001is to provide a safe and caring climate and culture in which we engage, inspire, educate, prepare, and empower all learners in partnership with their surrounding community to be successful in today's and tomorrow's society. Scott, can you please lead us in the pledge of allegiance? Thank you. And then you're when you're ready, Scott, can you please call roll? The following board members are present at the district office. Uh Scott Andreas here, El Dogren here, Zach Dorhalt here. Diane Fenton here. Shannon Haw here. Following board members are not present. are Natalie Copeland and Heather Williams. The following cabinet members and staff are present at the district office. Assistant Superintendent of Secondary Education, Dr. Jason Harris, Assistant Superintendent of Eve through Five Learning, Nikki Hansen, Assistant Superintendent of E through 12 Educational Services. Shannon Avenson, executive director of
002community education. Adam Holm, executive director of operations. Joel Hidamp, executive director of special projects. Gary Gani, director of community engagement and communications. Tammy Dan, uh, media technician, Gordy Scott, custodian on site, Austin Goodwater. Thank you. And next, I need a motion to approve tonight's board of education meeting agenda. Can I get a motion and then a second, please? Okay, I have a motion by Diana and can I get a second? Second. and a second by Zack. Uh Scott, can you call vote? Uh Shannon Haw, yes. Fenton, yes. Zack Dorhalt. Mr. Dohalt, yes. Alan, yes. Scott Andreas, yes. Thank you. Then we have the consent agenda. The consent agenda consists of non-controversial items the board adopts routinely without debate. Any single member may remove an item from the consent agenda by requesting removal at the time
003the consent agenda is moved for adoption. On tonight's consent agenda, item A, approval of minutes from February 5th, 2025 and February 19th, 2025. Item B, approval of bills and other financial transactions in the grand total amount of 4,48,687.76. Item C, approval of personnel staff changes. Item D, acceptance of grant awards and donations. And item E, contract award audit services. At this time, does any board member wish to remove an item from the consent agenda? Okay. Then I'm looking for a motion to approve the consent agenda as read. I have a motion by Al. Do I have a second? Second. And a second by Diana. Scott, can you call vote one more time? Uh, Diana Fenton, yes. Zack Dorhalt, yes. Dogen, yes. Scott Andreas, yes. Shannon Hos, yes. All right. Thanks. Nice job. Appreciate you filling
004in. Okay, we're moving on to information items. Uh, we have two tonight. First up, we have the LEAF Report, Local Education Activities Foundation, and we welcome Diane Mohler, the 2024 LEAF president. And then we have Tammy Dan, director of community engagement and communications. Thanks for joining us tonight. We're glad to have you here. Is it on now? Okay. Thank you very much for the opportunity. We're very proud of the things that have gone on with LEAF this past year and um we're here to share a little bit of that success with you. Um yeah, you can just keep rolling through the the board of directors are listed in the first slide. Um as you can see, we have a lot of most of the activities directors from the district are are serving on the board
005as well as Justin as the principal rep, Justin Scalude. Um if you go to the next slide, I am the past president because Charlie Eisner just took over as president. It was fun to pass the torch to him. Um and Beth Ben Fenstead, a teacher at Tech High School, just recently retired, has agreed to be vice president. So, we're very excited about the leadership um going on at LEAF. It was a hard transition, but you know, Bruce Hench has had a few big shoes to fill with his retirement. Natalie's done an awesome job and we're very happy with the the direction we're going. So, we have a video produced that we're pretty proud of. We showed it at our annual meeting back in February, but um it's about a 3minute video, I think. So, if
006we could take a minute to view that, I think it'll give you some highlights. [Music] 30 years ago, middle school activities in St. Cloud were at risk of disappearing. In response, a group of teachers, parents, and community leaders created an education foundation to preserve and expand these opportunities for our students. What began as a grassroots communitydriven initiative has evolved into a cornerstone of support for District 742 students and educators, uplifting generations of learners. For over 30 years, LEAF 742 has been dedicated to fulfilling our mission to raise funds through donations and grants to increase student access to vital opportunities in academics, activities, arts, and athletics. Week programming is designed to inspire the community to support district 742 students. And we know that supporting students means supporting the devoted staff across our 14 schools. Since 2011,
007LEAF has offered something special, the adopt a classroom program, which allows families, community members, and local businesses to sponsor a classroom through high school by providing a grant for essential supplies. We are so grateful for our classroom grants, which have allowed us to integrate innovative and new resources into our classrooms as we have transitioned to the new Minnesota State Science Standards. Because of your support, we are able to provide relatable and engaging materials for all of our students. We've also set up and continues to manage two endowments, one for activities and the other for academics. These endowments, all funded by donations from our community, allow us to provide grants that bridge funding gaps to increase access and opportunity for students to have the resources they need to succeed. In 2024, we surpassed 3 million in
008total grants to district 742 programs. South Junior High received a LEAF activities grant this fall and we were able to fund new equipment for our baseball and softball team. Because of the support, our athletes are able to compete with better gear and perform at their best. Thank you, Leaf 742. I remember when our community 40 activities program that was 30 years ago and that support has continued without pause through LEAF programs dedicated to helping our most vulnerable students. From providing crisis shelter for a family with three young children during our frigid winters to provate whose family could barriers and ensuring all students have the opportunity to succeed. Our community is coming together once again to offer middle school activities free charge to all students. Starting in the 202526 school year, LEAF will fund the elimination
009of two years worth of middle school activity fees for all students. District 742 and LEAF are committed to ensuring every student has the chance to explore activities from soccer to robotics. Thanks to our generous donors, if you haven't yet, join us, won't you? Thank you, Lee. Thank you, Lee. Thank you. Thank you, Le. Wait for the music to stop. Um, we have an awesome or communications committee that really worked hard to get that video created. So, um, kudos to them. It really turned out well. I think our excitement over next year's um or the the following year's uh elimination of the activity fee at the middle level is pretty when you think about the cycle. So LEAF started to save middle level activities. 30 years later we're eliminating the fees for the activities. I we're
010pretty proud of that. Anyway, so all right, a little bit about the financial impact. Uh, we have given 3 million plus in grants over the 30-year history. And this past year, we gave almost 300,000. I would almost say that could have been a 300,000 by the time the year was over, but the books closed. So, uh, so it's good. And, you know, we give our our finances do well when everyone's finances do well because we give 5% of what we make on our investments out in grants. So, um, the more money we make, the better the market is, the more we can give back to the district. And you can see our largest, uh, portion of income comes from public support. So, kudos to the St. Cloud community who really do step up and, uh,
011support their kids. That's for sure. And our greatest distribution is grants back to district 742. You can see that line there. Um the fundraising amount is very very minimal mostly because we don't do a lot of it. It just happens. It happens that the community gives. Um so that's kind of fun. And there you can see the wheel of kind of how it's all divided largely activities for after school and then academics. Our adopt a classroom program has just skyrocketed. Um interesting story that there at Kennedy this year there were four teachers. A a a parent contacted us and said how many teachers at Kennedy didn't get a grant and there were four. They gathered a group of people together and funded those four classrooms. Just a group of parents. It was pretty cool. Um
012Packrat and Pack Cat certainly are still going strong and a large part of it. The language immersion program, our homeless student services fund. people can uh have a flowthrough fund, a scholarship fund created through LEAF and so we have several of those um that are are in there. The music matters was when the St. Cloud All City marching band disbanded and had to donate their money to a nonprofit and LEAF was the recipient of that. So uh many of our grants to the music department can come through um that fund as well. And then of course our participation fund which was definitely increased when Ion and Jesus um did their dancing a year ago. So we have a large a pretty large uh account there to help students needing either fees or equipment shoes as
013they said whatever might happen. So that's kind of how it's all dispersed. There are some pictures of the things that we have funded. Grant goodness. Um, at our annual meeting, we did the U awards that we do annually. Um, so the, uh, award winners this year were Costco because they had their employees go to Westwood last year and read to first graders. I think it was first graders um, you know, on Tasco paid them. So it was employee time that they got to come and read with the uh students and they actually brought books and it was just a wonderful program. Um the George and Shirley Tory award which is for charitable giving went to Kevin and Beth Donnelly and then the volunteer service award went to Grandpa John over at Tilah for all of
014his work with writing grants um of which we help him sometimes because he needs support for that. And um the distinguished alumni award is going to Terry and Sue Pladson this year. They are both graduates of Tech High School. The Instructional Excellence Award, Kristen Dolman Stole, who's the art teacher at Westwood Elementary, and Amanda Sider, who teaches at Apollo, I think EL. Okay. um Benel who is at tech and coaches and advises the math um math league and then Christy Husen for her coaching and advising excellence award. So those were our district winners. And then we did give a lifetime service award to Bruce Henches. And Peggy Carlson actually got that award a few years ago because she's also very integral to what we do at LEAF. And um those they were classmates, class of
01568, I think, at Tech. So um that was kind of fun. Um in essence, we're just grateful to have this partnership with the district. Um, we are grateful to be able to support the students in the community and in your district from the day they're born until graduation. And that's what I think that picture is very cool for that. Any questions you have for us? Anybody have any questions or comments at all? Scott, uh, can you tell me a little more about the homeless program? Well, um I can tell you that it's a fund that we have that uh we work in conjunction with um the district rep for transition. Transition. Thank you. Yeah. Coco. Yeah. Um when there's a need that arises, um Koko will work with us and we can provide some emergency
016funding for families. Um we did have a grant from the city of St. cloud for a while that also uh went into that but we do not have that grant anymore. Um I think we also fund part of that fund with a United Way grant. Um so but it's it's designed in fact at our retreat we have a retreat next week or two weeks from now to kind of go through our strategic plan and look at sort of our committee structure all sorts of things and um we're going to have a discussion about what's the right name for that fund. So, um, homeless might be right. I know we've in board policy, we went through names and we came back to homeless because that's what it says in the law. Yeah, it might be the
017one. Yeah. Thank you. Yep. when I've so I' I've donated to Leaf for a while and and when I when I first started giving to Leaf and choosing a charity, one of the reasons that I decided to go with there's a couple of reasons that I decided to go with Leaf, but the main reason that I decided to go fairly heavily with leave is there was a lot of transparency in where the money was going. there was a lot of transparency in um where it was coming from and I felt very comfortable therefore that the funds that I was donating were being given to the resources that they were that they people said that they were going to be given to recently I'm going to they it hasn't been as trans transparent. Uh if I
018go online and look at the website for leaf, most of it hasn't been updated for two to three years. Sometimes up to n eight or nine years. Uh there's no financials posted on there anymore. There's no meeting minutes posted on there anymore. that it's as though this website is just kind of hanging out there and it's been forgotten about. And then along with that, and I and I'm not I'm I I this is hard for me to talk about this because I'm not looking for recognition. That's not the thing. But I also don't like to be wrongly recognized. And when I go in and look at the donor lists or whatever, they haven't been updated. the the uh major sponsors was last updated in online. And so the a lot of the major sponsors that
019are listed and they're getting the primary primary visibility on that website. Some of them don't even give anymore. And some of them that do give give a lot are listed down at the very bottom. And the supporters and sponsors page was last updated in 2015. So it's been like 9 years since that's been updated. It's not even close to being accurate. Um history last updated in 2018. There's a photo contest that was being run that's still a big piece of the website that hasn't been updated since 2024. the executive committee minutes uh 2024. The board meeting minutes 2024, fundraising reports haven't been updated since 2023. So, what I'm getting at is nobody's taking care of the website and the transparency is disappearing. And I'm not saying I don't trust you guys. I I know you
020guys. But for a charity such as yours that relies on donations from the general public, a lack of transparency is going to translate into diminishing funds. And I don't think that any of us want that for leaf. And somehow we've got to get that stuff. So at the risk of sounding defensive, well, you can be. I mean I'm I'm um first of all our funding we have seen an increase in and um in fact we just recently had a very large donation from Kermit Eastman. So that was pretty nice. Um we are going through a transition with the website. We do have somebody hired doing the website. Um I I'm unaware of why the changes would have been in there. Um and I will check that out. But I didn't realize that the minutes and
021um the finances aren't getting posted anymore. But it is part of what we're discussing at our retreat next week is that's part of it too is what is the website? What's our vehicle with the website? Um whom do we want to pay to do that? Do we want to continue with the person we have? Do we want to change? You know, um so we realize that there are issues with that and um I agree totally with you. We want to be transparent. Absolutely. We want to be transparent and I know that is the goal of the whole board and the executive director as well. So we'll um we'll take that into consideration. So thanks for the uh awareness level. Yep. Well and thanks for what you do. I'm not again I'm not being critical of
022Lee or and and I'm fairly close to well I'm close to the district so I get to see what happens with it but other people don't and and so therefore transparency becomes a really important piece of the pie to me and and I I mean I wouldn't I wouldn't have that for the school district if we suddenly weren't posting our minutes or if we weren't posting our financials and keeping everything very transparent and open to the public. I'd bring it up in a meeting there, too. So, thank you. Yep. I have a question, Diane, but and I don't think you can answer it, but the first part did you say we're doing a 2year waiver to middle school activity fees? And so, that's all I I don't even know right now. Are we currently doing
023prorating like it's a $20 or a $40 or $60? Do we have two tiers right now in middle school? Anybody know? Yeah. So the free and reduced lunch piece around the um activity fees is I think right now totally 180 but half of it for if I'm free and reduced either 40 or 80. Right. Right. Right. It doesn't go down to zero right now. It never has. Well as far as as long as I can remember anyway. Okay. So two years we're waving both both tears. Right. Is that right? That is incredible. Yes. Yeah. So now it's everything's off the plate, right? Where I don't have to come up with that portion at all. Yeah. Um so so thank you for that. It what's exciting about it to me is the possibility that you can
024fund this so we can see did that change what did that change enrollment? you know, because we're constantly talking about barriers as you did with the transportation and um but we we can't our hands are tied too often to know well okay if we stop doing that could so when you come in and you you can help us fund that so then we can see did that improve that situation and is that where we want to continue that investment so that's really exciting and I guess I'm just looking forward to than knowing the numbers. Um what did that change for us? So thank you amongst all the other things that you fund. Um how wonderful this is. Good. You're welcome. Anybody else? All right. Thanks for joining us. We really appreciate it. Okay, we have
025one moreformational item up tonight. We have the systemwide literacy progress and next steps and welcoming back um our regulars lately. So we have Laura Steener, director of elementary education and Hillary Johnson, director of secondary education again. Glad to see you too. Um thanks for coming back and this is exciting to hear about this. Well, we're always glad to be here. Uh so chair hos members of the board we are going to um really focus in on the read act. I have been here a couple of times with you um and Hillary obviously in her role as secondary has worked um extremely hard to help spearhead the the read act and we also work alongside some other people that we'll we'll share and highlight. Um but we're going to our systemwide literacy work is really guided
026by the Minnesota Read Act. um you've had an opportunity to hear about this and so this is an opportunity for us to share with you um what progress we've made since our last update and then what our next steps are. So just as a reminder the read act has um kind of five buckets I would say of work associated with it and those buckets are what we'll uh shape our presentation around tonight. So the Minnesota Read Act uh requires districts to do specific things related to training. We have specific work to do in curriculum and providing interventions to students. There's a parent notification component and a component for screening and that's really screening students um for characteristics of dyslexia and screening to ensure that students who need additional reading help um are found and are
027provided that help. So those are our five buckets and that is our you'll see those through our presentation tonight. Um so just a few updates when it comes to the Minnesota Read Act itself. These are not 742 updates. These are just um the nature of this work is big and the state legislature continues to modify and adjust as they are figuring out their first um ever legislation like this in in Minnesota. And so one of the the pieces with training that's been an update at the state level is that um we have different phases of teachers who need to be trained when it comes to the science of reading and evidence-based practices. the state had um identified different phases of teachers ensuring that teachers who were teaching students um in elementary and early childhood where
028some of those foundational skills were most critical were in the first phase of training and we've begun that training. We've been doing that for a couple of years now in district 742. Phase 2 teachers um are teachers who are going to be secondary language arts teachers. there's other teachers who are part of that group. Um and their phase 2 training was actually delayed until 2226 or sorry 2026 not 2226. Um and that reason was we were also implementing new standards and so the state recognized that the work to implement the new standards and then also to take on the training um would be a heavy lift for districts as they're figuring out how to use that precious resource of time uh curriculum. We know that uh the Minnesota Department of Education has partnered with Carrie
029out of the U of M to review different curriculums. They've been focusing on elementary literacy curriculum. Um and that timeline has been delayed slightly. They had um hoped to share with us some new reports in March or the beginning of March and we're we're still awaiting those. Um the state has done a great job of getting us resources um but as they've again done this for the first time, there have been some delays along the way. Um, for intervention, we do now know that the state will be reviewing K12 interventions um, and helping us understand which interventions are most likely to get the results that we need to see with students and we will be able to receive that in November of 2025. So, we're looking forward to getting that list. The work that the
030state does to really dig deeply into curriculums and intervention is very helpful for folks in a curriculum role to have that that good um, solid work to to piggyback off of. Um, parent notification is a component of the read act that we'll talk through. Um, part of the readact is that there are regional literacy leads and literacy groups all across the state of Minnesota and their role is to help districts in executing the readact. And so our regional center is starting to work on templates and exemplars for districts when it comes to the parent communication and notification component of the readact. And that is something new since the last time we got to talk about that. And then screening. We are waiting on a list of approved screening tools for students in grades 4th through
03112th grade. Um we do have a list of approved screening tools for elementary students. Um and here in district 742 we are using an approved screener for our fourth and fifth graders that's in line with elementarymentaries that really helps us systematically respond and train our teachers. Um but the state will be providing additional information in um in screening that can be used in grades 4 through 12. um that was set to be shared with us in early 2025, starting to get into mid 2025. Um we're hoping to hear soon. Um we've heard that the the state is about ready to share that, but at this point we have not gotten that information yet. So, we'll jump into training. Um I'll share about the elementary progress and then Hillary will take it away with the secondary.
032Um so, for elementary, we're we're really excited. Um I'll kind of start with that second bullet point. Um, we are at about 90% of our current elementary and early childhood teaching staff that will finish the letters training by the end of next school year. Now, I had an opportunity to share with you a while ago about letters and it's a very intense training. It's a lot of hours. And so, knowing that by the end of next school year, we will have the large bulk of our teachers trained is a huge celebration. Um something else we're proud of in elementary as well is that we were challenged with um figuring out a way to offer this training within the duty day for our teachers and that's something that most districts have not figured out to do
033how to do. Um so there's always pros and cons with any choice that you make. So the pro of having it within the duty day was that it was in within the duty day. We're job embedded training we know is is the way to go whenever we can. The con was we weren't able to move that fast. Again there's only so many minutes in the day. Um, so we did work with our teachers union and we got feedback from teachers and were able to execute a fasttrack option for staff who wanted to be able to get done this summer who wanted that information now who said I'm willing to put in the time because I really want to know this to impact my students. And so we have just under a hundred teachers who elected
034that option who will finish up this summer. So, that is something very exciting to be able to support um not only our teachers who really need that duty day experience, but those teachers who wanted to do something different. And we're also able to compensate those teachers on the fasttrack who are putting in time outside the duty day to complete training. Thank you. So close. I can't There we go. Sorry about that. Um thank you. And I think you'll see in this presentation um how elementary has really led the way for us in this and as secondary um some of the training pieces were put off. So you'll see some of the pieces that we have that are um learning from them and growing from all the work that they did. Um so you can see
035here our phase one teachers like Laura was talking about in secondary are our reading interventionists, our EL teachers, our special educators, and our reading specialists. Um, we were fortunate to receive a grant last year. Like Laura was saying, um, keeping that training in the day, um, has been wonderful for our teachers, but it also takes longer. So, we received a grant to get many of our teachers trained last summer. So, that's why you'll see why our number is very high and the number of teachers that we have to train in comparison is also much lower. Um, and so we're very proud of the work that they've done this year in getting trained um, in a secondary platform. So Laura will talk about letters. In secondary, the training that they're doing is called carry all which
036is in partnership again with um the University of Minnesota and Kerry Institute. Um the other part of training that we've done this year um is working on a secondary literacy task force. So they have been really um instrumental in getting teacher voice into what secondary literacy is going to look like for us as we roll that out over the next couple years. When it comes to next steps, the READ Act is big, so we always have next steps. We're we're never done with this work. Um, in K12, we do have a requirement to train our support staff, and we have that scheduled out for next year. So, any support staff, these would be um staff that are working alongside our students in various capacities. Um, any support staff who do work on literacy with students
037are required to have a training. Um it's about eight hours of training and it's provided by our regional centers as a partnership. And so we have been fortunate to already work with our regional center to have that mapped out right within our professional development time. So this will not impact students. We won't need to pull our support staff away from students to be able to get that training in. Um and our staff will be able to have that mapped out throughout the year to be able to um also have that great background. So as teachers are using practices in the classroom, those support staff members who work alongside teachers and are instrumental to student success also have that same knowledge and background. Um we also need to create a plan to provide required training for
038new staff each year and that's a K12. And so we are looking at that. Um the fortunate thing is with so many of our staff trained, this isn't a huge amount. We also are seeing more and more staff that we hire coming in already trained or partially trained. Um and so we do need to keep our eyes on that, but that isn't the same undertaking as the lift that we did for the whole system to be trained. Um in elementary, the staff who've completed letters um will be able to move into implementation of their new learning within their classrooms next year as the other staff finish up. So we have about a twothirds of our staff that will finish up next year and those fast trackers will be able to start really that key implementation
039work which is exciting to have some um folks on the forefront with more time and capacity to implement some of those new practices and to do that with their their colleagues and peers and really discuss how that's changing things for students. And in secondary, as our summer or as our um teachers were able to finish up the carry all training last summer, we've been really focusing on this school year of working with because they are our um special educators and our EL teachers are getting um to work in their PLTs on what implementation of their learning looks like in their classrooms. Um we are also very excited um about the work that we're going to be doing um coming up working with our special educators on writing structured literacy goals for our students with identified
040um reading disabilities. So we're really trying to take that learning that we did in carry all and implement it into um into places that we know um will have a lot of impact on our students reading. So next we move into curriculum. There's a lot happening in curriculum. Actually, just before this room got turned into this, we had about 30 educators in here looking at elementary curriculum. So, it's exciting work. Um, we have a curriculum review in progress right now. This means that we need to select a new resource. So, in elementary, we've had the same resource for about probably a good 10 11 years. We've updated it with new copyright. So, we aren't using old materials. We've had updated materials, but our teachers have been using the same curriculum for quite some time. Um,
041so now we have this great opportunity as part of our curriculum review cycle to um use the knowledge we've gained in our science of reading training, use the great tools provided by the state of of Minnesota and to bring multiple and differing perspectives together to say what's next for our students. Um, so we had about 30 some staff here today because we invited administrators to join us as well. But our 20 plus staff on the team includes classroom teachers, EL teachers, special education teachers, and building and district administrators. Um, and then we expanded that out now that we're at this stage of vendor presentations to really include our our principal voice as well. We're really careful. Um, you can imagine that with a a district of eight schools, we know that our schools have um
042different communities. We know that there are different needs and so we're very careful to make sure that all grades and all schools are represented. Now, that doesn't mean there's a first, second, third, fourth, fifth grade teacher from Madison. Um, but as we map this out, we ensure that every school's represented and every grade's represented. And sometimes we have multiple grade levels, but that really helps us to make the best decision. Um, this team has spent a great deal of time reviewing the U of M carry all and um, MDE reports and rubrics. These are very intense and very in-depth. And we did all of that work before we even looked at a teacher manual, before we had a vendor presentation, because we really wanted to align with the science. Um, we know that there are
043products and we know that products um have lots of great people who share them with us. We also know that um there can be things that we aren't going to see in a 50-minute vendor presentation. And so starting with the reports and rubrics has really helped us to ensure that we're leaning in to the evidence-based practices to help us choose what presentations to see. Um those vendor presentations started today and we will do probably four or five more throughout the spring and then that is in the ultimate goal of identifying which programs we would pilot next school year and then at the end of next school year choosing what would be our new resource going into the following year. You can see that this is definitely an area that um elementary has been given different
044resources than secondary. Um so secondary at this point MDE will not review secondary ELA curriculum. So what our secondary um ELA task force has been really focusing on is that ELA instructional vision. So they did kind of the same work that Laura did um in elementary by looking at the research. what does best practice say for secondary students and really coming up with being able to articulate that vision that we want to see. And the next thing that they're going to be doing is auditing our current resources for the structured literacy that we know is best practice for our students. When it comes to next steps in elementary, like I said, we'll be piloting. We will pilot in a wide variety of classrooms. So, we always um really look to make sure that we expand
045the pilot to be as big as it can be within reason. there can be financial constraints with a pilot. Um we also know that it is a big lift for teachers. So teachers have to understand um what this this feels like. But we do our very best to ensure that we're piloting in many classrooms and including our Spanish immersion classrooms. Now Chinese is a little different because it's not uh this it's not a letterbased it's a character-based language. So their curriculum process for literacy is a little bit different when we do other curriculums like math and such. Chinese immersion is it was within that um regular process. But for Spanish immersion, it's really essential. Um they are going to be part of our review. They actually are part of our review. We will make those
046final recommendations in spring of 2026. And then what's always so important is ensuring that we don't just spend a lot of time and effort and energy on picking the resource. We really think about what is implementation look like. So setting goals for our implementation. um understanding how we'll progress monitor those goals and the roles and responsibilities for implementing a new literacy curriculum don't just fall on classroom teachers. It's our whole system that needs to support that. So developing goals um and roles and responsibilities to clearly show how we will take this resource and bring it into our classrooms. And similarly in secondary curriculum, you can see once we review um our current resources, that diverse team of secondary teachers will also make recommendations um for what our secondary programming looks like um and decide if
047we need to um look at any supplemental materials in order to meet our um the knowledge that we have on structured literacy. Next up, we have intervention. I'm really proud of the work that our district has done around intervention this year. Uh this has been a huge focus area for our elementary teachers and a fantastic partnership um where we've worked closely with EEL and special education and our literacy coordinator for elementary Lori Eert has done just a tremendous job in leading this work. Um the progress that we've made is we have now with our tool fastbridge that we use as a screener. um we are able to use a report that helps us understand which students need intervention and what those interventions are, but you still have to then figure out how do I get
048those into the classroom? How do I know if the help is helping? And so we've done a lot of professional development to help our staff understand how do I read the reports? How do I look at my literacy block to incorporate interventions within? Um some of our students do attend interventions with um teachers outside their classroom, but many of our students are still in need of intervention and it's important for us to all own that intervention component and then progress monitoring as well so that we understand if the help is helping. Um this fall in October we did a training day where we spent about a half a day with our teachers training giving them time to plan with their teams and their full teams, their grade level colleagues, their EL, their special ed counterparts
049to implement those new practices and data collection. And then our principles have really been working hard to review um fidelity and impact data. So we've had this opportunity, but we know that um not everyone changes at the same rate or the same pace. And so we've really rallied around that support and having an opportunity for our principles to check in on their data and say um what are some places and spaces where we might need to lend additional support and for those places and spaces where we've gotten off the ground? What impact are we seeing for our student growth with our interventions that are being um implemented across elementary? So that work happened in January of 2025 and u Miss Hansen is working really hard to create a schedule next year where we try to
050figure out how we have some regular um data components right within for our teachers to continue to touch in on the data and be able to respond to their student needs. Sorry. Um, in secondary, just like Laura said, this is an area that we are really proud of as I have um been the had the honor of being the director of an really amazing team of literacy specialists um a literacy coordinator um with Andy Lanning who has really um been a leader in our region in this work. Um, every time we talk to like Laura talks about our our regional support teams from MDE, they very often are coming to our secondary team to see the work that we're doing. Um, and as much as even asking Annie Andy to present um, at Compass trainings
051so we are again very proud of this work in secondary um, because we are placing students. So we are doing screeners, we are pa placing students in available science of reading courses where they are getting a Sunday intervention. Um and our literacy specialists that work very hard um continue to support our middle school middle school and high school and even our e um reading foundations three classes with those interventions. When we think about next steps for elementary, we need to continue to build on the momentum from this year. So we're excited. we've gotten some new practices in place and now we can refine and build on that. Um, building in those regular opportunities for staff to review data and to plan interventions, putting that right into our professional development calendar. And then, like I said,
052um, one of the updates from the Minnesota Department of Education is that they will release a list in November to us of approved interventions. And so, that will be an opportunity for us to take a look at what we're doing. Are there things we could modify to do better based on that state level guidance? Um it's never a great idea to just overhaul the whole system, but it gives us an opportunity to pause and say, "What is this new information? How might it help us refine our practices in order to ensure that um for students, especially students who are um needing the most support that we are using the practices that are the most efficient and effective with those students to ensure that they're reading at grade level. Um and then again, you can see
053in secondary we're still waiting. Um but like I said um I am we aren't just doing nothing while we wait. Like we have been really placing resources and energy and um trying to be leaders in understanding what this looks like in secondary um while we wait for the approved um interventions. Next up we'll talk about parent notification. And so the progress that we have made here is really um just staying connected to updates from our regional literacy leads. We know that they're working to provide exemplars for us and some templates so that we can um not every district has to start from scratch. So the the regional center will will help support us. Um we are already though notifying parents across K12 when students are receiving specialized reading services. So it's not that we're waiting
054um for the regional center to um tell parents that their students are receiving a reading intervention. However, as the regional center works on their parent communication, um there may be things that they include that really would be um great additions to our process. So, we have a process in place. We'll keep an eye on what those updates are from the regional center. Um our next steps for K12 are then to review those templates when they become available. And we also have to recognize the needs of our 742 families. Um we have a diverse group of of students and families. And so it will be important to not just you know pick up an exemplar and say this is what works for our community but to review that carefully and to get feedback from different stakeholder
055groups and then be able to say is there modifications in our communication plans we would make based on these exemplars and also to meet the needs of of families across the district. And then we'll jump into screening. So in elementary we are in the second year of using a MDE approved screener. We're using the screener fastbridge. Um we've built capacity for our staff to understand the data to develop instructional actions to respond. Um so we don't just want to screen students and say, "Okay, we screened them." We want to make sure that we're we're taking action and we're ensuring that students are getting instruction does uh that's in line with their needs. And then we're gathering teacher feedback um to potentially modify some of our screening based on MDE guidance. So the Minnesota Department of
056Education has specific subtests that are required. um the FastBridge assessment has additional subtests that we can give and so often that data is is great. We can respond to that data, but it's balancing the amount of time in instruction versus the amount of time um assessing. And so right now we're working particularly with kindergarten to take a look at potentially reducing some of the screening um but then also recognizing what might the trade-offs be without that data. So, we obviously always want to have teacher voice in that and our kindergarten task force has been working with their kindergarten teams to collect that information to help inform district decisions. And in secondary, this is another place um that I give a lot of credit to the team. Um Katie Schneider is the dyslexia specialist years ago
057put in a really um thoughtful and wellressearched process for dyslexia screening. Um, so we, like I said, are um ahead of the curve on many secondary schools on this. And so what we're doing at this time while we wait is continuing the dyslexia process that we have outlined in our local literacy plan, screening for next steps in elementary is um there is also a tool developed by the state which helps us to identify risk factors for students. Um, and I won't get into the weeds with this, but this is um, a really nice tool that we'll be able to put into place because very often um, as students across the state are using different curriculums, different interventions, different screening tools, um, we get may get a student in that received a reading intervention in one
058district and then now comes to our district and and districts tend to have different processes for that. Um the Minnesota Department of Education risk factor will help us to have a more streamlined process across the state. Districts are able to opt in or out of that process, but it does really streamline um and help us understand with the Minnesota Department of Education tests that are required. Um it assigns a numerical quantity to those. So then we're able to identify based on just those required assessments which students are at high risk and some risk. Um, and that will be consistent across the state as the conversations I have are most districts are really finding a lot of value and plan to shift to that risk factor system. And again, us and secondary are waiting and like
059I said, um, you know, we continue to do a lot of work while we wait for those tools. Um, and definitely once we get our eyes on them, we'll review our processes, um, and make recommendations for next best steps. Well, I have Oh, I'm going to press pause on this one. Um, quick. So, you get to have a quick preview. Oh, no. Um, I am very excited. Uh, next week at our district professional development day, we are I'm going to just hold. Next week at our district professional development day, we are going to roll out tier one literacy in secondary. um we have principles um with literacy specialists and directors and all of us are coming together um to create a consistent long-term message about how we're going to um work on literacy in secondary.
060And I also want to give a giant shout out to Ion um who helped me put together um some student voice. Um so you'll get a little preview tonight of what the teachers will see next week. Uh, literacy is important to me because after high school, I want to go to college and find options that can help me support my family and find a good paying job. Um, literacy is important to me because I want to become a pediatrician and that requires a lot of medical terminology and I just want to make a better life for me and my family. Literacy is important to me because I want to be able to get into the medical field and be able to help provide for my family. Literacy is important to me because I believe you
061should be able to communicate openly, freely, and express the things that you're trying to say. Literacy is important to me because it helps me achieve my dreams and my goals and will help me define myself in the future. Literacy um is important to me because I read papers. I can read papers from family members who doesn't know how to read. also um make my mom proud because when she was growing up, she didn't go to school to learn how to read and write. Literacy is important to me because my dreams of being a teacher and a coach, rely a lot on personal relationships, uh being able to uh engage, have empathy, listen to others, be understanding. You know the personal skills and understanding where other people are coming from is extremely important. Literacy is important
062to me because it improves the capability to decrease poverty and helps with communication. Hi, literacy is important to me because I want to become nurse and help other people and find a good career to help my family and me. Literacy is important to me because I want to be a successful psychiatrist and I want to make a difference in my bank account and the lives of others. [Music] We'd be happy to answer any questions you might have. Okay. Does anybody have any questions or comments? Scott, uh, the legislature put in the the science of reading. Is letters kind of the result of that? Um, so the science of reading is a body of research that is quite old, lots of different branches of science. Um, the letters program is one of the state approved training
063modules for teachers to learn the science of reading. There are other state approved. There are three currently for elementary and our district chose letters. And so basically what letters is is a way for teachers to receive training in the science of reading specific to their role as educators. Okay. Uh you kept mentioning regional centers. Where is a regional center? Here it's in Sartell. Um so if you've heard of resource training and solutions, that is another name it might um go by, but the regional and maybe Hillary, you should maybe speak to this. Uh yes. So part of the uh part of the legislation is to fund those regional centers that went into each of the um there are eight service co-ops and our service co-op is the resource training institution that hosts our um regional
064reading and math specialists. Yeah. Um, you were mentioning uh I think it was Keral part of the University of Minnesota and they seem to have been really linked close with the department of education. Can you explain a little more about that? Um, I mean I can start and I'm sure Laura has been working on the read act longer than I have. Um but just like letters is taking the science of reading um and is one of the options for our teachers to think about it as educators, carry all is the version that they um put together specific to secondary teachers. So it takes that same body of research and makes it accessible to our um our our teachers in 6 through 12. And that connection between the University of Minnesota and the READ Act is
065explicit in the legislation. So it says the Minnesota Department of Education will partner with Kerry which is the institute research institute at the U of M to do this work. Um so that is why you'll you'll see that come up. Um but that's part of the the legislation itself is that the the department of ed would partner to help to do this work across the state. Okay. Um we follow state standards. Um there's been do we finally have social studies standards? What are they? So the new standards go into effect in a couple of years. They've just recently been approved. Um so you can find all of them listed on the Minnesota Department of Education website. So there it's it's hard for us to be able to tell you what they all are because each
066and every grade level has a multitude of standards. Um but those standards will go into effect. They'll be implemented um in 2627, right? Yes. 2627. It's hard to keep all 26. Um there's some mention of a dyslexia. I know one of our former board members was very heavily involved in that. Uh can you tell me what what's happening at this time? Um so years ago dyslexia um there was a big push at the state and that has really um gone hand inand with the Minnesota read act. So those are are not necessarily one and the same but the work for dyslexia has been encompassed into the Minnesota read act. Um I can give you a specific example of elementary how things are more streamlined. So in the past um we would do a specific dyslexia
067screener assessment where a human would sit down with a child to conduct an assessment. Um Shannon was instrumental in this work. So we have to give Shannon a shout out for this. Um but now with the state approved assessments like fastbridge that is also a dyslexia screener. And so now as the state has recommended specific assessments that we need to choose from. It also helps us in our capacity to identify students with dyslexia because the tools they're recommending we use help us do that and it takes out some of the the real significant leg work that it took to do that with a a one-on-one um person. And so that specific work on identifying students happens through our screening process. And then as we talked through interventions today, um those students who are identified with
068characteristics of dyslexia would be receiving interventions as well as other students who need support who may not have those characteristics. Um so dyslexia isn't seen as much as a standalone. Um, it still is definitely a separate piece for students who have dyslexia, but as we rally around supporting all of our students who need support to learn how to be grade level proficient readers, dyslexia is right within that wraparound support that we provide. Thank you very much. You go back back one side to the very last out there. um begin using the MDE risk factor tool. Can you tell me what the risk factors would be? What are we looking at? What what what is what's defined as a risk factor? I will do my very best. This is fairly new. Um and so what happens
069is there are specific assessments that help us identify risk for being able to read at grade level. Each assessment has um measures different components. So for example, there can be a nonsense word assessment. So nonsense words is asking students to use their decoding skills to sound out a word that could be like easily sounded out but is not a real word. That's an assessment that's used because if students see a word or are familiar with a word, they may have that word memorized but maybe aren't decoding it. So nonsense words is one example. What the state has done is they have then um assigned a threshold for the risk level for each of those assessments and then that threshold generates a number. Those numbers are calculated together. And then if a student has a certain
070sum then that helps us as a district know of all of these subtests this student performed um in a way that would indicate that we really need to pay attention to their needs. The reason this is helpful is that on the FastBridge assessment, which is our universal screener, um we do receive a composite score and that composite score also helps us understand risk. However, the way that the tests are weighted within the FastBridge system um isn't necessarily the way that the state department would recommend based on their legislation. And so districts before the risk factors came out were were asking the state, so if a student shows up on this tool as at risk, is that what we should be going with? Some of the assessments we're giving are not required. And so this is
071a tool that allows us to have sort of a numerical quantification for all of the required assessments. We always want to triangulate data and look at multiple data points for students. And so it's it's a really slick way for us to know which data points to look at, how to weight those data points, um, and to rely on those expertise of really those top level state researchers around risk to then say, "Okay, these are our students, um, who we want to prioritize resources for um, for intervention." Does that answer your question? It's it's very new. We just found out about it this spring, so we haven't been able to put it into um into use yet. I I think it answers my question in the sense that at risk would then be uh a measurement
072of how they are progressing. Yes. And it's really at risk of reading being a proficient reader and and not a measurement of I I I mean when I talk about when I when I think about learning going to school learning I always go back to it but you got to feel safe. You have to have food. You have to have th that's where the risk is coming from. That's where the majority when I when I look at a district like ours that scores very low. I don't think that it's kids that can't learn. I don't think that it's teachers that don't know how to teach. I mean, it's absolutely not. We probably have some of the best teachers in the state because of the the the kids that they work with tend to be more
073difficult um farther behind in learning. So you're you're always trying to catch kids up and giving different interventions and things like that. What what I see in a district like ours is a bunch of kids whose social emotional needs aren't met and it makes learning almost impossible with with without regard to the interventions. And a much larger risk factor or measurement of risk would be just looking at the community and the the poverty levels within a school and and the ability of kids to be able to overcome those risk factors to put them in a mind state where they can learn and this isn't measuring that. I was just wondering if this was something to do with measuring that and if that and and then again if that was the case then you could start
074to disagregate that and develop a expectation level and and and we expect the most out of everybody. I I get it. But they pit us against each other with MCA test scores and say this district is great and this district isn't. But with some type of a risk assessment type of system, you would be able to go back and and level those playing fields a little bit and say, "Hey, these, you know, these kids in this in this district, in this with this level of poverty and homelessness and all all of the the crime and things that go in this neighborhood versus a wealthy neighborhood with very low levels of crime and a lot of security, the kids are going to perform differently in those two areas and you could begin to level the playing
075field a little bit as far as measurement is concerned. So unfortunately that is not this. Yeah. So yes, you but I'm glad I'm glad you brought it up um because right that that could be misleading. So really it's measuring um the students risk in relation to being a proficient reader at grade level. Thank you both for joining us. We appreciate it. No problem. Thank you. Have a great night. [Music] Okay, moving on to discussion items. We have two tonight. First, we have um the task to appoint board members to award diplomas at Tech and Apollo commencements, which will be held uh Saturday, May 31st, 2025. Obviously, um I have two board members reach out to me, Diana and Natalie, that will not be available to um help with awarding diplomas. So that leaves five of
076us left looking for two people for tech, two people for Apollo. Um and then either I can be one of them or I can be the backup. Yeah. Are the backup? You'll be the backup. Okay. Um are you going to be here? As far as I know. Okay. And you'll be there. Um and I'm You'll do Apollo. Okay. And I'm guessing maybe you would Okay. Um, but I'm guessing Heather would like to do tech, do you think? Okay. Um, so we'll do Apollo will be Scott. Choose your poison. It's not poison. Choose your pleasure. I'm the north side. You're the north side. That's what I thought. Yeah. Okay. So, we'll do um Scott and Zach um for Apollo, myself and Heather for tech, and then Al will be um backup. Thank you very much. Um
077well, in case somebody can't make it or something. Yeah. But um and always feel free to step in if there's like one particular that you want to hand out or something, too. So, we can be flexible with that. All right. Um then we only have one other um discussion item. We have of course a policy reading. We have proposed revised board policy 707 the second reading for transportation of public uh school students and presented by Shannon Averson, assistant superintendent of E12 educational services. Good evening Chair Haz and members of the board. Um, as you recall, we were just here last week, uh, and reviewed this policy pretty thoroughly. Hold on one second. I will get that pulled up. Okay, there we go. Um just as a reminder, this policy is around um transportation and the
078only proposed changes that we are recommending for this policy. There's a language proposal around um what Scott referred to earlier tonight uh changing transition back to homeless and that was specific um because in the McKini Vento Act and the statute that's the term that is used. Um so that is our recommendation around those language changes. Um and then additionally as a reminder um as you go through you'll see a very lengthy list of statutes throughout this policy and at the end there's a long list of statutes. Um really um this policy is governed by those statutes and so we are not recommending changes to those because they are statute related. um the proposed addition to this policy um and I'll scroll the motion proposed uh language addition would be around reasonable transportation restrictions. This is
079a recommendation and in alignment with um several other districts across the state. Um, and then just a reminder that I did um, uh, do this in consultation with our legal team, Amy Mace, around language that would be um, within our rights and within the law. Um, and so reminder, uh, I won't read those again because we we read through those last week in depth, but um, after last week's first reading, there were no additional um, changes to this proposed policy 707. Any questions? Thank you. Okay. Then we have the board of education standing committee reports presented by um the committee chairs. Um Diana, I believe you have the achievement, integration and equity committee report. Yes, thanks Chair Hos and members of the board. The achievement, integration and equity committee meeting met this morning. Um, there
080were three items that we discussed. First, Dr. Harris brought forward a recommendation to alternate the school update in the school presentations to a bimonthly reporting versus a monthly reporting to the board. The committee agreed on the reductions of the presentations to the board. Second, Ayan Omar presented a draft of the response to the NAPAC non-concurrence vote. This will be an item for discussion on the April 2nd, 2025 board meeting. And third, Dr. Dr. Jason Harris and Hillary Johnson provided the secondary education presentation update that was recently presented at the cabinet. The presentation included data on the professional learning teams comprehensive comprehensive balance assessment system and information in the NIPY framework that has been designed to position every student for postsecary success in the district. Thank you. Diana, are those going to be um given to
081members of the board prior to that meeting? The draft of the NAPAC response. Yes, we will provide um a draft copy for discussion at the next board meeting. Before the meeting. Oh, yep. We'll get that to you before. Yep. Okay. Thank you. And we don't have any other reports, correct? I don't think so. Okay. Um then we have um last up is future agenda items. The April 2nd, 2025 board meeting topics will include community celebration approval of the 2025 2026 compensatory revenue plan. We have the 202526 FTE projections based on enrollment and registrations. uh the NAPAC board response letter, the 2025 school summer review, 2025 summer projects review, policy readings and school updates. At this time, does any board member want to suggest a future agenda item? Yeah, welcome back and something. No. Well, I
082just I I just have a question that I was thinking about earlier today, and it's it has to do with the uh 20 the next year's school budget. And I I I think I was listening to the radio and heard him talking about uh shortfalls uh through AMSD through the AMSD schools. Uh and then then they listed the St. Cloud School District is short x amount funding and I know that the budget is being developed right now and changes are being proposed. I mean they were saying that we had a shortfall of ex 900,000 or whatever it is and another 500,000 for something else. And I know that I know that our administration is going through the process of looking at things and and proposing budgets, but I'm wondering and it may be a finance
083committee agenda item, but somewhere prior to the presentation of the proposed budget, I would sure like to see what were address what and how we're addressing those shortfalls so that it doesn't come to the board as a surprise. Thank you. Yeah, that sounds good. And I know Amy is watching that and would have some dates and not not questioning in any way, shape, or form that they've identified the shortfalls and we're we're making plans to do it and and to have a balanced budget with the least disruption possible. Yeah. However, I would like to see some of that prior to the board meeting when that's presented. Sounds good. Thank you. Um, anybody else? Anything? Okay. Um, wonderful. How exciting is that? So, looking for a motion to adjourn tonight's board of education meeting. So, move.
084Motion by Scott. Second by Diana. All in favor say I. I. Okay. Uh, meeting is adjourned. It is 7:43 p.m. Have a good night. Thanks for watching.