001foreign thank you foreign thank you [Music] thank you [Music] foreign good evening it is Thursday April 6 2023 at 6 PM we are at the district service center in Cottage Grove Minnesota we would like to acknowledge that the land on which We Gather is the land of the milwaukeean people Dakota people minnow Washington means dwellers of the Spirit Lake our first item on the agenda is 1.0 and that is our call to order Dana will you call the roll Melinda Doles patresco Louise Hines Sydney petnick Katie Schwartz Eric tessmer Sharon Van Lear here will you please rise for the Prejudice Legions I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all next is 3.0
002and that's the approve of our agenda can I get a motion to approve the agenda moved by semi-seconded by Eric all those in favor say aye are those opposed motion carried next on our agenda is our Workshop items 4.0 4.1 is our School showcase with our elementary school principals hi babies and that is um we have with us Jennifer hope and Red Rock Christine McDonald from Bailey Susan recess from Royal Oaks and enrich Romano from Newport news welcome go ahead take it away all right wow good evening school board members we are so honored to be with you this evening to share about our new reading program American reading company each of us will take a different segment but I'm going to go ahead and get us started so the first step for our new
003reading curriculum was for our teachers to learn the assessment and art refers to it as the independent reading levels assessment and it's a very prescriptive protocol that our teachers use to determine a student's into independent reading level now the term independent is is important because that's very different than what our previous reading assessment focused on and that focused on the instructional level so that was a pretty big mind shift for our teachers but I do think what it shows is ark's philosophy of being a strengths-based approach for our students next slide you'll see a staircase on this slide if Susan can figure out how to do it thank you um erla uses 11 a leveling system with colors and so you'll see at the bottom there it's it's RTM or read to me and as
004it progresses each step highlights a different skill that the student needs to learn so it starts with phonics or vocabulary skills from there being able to actually accurately read words and then comprehension I do just want to note I think a big piece of something that spoke to us of why we adopted Arc is that Arc is really known as being book People First it is it is their philosophy and their passion to make sure that all of our students have books in their hands and so although a student might be placed in a level they are highly encouraged to select books that are outside of that level if it interests them and that's really to make sure that we're instilling a love for reading within our youngest students thank you all right so the
005whole assessment process really brings us to power goals and I see Power goals as kind of the meat and potatoes of it a student has to identify a skill that they're going to work on right now and that they can carry with them when they do independent reading level and so a way that I explained to parents about what a power goal is is I compare it to basketball so in basketball you have a basketball coach and they do yes Julie I know you're a big basketball player that was not as a suck up um but um they they teach skills to their players dribbling shooting and then from there the players practice those independently and that's exactly what a power goal is it's the skill that we're teaching the student and from there they
006take that power goal and practice it when they're doing independent reading and then finally a huge piece is the Home Connection oftentimes parents will ask us what can I do with my child at home to help them read and and Arc has just a great Home Connection tool um this is something that Bailey Elementary did at our parent teacher conferences this winter is every parent received an erla home update and on it it shares with the parents what the students reading level is the skills that the student can do and then things that they can do on home do at home to help support their child foreign hello I'm Jennifer Holt I'm the principal at Red Rock Elementary School so thank you for inviting us to join you tonight I get to talk about what
007I think is the most fun piece to our new reading curriculum and that's the Thematic units for each grade level so earlier Christine talked about that beginning assessment the erla and that's really geared at getting a strong sense of where students are reading at independently and that's really important because we know like anything the more students read the better they'll get right and so what Arc has done beautifully is created thematic units by grade level and then a big piece to the curriculum is they fill classrooms with lots of books around those units and if you look at those units those are really exciting units for kids to read and learn about what second grader doesn't love to learn about bugs fourth grade right now they're deep into their mystery unit and they're having so
008much fun trying to figure out the whodunit of their current book while they're also writing their own Mysteries so a lot of really fun pieces now you'll see the first unit is the arc literacy lab and that's the one unit that is not a thematic unit The Arc literacy lab is a six-week unit that is really designed to lay a solid foundation for literacy instruction throughout the rest of the year during this time teachers are really getting to know their students as readers and writers they're assessing not only their reading level but they also assess their engagement and that's really critical and that's also something that's unique and different students receive an engagement score based on a survey that they give students about their reading habits and when teachers identify a student who might be
009a reluctant or a less engaged reader that's one of their primary tasks during those first six weeks is to help expose the student to different types of genres and texts and just keep working with them maybe in the library in the media center or in the classroom library to try to get a student hooked on books so that they'll be excited to read so one thing that we thought would be fun is to share with you some student products and so I get to show you what I think is especially fun about this is we'll see that how students writing progresses over the years so this is a red rock student in the zoology unit wrote about zebras so students in unit 2 is a research-based unit and they're really learning and reading a lot
010about their primary topic and then writing about that so this kindergartner tells us that all zebras are different and then this is first grade first grade thematic unit for unit 2 was wild and endangered animals and you can see already a really nice progression and you'll notice as we look at the different pictures uh the sentence structures become more uh complex the depth with which they write about their ideas also becomes more rich I should note that there are research questions that guide this process and the we research questions are scaffolded to begin from let's basic information what kind of bug do you have and how do you know it's that kind of bug to tell us about the ecosystem all the way up to so what might happen if this bug was not a
011part of the ecosystem how might that impact that entire ecosystem so that level of thinking that evolves through the unit is really quite impressive and quickly we'll look at second grade here the bugs these students were all really really proud to publish their bug books they all chose their own bug researched that and they became the experts on the left hand side we have third grade weather and climate they got to choose a weather phenomenon hurricanes tornadoes and really research that and then fourth grade worked on animal adaptations and fourth grade decided to take they still did all the writing that one might do to publish a book but instead they created posters and then lastly look at this fifth grade look at that that's that's just two pages within their book about ecosystems and
012here we can see again that really in-depth writing about the different pieces the text features visual Graphics that were added and so if we think back to that very first zebras are different to hear I just think that's really exciting so thank you we'll switch okay good evening I'm Susan rishas principal at Royal Oaks and I'm going to talk to you and share a little bit about the daily framework what does it look like for a child and for our teachers in kindergarten through fifth grade so I know that's really fine print but hopefully you can see it on your iPads but Kindergarten first grade this is pretty much what their Reading Writing block looks like and we really want to have the children have 120 Minutes of this block and we also have that
01330 minute of intervention time which is which is very important one thing really new I would say for kindergarten in first grade is what we call the morning meeting and this is a time where the children are interacting with their teacher they're creating the morning meeting or the morning message together this is not a time that we talk about what do you want for lunch or our specialist today or music this is really a time where we're focused on our power goals like Christine shared and really focusing in on Beginning Sounds ending sounds Blends and so on all of those very very important beginning reading skills and so the teachers begin their reading Block in kindergarten and first grade with that then we have interactive read-alouds that's in all of our grade levels it's so
014important as you know to be reading modeling that expressive language talking about the pictures and really modeling this is what a good reader so to speak does and what it would sound like then we have phonological awareness and the phonemes the phonics part you know it's very important we're not throwing out phonics I don't know if you remember but I know my teaching I started in 1979 and I went from phonics phonics only phonics to a language they'll just learn and and this kind of is a mixture so to speak but we're still very focused on that phonics teaching children Beginning Sounds ending sounds what do words look like how do you take them apart those things are very important that we focus on kindergarten and first grade and then we also have some of
015that in second grade and let's see how about if you go to the Next Room then this is pretty much the second through fifth grade block and all of our students have time for the read aloud they have time for writing as Jen explained that her children do all of our children across the district do that and that's one I think really awesome thing about American reading company is the writing component you know we always wanted our children to write but this is so focused so just teaching them as Jen showed from the very beginning of kindergarten but how important research is and that we have to verify our research and just those tools that really as adults you know how often are we using Google we know we can't believe everything that is in
016Google I think that is probably true but we have to teach our children what does true research look like and how do you know how do we know what's false and so that writing part is very important the children are reading independently while our teachers are meeting in small groups or sometimes individually because we're focusing on those power goals our standards and benchmarks for that particular grade level okay I think that's the framework then I get to explain what our Royal Oaks 100 books challenge is this happens to be a picture um of our bulletin board in the hallway and one of the things that Arc asked us to do and many of our schools went ahead and and we supported this was really have that time for reading at home and the time for
017reading at school and so we had all of our I have a little things to show because no oh yes why don't you he will hold I can do it no you can help me thank you so much during our social emotional learning time which we have at Royal Oaks every day is really called salt we had all of our teachers read this book and this is just a delightful book if you don't know what I would highly suggest you whether you have children or not but no matter what age it's really beautiful it's just a wonderfully illustrated book and it talks about this little girl who's in art class and she just didn't like drawing she didn't want to do any of that and so the teacher said you know how about if you
018just begin with a DOT and so she then began showing dots you can find the picture like in the like right in here like in the school board area where they had keep going keep going keep going where they had where she had all of her artwork and this entire book really shows children that no matter what your skill is no matter what you feel you can do you are creative in some way it could be reading or writing or playing basketball or running whatever it might be and so we really wanted children to really be involved in the book and then that really launched our book challenge so all of the different dots there they show that the children have read so many minutes this is a wonderful way to have a partnership with
019families and the school because they kept track of how much they read at home how much they read at school and then from thank you that's fine okay do you wanna then the next step when they read a little bit more they all received a pencil they got to choose the color and that they wanted and then that larger dot our our teacher actually created the bulletin board in that larger dot then the children get to sign when they finish this particular goal they get the pencil and then they move on to this wonderful little bookmark and this is a thrill even though you know it's just a piece of paper and they color but it is such an awesome thing when they get to have this and then you move up to the next
020goal and then I found this um in amazon.com it's my friend and I found these wonderful congratulations with dots and then we have a skull keychain that's the next goal that they get and one of our parents actually donated them and if you have any ideas for our next goal and the goal after that I already have two children that have gotten that but I don't have like any prices but we're thinking at the book fair and some of those but some of our children did say well Dr riches you could just buy all of us pizzas how about if you give everybody a big trophy great idea but it was a wonderful way just to have our whole Community just really Embrace reading and show the importance of it foreign my name is Rich
021romano and I work for Susan I'm with Newport Elementary School and Newport is in a different position in that we have not started the arc reading program this year so we're adopting it next year so come fall we'll be learning all of the information that my colleagues have shared with you so in our situation we have used a reading curriculum that we've become very comfortable with we've even become very um skilled with and now for a staff we have to start thinking about how that's going to change we have to sort in in a way drop our old tools and pick up neutral tools and so we're reading the book called who Moved My Cheese I don't know if you've read who Moved My Cheese it talks about change in your life whether it's at
022work at home so forth and we're really just discussing like how are things changing in our world everything I'm very comfortable doing as a as an Elementary's teacher is now going to change and how do I adapt to that change so meeting with the staff and after we've we've talked about it the staff were extremely excited to jump in now learning now so the first thing we did is that that we planned a staff development trainings with among the early assessment School Pace everything that my rest my colleagues are talking about the Newport staff wanted to jump in full head so we typically have plc's twice a week or excuse me twice a month they asked to have all those plc's opened up and let's put Arc into all those spots because they were eager
023to learn as much as they can before we broke for uh summer which I was super excited to see and to feel that the staff was eager to learn your next page please uh they also said we want to see it we can read something you can look at the diagrams but sometimes seeing it in action really helps you understand also remove some fear I know when I went to see Arc In Action I was like oh I get it now I read about it for a while but I needed to see it being done and so we went over to Crestview all the Newport teachers went over to Crestview to see it in action and so thank you by the way for Crestview for hosting us each grade level team came back new program
024oh yeah I got there was you can see this excitement and whatever fears may they may have had or unknowns were relieved to a degree so it was really exciting so I really want to thank the Crestview for hosting us um and a group of Staff said Rich how can we do work over the summer what can we do over the summer together to have some cohorts in June and July learn more and more so we can get better I'm really proud of the Newport staff because I feel like they want to be 100 percent come June or excuse me September 1st you know they're just eager they want to master it before we even get there and I'm just really proud of them for that desire that's something they're asking me to help provide
025for them so I'm real excited about that any questions for any of us um I'm curious what the erla assessment looks like is it to have like a running record part does it like what what does it look like well also I'll start and we can build on one another so the erla looks a little bit different at each levels right and so in those younger grades you know we first begin with that foundational um you know looking at word lists and maybe so for example we might have you know the word run running pre-running right and so the first thing to do is to go down how are they doing with one syllable words and then how are they doing with multi-syllabic words or words with Blends just to kind of get a set
026and a sense of where they're at as the as students get older and have demonstrated Mastery on those skills that falls off per se but that's not the only piece there is also reading and comprehension so in addition to doing some phonemic awareness and phonics assessments there's also read this passage and then answer some questions about it the questions are really uh two types of questions one is text dependent go in find the text in the answer there and the other is more inferential and so then the teachers take notes on those as well does anybody want to add to that yeah I I would just say the biggest piece too about the erla is it's not a one and done I think similar to our previous assessment it was three times a year this
027is ongoing so teachers are constantly updating students progress in some cases on a daily basis and so that's where the School Pace comes in it is it's just constant I think two as students progress into the upper levels it becomes not just about informational texts but it's it's multiple genres and so it's it's poetry it's it's Etc et cetera which I think is so much more comprehensive than than what we've been used to when we've looked at reading assessments that answered my other question when I look at the the units look non-fiction based and so I was wondering where the fiction comes thank you Christine you mentioned a little bit about School Pace one of the nice things you can speak individually but one of the nice things about the resource and the curriculum is
028that at any moment in in time we can take a look at how the district looks with literacy individual schools can drill down to the classroom to the student level to see the progress and so it's much much like we used to have a data board it might have been Post-it notes or however we organize it and now it's all done electronically which is a beautiful way for at the district level to monitor how we're doing so I don't know if anyone else wants to speak to school pace and how you're utilizing that data source I would like to speak to that school Pace um it's it's something I think that some teachers just love they love them the very beginning some it's a little bit difficult to get used to it there's a lot
029of parts of School Pace but when a teacher is meeting with a group of children or it could be afterwards the chill the teacher really decides then they're putting in evidence they're putting in this is what the child learned this is the power goal that they want to ahead and they have mastered that they're on to the next one so instead of having all these Post-its and notebooks and all of those things you know we're really wanting teachers to be putting it right in there that saves from year to year we can always go back like Julie said we can look at our students growth individually as grade levels as classrooms as the whole school as the district and when we have our professional meetings I don't think we talked about that but we have
030principles professional training once once a month usually I think sometimes this month it's twice I think but usually once a month we have all day meetings that we are really asked and really I think we could say challenged because we always set goals this is what we're going to be looking for from now until we meet and this is the data this is the information we're going to bring back to share with our colleagues or to share with Dr Brookins and the arc staff and then our teachers also have professional development through the year they have a coach all of our buildings have different coaches and their responsibility through Arc is to meet with us as like our leadership teams for reading and then to meet with our classrooms I'm not sure what you all
031have done but I think most of us anyway have had the coach and our leadership teams go from classrooms to classrooms we're observing this is not an evaluation time this is just these are some of the great things that we saw you doing these are some of the things we saw the children doing giving them that positive feedback and maybe something to grow on or something to focus on the next time so it has so many components um wonderful positive things compared to I think what we've had in the past what we had in the past was good this is great um so I had a couple questions one is does this help us identify kids who may have some challenges learning to read like dyslexia or something like that does this help us identify
032them earlier and offer what kind of support can we offer with this that's a great question thank you so the as Christine mentioned the assessment is ongoing and then as Susan mentioned that's all recorded in an online platform called School Pace right and so what's really nice is Teachers develop conference schedules Equitable conference schedules in which they determine based on where students are at and how they're progressing how often do I meet with them what's the focus of that meeting what's especially what I appreciate the most about this new curriculum is it has interventions embedded within it and as a part of it so in addition to the Core Curriculum there's something called a tool kit for each level of reading and so if I have a student and the toolkit can be used as
033part of the instructional practice or as the intervention and so if I have a student who might be struggling with Blends or digraphs the toolkit has resources for me to pull to provide direct instruction about that and then I'm recording that into School Pace now what we know about children and how they learn to read is if we have a significant documented research-based intervention and we're progress monitoring throughout that intervention and we're seeing little to no growth that's when there's signs that there might be something more going on there like dyslexia or some other kind of learning disability and I think what Arc has done is it has taken the intervention process and it's done two things one it's systematized it a lot much more so in our district and the other piece that it's
034done is it's made that data much more transparent and accessible to the school psychologists the special education teacher the general education teacher the reading specialist and so um so we have the interventions built in within that it really provides that skill for teachers and that transparency of data collection thanks and then is this the first year each of your schools is doing how have the students responded to this compared to what they were doing last year I I will tell you that we what I've heard from teachers time and time again and what I've seen with students is the enthusiasm on around reading has significantly increased like kids are really enjoying reading a lot more I meet with my student ambassadors um on a we all meet with our student ambassadors but I asked them
035about reading and many of them have said oh this is so much more fun because they're really engaged in those topics uh those thematic units what I've noticed as a building principle when I do walk-throughs is the quality of writing is really significantly grown this year which is wonderful to see it's especially nice to see coming off of covid because during covid so much was digital and online that students did not have as many opportunities to do writing per se yeah and one thing I think um this reading program comes with it which is great to enhance that reading is it comes with um little tubs if you will a different color depending on what the level is but all of our classrooms have those it comes per grade level so every grade level got
036so many of those colored tubs so to speak with wonderful pictured books I mean there's fiction non-fiction and one thing I wanted to kind of say if I may as far as your question one thing that we principles focused on at the very beginning was our children that after they took the erla they were they were called so to speak read to me children and those children we really wanted to teach them the pattern the dog went outside the dog went to the park the dog went to the dentist or you know that type of a thing and so you were a child would be read to me yet if they were not able to have that continuous pattern and of course it's important when a child is First Learning need to read to look
037at the pictures but we also want them to look at those Beginning Sounds the ending sounds come up with patterns and I I know I feel in my many years of being a teacher and a principal that this program really fits the needs of our children it has wonderful books it has all these tools for assessment progress monitoring as Jen said it has all the Frameworks that a teacher has it doesn't tell a teacher like this is what you're exactly supposed to say some of it is a little open-ended but yet we want it to be that way we don't want to have a program that say this do this like robots we want to be able to have that teacher ability to say I'm going to use this I'm going to say it in
038this particular manner so I think for me anyway this is the best thing that I know I've ever seen to have our children to be able to use and teachers too standardization services no I would say at this time that's too early to tell I think what is and and we saw this with our with our math curriculum it really it continues to cycle back and so it'll be really great when we have an entire elementary school that has gone through this because it just continues to build upon one another I think that was the neatest thing sitting with the third grade team in my building and them really being a little fearful that oh are students really going to be able to do this and then visiting with the fourth grade team and the
039fifth grade team and then understanding that it might start with this piece for the research project and then it builds on to the fourth grade and then it builds on to fifth grade and so it'll be interesting but I think it's too early to tell yet on standardized I was wondering about kindergarten and pre you know the early years do they specifically isolate sounds for you know vowels and letters and okay and um so when a child is in like second grade and still doesn't know those are there interventions along that way and um the plan after that if they don't meet because you know that's the root I mean if they don't can't do that they they're going to fail on everything else so um just want to make sure you're doing that and
040when kids are starting to lag you have the resources to intervene okay absolutely I just want to go back to the stair step there right so you can see we begin with active reading strategies and initial consonants high frequency words Blends digraphs and so there's a very very intentional scaffolding yellow really has three pieces to that one one yellow two yellow three yellow and that's where they look at our students able to the one yellow is initial sounds if I look at the word you know dog can I identify that first sound and then we look at n sounds and so forth so it does isolate it and again very very systematic to address your question too I think when the use of School Pace our District staff here our principals are our coaches and
041the people that we work with you know we can look up school pays at any moment and put in like let's say October 6 and put in today's date and then it'll show like let's say where I look so then I can look at it as my grade levels in those those months and the comparison I look and can look at my children that are merging my children that really right now could be at risk because they haven't moved that far the children that are far above so I mean we constantly look at that data um every day sometimes yeah yep it's all isolated and it is very much I mean it is it is phonics as well I mean all of our things we need to teach the children right some of our children
042do come in to to school already learning they already know how to read but most of our children can't and we can't just expect it it'll magically happen they need to have those those phonics and the skills that we are this program really is is stressing and as you're looking up at this picture if you're thinking what are those two manuals um the curriculum is also in Spanish and so the Orange is our Spanish and so not every resource we have um is both English and Spanish and so our Spanish Immersion students adopted um yeah about four years ago American reading company so Spanish you have a Spanish version yes any other questions I'm happy to see that there is some cultural identity here and uh on the unit for fifth grade thank you I
043think that's very important any other questions okay seeing that I'm so come back again I'm coming to see all y'all I do I do okay uh next is 4.2 and that is our long-range facility planning and that will be presented this evening by our superintendent assistant superintendent oh where is she oh okay yeah super did you hear it okay Christine Schaefer all right good evening everyone so tonight we are going to review some of our long-range facility information some of this information you have seen before some of it will be new um so we're going to quickly go over what you've seen But at the end we are going to ask for your input on what you'd like to see as priorities in our new plan so you should all have it in front of
044you a packet with some of the important information in it so as we are going through the information on their slides please feel free to take notes um as as again at the end we're going to have some conversations and we are going to ask for your input much like I'm clicking my own slides over here all right so real quickly our agenda we're going to review the demographic study and the community survey and give you some highlights on that we're going to review the long-range facility process we're going to look at Community survey results the demographic study results we'll look again at our projected enrollment chart we'll check for understanding along the way and answer any questions and at the end we're going to share some feedback based on the survey and demographic reports
045all right go again all right so a reminder of our 2022 Bond referendum um we had asked the voters for 462.6 million dollar bond for construction and as you can see what was included in that request and as we know that did not pass all right so a review on what you've seen so far so on February 2nd we brought the community survey to you and you saw those results February 16th you did see the presentation on the demographic study we're going to show some highlights from those again tonight and then we set dates for all of our meetings and as you can see we have those three Community meetings scheduled one which has taken place on March 21st and we have two more coming up and again those Community meetings are for anyone in
046our community to come and get all this information all right so our process again we have our leadership team our steering committee and then you can see all of the task force partners that we have so that we are including our parents our community members our students and our staff so we're hoping that we can gather input from all of those groups in those various meetings that are listed below all right so our community surveys you remember we had our community survey that was conducted between December 1st and the 16th of 2022. that was a random sampling of 500 households in our district and that random sampling um was proportionate to the community members in our district and so some takeaways from that Community survey from Morris Leatherman where that while residents don't necessarily blame
047the school district the property tax climate is very hostile those were one of the highlights that came out of the survey there's a very low level of residence that felt informed about the referendum the most common responses among parents that didn't vote were that they were too busy or they forgot and three main reasons for opposition the pandemic economy property taxes on one lack of a compelling need and disagreement about the solution being offered so those are some highlights from that Community survey and when they would when they were asked about what they would support a property into increase for so this is the graph as you can see the green is what they would support the red is what would be a they would oppose and so let me look back at so as
048you can see at the top secured entrances were at the top for a community survey and then high school classroom additions stem spaces classroom editions CTE spaces I'm going to look at Morris Leatherman language related to our percentages and he stated that anything under 60 percent may be difficult to get approved so as you look up there and we look at kind of the cutoff of theirs performing art space at 59 so the things above that may be supported things below that would be more difficult and as you can see the the three bottom pieces that were highly opposed District service center purchasing land and athletic facilities and this chart again is in your packet if you want to reference back to that when we're looking at input in a little bit all right so
049when they were asked about how much they would support for property tax increase you can see um nothing 34 percent and then between 10 and 20 of the highest percentages and so the end result is the tax tolerance was reported to be about 10 to 15 dollars per month on a medium property value so that is what our community members stated that they would support right boundary changes so this graph correct me if I'm wrong Julie was all of the community members so parents and non-p and community members that don't have students in our schools and when they were asked the question about how important is it to limit boundary changes in our in our district and so as you can see 34 percent vary 42 somewhat and then you can see those other percentages
050and again this was all of our community members and as a reminder 30 percent of the of community members are parents in our district so 30 percent and Christine I think you have the stats this slide shows the 500 individuals that were surveyed so there you see 76 percent were somewhat are very remember not all of them were not many of them were parents and I believe it was upwards of 80 when we just pulled out the parents of the 500 yes 85 percent of um said limiting bonding changes is somewhat or very important so if we just pulled out the parents it was 85 percent the whole 500 was 76. foreign we don't have any breakdown of the voting piece as it relates to boundaries or not this slide shows the 500 surveyed and
051then Peter was able to pull out just the parents do you mean the parents they all have children that are still in our school parents of school-aged children that's a good question but I'm assuming that they took our district our district I'm assuming but that's a good question yeah we can certainly follow up with Peter yeah all right so now let's look again at the demographic study so we receive feedback from community members concerned with our previous demographic study therefore we commissioned a new demographic study by Hazel Reinhardt we know that the methodology of demographers can be different therefore results May Vary moving forward with our long-range facility plan we will use the new demographic information so the demographic study completed by Hazel looks at projections for the next five years the study focuses on
052fertility rate cohort survival rate and housing data and what it showed is that fertility rate is decreasing in Minnesota and in the United States 2020 saw the lowest birth rate in the United States since 1979. decline in verse in Washington County and in Minnesota will result in smaller kindergarten classes in the next several years and the demographer looked at the housing growth in South Washington County Schools but said the relationship between housing and K-12 enrollment is complex noting that it is difficult to determine how many students come out of new housing right so let's look at our five-year projections so we know that as of today currently over capacity we have East Ridge High School Woodbury High School Pine Hill Elementary and gray cloud Elementary today they are over capacity at or over capacity within
053five years we'll have Eastridge ultman Pine Hill gray cloud Bailey Liberty Ridge in Red Rock and again this is with our new demographic information and then also within five years the schools that will be within five percent of capacity will be Park Woodbury and Lake so those are our enrollment projections and so so since we've shown these to you at board meetings we've had Community meetings and so this was 75 community members that came to our community meeting in addition to our parent advisory meeting where we invited all of our parent advisory groups to one big meeting and we presented the information that you saw the demographic survey information on the projected enrollments and we asked them what they would support and so as you can see and this is also in your packet as
054well you can see the similarities with secured entrances high school high school stem middle school but there are some differences below when you look below what kitchens cafeterias and purchasing land so just some differences and the this is not percentages so if you look at the bottom it's the number of Community member responses so at the top it's 31 community members said secured entrance 48 so those are not percentages their number of respondents questions about that we use this list of things to the community members yes because this is a list that was given out on the survey yes yeah right staff feedback so this is Staff within our district all principals presented the information at their staff meetings and staff responded and this is these are the responses from Steph and again these are
055number of staff member responses and you can see there at the top security advances high schools Middle School editions and then some differences down below and this is also in your packet all right so now what we'd like you to do is using the information you saw and looking at your packets we would like to get you in small groups and have a discussion about what would you like to prioritize in our new long-range facility plan as we now start to build it and how would you present these priorities to the community and so we have I'm going to put you into four groups so if we can have Tyrone Louise Sean and Eric just kind of move your chairs together Kelly Abby Katie and Sharon no no we're in a different spot Kelly Simi
056Sharon um and then Julie Melinda Anna Pat and then three of us you get us both and I would just add um just in conversations with board members um we're asking about the priorities and why and so your why might be that the survey said it our community meeting said it our staff said it but we may have other things that other people don't see as a high priority that perhaps as board members you may see as a high priority what's important is what's the why I know that we have had conversations about early learning about an alternative high school around next step in Pathways and so as you think about putting together your priorities and we'll be using this information to guide us in the next step of plan development we just have to
057have a strong rationale about the why and while Peter said at 60 and above he also noted somewhere along the line about communication and really talking about the why included on here not even brought forth in the survey questions or do they just not high enough up on the list where they didn't make it to the ground that's a good question I don't believe that they were part of it because they were embedded in other pieces so and that might be another reason to talk about the why with those and can I ask one more question so the kitchen cafeteria restrooms section that's like if we wanted to change the kitchen at East Ridge independent of Eastridge classroom space or that's a good question I believe that that is intended for perhaps elementary middle school
058because with an addition to the high schools we know we'll need bigger kitchen and cafeteria yes good question and so for people watching we'll have these small group conversations but then at the end each board member will speak into the mic and talk about what you put as priorities we'll take about 10 minutes and then we'll see where we're at after 10 minutes thank you exclamation point the I banded the first three priorities together the one that has to do with security the high school additions and the Middle School editions because those were the top three not just on the community survey but also on the staff survey so it seems like that's exactly what the community and staff is asking for things I added beyond that I added three one of them was the
059kitchens cafeteria and restrooms and I look at that infrastructure as something that supports instruction so I don't know if you've not been in a classroom but if you have a math class that we meet for 12 minutes and then kids go to lunch and then they come back the impact that has on learning or if there's not enough restrooms and the impact that has in disruption and learning is is significant another thing I took a look at were the places where we have rentals which would be like next steps Pathways and also Central Park um you know I'm a Believer in home ownership certainly as a way one of the things I can do to control costs so I looked at if we can bring those in-house in the long run that really helps control
060our costs for that facility space and although it was very low on the survey I still think land is a priority I understand it's probably not a priority in five years certainly to our our community and staff but again if I'm looking at controlling costs and being protective of our future in the long term I would also put that as a priority all right thank you and we would like to collect your your at least your top sheet at the end if that's okay all right Eric uh yeah thank you um my first or my priorities are pretty simple uh High School additions middle school edition secured entryways I think that the community survey staff survey Bears this out pretty clearly I think it will ring true with I think most members of the community
061and um very easy to understand you know why we need High School additions why we need Middle School additions and why um you know our why the schools need to be secure they're already secured in the elementary school so I think that people understand that without security um without having a feeling that children are safe um and that there's not enough you know and that they don't have enough space to properly learn um that that's an issue and I think that people are you know pretty much put their money toward that and then Louise without knowing convince me also that land is important too so I think you know buy some land so um this is going to be like the ditto Club I also agree with the high school editions middle school edition security
062for everyone one of the things I added in with the high school editions was also the Career and Technical and stem spaces as part of making like one big um great you know great like just do the Improvement properly at once and um you know I don't know that we necessarily like we talked in our strategic planning about preparing our kids for This Global future and just so just making sure that we have the facilities in place so that our kids have access to what they need in order to be prepared and the security of course is critical and then right before you called us back um Kelly Kelly made like a offhanded mention of like a uh some sort of like centralized Learning Center that could be for next step in Pathways and we
063hadn't we hadn't talked about that but I do think that something like that is important both for from Louise's perspective of like Cost Containment um in perpetuity but also to ensure that we are able to provide you know some of our most vulnerable Learners what they need in order to get the education that they're entitled to um and I agree with them on land and uh but I I've always liked land and then lastly one of the things that we talked about a little bit in here was um doing some sort of Elementary question that was kind of a straight up and down like would you rather uh do these Renovations and expansions at elementary or would you rather have the boundary changes that would be needed um in order to address some of the
064overcrowding without spending money on in a bond and one of the reasons I I want to see that is because you know we've had a couple questions where Elementary has been on the ballot and it hasn't it hasn't passed but I don't know um I don't know where the trade-off the voters are willing like what the inflection point for boundaries versus increased busing that they that they have and so I just would want to know where where voters stand all right thank you Sharon okay um mine was also the high school and middle school additions and um security and I felt that security is really critical because safety is is critical and to update our systems our cameras our doors our and in Banks when I used to work at the bank um we had
065panic buttons and because you don't know how many seconds or minutes that you have before you're in crisis mode so I just think it's really important and then as semi said first of all I would put out there how many seats do we have in our elementary school that are empty how many are full because then that's going to affect if we don't do this what this then you're going your kids are going to be your boundaries are going to change and if you're going to Newport you could go to the gray car I'm just using that as an example but um and and I think it's it's a disservice not telling them what the consequences are I think we've been you know thinking that they're they're going to just you know okay addition okay
066all right we'll do that but um and and that one other thing that I I I I in some of these schools the restrooms are outdated or they only have one restroom and I just think that that's unconscionable from to me so I think you know Equity versus equality yeah that's a that's a key and then um the other thing that I don't know if anybody remembers but you remember when we had the reconfiguration of grades where we had K through five and we split that out and then or six and then we had um what was it seven through nine and then we moved the ninth graders up into the high school and make that could all be a possibility so I mean we need to just be strategic about what the plan and
067lay it out and okay you don't want this here's here's what's going to happen if we don't do this so make the choice it's their choice all right thanks Sharon Melinda okay so I in looking at the community and the staff feedback I think it's clear that you know that the two top things were the huge things on both of them so I really think that those are things we really need to prioritize since you know the community and the staff are talking and that's what they want um for security entrances I would present that as more making sure all of our schools have the double door system and the cameras and then also it goes go as far as adding the um the the glass the stronger glass security glass as well into the
068door system um as far as the high school class editions um I mean we know that we need that they're all overcrowded um I would add on there hopefully doing something with our Alternative Learning Center as well also high schoolers they need the space as well um as far as the elementary well actually the next thing I would prioritize would be our next step in Pathways program um those students um people forget that they're still I don't even know about them a lot of our community members don't even know anything about them for one they're left off of our school systems often and they're still high schoolers they have not gotten their diplomas yet and they are the most vulnerable kids in our house our whole district and I think that we need to prioritize
069them and make sure I mean I've had a kid in those and their space is horrible I mean that next step program is so overcrowded and it just keeps getting bigger every year and there's no more space for them they have no green space the kitchen's horrible there's no space for classrooms offices it's I mean they need something there we need to do that as soon as we can and I would love to see something that's safer to have Pathways and Next Step together and possibly even something like they talked about where ALC was also there and that could we could do something Transportation with that too because both ALC and the pathways program have work programs often they go off to work so that's something we can help out with there and a lot
070of our ALC students don't have driver's license so that's something we can look at as well if we if we do some type of building where we put those programs together um and then as far as looking at the Elementary classroom additions if you look at the community feedback it has zero so um as much as I really don't want to do boundary changes I think that what I'd like to see is us utilize the space that we have I think you said we have about 920 space open or something about that how many Elementary seats do we have open but okay yeah thank you yeah I did the quick 16 schools and like how many I thought so what was it 1305 spaces open okay so I mean I would like to see as
071little boundary changes as possible and um and really be able to present what that boundary changes would look like to our community down the road when we get more into this but I also think that the community has spoken that they don't want to to increase their taxes that much for boundary for for elementaries to be added on to so I think we need to try to utilize those spaces as much as we can all right thank you Pat okay he's last laughs so so the one thing that I care about you know all of this all of these top things that the community said I totally agree with um I agree with the land because if we wait it won't be there it might not be there and we'll be having our bus garage
072or whatever we build not in our district so where are we going to put it so um and it we won't lose money on it land goes up in value so I think that's a smart move to invest in and um I think we need because of the staff survey I being an elementary principal and you know many years in education I know what I needed for space and I've seen spaces where the speech teachers in an old closet I've seen that happen in buildings and when you're overcrowded that's the kind of thing that happens it's very you know I was in a classroom that didn't have a full uh it was a roof that came like this you couldn't stand up in it and I was teaching special needs students in that that was
073in 1970 six or seven something but anyway I'm hoping that that won't happen any of our buildings and I really want to listen to staff in this regard because they live in those buildings they teach in those buildings they know what they need and I don't believe they're exaggerating I think that you know teachers are honest and they're just saying you know they would be if they could make it work they would make it work and the other thing is if you're a person whose child lives in one community and you have to have that child go because you just moved here and your child can't go to this neighborhood school and you have to bus them to another city I I just don't think that's right I don't think people will buy the homes
074I think if you don't have the space for them in the school they're not going to buy the homes and so that's a property issue for all people who own homes if you don't have space in your school your value you know you may not be able to sell your home when you need to so I think we need to listen to the teachers and do that as well but I also think that let the voters decide do two questions the first question is on all the things that we know the public wants and will support and the second question would be about the elementary additions and if they want to go that way that's you know it's their property values that will be affected it's you know there there are kids that will be
075going to different places for school so let them decide that okay so I have the same the secured entrances with the security as well as high school additions including the stem and those classrooms um I would like to look at middle schools and see what we have for open space um before we add on just look and see what do we have for space because I feel like high school editions are very important and the secured space is very important and as we start to get higher in price that's where we start to know that maybe it won't pass and we need these to pass so I would like to see the secured entrances in the high school editions as like one question um I think we do need the Elementary bathrooms especially in like
076those older prototype buildings um I went to Pullman and it had one set of bathrooms my kids went to Pullman and it still has one set of bathrooms so um we need to do better there and then I did also have a Pathways Next Step Alternative High School and Early Learning Center all in one would be like kind of what I would like to see if that's if there's a space that we already have that we can put them all together um utilize maybe something that we have already but I do feel that they all need kind of a home and they would work well together I mean the special ed kids right now I they've set up classrooms over the summer for elementary kids they help clean classrooms they do those types of things
077Alternative Learning kids could help with you know teaching preschools they do it in some of the high schools right now so I think they could all utilize each other if they were all in one space together um I'm a little indifferent about the land I think if we do it it has to be its very own question it has to be a third question we can't combine it with anything else because I I don't know that in the tax tolerance that it's something I agree we need it because if we don't buy it it's not going to be there but again we've seen what happens if we put everything that we need or want on one so I think we need to be very strategic in how we word the questions how we place the
078questions um and I do I guess I don't know about the I don't really agree with the adding on to the elementary schools knowing that we have the space my only issue is we don't have buses we don't have bus drivers and it will be extensive boundary changes it isn't going to be minor boundary changes we know that and I don't think we can say we don't want additions but we want minor boundary changes they're just not they're not a thing it's either additions or major boundary changes at the element level so I mean if that's what we'd rather have as a third question and but I think if we're going to do that and look at any of these things the Middle School boundaries changing or Elementary boundary skills changing before that question before
079that vote we have to show the boundary changes that will happen because that was a big thing that people were asking you're telling us if this doesn't pass there's boundary changes what do they look like and we didn't have them and I think we need to have those boundaries those what those boundaries will look like if these things don't pass including the high school I mean what will happen so that's what I'd like it it so it depends on what we want so if we go with the security I think the secured instances and the high schools should be together I think then we should have some sort of question that looks at elementary boundaries and possibly the pathways next step or we can combine the pathways next step with the high schools so my
080third question would be either a land or it would be the additions to the elementary schools as I listened to board members share and our leadership team has had conversations and what really becomes hard is we use the word priorities and even as you go around the space and you hear that we're kind of adding on to our priorities and then when we get to the price tag portion and costing it out it's going to be way above and so I think this is a really good first start around priorities but we're going to have to prioritize the priorities um if we want to stay between that 10 and 12 and that's really hard especially and we've had this conversation as a leadership team because these are things we need these are things we've asked
081for before but we're going to have to really look critical at prioritizing the priorities I also want to say that when we look at the community feedback here we have really worked and I will continue to work on using the terminology engage with us when individuals come to community meetings it's not to sit and listen to us it is to give us feedback and so you can see how we're utilizing that information and bringing that back to the board and I think from the leadership team's perspective we want to give every um give our community every opportunity to say yes or to say no and I think as you shared tonight we need to make sure as a leadership team that we're prepared in the event of boundary changes or any other shifts that we
082can clearly spell out and lay out what that plan is if it's a yes Vote or if it's a no vote and I think we will be prepared to do that all right thank you everyone for your input and again if you could pass over your um top sheet so we can gather your input we greatly appreciate that and so finally at the end just a reminder we do have two more Community meetings April 25th at Oldman middle school May 23rd at East Ridge High School where all community members are welcome to join us and get information and then our next steps so we are going to review information again at step with the Staffing committee about what they'd like to prioritize and following this meeting the steering committee will begin drafting a preliminary plan
083with all the feedback that we have so far and hopes that in may we will have a final plan to share with you but we will update you along the way well it is April so may is next month and again our website for anyone watching where we have all of this information if you'd like any more information on the community survey or demographic information thank you uh for a minute I thought Kerry wasn't going to be here I thought did you know she's presenting this guy she whispered she was like I knew you could do it Julie but thankfully she's here and you know Carrie maybe before we get started uh this is an individual who gets up early on snowy days and is talking to me as I'm driving and we're evaluating um
084but really really to carry Olson our director and the entire Transportation team um it's been a year is what I'll say uh each Wednesday we get the updates on bus drivers and where we're at and so in addition to talking about where we go next with Transportation what our next plan is this work in terms of routing is all being done while everyone is doing their full-time day job and so in between they're talking about plans and options at our last doing committee meeting we've uh and we've been meeting regularly we've had conversations about of course Transportation everybody around the table is familiar with the transportation opt-in remember that purpose is to say who needs a ride and who doesn't so that we can be more efficient with routing as we met last week last
085uh last week yeah it was last week I was thinking it was this as we met last week and we began to talk about more pieces of Transportation I was beginning to feel a little uneasy because there are some significant changes that we're talking about and so we want the board to be part of that process in approving a guiding change document tonight Kerry's going to go through it um Carrie I don't know that you have to spend a lot of time on the current reality that is what exists but I would like you to share as a result when we finish our work this is where we want to be and the center column as I spoke with you today not all of those uh unacceptable means can stay because if they stay we
086won't get to the result of 15 to 20 bus drivers reduced so Carrie I'm going to have you talk us through this Kiri and her team have have run different scenarios and she'll be able to share that with you as a reminder for the board in community currently High School dollars two miles Middle School 1.5 and elementary students a mile so a mile or less are Walkers anything outside of that mile are bus students so just as a reminder of the mileage so Carrie thank you thank you Julie and I just wanted to remind everybody Dan fine actually went over the majority of that um Carrie Carrie I'm just going to interrupt you um we just got noticed that they can't hear is your mic on we want to make sure everyone can hear you
087there you go thank you all right sorry about that um so unacceptable I'll start out again uh where I left off unacceptable to increase walking distances for elementary school students as well as unacceptable to increase walking distances for middle school students unacceptable to change school start times unacceptable to not provide transportation for current Choice programs in grades K-8 results very quickly we want to implement a radius model for fall of 2023 coming up to determine Transportation distances this requires a change to existing District policy with the 707 Transportation policy and the reason we do want to change to radius regardless of what we do or do not do is right now we have um it's a very loose system I mean as you folks probably know it's in front of someone's residence to the point
088of drop off with the school parents a lot of times say Google tells me this I drive it it's this we take District Vans out a lot of time and expense and resources used um throughout the school year to I don't want to say disprove or prove that what we actually are doing for the mileage is accurate and correct so with a system that's certified any software system that we currently have or that we would buy in the future that's a pretty easy thing to do is you pinpoint it like Julie was saying before a two mile radius mile and a half mile whatever that is it's much less arbitrary so regardless we would like to make that change another result is Implement a plan that would reduce the need for 15 to 20 bus
089routes increase the accuracy of ridership and that would be done through the student tracking piece that we've talked about or we'll be talking about clearly Define what a hazard is we also have an extraordinary Hazard committee that meets when those are determined and I'll be honest until this this year I think in the 16 years I've been here it was reviewed one time that was probably about 10 or 12 years ago before that those hazards have existed forever in some places and I'll get to why we want to change some of those or look at modifying some of them because of the changes in the district over those the past 15 20 years we would also want to review the hazards to determine if there is rationale for keeping or removing a currently existing Hazard
090which I just referred to and finally create a transportation system that is sustainable for the next five years that is a big goal right now um so to dig into this a little bit first of all any questions before I get into this all right we initially ran back in January on some options it started literally with what would we do what would next fall look like right now if we did everything the same all right and we can't sustain it we are literally about 15 drivers short right now we have currently 12 open routes that have no drivers assigned every day so either office staff a few substitute drivers are filling it we have one morning and one afternoon contracted out General Ed route and right now that's all the contractor will commit to
091and that is a week to week basis if they don't cover it that would probably honestly be another additional morning and afternoon route that would be in fact canceled so we're very fortunate in that regard right now um and then we took scenarios and we very quickly realized that we started fooling around as much as we could with walking distances the non-busting areas is what we'd prefer to call them right now and very quickly determine we would not gain much of anything unless we do a combination of both moving those non-busting areas looking at you know moving either Middle School elementary middle school out further and or um something with some of the Hazardous current hazardous areas modifying some of those eliminating them whatever that looks like and I'd like to at least focus on
092three options that we ran and part of it was in conjunction with Dan and Julie as we were talking things through and these were run in the latter part of January through the last two weeks all right and by the way I should preface this also last year for high school for our Public Schools not the non-publics we focused a little bit on those we did Sean thankfully Communications this year we've got the opt-in we did in fact do opt out for this school year all right and we got pretty good response out of two of the three of our high schools and some of the non-publics but what we don't know with the opt-in those numbers coming in soon um we don't know are some of those kids the same high school kids that
093are currently not writing that actually opted out with us last year so those are some of the unknowns that we're looking at as we go through these different scenarios but option I'm just going to throw a number at it because it's all the different scenarios we ran option six one option we looked at is changing the measuring criteria to a two mile radius for all schools to establish non-transported areas and eliminate all the current hazardous areas so everyone would go to two miles and we'd eliminate all of our current hazardous areas much like one of the other Stillwater did this mid-year last year in that routing simulation and again keep in mind that's with this year's school students we don't have a way to progress them up the grade levels so we're assuming it's fairly
094you know accurate we would eliminate about 40 routes that was the worst case scenario we wanted to start with the worst care scenario we don't think we need to eliminate 40 routes so then we said okay what can we do next we um and again this is all provided we're moving to a radius and then we decided to um change the elementary to one five and we left middle school at 1.5 in high school at 2.0 so we just changed the Elementary in that we were able to eliminate um we eliminated uh sorry bear with me while I get to my other page here 29 routes and with that we had some inefficiencies so what happens is typically we route three tiers usually middle school high school or Elementary and another late Elementary and with
095that we had a lot of um single tier routes either in the first tier so again what happens is we can run the route but we're kind of we're painted dryer first of all for literally 20 to 30 minutes worth of work and then we don't have anything else on the back side of that so that was very inefficient and then the final scenario we just got done running was um we moved the Elementary to 1.5 and changed all of secondary to two so move Middle School to 2.0 that eliminated eight routes for us again some inefficiencies in especially the second tier gaps so we have a first school literally an hour in probably 12 different routes in the middle that no one's doing anything drivers sitting idle for the hour and then the third
096tier so some inefficiency with those different scenarios so that's where we are right now today um looking for guidance on you know I I like I said the unacceptable means at one point um or I guess really are right now today it's unacceptable to increase those walking distances for middle and Elementary but that's kind of where we're at we are not going to get to saving the number of routes we need unless we do a combination of those distances as well as hazardous and sorry Julie you guys got a question one other thing on the Hazardous we did take the Liberty on this last scenario of moving some of those hazards um our hazardous committee has met but some of them are very simple some are not so simple we have someone I think Katie
097or someone over here mentioned the tunnel right for Woodbury that was created specifically honestly for Eastridge and has never been utilized so that we figured okay that has changed we now have a controlled intersection at Lake and pine at Lake and Bailey as well for those kids that are north of of Bailey for East Ridge High School these are just examples another easy example is if you're um Pioneer and Lake heading towards radio there used to not be a path on the north side of that so we're busing kids almost right we were busing kids up until the school year on the corner of radio and Lake to Lake Middle School so it's simple things that we think that are not really true safety hazards anymore paths that didn't exist that now exist Oakland Middle
098School across 65th you know they've got the crosswalk that kids are utilizing around Altman Middle School that area right now is Dean bussing that route right now is currently canceled North in the Summit Hills neighborhood but that's deemed bussing and again now there's pass on both sides so those are the types of Hazards I'm talking about low hanging fruit that we're trying to look at and go this maybe makes sense versus just you know do we need an all-out committee to say oh my gosh you know it's not a 50 my five mile an hour road that we're talking about so just and I think even with that we know because there was Transportation just by making changes that we may consider like it's not hazardous something changed we know that it will impact families
099correct um I want to get into that Center column so that we can have the discussion because what we did is we put a lot of considerations in there and we know they can't all stay and so I think as a board what we need to have a conversation is just where are board members at with walking distance you got to hear a little bit about kind of the outcome but what we want to know is where are you at when it comes to your tolerance around distance well isn't that a law two miles two miles is the law and right now it's 1 1.5 and 2. the only unacceptable means I think should stay right now are the first two um I think when we talk especially after hearing inefficiencies I mean would changing
100start times eliminate those inefficiencies um so that's kind of where I am on that I do have one question though about and the only reason I even think about this is because my cousin went to a private school and got they got money instead of a boss I mean when we talk about driver shortages is that something that would cost too much to eliminate the busing to the privates and just we we legally cannot do that I thought we could pay instead of offering the bus well you have to have like it it's almost got to be a joint agreement to the best of my knowledge back in the day we used to actually Hill Murray we bust those students we had our transfer point at yep Woodbury Elementary way back in the day so
101it's kind of got to be a a mutual decision okay one way or another we have to transport those kids it's just you're right are we gonna do it with our buses or a mutual decision with them and meet them at the board of the closest safest spot at the border to transport the non-publics that are outside of our district those that are within our district we do in fact have to legally transport them equal Transportation okay okay yeah because I just like I said I just knew because my cousin they were paid because they didn't get a bus so I didn't know if that was um something but yeah I would I mean I think the because don't we also legally have to special educations correct yeah so those top two I think are
102the two that we basically legally have to do um and then outside of that I think we need to look at every every option because even in the one that you mentioned as one of our best options we're only eliminating eight and we need to eliminate 15 to 20. um so I don't I don't like when there's a lot of unacceptable means I think we need to put as few as possible and then I think we have reason to believe that the opt-in will allow us to be more efficient too and I know Sean has done this in another District a smaller district and Sean I don't remember what the savings was okay and if that happens for us woohoo um I don't know if Kerry's like a deadly no no it's not going to
103be that much but I think that for the board and the community to know that that's our first step is that we're going with tighten up efficiencies before we move to mileage and Hazards but Katie thank you that's helpful do we know unacceptable means I was gonna say do we know for um for the students who are within walking distance now what percentage of them get driven versus walk um because I'm just thinking about like what traffic potentially would look like at this like I have picked up in our schools and I don't I don't enjoy it and so I don't I'm just thinking about what that what that might look like if we do increase distances to me I'm smiling because you could go to any parking lot in the district at the end
104of the day I was over at Pine Hill gosh two weeks ago and it was at least 20 minutes of car flow and it was organized and it was efficient but Red Rock you name the school Liberty parking lots are filled so if there's a data source in terms of even Walkers and we can also tell because a lot of times kids will ride their bikes and as it gets warmer of course we'll see more bikes in the bike racks but if you don't see bikes walking's the last option biking or scootering would be an option before that so we would see those out and then are we when we do increase things like driving or sorry walking distances I mean are there um like traffic concerns or like hypothermia concerns or whatever that we
105should be keeping in mind as we as we look at that the only thing I would say with that is I no I mean we believe that um getting kids to school whatever means that is is a shared responsibility so if children are walking or you know weather is cold or whatever we hope that parents or there's walking groups or an older sibling or whomever that um that shared responsibility is split between families and and our district that's cool they are a regular bus drivers they're actually built in within our three-tier system expensive So currently we started off the school year with eight in-district special education morning and eight special education afternoon routes in District okay and we've got 60 70 other routes that are contracted out what we did was ask all of our
106special ed drivers if they would be willing to switch to General Ed routes and then because at that point in time our contractor could have taken them since that's not a possibility they don't have the staff either two of our drivers switched from special to General so our contractor took those two so now we have six in-house morning and afternoon for sped this year I don't know if we any type of private like van type transportations and that could use like get some type of tpr reimbursement for those you know level four kids sure so what happened also is um our drivers are contractually you know they bid on the routes in the fall so that's why we voluntarily ask them to move from those eight you know to the general special ed to General
107and again I had two volunteers the other six chose to just continue driving special education that's the right to do so we currently have oh boy probably 10 different providers both type three which are our vans for special education kids and the yellow school buses which right now Hastings Bus company is providing those for us so um they pick up everything else that we don't do in-house is there any way to utilize City busing is that feasible at all not to the best in my knowledge so I don't think um we even have many lines out here to do that so is there a way to make our buses kind of follow a route that kids have to walk to and make less stops we have had conversation about that it is not a model
108that we've moved yet depending I think on what happens with some of this okay yeah I think what happens whether we're talking about our contracted busing or our own busing it doesn't change the number of drivers because even our contracted companies aren't getting bus drivers so we're just doing kind of a swap but I think in the long term you know we're not really solving the problem because we still have a set number of bus drivers yeah we looked at one of the things our subcommittee did our steering committee was a good majority so yeah yeah and we looked at the workforce and that is very concerning for us too in the future yes it is Carrie how do we look as far as the buses in their capacities are they you know does that
109make sense absolutely full question but no it does Eric and I would say the Middle School um are pretty full most Elementary's are very full some of the non-publics where we have room um a couple of them are full a couple are not one of our high schools I know is very low on loads the difficult piece we have is uh I think Julie mentioned before those load counts when we do it on a daily basis okay we pick a couple of days during the year to do load counts if all those kids are riding that day great if not it doesn't give us a good sense if we hopefully will move to ridership tracking at some point that'll tell us exactly how many kids be able to look at that data really quick and
110make adjustments where we can we did start out with a hundred morning and 100 afternoon routes for the school year in the last three to four weeks we've paired those Down based on some numbers again we're down to 97 and 98 so we were able to reduce routes looking at that it takes a lot of time inefficient because we're literally hand going through those things but I would say the elementaries the majority are full the middle schools are full some of the high school routes so overall efficiency is not an issue it's really not in some areas yes it'll clean it up somewhat and we'll be able to induce reduce runs across the board doing that the question is do those three runs happen to be in a tier that makes sense and can fit
111together can you get from one school to another to another so that's that's the difficult piece that's what I was going to ask as far as what the high schoolers once we find out you know the opt-in and we start with that combining more routes where students would just have to be at the bus stop earlier at different stops where we're combining you know something that might be one route into you know two three routes and we are constantly doing that literally making changes if there's stops we see and some drivers are really good about coming in and saying these kids haven't ridden all year great we take those stops off or I'm overloaded this bus can pick them up we'll move stops around different routes to be able to accommodate those things and the
112morning isn't the problem usually because we can in fact move those um pickup times earlier and schools are really good about saying if I'm supposed to drop at 7 30 hey you guys bring the kids here at 7 20. but it's the afternoon on those dismissal times when you have to be there on those set times that's where we run into the trouble when we talk about the like scanning their cards to know when we talk about like those really cold days I mean couldn't we on a really cold day if we know that a bus is running at 50 percent couldn't we add stops that are on the way for kids when it's really cool I mean if we're talking about increasing say in elementary school to one and a half miles and if
113it we know it's going to be cold and we know there's only 50 kids on that bus and we know there's like maybe 20 kids that I mean couldn't we when we know these things no and the reason is um number one safety issues but number two we have to legally have a roster of kids on that bus all right if God forbid something but that's what I'm saying have them as kids for say if it gets to a certain temperature this stop then is made and these kids can ride on that day so it would be something that's set up in advance because otherwise the separate roster of kids a separate roster of kids we could potentially when we talk about cold days because we talked about I know one year when it was
114really cold we were talking about shuttles and we were trying to run shuttles for some of those areas because the the dilemma I see would be okay Equity versus equality do we only do it well we would only be able to do it for those buses or those select runs that actually have room right to be able to do that so I just worry about kids walking when it gets really cold but I think many districts have adapted and they don't call them walk zones anymore it's the Zone where parents are responsible and the Zone where the school district is responsible and we've really always owned that as you know the safe routes to school this is the pathway students can take but we're kind of at a point where it's that shared responsibility of
115if you're within there and it is that cold day then we're going to ask for parent support in helping us can we change what we call it I mean can we change it from bus to I don't know parent responsibility responsibility we've talked about that and we've actually interchangeably I think we've used non-busting areas or non-busting zones versus walking areas and you know and and again we have been trying to really publicize shared responsibility and transporting kids to school any other feedback because we are going to go back to our leadership committee and we want to get this finalized and then start talking about what options so any other feedback oh yes if this would be something that the parents would just do on their own if it's something that could be done through the
116schools is having some type of online type of Rideshare type system where parents can like a carpool type system where parents can put in their names and you know where it comes out where they're taking turns with those kids Elementary kicked out of liability waiting to happen if yeah no I'm saying if we even put it as a district and I think in a lot of neighborhood it would yeah that it would then if a parent gets in an accident well I signed up on the district website and my kid wasn't it but also I think in a lot of neighborhoods that are right like my house used to be walking to Lake and I know a lot of my neighbors had like informal carpools like I pick up on Tuesday afternoon these four kids
117right and so I mean I think in those types of neighborhoods parents are already okay right like if they're not you know just a couple blocks away they're already setting up kind of some of these informal ride sharing already I was thinking more like through the ptas that are doing that not like through the school yeah but I think that also might be a liability for the PTO as well and there's just one other thing I wanted to add so this is the timing is really good but we are somewhat pressed for time for next school year we've got the opt-in information which we'll have very soon and be able to really tear that apart very quickly here non-public information we'll have back in the next week or two and then um our contractor though
118has also indicated us whatever general education routes that we need help they they want to do for us we need help with next fall we have to have that final number to them by May 15th of this year so then whatever we do could give to them by May 15th they will commit to after that point if we would change our mind needing more or whatever they'll see what they can do so we I hate to put pressure on but it helps us in the feedback that we're getting because again it's yeah fall for us is right around the corner I mean we start routing usually you know right in June pardon me oats and we only need it that's correct and what we've told our own bus drivers if that is the case we
119can utilize our contractors and we will utilize our own bus drivers to help support other drivers and where there are needs so we feel like we can still do that I think the question is is we have a busy spring we have strategic planning we have long-range facilities and as I've talked uh with our leadership group I don't know if we want to address the mileage and the significant changes as we go into fall or is that an implementation for a fall of 24 and we work toward because May 1st is coming up you said May 1st May May 15th um do we work with our contractors to see if we can get 15 contracted buses on a regular Ed that will buy us some time because what we don't want to do is get
120into June and now surprise our community by saying and by the way we're going to change your transportation and now you're going to have to bust your children and so I want to make sure that we're looking far enough ahead I think the components like the radius model we can do communication with that and Implement that we know that and Carrie would know exactly how many families are impacted by the radius the opting in of course that's already in motion but I worry a little bit about the timing of the mileage and that really is the direction that Kerry's going to need to know so I just from the board when you look at some of the changes that we may be undergoing just any quick thoughts on fall of 24 do we work quickly
121and try to do it now because this would have to be approved by the board um in the next month I'd be okay with the 1.5 for elementary starting this year if we can get it and then leave Middle School to leave Middle School K8 one point five and then 9 12. just and then see what it does only because we can't cancel routes again I mean we cannot cancel and I think in the spirit of not canceling routes and assuring transportation and fall is why and I know it's more expensive but to take a look at Contracting we said 15 to 20 I think originally but even if we contacted 15 on the low end we would keep all of our bus drivers I mean in the last two weeks we've had two retire
122retirement and a medical leave I mean these things just come out like this and now we have to cancel routes and so I don't know if we can make it all happen in that timeline without upsetting parents because we want to bring them along what about if we I mean we could look at the possible mile and a half but what about if we take a look at those things that are the obvious not hazards anymore and get rid of those by the May 15th date and we could um Carrie knows those less hazardous or areas that have changed we could come back to the board and share that information and talk about the number of students impacted with that talk about the radius impact and then even bring back if we made the adjustment
123to 1.5 for elementary we could look at that too Louise you're going to say something though uh yeah I'm not a fan of increasing the elementary I'd rather see the Middle School increase just because the shorter legs and how long it takes to walk that I'm sorry it's dark and it's et cetera et cetera I also in terms of timing a little concerned about changing the mileage and then potentially changing boundaries right after that I don't like those two on top of each other either I agree with that and I think it's a really good idea to start with those swipe cards just don't do anything yet do a year of the swipe cards and then you'll have better information to make those changes well couldn't we um survey the student the not survey but
124get consensus from the parents a commitment that this is my route my child will ride and make uh and if they don't if you miss three without a say you're on a sports team right at the high school and so for six weeks or however long Sports season is um you don't take the bus after school but again but then but then you have like four weeks until the next season starts up or you don't play another Sport and so you're still and your parents would be responsible for taking you there yeah but for the whole year yeah and so I don't think that that's I don't think that that's a good idea I mean I think that if we want kids to participate in our activities they shouldn't have to participate in like an
125entire School Year's worth of activities just to get where I I don't want that to be or not participate at all just to be sure but I don't want that to be expensive the elemental of it I mean if we're walking 1.5 have you have you driven one I got my car and drove 1.5 to see where it was and two miles now I'm not gonna walk two miles I know I know exactly how far away I said nothing about walking distance I know I know how far 1.5 but I think we're all saying walking distances here non-busting areas I had a question in terms of um in terms of the cost of Contracting how much is the cost of Contracting compared to doing that same cost in-house right so if we have like x
126route done by a contractor versus extrude done by one of our so watch co-drivers what does like what is the cost difference right now it's at least double and we are going into contract negotiations with them so it will at least be double so at least double and then um my other question was that if we do have contracted routes do we have flexibility with them so I know with our current drivers because of the contract that the labor contract that we have with them they've been on their route and then any change has to be at their initiation or their their volunteerism with the contracted routes do we get to say okay we don't need you here anymore we want you there no no it would be the same thing locked into those particular
127routes that we would give them okay but the great thing is we still have transportation office staff mechanics who are still all on backup for driving a bus right Carrie and all of you are probably eligible to come get a license you can train you very quickly so yeah um okay carryout drive for you is there like a is there like a solution that is um that is like preferred from a transportation perspective or easier management Wise from a transportation perspective I would say it's not preferred Simi but right now what we're seeing in the in the and we've run what probably six different options since late November and I don't think we can get to the number that we need to get to and going forward with an aging Workforce unless we just do
128a combination of those non-busting areas moving them somehow some of them as well as modifying some of those hazardous areas I just yeah I would like like Melinda I would like to see how much you get from from changing some of those hazards right like I mean I used to live at Pioneer and lake and so I know exactly where the when the sidewalks started right right um and so and I didn't realize that we bust still up that way um and so I think that would be helpful because that's probably like the lowest hanging fruit right um and then yeah I'm not really opposed to any of the other like I agree with Katie and Melinda that we have to have we have to restrict you as little as possible on finding a solution
129but I also agree who said was it who said the boundaries shifting it yeah I think like I I do agree that like you want if we're going to shift boundaries we're going to have to do bussing anyway so let's just do that all at once right and we'll find out in November or whenever what happens right but I would rather I would rather not rush into it if we don't have to and I think the only we don't have to is that we heard about the costs and so we know that we would be incurring an additional cost to do the contracted but that would assure us on the results side that students would have transportation every day and every Wednesday Kerry wouldn't be emailing Communications to prep the letters that go out to
130families about no Transportation Katie I would be curious to see because the only reason I was suggesting changing the elementary is I feel like a lot of those parents I mean are driving their kids so I'd be curious to see with the uh in opt out how many are in that that we might if we would change from the one to one and a half is it really going to impact a lot of families or did a lot of those families already opt out of Transportation I guess is the only thing I can say to that Katie is the majority of our elementary runs are full right now so that tells me that I don't know how those parents will answer hopefully they're opting out as the ones that are already driving but those buses
131are full so and we and we put more kids on those than yeah because we do like things correct there's a set of two firsts it's probably 60 to 65 kids for elementary are on each Bus 65 students and middle schools 52 we try to stay at about 52 kids correct so we try to do two to a seat for those I'd be curious of parents that'll be interesting to see but I'm on board with not changing it I mean in looking at the hazards and I do though because if we do change boundaries the boundary change would probably be a 24 thing and then we'd be changing the buses so we would be changing them all at once it would be yes right but but if we're trying to eliminate doing it all at
132once if we wait until 24 we would be oh no I think I think you just I think you just do it at once because this is when the changes happen like because if you're gonna okay I'm Gonna Change you now and then you're going to get rebounded I mean you just do it at once and then because then you don't know you don't know what your new bus driver bus route is going to be anyway right we're always whenever there's a boundary ship there's always bus route changes I just don't want to cancel routes I mean neither do we and I know I really though I also don't want to when we're getting that fund balance up I don't want to pay double for something that if we made a shift like this we
133wouldn't have to pay double we're the public is always saying we need to be fiscally responsible so that's where I'm looking at if we're paying double for a route and we could change a walking distance by half a mile and not pay double for a route it it's kind of that line do we be fiscally responsible and change the route or do we pay double for the boss I think one thing to think about is let's just say through opt-in if we saved five routes and through hazards we saved one or two that's seven routes so we would be saving money there and we would need to invest it in the Contracting site it's not equal but I think we would still have to Katie I agree with you we would still have to look
134at where could we come up with some other efficiencies because you're right and that has been an ongoing problem of moving forward with some of the financial things that in the long term aren't aren't fiscally responsible but we also know that we're impacting a lot of students when we're talking about Elementary changes with distance and so I think it's weighing that and what the impact is so Kerry could we feasibly have um the hazards figured out and then the cards for the students starting for the next school year and then and then waiting to see what happens with boundaries before we change any type of routes so unfortunately no the cards are tied to this routing software which we are in currently looking at right now we need to either upgrade transfinder that we currently
135have or move to either Edge log or traversal which is the versatran system and even if we would say with what we had right now in upgrade which we need to do in order to implement a system like that which there is also a cost Associated we're out at least eight to twelve eight to ten months with any three of those vendors even if we'd upgrade with the one we currently have so for next school year not possible right now maybe mid-year through the school year depending on what we look at but it is not possible for the start in the fall unfortunately that's the correct the student tracking piece how about a system where the bus driver just I don't know if they have any type of way where they know which kids are
136on and which kids aren't where they kind of track that we really think that's just impossible really don't but that's but that's what I'm talking about the student that tracking that ridership piece is at least eight to ten months out so I think what we'd have is hazards we'd have the radius and we'd have the opting in and then um Katie you asked for 1.5 Elementary we can bring that information back so what would it be if we just changed Elementary I think just to give the board some idea but the three or change middle to two okay this takes time Julie it takes time yeah I mean it takes a couple weeks to do each of those so we we will do our best um so I want to go back to the guiding
137change document because that will provide the guardrails and I want to make sure that as uh Carey and the team continue to work that what we heard the board share was that in the unacceptable means the only two things that as a board you would find unacceptable would be bullet point number one and bullet point number two that you will allow Administration to explore the options as it relates to non-busting areas um start times I know someone had a question about start times if we ex if we extended start and end times it would be like having a four-tier system some kids would be coming to school at 9 30 or 10 o'clock and they would be staying until five but you know that is also a route saver too right because we would need
138fewer buses um and then the other one is um that we would take off unacceptable to not provide transportation for current and so the only two that would remain on would be the first two board members okay with that all right we will move forward with that and we will continue some of the other work that we discussed tonight can I ask one more question I apologize no these are good ideas you guys are going to figure this out I can tell um as far as the radius or the I'm sorry the um the non-busting zones go do they have to move in half mile increments they do not okay no does that does that help if we go one point to 1.2 I mean or does that make much of a difference it wouldn't
139matter to us I mean either way we would set that parameter in the system Okay so But Eric I think it's a good point because we talk about that even with Staffing that it's always a 0.5 or a 1.0 and what about a 1.75 what about a 1.25 so Carrie if you could run 1.25 1.35 sure no but thank you I think that's something to think about as a committee great Point thank you very much thank you Carrie thank you Kerry oh that was a lively one alrighty how long y'all been on this okay moving along we have uh 5.0 information items and the first one on our agenda is the reading of proposed policy changes presented by Julie Nielsen thank you I'll make this quick we are bringing forth eight policies tonight the policy
140committee Review Committee met and went through them you will see policy 403 in your packets there are grammatical changes and clarifications of substandard performance that is letter B on policy 403 on policy 404 there were just updates in the area of legal references in policy 421 gives to employees and school board members there were no suggested changes policy 505 distribution of non-school-sponsored materials on school premises by students and you will see that what was added and employees and we talked about that during our time together Kelly shared that she was going to go back and check and so we did not have a policy so we'd like to include and employees and that is also part of msba's policy um policy 512 school-sponsored student publication and activities no suggested changes there 519 interviews by students
141interview of students by outside agencies we just did some updates with msba's language 525 violence prevention you will see there are some changes in letter a section 2 and letter e section 3. and then finally 5 30 immunization requirements that was just re-looked at not too long ago so there are no suggested changes for that policy and so I would ask if board members have any questions about those policies or Board review group if anything was missed any questions okay we had a sign up for public comment on policies only Dana has anyone signed up all right next is 6.0 and that's reports and comments and we'll start with our superintendent Julie Nelson I just have two updates um first of all um I signed a proclamation for this week it is the week of
142the young child April 2nd through April 8th and so just to share a little bit about the proclamation of the young child the first five years of a child's life are the period of the most rapid brain development and lay the foundation for all future learning children's cognitive physical social emotional and language and literacy development are built on a foundation of children's positive interactions with adults peers and their environment high quality Early Learning programs provide important benefits to Children families and our communities high quality Early Learning programs lead to positive outcomes for individual children helping them be better prepared for school and more likely to succeed in life families provide children's first and most important learning environments and parents are children's first and most significant teachers and finally high quality early childhood education depends on
143high quality Early Childhood Educators who ensure that children supported by families have their early experiences they need for a strong Foundation I was excited to present this to Bob to present back to his self to his staff and we certainly want to acknowledge all of our early learning staff as we do the proclamation of the week of the young child and finally um just talking a little bit about safety in light of the tragedy in Tennessee it is always our reminder and while safety is on our mind every day I shared with our learning leaders the expectation which there are expectations in place around all safety drills but the need to make sure that our staff goes back and takes a look at our lockdown procedures and I think for board members and our community
144members to know that anytime we do a practice drill it's not a rubric it's not a march to this space it's not a go here it's a think and so what we asked our leaders to do is to Think Through the many transitions that occur in a day what if your class was in the hallway going to the bathroom what if in our high school there was a pep fest going on what happens during lunch time and so it was not even physically about going through the act of locking students behind doors but rather thinking about what would I do if we were in this situation how would I direct the students because ultimately is that it is our staff's job to make sure that students are led to safety and behind doors so really
145the focus was on thinking through what to do you are going to notice and you may hear from families in our school district that there's a new process being implemented when parents or visitors to the school come to drop off things the towel for swimming the tennis shoes for gym class the lunch that they forgot what we're going to ask is they buzz in they share what they're dropping off but we're not going to have everybody that has things to drop off in the morning coming even into the main office we're just going to have a space in the vestibule where people can drop in our office support staff will make sure it gets delivered one less person into our schools greeting visitors so we will still allow visitors obviously parents and family members in
146for IEP meetings that will continue however at our greeting desk and our office coordinator areas where we're welcoming people we need to make sure that anybody who's being buzzed into those spaces that we know their name we know the location and what grade level the child is and the reason for their visit so we are really being intentional around the standard protocol of asking questions hi I see that you have a district badge um can you please let me know your name and why you're here we have to get to the point where we are asking now we know that many of our individuals in our school offices know people and you really get to recognize people but we need to have a standard system of buzzing people in in particular those learning spaces that
147aren't secured at a two-tiered level uh so just for board members and community members listening uh safety is on our minds every day and we will continue to emphasize and make sure that we hold staff and our leaders accountable for making sure that we are implementing those practices thank you next are our school board members committee reports and we'll begin with Melinda okay so um I will report on 9 16. UM I had a building tour there on March 22nd and um the sites that I saw on that date were pancalo Bel Air and the auditory oral program at Stillwater Early Childhood Family Center and they're just such unique and um amazing programs and I just would encourage all board members whenever there's you know those building tours to be able to go on those
148to really see what what our Intermediate School District is is doing with the kids that we refer there um and then also let's see um oh I had a meeting last night there and um I presented a few different preliminary goals I'm on the gold committee for we're developing um a new void self-evaluation there and and then also the 916 is still seen about a three percent increase in enrollment per year but Staffing remains to be an issue and there are more vacancies this year than last year and the waiting lists you know which we know there's still plenty of waiting lists there but it's not due to space at all it's due to Staffing I mean they actually have a lot of open space in their schools but just they don't have the staff
149to have more kids there so okay thank you Pat Louise I had three of my committees met the advisory staff development committee the citizens Financial advisory committee cfac and the Ambassador committee all three of those committees the main part of the agenda was an opportunity to give feedback on the Strategic plan the mission division the core values and Direction the ambassadors also took a look at the transportation update and what's going on with opt-in the calendar overview was something that staff development committee did and then cfac also took a look as they do every month at the enrollment update and budget revisions also took a look at a legislative update thank you Louise Kimmy yep so my committee update will sound very similar to Louise's since we overlap on two-thirds of our committees um and
150then the third I just was on the policy committee I believe that was the shortest policy committee meeting we have had in like four years it was amazing hey Katie Eric uh yes ma'am I'm going to hurry up with this I went I was a sat in on the amsd March board meeting board of directors meeting uh they had a they had a state center there and a legislative legislate tour there I'm not I don't didn't write down the names um right now there's a bill working through legislature to increase five percent funding for Education Plus indexing for inflation uh there was concern amongst the board members that with more funding comes more mandates which is almost a certainty and that those funds would be eaten up by those mandates so the the um the
151legislators that were there kind of assured them that that would probably happen the goal is to get back to 2003 funding levels but but you know they've kind of assured us that it's going to take more than one budget cycle so some of the other goals just briefly cross subsidies for special education uh English language Learners increasing student counselor ratios working on funding more Pre-K programs and more districts and then finally um just increasing the requirements for graduating high school including such things as personal finance Civics and ethnic studies that's it okay thank you uh Sharon pass all righty 7.0 our future meeting dates our next meeting will be our business meeting on April 20th 2023 then a workshop meeting on May 4th uh those meetings will both be held at the district service center
152at 6 PM there will also be a strategic planning meeting for the uh for the board on Thursday April 27th from 5 to 8 pm and now we are at 8.0 and we are adjourned