001that when kids first enter an immersion program and usually those starting kindergarten, academically um on test they do tend to lag a little behind their peers, but by the time they get to third and fourth grade they catch up and they surpass because there are some strong cognitive benefits to learning a second language um that metalinguistic analysis is really strengthening your brain and enabling you to learn more. Um so another proven benefit and a goal of immersion is that cultural competency and global readiness. We want our kids to be prepared for the future and the future is global awareness. So we're giving our kids a leg up when we sign them up for immersion. Um it's going to give them long-term career advantages and this continues to be a strong asset to our district in
002terms of enrollment. We have quite a few families that are open enrolled into our district because of the immersion programs. So the enrollment right now, this is where our enrollment enrollment stands this year. Currently 11% of our students in K5 are immersion students. Um this year we did expand the program at Westwood to second grade. So we continue to add an incoming kindergarten class each year to that program and so then we just keep bumping up the grade levels as it goes. Currently our enrollment right now for um the Madison and Clearview has been stable in those um well-established programs and it's looking up in um our Westside or our Southside Northside, excuse me, um program. We'll We'll get more into that later. Um So this is kind of a breakdown of our enrollment right
003now. Currently we have 642 students enrolled in our immersion programs. As you can see on the graph here, our orange bars are that Southside Spanish immersion. Um and we have pretty strong interest in that program at Clearview up until fifth grade and then it shifts to the middle school and we do have a bit of a drop-off in enrollment and we'll get kind of into reasons why on that later. Um and then it continues on into high school. The green bars are the district-wide Chinese immersion and then the Northside Spanish is that dark blue. So as you can see, our Spanish immersion program has more kids in it, um but we do have stable enrollment in our elementary in Chinese immersion. This is a breakdown of the in the school at large. So the whole
004pie graph is the enrollment for Clearview and the light blue is the immersion program. Same for Westwood and Madison. Right now currently at Clearview we have 275 students in our immersion program out of 415. At Westwood we've got 107 out of 510 and then at Madison 127 out of 710. So that stands 60%, 17% and 15%. Um and I think Nikki Hanson's going to talk about this slide. Yes, I get to hop in here um just to speak to a little bit of the thoughtfulness and planning in our efforts around that Northside Spanish immersion transition um that we are looking at for next school year. And so we know that program kindergarten through second grade at Westwood this year will transition to a kindergarten through third grade program at Kennedy next year. Uh we took
005some time during family uh conferences to engage with parents face-to-face and start to support some of that transition planning. And so what we know is we have 87 families out of the 107 that are committed to moving to Kennedy and continue that uh Northside Spanish immersion programming. 11 of those students are hoping to stay at their community school location and nine of them are undecided. Um we have down to the spreadsheet of those individual names and numbers and are working in contact with those families to support them um as they make that important decision for their learner. Uh some of the transition supports that we have worked around with elementary leaders include two waves of intentional and targeted district communication, uh student conference communication as I mentioned with our Westwood families and then individual follow-up
006for those transitioning and undecided students, site transition planning meetings with leaders. Um Matthew Boucher and myself have been going out with our building leaders to just talk transition all the way from uh staffing to furniture to any needs that may come in between. And so really just trying to get ahead of and be thoughtful as we work on this planning together. On April 1st there will be a targeted message to welcome new families from building principals along with spring opportunities to do tours and engage in some of the family events here yet this spring. So just a little bit about that transition. So one of our focuses this year was on strengthening our Chinese immersion program. Um as many of you know, Superintendent Putnam had the opportunity to go to China and she made some
007amazing connections with the Minnetonka Minnetonka school district. Um so this year we were actually able to, Katie myself, um Meredith Boucher and um Emily Schmidt from our department were able to go and observe and partner with Minnetonka and we learned so many amazing things that we have been able to bring back. We were also able to send all of our elementary teachers to professional development um around literacy at Minnetonka. They had never had professional development in Chinese before and so that was um a really impactful piece that was awarded to us through that partnership. Um yeah. Um something else that came out of that partnership is we've been working to develop sister school ties to um schools in China. Um so this year we kind of laid the groundwork and this was through our collaboration
008with Minnetonka. We have two schools that we've identified and we have a tentative agreement with them and we're just getting to know them and getting to know what our priorities are and going forward we're going to have great plans for that. Um like Anna said, our Chinese immersion teachers did have the opportunity this year to develop in some to engage in some professional development. Um many of you might know that our elementary teachers in general have engaged in a lot of professional development around the science of reading. Um and so and our immersion teachers have as well because they are teachers of English as well. So they need to know how to teach English at their best advantage, but they also need they are faced with the task of also instructing kids in the target
009language. So they need to have that secondary skill set. Our Chinese immersion teachers got um some great information on how the science of reading might look in Chinese. Um our Spanish immersion teachers have taken letters and there's a lot more cross application as the systems of language are very similar. Chinese is a character-based language, so it's a different system. And so having that targeted professional development where they can really learn about that and take it back to their classroom, it was a big win. They were so excited to go back to their classrooms and get started on it. Another focus this year has been refining our assessment systems. Um and so just some of the other um systems that we have in place that maybe needed a little bit of a tune-up. Um we clarified
010our late entry admissions and what that screening looks like and if kids want to enter the program after kindergarten, we now have a process and a set um a set process in place. Um earlier this fall we also got to engage in a data dig. So we got to sit down and look at assessments and data and plan instruction and that was for our Spanish immersion program. Um part of the READ Act, we are required to screen our students who are in immersion both in English. We're We're required to test them, I might say, in English and both in the target languages three times a year. And so we have data for those kids on both languages on how they're doing. Um and part of the READ Act is response, right? So we have this
011data, now what? What are we going to do to inform instruction with it? And so we had our first data dig this fall about our Spanish data. Um and we have also been engaging in um um conversations about interventions. Um right now we've been doing a lot of work in our elementary around English interventions and we have for the past couple years. What does it look like in immersion is still a puzzle. The state is coming out with more specific guidelines around immersion and so we're all kind of staying tuned to see what the state is going to say about that, but just kind of getting ahead of the game and looking into options that we can maybe look into. So um Another part of assessment as far as it goes is STAMP testing. Um
012our students will stay take STAMP again this year. STAMP is an assessment that measures language proficiency in reading, writing, speaking and listening. So it's answering the question, are the students able to learn the language that they are studying? And we are we look when they take this test, are they meeting what we would expect them to meet? So it's kind of an accountability piece on is this is this a good fit for this student and is our program effective? And they will take that again in May this year. Another thing we have going with immersion is our internships. Um currently we have two sets of interns and one is through the Amity Institute and one is through St. Cloud State University. The Amity Institute is our Spanish immersion uh interns. And through St. Cloud State
013we have Chinese immersion in interns. And the benefit to this is it um lends a it gives a lens of cultural authenticity to the program cuz we have these um individuals that are native speakers of the language in our classroom and they're able to model that language and what it looks like. And they're also able to give some support to our teachers in our program. So it's a big win for us. As Katie and I are both new to the immersion programming, one thing that we found out this year um through our district immersion advisory council with our families and partners was that we didn't really have a campaign for how we advertise our programming. So one piece that we really focused on this year is having a comprehensive enrollment materials. We had the most
014highly attended kindergarten enrollment night for our immersion programs to date. Um and we taught um helped inform our parents around how our children learn the language and have a better understanding of the immersion program. Not just join immersion, but actually understand the benefits of immersion. We also created um they're on our website, so if you haven't checked them out yet, a day in the life of a kindergartner in a the Chinese program and the day in life of a kindergartner in the Spanish program. So a parent as you're sending that that little 5-year-old off to school and you're thinking, "Oh my goodness, they're going to learn two languages." You can actually see see what that would look like for them. Um we have been really uh proactive in our messaging and making sure that we
015identify who we are um and what this program can do for us. And we want to make sure we're visible and that our program is sustainable. So um we know that through word of mouth we've been able to sustain this program. So we are hopeful that with our communication, our campaign that we will continue to um make this even more sustainable. Okay. Um another thing we have going this year is we are having our capstone trip to China for our eighth and ninth graders. Andrew Stanick at St. Cloud State is a good partner for us. He helps us to organize the trip and goes with the kids. Um and so this is their opportunity to be immersed in the culture and the language that they have been studying for years. So it's really exciting for
016those students and those families that they get that opportunity to go to China. Uh and as I stated the slide ago, we had the immersion district advisory committee. We have met a couple times um and we have had a lot of really great feedback around assessments, programming um and so we are looking to continue to keep that um so we can make sure the voice of our immersion parents are being heard and that um they don't have to be um advertising for themselves and and having it kind of stay within them. Um and then we have we have established our final meeting date in April so that we can wrap up and and share with them all that we've we've done so far this school year. Um some of the other things that we've been
017working on currently um are just bolstering that communication between teams, having some monthly meetings to stay in touch and stay on track. Um now that we have two sites for Spanish immersion, it's great that we're growing our program, but we need to keep it in alignment. So being proactive about that is going to really be key, especially with the move for our Northside program. And just that reactive proactive says reactive there. Proactive problem solving. All right, so looking forward, what are we doing next year for Chinese immersion? Some of our key initiatives in this program um we're going to have a curriculum review uh a formal pilot. So part of what came out of our partnership with Minnetonka was a need for a strengthened curriculum that really supports tier one instruction um that supports our
018teachers and our program in staying in alignment and delivering good instruction. And so we've been scoping out different options and we're going to have a formal pilot next year. So that's very exciting. Um we will continue to develop those sister school relationships with those schools in China. So that's really exciting and promising. Um we will continue to look into options when they are available for strengthened professional development around biliteracy and what are best practices. Um we need to keep our focus on that as we continue to implement the READ Act not only in our English programs, but in our immersion programs as well. And we will continue to have those J-1 interns through St. Cloud State University. Um And of course we will continue to monitor enrollment and be active at getting the world word
019out. Um looking forward for our Spanish immersion for next year, some of the things are the same. We are also having a curriculum pilot for Spanish immersion. So currently this year they did pilot or try out a new curriculum um but they only tried out one. So that's not much of a choice and we we certainly want to get the best program that best fit possible and so there are two new um promising programs that are actually being written currently right now and they're being written for immersion. So that is really promising because what we have right now is kind of a direct translation and it's meant for kids that are native speakers of the language, so it is challenging for our teachers to implement. And so I'm hopeful that we can get a good
020program. So we will continue the pilot for Spanish immersion next year, but we will be looking into two new options and making a decision on that next year. Um we will also continue to seek out opportunities for biliteracy PD in Spanish. Um and as Anna said and Nikki said, the um the Northside program will make that big shift to Kennedy. And they will expand into third grade. And we will continue to have those J-1 interns through the Amity Institute for Spanish immersion. And we will continue to monitor enrollment there as well. Um so going forward in both programs, there were some common themes. We're looking to strengthen those tier one practices around biliteracy um develop our understanding about STAMP data and how to inform instruction with that around ACTFL levels and just increasing our proficiency
021around those benchmarks and supporting growth um and then keeping that program alignment together. Those are focuses moving forward. So our um we're building for the future as we keep alluding to. Um so we are going to grow and systematize our programs uh aligning is something that we are really focusing on district-wide through all um of our programming to ensure that we're best supporting our students, our staff and ensuring long-term success. Uh we're going to strengthen global connections and cultural authenticity. Um we are also looking into the possibility of sister schools um for our Spanish immersion programs. Um this year uh we focused on strengthening those foundational elements and next year we will be intentional about our instructional refinement um and we are very excited about our curriculum development for both of those programs. Questions for
022us. Thank you. Does anybody have any questions or comments? Peter. First just a thank you worked on the transition with the Northside. I know that um earlier in the year uh that was not always um taken um with excitement by by everyone in the community, but um from your graphs it shows certainly that you've done some really good work um in transitioning families and and um getting their support. Obviously, you know, they have choice to do other things, but you uh uh large majority uh will be transitioning. I personally think it will it will be interesting to see the trends related to elementary to junior high um I I don't know what the word is that I'm looking for right now, but staying with it. Um obviously we see that big jump when you're a
023big decrease when you go into sixth grade with um and I think it could be really an an incredible positive uh to have that continuity between K through eight. So uh thank you for that. Um I do have a question that, you know, maybe integrates a couple things and it's two questions, but I'm going to wrap it into one. What do you see and partly because um immersion is self-selection into programs, what sort of trends do you see in immersion related to conduct um and and issues with students and is it different than in general classrooms? And the same with special education. Can you talk a little bit about how you serve special education students um in an immersion program? Um so student behavior is student behavior, right? So um it comes down to engagement,
024how strong our tier one instruction is and um speaking directly to the differences in conduct from immersion to a general education setting, I don't think we could give you anything that would be valid. Um as for special education, we do have students that receive special education services in our immersion programs. We really try to support our students. Often times as many of you know that we don't necessarily know a student need is in need of additional services. So if we are no longer able to service them, we might possibly look at a change. But we really try to meet our students needs and where they're at so that they can still be part of the immersion program. Just following and mostly because I'm ignorant as to character based learning in in Chinese immersion. Do you
025do students I mean obviously you know in um English and Arabic letters you have dyslexic and does it play out in the same sort of way like when you're do you see the same sort of reading challenges and just interpretations that you see in in all languages is that universal across languages? That's a really interesting question. Very interesting question. I don't know if either of us are experts that we could attest to it. But when we were actually in Minnetonka, one of the things that we took away. So what we had kind of right historically thought because we are new to immersion programming was that a lot of our Chinese learning was around memorization of characters. And that's actually not the case right? There it's a really robust system and I said well if I
026would have known that when my children were little I probably would have put them in Chinese immersion. And so that would be a really fascinating piece to find out because students are learning in different ways but there's still a system. So um >> Can I take a stab at this I'm actually one of the letters trainers in our district. So I've been very involved in the training of the science of reading. So your brain when you are learning to read in a phonetic language, we have a reading circuit right? And so part of our brain is processing the auditory that's coming in and part of our brain is the letter box. And so we're making these connections in our brain and we're putting the sound and the symbol together to decode words in a phonetic
027system if that makes sense. As a as an adult and um as a fluent reader, you read almost effortlessly in this manner because you've ingrained that in your brain. That's the system that sometimes gets tripped up by dyslexia. And so I would take a stab to say it probably does present but it presents differently. And that's probably all I could speak to. So I'd have to look up the research. >> [laughter] >> That's a good question. Yeah. Anybody else have any questions or comments? Scott? Uh probably more for Matthew um how's the transportation working out between um Westwood and Kennedy? Um transportation between Westwood and Kennedy when we switch the programs over um most of the kids are still going to be living in the Westwood area. Um how's that working out? Do you have
028plans for that? We have plans. We haven't routed it yet. That routing will happen over the summer. But as we look at our preliminary numbers it will not add routes to us. It will not add buses or add cost from a transportation perspective to make that transition. So we did a and a preliminary analysis of what that transportation impact would be. But we will formally know that once we actually run the routes and have real kids on real seats. So you will you be having actual pick up at Westwood or would be picking up along a normal route? Those students will be assigned routes to you know closest to their home right? So stops closest to their home and they'll just be driving it then out to Kennedy. So Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you
029for joining us tonight. Thank you. Okay, we're moving on to discussion and action items. First we have board members appointed to award diplomas at the Tech and Apollo commencements which are Saturday May 30th um this year. So for Apollo we have Scott and Zach will be handing out diplomas and Tech Heather and Gina will be handing out diplomas. And if any of you run into a conflict um let us know let me know because I can certainly be a backup um and other board members be a backup if you're not able to make it something comes up at that last minute. So thank you for um volunteering or being enthusiastically excited about that. I appreciate that >> [laughter] >> very much. Um so next we have the graduation plans update and Dr. Jason Harris our
030assistant superintendent of secondary education um will be filling us in of what it's going to look like this year. Good evening Chair Haas assistant superintendent Hansen. I miss you over here it's a long corner by myself. >> [laughter] >> Uh and board members. Uh just a few updates around the graduation ceremony coming up. Can you believe it? It's around the corner. So our families are getting notices right now around graduation. Our students are looking at where they are and all their credits and requirements and we're planning for the ceremony. And so I'll just go over a few quick updates just around the ceremony. We'll have a few new policy procedures within safety and security. So we'll have a bag policy. It's a clear bag only 5 by 9. And so uh clear plastic bags will
031be allowed but they have to be clear. Exceptions will be diaper bags and medical bags but they'll be subject to search. We'll have a specific separate bag check line for the families that have bags right? So when you look at it you go to big events currently right now a big arena as you have to have a certain size bag clear. We're just starting to for us follow the standards of what's taking place when you go to big venues now. Uh one of the things that will really communicate our next communication is coming out Monday the 23rd is just around time and an entry right? Folks that haven't been in the downtown area at that time for movement and graduation it gets busy. And so to find parking we'll be communicating give yourself at least
03230 plus minutes to park get to the venue doors so we can really start uh promptly. The new change will be in our time cutoffs and we'll enforce when you can get in the venue and not. The folks that don't make it will have our alternative area to view it with big screen. We just got a chance to see the venue to see how it will be for those families that don't make the time. So we'll really communicate to get families to really understand like time is of the essence. We'll we'll have a cutoff time. When you remember in our last ceremonies we get that last group uh during the ceremony and we're probably what 25 minutes in. That won't happen. We'll we'll stop the disruption to stop the ceremony for that and you'll have
033the alternative site. Uh here the door communication times at Apollo's graduation and Tech. This this is all already being communicated in our family letters but now this will be the next wave is coming out on Monday. And then specifically around the safety and logistics we'll add extra St. Cloud PD within the venue and we'll have more supervision in our areas where we've had concerns in the past. And so those will be some of the things around visibility and then safety cuz you'll probably like you know get folks that are probably mad that they if they can't get in and they missed the time. We just want to communicate ahead that we will have security and you know so we'll make sure like here's the time. And so again arriving early plan your parking give yourself
034plenty of time so we can have a good ceremony and every graduate can be celebrated and those families can have a happy happy event on that day. Any questions around that? And this is just a quick visual that we put together just for the new implementation procedures around the ceremony. Yeah Laura No any questions? All right. Oh that's it? >> That's it. That's it right now? We'll get a second scoop of the actual principals coming in in May to just go over all the other things. This is just superintendent Pun wanted to get just a quick update. We've been getting calls about graduation already right now. And so this will be you know just to get ahead of everybody to help them know the new changes in the process. But right now it's um we've
035announced the date right? Saturday May 30th. Yes. And the location. And the location. Yes. Thank you very much. Yes thank you. Yes. One policy read. Um [clears throat] this is a second reading for proposed revised board policy 208 which is development adoption and implementation of policies uh policy for policies presented by Shannon Evenson executive director of community education and community partnerships. Good evening Chair Haas members of the board, and assistant superintendents. This is a second read. So, I will not go into many details here, but just as a reminder, the changes that we made to this policy were just some updates as were recommended by about which policies would be reviewed annually. And so, those have decreased. But now, we only have three policies that are required to be reviewed annually. And then, the other
036change to this was that we removed the um amend What do we call it? The on the end. And the reason we removed that is because it becomes really challenging to follow that. We like to go with when MSBA is updating policies or there are statute changes or internally if we have some changes, we like to make sure that we follow those first. And so, that's why we removed that. And then, we have an internal process for that review cycle. Any questions? All right. Thank you. And then, standing committee reports, I believe just one tonight. We have achievement, integration, and equity board committee chair Diana Fenton. Thank you. The achievement, integration, and equity committee met this morning. Um the immersion program update that was presented tonight by Anna Wilheit and Katie Simasek was um presented.
037And again, you heard about that tonight. And the second thing we discussed today was the draft of the NEPPC letter that we will be signing at a future board meeting. And I on Omar will be sending a draft to board members to preview before our signing. Thank you. And I'm not missing any other ones, correct? Okay. So, then we have the board of education or excuse me, just future agenda items we have left. Um the April 1st board meeting topics will include technology and information systems future systems transition update, approval of the 2026-2027 compensatory revenue plan, the 2026-2027 FTE projections based on enrollment and registrations, approval of tentative agreements, if any, the NEPPC board response letter, communications update, and policy readings. At this time, does any board member wish to suggest a future agenda item?
038Okay. Um so, looking for a motion to adjourn tonight's uh Board of Education meeting. I have a motion by Natalie, a second by Heather. All in favor, say I. Opposed? Meeting is adjourned. It is 7:42 p.m. Thanks for watching. We'll be back April 1st. That was quick. >> [laughter] >> Yes.