001[Music] good evening and welcome to the regular school board meeting independent school district 8 30 33. uh today is thursday november 5th at 6 30 p.m uh 1.0 roll call melinda doles here louise hines here simi patnaik here padres gold absent sharon van leer here katie schwartz is absent tracy brunette here uh 2.0 please um stand and join me for pledge of [Music] united states allegiance america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all 3.0 is the approval of our agenda it will entertain a motion to approve so moved second so moved by sharon and second by louise all those in favor say aye any opposed motion carries 4.0 our district highlights they will be on our agenda on november 19th 5.0 is public
002comment that will also be on the agenda november 19th 6.0 is the consent items all consent items are considered routine and non-controversial by the school board and will be approved by a single motion there will be no separate discussion of the items but prior to the meeting board members did have the opportunity to review each of them and could have requested that one be moved to an action item since we have not had that this evening i will entertain a motion to approve our consent agenda second the move by louise and second by melinda all those in favor say aye aye any opposed motion carries seven 7.0 our workshop items 7.1 is our racial equity vision and professional development activities and assistant superintendent kelly jansen will present all right good evening it's different these workshop
003sessions when we're not sitting in that square um i am pleased that our practice is to have supervisors introduce presenters and i'm honored to introduce wayne felton director of achievement and integration and james mcgee coordinator of professional development as you know we are on a racial equity mission to provide each student with the welcoming and inclusive environment for learning and success we know the ongoing injustices across our country have had a profound impact on our students staff members and families of south washington county schools and we are responsible for nurturing anti-racist learning environments where all children staff members and families are respected and valued for who they are and mr felton and mr mcgee are key to our to our success in this endeavor they truly are masterful at working together and in leading our
004work if you have had a chance to participate in their sessions you know they have that special chemistry that makes it work and i have no doubt we will hear about them for years to come but not until their work is done here so i'm going to turn it over to mr felton to start members of the board superintendent nielsen thank you all so much for the opportunity to speak uh tonight about the work that we're doing um and it's super awesome to see the work that we get to do around racial equity and naming racial equity in this district and i don't want to take uh nor do i think james wants to take all the credit there was definitely work that was being done before i arrived here a few months ago and
005so as a district we made a commitment to culturally responsible teaching over the years and a part of that commitment was bringing in different people such as dr character holly and the work of others to begin to talk about cultural responsive teaching and cultural profession schools here in the school district and then corey thompson the person had my job previous to me began to talk about how we could make more culture proficient schools and began to work on this particular item and so one of the ways that was done is by creating a racial equity vision and racial equity promise and meeting with different stakeholder groups such as the achievement integration parent advisory to get feedback on the information and create a draft and since i've arrived being able to take that draft bring it
006to more stakeholders principals teachers etc to be able to clarify what exactly it is that we can do as a district so what we have come up with is that in south washington county schools we are on a racial equity journey to provide each student with a welcoming and inclusive environment for learning and success we will accomplish this by constantly examining our policies and practices in order to remove obstacles that contribute to systemic inequity and we will develop our staff to become anti-racist educators focusing on attitudes skills and beliefs to support students and families and so as we begin to look at the work that we're doing we want to make sure that we're creating these environments that every student feels welcomed and that we're including them in the work that's being done but we
007can't just say that we're doing that we want to make sure that we're training our staff to be able to do that work well so in addition to this vision we are making a promise to each one of our students and families and that is this that student achievement will not fall into the predictable patterns identified by race ethnicity or culture that each student will have access to personalized learning opportunities that represent their race ethnicity or culture for a sense of belonging and that every student will be supported encouraged and academically challenged by the adults around them regardless of culture race or ethnicity and once again in order for us to be able to do this well we need to make sure that we are equipping our teachers and our staff to do this and
008that is where the partnership between james and i really takes off evening board members more chair uh superintendent nielsen still not good at that part of this um um so hi i'm james mcgee coordinator professional development um so to be sure um we have been learning and practicing and developing our staff in culturally responsive techniques for years um so what we're doing was nothing uh brand new uh but i did not expect that uh we would get the call to say hey can we take this to the next level because what we're doing right now is something that i've not experienced as a participant or seen anybody else do something quite like this so not a moment it's the movement um first of all we are very much fans of hamilton and so we've got
009a theme and a motif um because just as that show has kind of combined art and history we're trying to make sure that our professional development is engaging for the staff that are participating in it because we want them to learn and we want them to engage with this and so this conversation series that we are i almost have created but we are still creating it it's kind of a week by week thing where we're taking feedback from our participants every week and modifying what the plan is moving forward but it's a six part series where we've talked about what is black lives matter we've separated between black lives matter the statement the hashtag the movement and the political group because there is confusion about what that statement means what those three words together means
010and we wanted to be very clear so we had common definitions we had common understanding so then we can move forward with the work that we want to do which is creating an equitable educational system for all of our students and our colleagues so each week we've got man anywhere from 20 to 45 staff members attend uh the five sessions that we do each week one of them is specifically set aside for our system leaders the other ones have been open to teachers although we get we have paraprofessionals uh transportation reps um office coordinators that have been part of these sessions with us as well we said we're not going to kick anybody out if you want to engage in this work we want you here because it's not easy work um and it involves
011a lot of introspection and so if anybody's willing to do that we've been more than happy to have them be part of it so the six we're calling them episodes because we just weren't sure what to call it so we call them episodes um why black lives matter this is where we really set the foundation for what that phrase means in our school district um and it was really helpful for people because we're not talking about the political group black lives matter we're talking about the statement that turned into the hashtag which turned into the movement uh we're talking about human rights and so that's what we set in episode one just establishing the foundation this is what we mean when we say black lives matter don't all lives matter we talked about the counter
012statement to black lives matter all lives matter uh and talked about how there are things that uh on their face are true statements but the context surrounding what we're doing is often more important than the words that we're saying and so it's not enough to just know the words we have to know the context of both black lives matter and all lives matter 8 46 was one that was really tricky and emotional for us to write i'll be very honest about that being minnesota educators we know that there has been a spark in a lot of people in minnesota after the the events with george floyd the murder of george floyd in minneapolis and we we wanted to face that head-on because what this is not about is demonization of one group this is an
013introspection on all of us and the role that we play in making sure that this does not happen again um 1350 this is talking about the the representation of black americans in prison uh versus 13 of the population and how that lays there in our school how that lays very in our predictable outcomes how delays in our suspension rates we see this inequity in just about every measurable in our school system and in our society and we kind of dove deep into what is the historical context for this allies activists anti-racists there are levels to this we don't expect that anybody who really cares about this is going to have the skill set and the mindset to be able to jump all the way to being an anti-racist uh like so many things in education
014there's a continuum and what we're trying really hard to do with this conversation serious is explore the nuance so people are not good or bad people are not this or that we are all on a journey just like our blue vision says and allies activists and anti-racist guests at just that where are you on your journey we're going to give people an opportunity to explore how comfortable are you are you ready to be out protesting or are you working behind the scenes or are you doing it in your classroom are you doing it in the boardroom this is uh we all have a role in this and just knowing where you fit is really important then finally can't we all just get along seems particularly appropriate right now because there is a it would be
015easy to find division and so we've been focusing on the things that really unite us as educators seeking an equitable educational environment so that is not a moment is the movement we are i don't know it's one of the coolest things i've been able to do in education so thank you for that opportunity ah and then the big thing that we got to do this week we kicked off a professional development series that we're writing in-house uh on culturally responsive teaching in the brain by dr zoretta want to be very clear we are not doing crt in the brain this is not a the next new thing uh one of the one of the most affirming comments that i heard today was it feels like our work with dr shiraki hawley and her work with
016social emotional learning and avid it feels like it came together uh in our training on crt and the brain this week and that is what we're shooting for because we're not looking to just buy a book bring in a speaker and then move to the next thing we really want to connect this to things that teachers know and are already doing well and then help them advance their mindset and give them additional tools so they can you know take this into their classroom and maybe in their personal life it's worked for me i'll say that um so teaching cultural linguistic uh cultural and linguistically responsive teaching strategies this is based on dr sraki holly's work avid as you know we are deep into our avid work i think just about every licensed teacher has been
017trained in some way in avid um social emotional learning standards-based instruction we are starting to see all of these things come together um to create uh you know our assessments assignments uh um grading practices that reflect all the the whole student their social emotional well-being their culture who they are and their skill set but a lot of that has to do with our adults and getting into adult learning and adult mindsets so we're diving into brain research one of the coolest things about this book is uh it's made me sound like a neuro scientist because i'm learning about the different parts of the brain that are activated when people feel safe and when people feel threatened and as adults and in children if we're feeling threatened it is hard for us to access the part
018of our brain that is creative that is problem-solving uh that is able to do critical thinking and so we are dealing with the very base level of the hierarchy of needs for our students and for our adults and trying to access safety and validation in everybody the outcomes that we want to see we want to disrupt these predictable outcomes and we can because we have an opportunity right now to shift the way we even look at our kids to shift the expectations that we have for them and we're seeing it happen in our teachers and in other uh groups in our district just by simply changing some of the mindsets and some of the stories that we've been telling ourselves about students and about people in our community and about our colleagues so that is
019a crt in the brain briefly we will as we continue through the year um we had our kickoff on november 3rd we've got a district-wide pd day on april 26th where we'll be kind of wrapping up the year with this book we're not going away from it but we will be then pushing out modules and trying to tailor it to schools and departments based on what they need to continue the work uh we don't want to do a one size fits all we're not going to just drop all right here's chapter five everybody go do it we're gonna work with uh principals and department leads to make sure that they're getting something that is tailored to their school because like we said we're on a continuum this is a journey and part of being a
020responsive teacher is actually listening to the feedback of the people the users the learners that we're trying to teach and collaborate with so that's where we're at with that do you have any questions well i know i was able to attend yesterday morning no what is time i don't know because i know the reason we arrived and that the crt and the brain was awesome well thanks for letting us join it was great conversations in the classroom um that that would apply to all classes then they would try to do sort of culturally responsive personal learning opportunities say more about what you mean well okay one of our one of our portions of our promise is personalized learning opportunities for students based on their cultural experiences yes so how um how does that permeate into
021subjects where we're not like it's not so obvious like if you're thinking about i don't know biology or something yeah i think yeah one of the cool things that can happen so one of the initiatives i was able to lead in a previous district was around engineering and working with our american indian education team there to bring forward some native engineering practices that were connected to some modern modes of engineering and so being able to connect the fact that there there are multiple modes culturally and how these different things have been developed and so it is going to take a mindset shift on they have i don't know if i did that but it's going to take a mindset shift on behalf of everyone to recognize that some of the ways that we've done things
022will change when we're trying to personalize the learning it's not going to be as it was but i think as we can begin to peek forward and say there is there is such a rich history in the sciences and in mathematics culturally we start to see his representation and also the realization for our students that they are represented in the curriculum and i think that's our ultimate goal is that sense of belonging and connection along with that we're also trying to expand what our definition of culture is and making sure that it goes beyond race and ethnicity or home language when i'm an adult and i'm working with students we have cultural differences just because of our age and so when we're talking about personalizing learning so kids are our students are feeling culturally represented
023sometimes that means you might have to get on tiktok and you might have to learn what kids are actually using to communicate with each other and not see that as a weakness but capitalize on that as a strength that they have and modify what i'm doing to be responsive to what they need so broadening out so our live our definition of culture is not just race ethnicity language uh it's family makeup it's uh so many more pieces of the way that people are socialized the other thing i'd add to that is personalization can also be making examples relevant making questions relevant so that a kid can relate to them so it's it could be a matter of just giving multiple different examples to demonstrate something that would be related to you know i think um
024you know we dr jacobus always told the story about a hot dish like what's a hot dish versus a casserole hot dish versus an actually hot dish so just making sure when you're giving examples that you're making that learning relevant for them and so that also can be part of that culture responsive and personalization piece of it as well so but i think everything together collectively is just that personalization i think we use that term a lot but what does it actually mean to your point 100 100 this ties into that and that's where getting those teachers in that human center design mindset how can i design this learning activity around this standard that meets the needs of these kids that are in front of me today and then it could be different the next
025time i do it and it's a lot of work it's a lot of work for teachers and so the more that they're grounded in just the principles of you know the brain and things and the why and it's just becomes part of who they are it's not a let me pull up my let me pull on my binder and check out the avid strategy i'm going to use today it on our teachers are becoming really masterful at just internalizing things and having those conversations so it's all part of that um 6 000 yes yes he wants the plug he wants you to plug it um yeah generally speaking so the people that have signed up they've signed up for all six sessions we just gave our teachers four different sessions that they could choose from
026based on what time works for them um you know schedules are yeah 20 to 45 per session oh yeah so we're doing five sessions each week and each session has 20 to 45. yeah it's really like 100 for the most part um people we have the same people coming to the same session which is really cool because we're trying to be intentional around our breakout rooms and how we have those conversations but also to see how people are building on previous conversations is super helpful and we're trying to be as consistent as possible about certain themes so that as we're building we can say like this weekly we did an activity around just giving people the opportunity to speak how they're feeling and we said hey remember we started every one of these sessions talking
027about speaking your truth and what that looks like and so i was able to bring that back and so yeah it's been really consistent it's been really cool to see people grow through it it's also not a lot of opportunities for our staff to engage across grade levels and we're talking we've got pre-k 12 plus that we're working with in these sessions so they hear the experience that an elementary teacher is having versus what a high school teacher is experiencing i mean they're seeing diversity in just experience based on the age of their kids and so that's making the conversation that much more rich because we're getting out of our bubble we're getting out of our our comfort zone really with being in a site or in a grade level and really expanding it to
028see what the experience is like for teachers and students across our district wayne and james you know you're two people in a large system can you talk about when we deliver professional development what that looks like and who's kind of leading it then at the sites if there's only two people in all of these schools yeah this was a major exercise and trust for me because i'm a little bit of a control freak um so the the professional development that was delivered on november 3rd uh first of all most of the work uh of preparing the show and training all of our trainers was done by gina spu and sandy saseto falcon who both are in the ai department uh from there they trained all of our principals all of our student achievement specialists all
029of our equity teacher leaders and some other uh staff who are on leadership teams and sites and so this professional development was delivered at sites by our principals and our leadership teams within school so i mean when we talk about like the multiplier effect we expanded the number of people who have the skill set to just engage in these conversations uh exponentially so we don't i mean this will go on if we're not here because we have empowered hopefully a huge bunch of people that are able to carry on this work and recognizing that when we do it that way we also get a diversity of how that voice comes across james and i are very very unique in the way that we approach things in part because of our our personalities and and such
030what was cool was to hear people coming back from tuesday and talking about their experiences and there were certain things that were consistent across the board which is what we want we also recognize that there has to be some nuance like how that conversation happens at woodbury middle is going to be different than how it happens at eastridge because of the context the students the experiences etc and we want that responsiveness we want what we're delivering to be responsive to the spaces while also being consistent in our ethos i have a question on the um not a moment it's the movement i've been watching them and they're really great but kind of a two-fold question first off uh is this something that i we said there's about 100 people involved now is this something that
031will be offered again coming up where more staff will be able to do it and then also how are you finding um the receptiveness of people so far um you know with openness and um comfortability and all that how are you finding things so far um so so to what happens next um i don't know what happens next first step what i can tell you right now is this is posted and so while we have people attending the live sessions we do have more people that are attending asynchronously and sending us their thoughts their takeaways via email uh we've had people request to have some sit downs with us because they are struggling with some of the content and you know this is that's such a cool place to be in where we get to
032be responsive to i mean this is what cultural responsive teaching is is learning who our our users are we're also wanting to modify some of the content and take it to our not teaching staff so that we're addressing culturally responsive techniques at every level of our district because teachers are not the only holder of the keys when it comes to student experience when you get on the bus when you're served a meal when you're in the hallway everybody in our district has an opportunity to impact the lives of our kids and if we haven't armed everybody in our district with the tool set to have positive um trust building moments with our kids then that's on us and so we are going to be working with our department heads to see what parts of this
033can we modify to fit your department needs um regarding uh overall feedback i mean people love us right no no no honestly honestly and i thought you were going to be humble and i was like i'm sure they're going to be really humble so i'll give you some other people i think honestly the feedback has been really really great what is the coolest for i'll speak from the i what has been the coolest for me is when people reach out and they say okay you said this thing and i really want you to explain it or we've gotten some emails whereas like i think that everything that you just said was wrong right like we've gotten a couple of those and we we you know hop into a webex and say okay and for us
034it's it's on the one hand let's have that conversation on the other hand let's make some modifications in how we approach this because it's not that we're going to stop doing the work but if we can't communicate it well it doesn't matter and so we have and it's been very few right and so for the most part it has been people overwhelmed at the fact that we get to have this conversation and i'm overwhelmed the fact that we could have this conversation and when we have gotten feedback that was i don't say negative but where people were asking questions we've been able to engage people in conversations and so there hasn't been a wholesale dismissal by anybody that we've experienced even there was an email that we got from a person in this district who
035watched an episode of ours that i was for sure was going to be upset and they talked about how professionally we handled uh the episode 846 and so it's moments like that we're like okay maybe we're doing something right now the flip side of that is we know that the number of teachers that are engaging with this is only a fraction of our teaching staff uh and the people who are attending this this is voluntary it is yes we're getting ceu and and that's it and so what we're experiencing right now are what we probably call our earlier adapters um and so we know that this message uh is something that we want everybody to hear whether they not whether it's us delivering it or if it's coming from their colleagues we know that there
036are more people that we want to engage with this work but the more people like the same with our november 3rd the more people that we can empower to actually have these conversations and to have the common definitions and to have the the the trust that we've got a community of people that are behind you on this uh hopefully we'll start to see this pick up more uh users and participants thank you i'd like to add something just to that i've taken a lot of professional development in this district and a lot of it's been great but there aren't many times that i want to talk to my husband about it or that he wants to listen to anything that i learned about education so um it's probably not on your rubric but you could
037have that one but i think that's a good point because i think what we see happening is that they feel like now it's a safe space to have the conversation maybe not with their spouse but with with their other colleague who didn't attend and so the num i think it would be interesting to do a survey or some some way pepe doesn't like when we say that word but um i think you know to see i think word of mouth is way bigger than we can ever anticipate because i do know that those conversations are happening between colleagues who did attend and then maybe encourage their college to well it's online you can pick it up here so i think this in particular series has caused a lot of conversation which results in growth so
038it's been great and i just want to say thank you as a um a former kid right i grew up in a time where teachers would jimmy putnik is too hard to say i'm going to call you whatever or you know i would have teachers who would say things to me about my parents because my parents were super um my parents are immigrants and they're hard to understand they're not hard for me to understand but apparently other people think so you know and so i think it's really important that for a lot of kids in our district i mean like i wish this had been the case 30 years ago when i was a kid and so i'm really thankful that we're doing this now i'm thankful that my own kids aren't gonna have oh
039your name is weird or your parents talk funny or whatever and so i'm really grateful for the work you're doing i sat in the crt stuff on tuesday election day was really great and it was really wonderful to listen to um you know one thing i was really struck with was how hard and careful our teachers and staff were about thinking about these issues and how right they wanted to do it and so i'm really grateful that you're doing this work i guess i'll say something my phone is cutting up so um anyway um i've been watching your and events my programs and i found them very interesting but one thing that we have to remember that we don't change to make people feel comfortable you have to address the hard conversations and i my
040my problem with i mean i've been in this district for a long time i've grandkids great grandkids kids and the the community is changing and we people are gonna have to learn how to change with it the world is not one race we're one people but we're not one race and so i think that is important to um and people are going to have to be held accountable for this this stuff i mean it's important work but i don't think we should modify uh our intent in order to appease the majority group i'm gonna put it like that i deal in this work and it's it's hard work but people begin to trust and and feel comfortable and the other thing is is that um i think simi said it you know our kids of
041color have to feel like they're in environment where they're safe where they can learn and with that comes success and so um i just hope you just you're you're strong enough and yet you're brave enough to tackle this and to move forward so what we're striving to be is as uh dr zara hammond would describe it as warm demanders so we're not changing the content and what we want to do is build the trust uh and build that capital because we are asking a lot because to your point some of those teachers are still in this district i mean not if you went here but i mean some of those teachers are still in the business of teaching kids and there's things that they are trying to unlearn because at the time they were doing
042the best that they knew how to do it they were doing the best with how they were trained uh and so we can't undo all of that what we can do is build trust with them and then demand more uh but we can't do that with you know beating them over the head with the book uh we have to come to them uh to build trust and say these are the expectations and here's how we're gonna help you get there so yeah we're very committed to that and i think our we are trying as much as possible to be explicit about the nature of the system and the necessity of shifting the system and that individual actions are born out of said systems and so one of the things we talk about all the time
043is not absolving people right so i think it was two weeks ago we said uh racism isn't your fault but it's your responsibility right like like it is incumbent upon all of us to recognize we are holders of these systems and so really being explicit and this is honestly awesome that we get to say this to like i am i am amazed sometimes that we get to have this conversation um in 2020 in all the different contexts that exist to be able to say to a group of people actually education was born out of racist systems and there were things that were built along the way to make sure that there was prejudice and excluding of different groups now we get the opportunity to fix that by examining our individual practices and making policy practice
044changes so we can actually change the outcomes so yes we're on the same page and i i know this at the end of the day if we start getting weak you're going to make sure we're strong you got it just to add before we leave and i i think it if you haven't been reading between the lines this wouldn't happen without superintendent nielsen's urging to do so in in reality the series was born out of we have to do something different and i it was a 45 minute conversation with d2 that those six episodes were created like the titles and so it was it is a courageous spot to be a woman superintendent and it's a courageous spot to lead equity work as a white woman and so thank you for that thank you second
045is that wait we don't say that we don't say a second okay and you prompted me to watch hamilton and it was amazing listen every week we tell people at some point i'm just waiting on disney plus to send us our check for that they are entertainers but it was very good i will watch it again so i understand all your little [Laughter] we are obsessed collectively so you have to watch it with me yeah but thank you so much i mean we appreciate you getting us going right first step or steps thank you thank you thank you 8.0 information items 8.1 uh trimester 2 enrollment update so i'm only here again for the introduction and i can guarantee john will not break out in hamilton song for you but he will probably build a
046dashboard and call checks for anything you throw at him he is here to present the number of students who requested enrollment changes for trimester two so those students who were in the vla model that want to go to the hybrid and those that were in the hybrid that want to move to the vla that deadline as you know is october 25th and so john has been working with those numbers since then um as he goes through these i just just a note and i'm if he i'm sure he'll point it out but our as you know our middle school in high school will be changing models and we thought including the numbers was important tonight just so you could see the number of parents who had requested and it would become applicable if the model
047goes back to hybrid during trimester two so but starting trimester two for our middle schools and high schools everyone is in distance learning and that means a model change for everybody so thank you good evening superintendent nielsen board chevronet board members i'm john linder director of program evaluation research and assessment as kelly said we put out a survey um through the staff or i'm sorry through the family newsletter on october 12th and it closed on the 25th the numbers we're going to show you are true as of november 2nd i just want to really put that out there because what ends up happening is you know maybe me and my wife both fill out the form and maybe i didn't quite fill out the form right which has happened once or twice and so then
048a student information has to call parents and and kind of fix things and as when you see our numbers you're going to be like oh gosh that must take a lot of work and it does it um trisha torito um goes through a lot of um different iterations so what we're going to show is true as of november 2nd just because things are changing 693 students signed up for some type of change that could either be going to the district learning model or going to vla virtual learning academy it was pretty evenly split with the exception there were a couple more high school students that went so let's talk about how things changed in general first we had a roughly 50 50 split between students leaving wanting to go to the virtual learning academy do
049school from home and peop students that wanted to come into the building for the hybrid model 49 to 51 roughly if we look at elementary because we're this is what really kind of matters right now um 63 family of students sorry 63 students opted to go um to virtual learning academy and 152 are wanting to come back to the school so we're talking 29 going to virtual alerting 71 coming back to the school middle school kind of what you would expect right right in the middle 50 50. um half going one way half going the other and high schools you know just so they can be a little different from the middle of the elementaries 62 of so 204 students are going to virtual learning versus 124 that i wanted to come back into the
050building obviously these last two middle school and high school um because of what uh assistant superintendent jensen said this would probably be more relevant come late december when hopefully we're switching back let's kind of talk about who these students are it might be a little tough to see for you but basically everybody um moved it about the same rate so asian students um black or african-american students hispanic latino two or more races and the white pretty much all moved about the same numbers there wasn't a big disparity the the next big question is yeah but how does that relate to our general enrollment well in trimester one our vla american indian students were right about the same they're about a little less than one percent where we see a large difference difference is in the
051asian student group where there are many more asian students about 25 percent of our vla students are asian um and if you compare that to about 11 percent uh we're talking k-12 here um we're not looking at pre-k or anything like that so so pretty big difference there our black african-american 13 percent are vla versus nine percent general population hispanic latino 99 so it's exactly the same two or more races eight percent to seven percent kind of give you a feel so pretty close in our white student group and trimester one with the vla 44 of our white students i'm sorry 44 of our vla students were white and uh versus 65 percent the general population so we're going to see a little bit of change with more white students moving into vla versus uh
052what it was in the past but it's not going to be a huge change and again with the secondary moving to distance learning well that'll change a little bit and then if we talk about our other groups uh for trimester one roughly about nine percent of our um vla students are el and if you look at these numbers up here we're not seeing a big number a big change in numbers but they are choosing to move into vla at a slightly higher rate uh nine percent um yeah so special ed is 14 to 14 percent but again we're seeing a slightly higher move to vla so more i'm sorry not vla district learning model so we're going to probably see a little bit of difference there and then our free introduced we're seeing free introduced
053families 59 percent of them said hey i want to i want to do the distance learning model currently our vla free introduce is right about 19 versus a 14 general number so it's slightly there's slightly more frame reduced price launch students in our vla versus non-vla i am done with the numbers section and when i started i promised i would not beat you guys together data so i'm hoping to uh continue that so there any questions please feel free so i have a question do we know why these students are changing learning models do we do we ask that when we ask the families do we do it is optional a lot of the response is for the students that want to come to vla it's coveted numbers we're seeing increases in covid it's in
054the news a lot it's things like that the other direction it is a lot of families saying gosh my child really needs to socialize they're missing out on that aspect people matter so not to oversimplify but that's kind of like the two big camps we're worried about safety but we need people do we see any like i know that covid has been disproportionately disproportionately affects black people or people of color in general in the united states do we see a difference in you know elementary middle school high school racially how the families have been going because you're like from the numbers you said more elementary parents were choosing to go back to the district model um and more high school parents were choosing the vla do we know is there like a racial component as
055well we did not or i did not um break that part down um in part because we're going distance learning for everybody and um these numbers are still changing a little bit and i think they're going to change a little bit more all the way through december as these numbers change so we haven't really beat those numbers down yet or nailed those numbers down thank you keep an eye yes 9.0 are discussion items we don't have any this evening 10.0 or action items 10.1 is the approval of our finance and budget adjustment process guiding change document our director of finance and operations dan pines good evening chair brunette members of the school board superintendent nielsen on october 22nd we presented to the school board our guiding change document to guide us in our budget reduction
056process and made a few tweaks to it and we would like to get it approved tonight so we can begin our work and we have have our fence posts i could go over it a little bit [Music] you've seen it before the why that we have to have the process is um pretty much the numbers i mean this financial situation we're in we have not had a high fund balance and we've been below five percent for the past five years of the last this coming year looks like we're finally at about five percent we know that our budget was about a 6.7 million dollar deficit we know that transportation for special agent special education excuse me and staffing has risen about 16 million dollars over the last four years we're anticipating we know what the
057formula is for the state a but we're anticipating with the state economic forecast that will not be increased we rely on the state funding for about 60 percent of our revenue and our salaries of benefits continue to increase at about four percent a year all that put together we are projecting our fund balances to be dropping down by the end of 22 to minus 10 million dollars which would be statutory operating debt and we also know that this year's enrollment has not been as high as we anticipated would be and obviously with coleman 19 it's made a big difference is this the powerpoint i don't know what this is the middle part of our gutting change document is the not how and these are things that unacceptable means and these are things that we will
058we cannot do in our process and we will now propose a plan that creates inequities and learning opportunities between schools at the same grade level we will now propose a plan that increases the achievement gap historically marginalized students and we will now propose a plan that is not at least 18 million dollars in reductions or revenue enhancements over the next three years and what are the results of this the what the what of our our plan our guiding team's document that will have some financial stability as we combine revenue enhancements and expense reductions that will stay out of statutory operating debt which is defined as negative two point five percent of your operating expenditures there we have resources that will allow us for flexibility and innovation that will maintain the taxpayer trust with ongoing communication
059and frequent updates regarding all aspects of our finances and we'll be able to recruit develop and retain high quality employees and we'll have ongoing evaluations of cost efficiencies for all our buildings and programs with that that is the the document that we've come up with and i we're asking for your approval tonight and um obviously you'll be um happy to answer any questions or receive any comments so dan the the 18 million of revenue increased revenue and reduced expenses that gets us to the five percent uh the yes well that'll get us to the five based on our current projections okay um that's the end game but if we can get a little bit more in revenue enhancements or some program reductions we can shoot to get to lease our goal in the very end
060would be the nine percent the top end of it so our goal for the three years sorry so the goal for the three years with 18 million at this point with what we're projecting for revenues and expenditures would get us to the five percent we'll give us a five percent okay i had just one comment you know certainly it's a massive undertaking and so just to underscore the importance of that ongoing evaluation and i did have a follow-up conversation john left for the evening but i did have a conversation with john and when we think about evaluations what he shared is depending on the program that evaluation may look different but with john in place now we do have the ability to make sure that when we're starting programs that we have an evaluation piece
061already included in so it's not three or four years down the line and we all love the program and then it's you know it comes to a budget reduction time and now what and so we know that that is something that we definitely have to get better at and do better the one question i had was um in the not nows where we say don't propose a plan that increases the achievement gap of historically marginalized students and after hearing um wayne and james speak i wonder if um it would be better to change that that it supports our equity mission i mean that that to me seems difficult um that we don't propose a plan that increases the achievement gap um i don't know if we can actually i don't know i guess i'm open
062to conversation about that but um and i would say my my concern with that is that then it sounds like we give ourselves permission to balance our budget on the backs of the most vulnerable students and i don't think that's okay you know i mean i understand like i understand the point about supporting the equity work but i think this is very deliberate language that says that like what we have now is kind of the baseline our baseline and we shouldn't be we shouldn't give ourselves permission to um make our current situation worse right i i mean i think supporting i feel like supporting equity work and um not increasing the achievement gap they're they're similar but they're not identical or they're they go they're complimentary all right i'm just concerned if we're not explicit
063then we won't do it sure um all right i don't i guess i don't think we're doing that now so having it in there it almost seems like well i mean i understand the intent so i'm not going to go to the mat to take it out i guess i just thought there was a you know like i said i don't anyway it it's not worth arguing over or yeah the only other thing i would want to add is just um and i told i was telling julie this earlier today is that um it would be really great if three years from now we're not still worrying about our financial stability and i think it would be really great if we are just and again it's very easy for me to say and it's very
064difficult to achieve but if we can do all of the hard work at once instead of you know kind of nickel and diming this stuff out for a few years to for for whatever reason i think it's just easiest to just rip the band-aid off so again i say that as someone who doesn't have to actually figure it out and i know that 18 million is a really large number yeah that's what we talked about uh you know 18 million and one uh one stop or one time that's a lot of dollars and a lot of stress on the system in one year and what does that look like over three yeah and another practical reason for having a longer time frame is that the re some of the revenue enhancements can't occur immediately i
065mean based on you putting into place and actually you know the way the funding system works even if you were able to increase your operating levy it would still take another fiscal year to actually get that money so we're just kind of being practical and 18 million is the floor we just we can't go under that any other thoughts on the change document all right so we would need a motion to approve so moved move by sharon second by louise any other comments questions all those in favor say aye aye any opposed motion carries thank you yep all right so 10.2 approval of resolution for fund balance transfer so this is a technicality that we have to perform before the end of the year and we'll actually before we ever audit finalized and approved and
066back in on in march on march 25th actually the executive order 2019 came out from the governor and in that order it was part of the safe school plan as we worked on implementing changing our learning models and such and there were a lot of different things in there day care things like that but they also they also allow districts in these times of trouble to be able to transfer what are restricted funds into or anything in the general fund actually but even the restrictive funds are actually why they had to have the law into the other funds like community ad in nutrition services this actually became law in one of the special sessions so now we're allowed to transfer operating funds that are restricted or reserved to do this transfer we need the school
067board to pass a resolution and to submit a request for fund transfer to the missile department of education we are requesting the southwest county schools requesting to transfer 400 000 from the general fund reserved for state approved alternate programs to the community education reserve due due to the coveted related impacts in particular the increased costs and decreased fee based revenue related to the shift to providing required emergency care in the spring of 2020. so this is affecting our previous fiscal year the resolution is attached the form is there for you to see the number we chose is based on the financial status of community education in the financial status of the general fund the reserve we're using is one in which we have a fund balance of about 1.2 million dollars so we don't feel
068that transferring from this fund will hurt the programs it's intended for that's about it i'm just asking you to pass this resolution and and obviously um if anyone has any questions i can answer them right i will entertain a motion to [Music] approved second moved by melinda second by sharon any questions all right um since this is a resolution we need a roll call vote melinda dolez yes louise hines yes simi pet yes that driscoll's absent sharon van leer yes kelly schwartz is absent and tracy brunette yes thank you 11.0 reports and comments 11.1 is our superintendent's report thank you first to start out you heard uh this evening that we had staff who participated in professional learning on tuesday and we know that as well it was a great day for us to focus
069our work on culturally or being culturally responsive as a school district for the board in the community to know that each of our executive cabinet members also participated alongside one of our schools and so our 10-member cabinet we were all out at a school and we too did the reading and we were doing the learning with our school staff and it was really a great opportunity to learn to share stories and to have conversations i see everyone's looking at the dashboard it's a pretty cool dashboard just hang on a second the budget process this evening you heard and we approved the guiding change document for the budget process and for the board in the community just to know that we're going to begin that work shortly we will be providing the board with an update
070about the process as well as the timeline but just kind of the end goal so you know as we think about staffing and beginning that process by february that we would need to have those reductions to the board and approved by the end of january and so that's the timeline when we think about the budget process our learning model decision last friday communication went out regarding the change in our learning model for secondary students we knew stepping into this fall that there were going to be many challenges and i certainly want to acknowledge publicly to our community that we know that that option is not the best for every family but we feel like it's a step that we had to take first to reiterate from the school district's perspective and our staff that we
071want students in school and we know that's where kids learn best as we look at the county case rates and again i want to reiterate that that is one point that we look at and while it's at times concerning um we have work been working together with mde mdh our regional support team i mean we have a lot of support around us when we're making those decisions what was shared is that we continue to show a massive trend upward and i use the word massive because that is one of or that is the word that one of our health experts use today previously when we reported out we shared that our schools have been doing a great job with mitigation and that for the most part the cases and the spread were contained to the
072community this week i can share that the community spread is affecting our schools and we have seen a significant number of quarantine cases as well as additional positive cases and so i see your attention um this i think what we learned over time is that we got to a point as a school district that we have now so much data when we first started there really wasn't a dashboard to put data on it was just so small in numbers and thanks to our communications department this will be updated each thursday and online right on swashcode.org backslash fall planning backslash all year planning oh fall 2020 um but at some point we might have to change fall 2020 pepe and i were just talking um but this is the dashboard that families can see and so
073you'll see the case rate today that was sent out and that is the one that a lot of parents and community members look at it did include the numbers from the prison and if you recall from the last two previous weeks they've taken that out so so our washington county fell at 39.03 you'll see the positive number of cases between students and staff and i don't recall two weeks ago exactly what those numbers were but there has been a significant increase in those positive cases and with those 91 students you can also see then that next column is the breakdown of the 91 and where those positive cases are landed and then finally currently quarantined and when i look at those numbers the number of students and the number of staff i think to myself
074that is one of our average to higher average elementary schools right now we have one entire school in the in the district that's under quarantine and out and actually staff is maybe just a little bit more than that but that would be a typical school size so that number of quarantine students that are quarantined is huge staff i will say our communications department works overtime with tara gobel our licensed school nurse this is a weekend this is a 10 o'clock a 10 30 at night job because if if we realize there's a positive case and kids are coming into school the next day or riding the school bus we need to intervene and make sure that communication goes out so we see communication going out and calls being made to families our staff members reporting
075up till 10 30 11 o'clock at night and so there are still people responding this week when i talk about that impact on school we definitely thought monday was a super busy day when it came to contact tracing and following up on situations and sending out communication to staff and families and so i think we could ward off the community spread as we've said for a while but as it has increased so significantly we certainly see that now coming into our schools uh and so please know uh for the board and for our community that this will be out there every um every week i also want to make note as we think about our learning model that the governor did issue a new executive order that was issued today and will go into effect
076tomorrow and that's executive order 2094 and that further clarifies about eight different points and we were just brief this afternoon on some of that information but there will be some slight changes and shifts in a couple of areas that parents may notice in terms of student learning that we still have to read the executive order and make sure that we're interpreting correctly and so expect more to come as it relates to that new executive order are there any questions for me as it relates to the dashboard do people find this helpful this is just that quick glance you're not able to click on it and see charts um one thing i will say is john lindner with his all of his ability to do dashboards uh for tracy and melinda who serve on our incident
077command team john lindner is creating a beautiful dashboard instead of all of the charts and the graphs he's putting that all into something that's very easy to read and quick and now because we have so much data we can watch the trends over time all right can you talk a little bit about um the shift to distance and how we think that'll affect or what we think it advises us in terms of elementary and then the other question is um for the case rate numbers so you said we're taking out the prison we're at 39 when it gets over 50 is when you know theoretically is when elementary would also have to move how much flexibility is there when looking at those kinds of numbers i would say um if you take a look at
07830 to 49 it says that secondary students are in distance learning and so you can see that for the last two weeks and we we will still have two more weeks before we actually go so that's actually four weeks and so what we look at is about three to four data points before you know mde mdh they say you need to make a shift and so it's not like you land on a number and now you have to shift i think the goal is that we try to maintain as much consistency for our students um one thing i did hear from a number of secondary families was just that they had some time to think and to prepare and to make that shift and so it doesn't happen now until actually uh the 16th i
079think which gives families a good amount of time to gear their kids up and to make that shift and simi your first question yep so i think you know one thing that we know about elementary is and let me just back up as i have conversations with superintendents every single week a consistent pattern is a staff shortage and that is that that was true pre-covered we've always been short substitutes not just teachers i want to make sure that i make that clear paraprofessionals recess and lunchroom staff you know people that supervise and so the hope is that we get our secondary settled and distance learning and some of those resources you know the substitute teachers that did go to secondary can now be freed up to help and support in our elementary schools in all
080positions and so we are already talking about what staff does that include who can come and help because again our goal when we started in june was to keep our youngest learners in person for as long as we could and you know people are asking do you think it's going to be december i don't know you know it depends what happens in the next weeks what i can tell you is our incident command team now for i think the next six weeks we're going to be touching base on fridays just so that we can take a broad look at the data and what's changed in a week but at the end of the day really the decision to change learning models is based on our ability to run our operation to teach students to supervise
081kids to provide them with the services that they need when they're in person and so that really is the big factor if our numbers go above 50 and it says elementary are supposed to be in distance learning but we have it under control because all the safety measures are in place in school we can cover the sections and make sure kids are properly supervised then we will continue to have students coming in person for as long as we can until mde or mdh says we need to shut down and take a break and julie is there any type of guideline with mde where if you get to a specific number that they're not going to let us use those other factors anymore to keep the elementary kids in school i know we're in our 50s
082i think today and anticipation by next week it could be up to 70. so i'm just saying is there anything can we continue to try to keep them in the hybrid model as long as we're keeping our numbers down within the schools of infection rate or is there a certain maximum of the 10 000 you know number that they're going to say you can't do it anymore i would say that from my experience working with them they are willing to be flexible they want to hear the story of the school district and what's happening in our schools and they refer to it as the scalpel approach really digging down deep into what's happening in the schools i do think however that if it's just so outrageous in our community that we may we may get
083told we have to shut things down um there was one day uh we had 232 cases minus the prison it brought us down to 290 or excuse me 198 and we hope that that was just a one day but that of course was of concern today when we were on the call with the epidemiologist and so i wish i know what we know in talking with the health experts is we're going into holiday season and again you know we have conversations about make sure you're safe make sure you wear a mask but we also know that we can't control all of those things but we do want to have kids in school as much as possible but we have to balance that thank you and thank you to pepe the communications team for putting this
084together and he'll pepe will gather the data each thursday and make sure that it's updated online thank you all right 11.2 school board member of professional reports around equity work the conversation series um sure um so i got to chat with all of my schools and one of the things i wanted to highlight was newport was a top 10 school in the metro for its um at a website called school sparrow which is a ranking site that tries to decouple household income from school performance and so i believe they um they were number six though i didn't write it down in my notes so i might be forgetting but they were a top 10 school [Music] and uh tomorrow i'll be um hanging out with virtually online with some nuevas uh teachers and staff to
085just kind of learn how everything is going down there um i also got to chat with the folks at the access program and one of the things that they have mentioned several times now is that the virtual classes or the move to distance has actually been really great for them since they are now a lot of the issues that their students had around transportation or child care are no longer factors because they can take care of their kids and attend english language classes or whatever from home and they're launching a new t3 program which is um a transitions program for people leaving jail so i'm excited to learn more about that and then again like louise attending the culturally responsive um professional development i've never sat through one of those before it was really wonderful
086to experience and also the east ridge and woodbury i got to see the woodbury awards mainly because my kid goes there and then and so i got the link and then uh i'm looking forward also to the woodbury play i believe the park play will be online as well so i'll be watching that thank you melinda yeah i got to attend the uh virtual awards ceremony as well through eastridge so um i always like to stay involved in that and then attend the idi training the virtual one with the board and with julie that we attended with terence harewood and it was just really interesting to learn the difference in the boards and my own individual kind of that perceived orientation versus the developmental orientation that was very interesting to see and then i've been
087watching those not a moment it's a movement video trainings done by wayne and james and they're remarkable i love that it's a serious topic and you know and to really get into that but yet you guys add humor to that i love the hamilton references to that i've seen the musical twice it's my favorite so i love having that involved in there i attended my first mshsl meeting along with kristin and they talked about the financial issues and decision making for high school sports connected to the different covid issues that are going on with that so i'm glad they're finding a way to keep some activities going right now despite what's going on and um with our learning so that's it thank you sharon i want to thank brian bruce for sending out that invitation
088to each east ridge award ceremony mr smokovic did a wonderful job presenting the the awards i felt a little bad because the kids weren't there to get their awards but it was done very nicely and then i also did the idi my personal evaluation so i'm happy with my summary i moved into a positive position from where i was so i i enjoyed listening to the evaluation and look forward to what's next thank you yeah i'm not going to repeat i did like all that the only thing different i did is i went to the park game on friday which was cold but it was fun so i haven't been to a park football game for a while so it was very fun uh 12.0 are our future meeting dates 12.1 thursday november 19th is
089a regular uh school board meeting and then thursday december 10th is our regular school board meeting and i think that's like the super bowl for dan too right so i have that to look forward to and with that we are adjourned you