001check-check check [Music] good evening and welcome to the regular school board meeting for independent school district 833 it is Thursday August 15 2000 19 at 6:30 p.m. and we are in the district service center in Cottage Grove 1.0 is roll call patrocle present either Hirsch Michelle Witte Katie Schwartz Sharon Van Leer Ron cath yeah 3 supernet yeah 2.0 please rise and join me for pledge of allegiance 3.0 is the approval of our agenda and we are going to add our closed session pursuant to Minnesota statute 13 2.03 for labor negotiations so I will entertain a motion with that amendment moved by Sharon second by Katie all those in favor say aye any opposed motion carries 4.20 our district highlights they will be on our our agenda in on October 20 or sorry October August 29th
002public comment will also be an agenda item for August 29 6.20 our consent items all consent items are considered routine and non-controversial by the school board and will be approved by a single motion there will be no separate discussion of these items but prior to the meeting board members did have the opportunity to review them and could have requested that one be moved to an action item for individual consideration and since that did not happen this evening I will entertain a motion to approve our consent agenda well by sharing second by Katie all those in favor say aye any opposed motion carries 7.0 our workshop items 7.1 is program evaluation and our director of continuous improvement and assessment brian booth well present this item is that any better that'll work okay well good evening thank
003you for the opportunity to share a little bit about program evaluation and a system were using in our school district called Qualtrics and so I'm excited to share a little bit about the work that's been done this year in partnership with a few other departments and kind of looking forward to what is going to take place in the future and so we're gonna start by talking about program evaluation if you'll note there's a big little bit of a title change for me I've worked in the district now for six and a half years and I've been involved in the professional development side for that entire six and a half years I'm very proud of the work that we've had the opportunity to do over those years and now transitioning into sole focus on the research
004evaluation and assessment and within that there is program evaluation which is a process that forces a school district or company to look inward and ask the question what are we doing well what's working for us and what's not working for us looking at efficiencies oftentimes in the business world they'll talk about ROI return on investment for us we might have a different lens to look at because it's not necessarily dollars that we're talking about it's student achievement or student perception staff engagement as well and so tonight we're gonna look at program evaluation through the lens of staff climate and culture and employee engagement and so in order to measure that we asked kind of the question as as I was working with Kelly and with Keith and Julie to kind of to determine what's next
005for this new role that I'll be in we started connecting with other school districts in the area asking about how they perform program evaluation and what tools they might use st. Paul school district uses a company called Qualtrics and so we reached out to Qualtrics and started to learn more about them it is the leading organization leading company in the world on how to combine OData all of the the purchases and all of the numbers that you might be involved with in a business and the X data so that's like this the experience of the customer and they can merge together the X and O data to try to tell you trends and patterns that might help you become more efficient some of the types of companies for example that use Qualtrics or companies like
006BMW Zillow uses it to measure their employee engagement and satisfaction and it's how your lifecycle of what an employee would go through Xerox uses it to measure brand performance Pandora uses it to measure how successful their product is launched and so companies around the world are engaged in this StubHub the NBA some some of the leading organizations in the world and so if it's good enough for them that's good enough for a school district Madison School District in Wisconsin uses it as well among hundreds of districts across the country and so we engaged in a conversation with Qualtrics about how we might be able to use it in our system and so basically at the end of the day what it allows us to do is conduct surveys but then also merge that data together
007with other factors so that we can try to understand the patterns and the the systems that are taking place within our school district one of the major projects that we wanted to work with work on was from our strategic plan Kevin has been instrumental in leading the staff climate and culture objective within our strategic plan and one of the measures set forth last school year was on employee engagement we first set a goal of engaging our staff in training on climate and culture and/or work-life balance and then there was a measurement that we wanted to see how engaged our employees are in that work and in work in general and set a target of 75 percent of our employees participating in a survey would report positively on engagement and so working with Kevin and working
008with Qualtrics we sat down to try to figure out what types of questions we would want to ask and I just want to publicly thank Kevin for the work on that we took many of the recommendations from Qualtrics Kevin was instrumental and kind of saying you know what from an HR perspective these are the things that we really want to know in particular our focus on equity and diversity and making sure that questions like that were included in our survey so that way we could measure more than just employee engagement and so it was an excellent opportunity to collaborate across departments I'll also have you know not having an expertise at all in HR that my job here was simply to be a conduit so that Kevin could get access to that data and from
009there working with leaders across the system they're the ones who would make those decisions and so my role here and this was simply the the person that might be a filter to help help Kevin and his team generate those questions and then possibly start to sift through some of that data and help to make sense of it and so that's kind of the first major project that we engaged in in our district and so in working with the company Qualtrics we try to identify what are the major categories that make up an engaged employee and there are they there are 10 key factors that make an engaged employee and then there are a few extra additional factors that I'll just address them just quickly kind of go through them autonomy and empowerment when you empower
010your employees they tend to be more engaged and more enjoy their jobs more opportunities for advancement on their career to collaborate with others within that system communication through and then company leadership of course is an important factor recognition the resources they need in order to do their jobs effectively strategy alignment to a company mission or vision supportive management whether or not the managers of their leaders well did I go too far yep supportive management's there whether or not their leaders support their team's training and development what opportunities they have for growth those are the kind of the top 10 and then there are some extra ones that we we wanted to analyze as well such as customer focus how keyed in they are on their customers diversity and inclusion pay and benefits certainly are a
011factor when you're measuring employee engagement quality of product and service what what are they making what are they selling the safety of employees social responsibility kind of a particular mission this is a growing trend as well and then finally work-life balance now why do all these factors matter what happens when you have an engaged in workforce versus a disengaged workforce well engage workforce statistics will show an engaged employee will stay at the company longer less likely to leave so you're gonna have higher retention rates they tend to be more productive they tend to be more creative the workplace tends to be the a healthier environment so their own personal health tends to be better the workplace tends to be safer there are less accidents when you have an engaged workforce because they're more conscious of
012the work that they're doing and so employee engagement is something that many companies around the world are interested in trying to study and analyze and so we have the opportunity to have access to quality X to help us evaluate our own system and where we're at currently so in working with Kevin we generated a 25 question survey and we measured many of the categories that we just listed on employee engagement employees had the opportunity to answer in a five-point scale they could click strongly agree agree neither agree or disagree disagree and then strongly disagree and then we took those results from our survey and as I'll show we compared our results to Gallup polls from across the country to see how does the South Washington County School District District compared to the national average on
013some of the key questions so our engagement goal was to have 75 percent as you can see our results were at 83% engaged employees which is reason to celebrate our school district we are fortunate to have a large workforce that cares deeply about the work they do I should share that the national average on clicking strongly agree on the engagement questions is 34 percent and we were about 45 and so for our school district to have a high level of employee groups that care deeply about their work that is a great benefit and reason for us to celebrate so that's kind of the headline from this if there's one thing you can take away from this is that our our staff loves what they do when we say measure engagement by the way in particular
014we're talking about questions like the work I do is meaningful I generally enjoy going to work I feel proud to tell people where I work so you think about that question when you go home are you proud to say you're a South Washington County School District employee that's a that's a great question that our staff feels positive about what's great about the Qualtrics system and when we talk about program evaluation is that we have 2700 employees and about 950 of them responded to the survey so about one out of every three employees filled it out but we can also start to look at that by employee groups so for example I can start to break down the data when I'm meeting with a particular school I can see how our engagement scores might rank from
015one school to another and have that conversation with the principal I might be able to look at employee groupings and say how are for example our elementary teachers what's their engagement score what about our paraprofessionals I'll let you know by the way just in case you're curious our paraprofessionals had a 90 percent engage very high our bus drivers 89% and so we can start to look at within each category of employee groups and start to notice some trends and patterns so headline we have an engaged workforce that stairs are our big takeaway now I apologize for the graininess of this but I wanted to show you what it looks like on the dashboard side so within Qualtrics it we don't just give the survey and then just get this beautiful dashboard we have to work
016to create it and so behind the scenes working for and and I apologize to my members of other members of cabinet they would walk by and see me staring at my computer screen for days on end and sometimes very frustrated because I'm learning to use this system it takes a long time to kind of put all together all of the data to try to make sense of it and this is what it starts to look like as you use the system to help you break down employee groups or try to analyze trends and so our highest scoring questions this is one of the things that it helps to spit out is that the work I do is meaningful we had a 95 percent positive response rate for our teaching staff it was almost a hundred
017percent 99 which is fantastic that's a great measure for us to see how engaged and how happy and how our staff views their own personal work my colleagues are committed to doing quality work we are at 89% we see each other that's a positive response so how do we do compared to the national average when we compare ourselves to Gallup polls Gallup conducts national surveys on this type of stuff often there are some some patterns that start to emerge overall we certainly have a workforce this is the percentage of people clicking strongly agree to these key questions and they are similar questions almost word-for-word on some of them to how we compare to the national average so for example my supervisor or someone at work seems to care about me as a person 58 percent
018within the south of Washington County school compared to the 40% national average and so we have supervisors who are going out of their way to make sure that people care and know that they care there's compassion there's empathy there I have someone at work who encourages my development we pushed and we asked people to grow from a professional development standpoint I was very happy to see that number like that's a little validating for the work that takes place but then there are other areas that asked us beg the beg of us some follow-up questions so for example South Washington County Schools provides me with the tools to effectively do my job 16% we'll unpack that one a little bit more as we kind of start to go through some of the other data points I'll
019stop here for just a moment and see if there are any thoughts or questions as we're first kind of just seeing the data well for me at the bottom one so we're gonna hopefully you know have a discussion around that - if the mission isn't being rectified or people don't envision or feel it then we've got a problem yeah an engaged workforce or an engaged employee would say that they are connected to that company's mission they are connected to a company's vision of what we're trying to accomplish what we're trying to do so we were certainly below the national average on that what's great and I just want to reiterate my role here is to prevent provide the data I and I want to just as much as this I hate to say it I'm
020not an expert in human resources and you and employee development or employee engagement and so my job here is from a program evaluation perspective is to share those numbers and then work with leaders in the system who can certainly then start to make some educated decisions about the work going forward is there a particular reason why we just I mean segregates a lot of times when to me when you look at them you look at agree and strongly degree together because you get especially on a national poll because you get like the Minnesotans who we don't ever want to say 1 or 5 and I mean there's regional differences to help people answer so I'm just curious about that comparison sometimes well I use this comparison because Gallup uses this particular data point on a
021strongly agree on the other factors you know it's there's the kind of positive responses negative responses and then neutral so just kind of the three options and so I use this particular data point because it's published verifiable data that we can then compare to to say how do how are we doing so I know this isn't your role necessarily but it's our role as the board and the cabinet to be thinking about but as we were talking about what makes an engaged employee in a workforce it mirrors what makes an engaged student and so as we push ourselves to dig deeper in terms of the climate of our buildings and of our district and mission and vision is the strongest area of school climate improvement that buildings should be focusing on and so as they
022focus on that with students and Families the ripple effect of that and the participation by the staff should help to increase how scow connected and engaged staff feel to the organization itself and so I think that the work we've been sort of laying the groundwork and starting over the past two years certainly will help us see improvements in this because all of the things that make an engaged in connected student also make an engaged in connected employee thank you for saying that in fact it reiterates some of the conversation we've been having as as I've taken some of this data we've been working with principals and having a conversation about their school improvement plans and I had a meeting with a group of principals yesterday and one of the principals said you know this we
023have a student engagement goal and it feels kind of almost wrong to have a staff engagement goal shouldn't we just have a student goal and we unpack that and have that conversation about how when we focus internally and we work with our staff members that that staff goal can help contribute to a positive student goal and so I agree hundred percent it's the type of thing that if you can align that work with each other I should also say there obviously is like workplace culture things that can have a big impact as well and that would certainly be seated much more instead of like the HR world and and leadership development of our building leaders and things like that but the work that we do around engagement and climb and connectedness is the same work
024with adults and kids so I also like to add when you look me when you look at the 10 and the more these are all management tasks pretty much and you know I think our district we remember we're sitting and when you look at administration and management we remain 48th of 48 and school districts in terms of commitment so these are a lot of things you know being you know recognizing employees and buy-in and all the different things that managers do for people so I think it's also worth you know acknowledging that and looking at that again the importance we often discount in a school setting the importance of managers and management but that is part of this is part of the whole culture and that we're doing here and it may be in some
025of those areas where we also we need more tools in administration to do the job to help employees do their jobs so I'd like to also be conscious that you know this isn't you know this is about everybody having the tools to also support their employees okay so with that let's unpack that a little bit there are the lowest scoring items and so to Michelle's point notice that the blue would be the positive responses gray would be the the neutral red is in the negative and so for us the lowest question we had lowest response rate we had in the positive was in the past 7 days I've received recognition or praise for doing good work and 45% I feel appreciated in South Washington County Schools at 49% I'm given the opportunity to be involved
026in decisions that affect me 52 South Washington County Schools provides me with the tools to effectively do my job 58 and I want to unpack that one because it's it's fascinating because there's an additional question in the survey about that my supervisor gets me the tools I need to do my job when I ask and we did very well on that question so as I'm meeting with principals there there there's a little bit of confusion they said well we they're saying that the South Washington County Schools doesn't provide me with the tools but my supervisor helps me get them when I ask for them and so there's kind of the the discussion that did they do the are the principals of a supervisors not seen as a part of that the district mechanism to help
027you get the things that you need why would you click no on this question but then say that your supervisor helps you and so there's there's things to unpack and it's different at each school each principal as I've met with them or department leader they've they're looking at their data and seeing trends and trying to understand from their staff perspective and they'll oftentimes say well I want to go back and ask my staff why did they why did they click this why did they say this in this in this particular survey how does that match up with the reality of what I'm seeing and so that was what I was gonna ask is are we working with principals to effectively do focus groups or or are you working to do them together so that so
028in working with like Minnesota Student Survey data or school climate data with kids people often asked like well why did a student respond this way what were they thinking I don't know I just administered the test so in order to find out what our employees were thinking when they responded this way we actually can engage with them and ask them and give different opportunities to provide context to these scores and at a building level that certainly makes sense or by a bargaining unit it makes sense and so giving employees voice to say why they felt that way or or how they're distinguishing between their supervisor versus South Washington County Public Schools as an entity and sort of helping teams or the cabinet or the district or the board unpack sort of what are the distinguishable
029differences between that and so I think you were going there yeah that's of our next steps it's part of the the joy of this work when we talk about what program evaluation means it's not necessarily just the numbers the numbers are an important part of that it is the action and the follow-up it is the the type of work where and Mike referenced this in his strategic plan work is that then for us to see perhaps there's a way for us to identify the types of engagement strategies that are working at some of our schools and say alright let's ramp that type of work up we see success our principals are noticing this our results are starting to show it that's part of that evaluation process to your specific question absolutely the follow-up for many
030principals has been I'm gonna go back and I'm gonna ask and in most cases it's gonna be in a small focused group usually their school improvement plan team and say okay let me show you this result and I'm curious about why and let's let's talk about that let's unpack it as a staff and so it's been I should share our engagement results for our employees our principal group were incredibly high we have some fantastic administrators who are very insightful and know their staff very well so this is confirmation for many of them of what's working and then an opportunity for reflection that they're gonna they're taking I think quite serious and so just to validate that now with in Qualtrics they're my favorite feature of all this and this is a very ugly chart from
031this perspective but it looks really beautiful on a dashboard let me tell you that because it's interactive and I didn't want to pull up an interactive one during the school board meeting for fear of doing it wrong so I just gave you a screen shot instead so what the data can do for what call tracks can do is can help us correlate which questions align to help drive up our engagement score and so it can take each question and correlate those responses to the questions about I feel proud to tell people where I work I generally generally look forward going to work and can tell you which questions you that correlated strongly that you did poorly on and which questions correlated strongly that you did well on and so as a district what we would
032see on this chart the top right quadrant if there were any blue dots would be the types of things that correlated strongly that we did very well and you'll notice we didn't have any the green dots are ones that we did well on but didn't correlate strong the gray didn't correlate strongly but we didn't do particularly well on and then the Reds are the the types of things that you would want to address and if you can make a dent in those questions and increase the positive response rate on those questions you will drive your engagement scores higher so there are three red dots as a system the furthest one on the left was that I feel appreciated I feel appreciated at South Washington County Schools and universally as I've met with principals that conversation
033then starts to go well what does that mean what does appreciation mean for a staff member and each site might have a different each school is gonna have a different perspective on that each person oftentimes is going to have a different perspective on that the second dot on the from the reading from the left is I have the opportunity to be involved in decisions that affect me an engaged employee feels some locus of control some opportunity to have a voice and then the third red dot is I'm happy with my current work-life balance and so now though that's tends to be a result question and there's not you can't it's not much you can do to control that particular one but when we talk about opportunities to be involved in decisions and appreciation keep in
034mind this survey was given in April when everybody is really happy everybody's very positive a lot of testing going on when we start to break it down by employee groups and important and important finding that I wanted to share when we look at our non licensed staff a red dot emerges on this chart that is worth discussing and that is that different types of people with different backgrounds such as ages opinions collaborate effectively and that red dot became kind of large on the left for our non licensed staff there tends to be perhaps a feeling that they're maybe not as seen or have the opportunity to be involved in decisions and and collaborate with other employee groups that's kind of that and it's worth noting in terms of discussion and has come up with multiple
035principles as we've looked at their data just to talk about how are we ensuring that our custodians how are we ensuring that bus drivers that you work with how are we making sure that our paraprofessionals are seen and heard and validated for their work and their experience in our system as well so these are the questions that were addressed that I feel appreciated current work/life balance and opportunity to be involved in decisions and so that was that chart so our next steps as we've kind of addressed already is that right now you know we've done just kind of a quick buzz cut and looking at the data it's been a quick attempt for us to see what has what can we glean from the initial information points we're gonna continue to work with HR and
036Kevin's leadership to make sure that the information that we get and the types of questions we ask next for this upcoming school year aligned to our strategic plan and aligned to the to the hopes and dreams of what Kevin's team is looking for we're gonna do it at the same time so we can have some comparison data and then we're gonna continue to use Qualtrics in the future for other other types of surveys for example I've worked with Shelley and our communications team to do a survey before we launched the website for our parents to get kind of a baseline level of information about how people are consuming information from us as a school system and then we'll be able to go back and do that again we have worked with Michele on a survey
037from for her pair of professionals that work in special education and what how they're thinking and feeling about work within our system and their needs and so working with many departments across the system here too to start to ask the questions what are we doing well what are we doing efficiently and effectively what can we build off of and what are the types of things that we would potentially need to stop doing as a part of that evaluation process so I would say we've just scratched the surface of what we can do with this and so we're really excited about the different elements and as you implement change Kelly had brought in work with the concern based adoption model which is CBM is one of the only research-based change models using Qualtrics you can actually
038implement that to address how are people doing with a change to see if we're implementing with fidelity on anything as far as our curriculum working and things like that our student voice and a way to pull our kids into what we're trying to do with our strategic plan and then as Brian said with the analysis there is so much that it can do and you can get bogged down in and data but this can clean it up for us like the correlation so it's it's in its infancy stage infancy stages but it has great potential I have less of a question more of comments one I'm sad that you didn't call me while you're sitting in front of your computer because as you know this is what I get super geeked out about this is
039this is like what I do all day long so I get really excited about it but I will I want to challenge us as a district leadership to not just ask our principals what we think our janitors or our custodians our bus drivers need to feel recognized but to also ask the bus drivers and the custodians and the paraprofessionals and the teachers what they would like to be recognized because what maybe our idea may not actually make them feel recognized and so it is important to engage leadership in those conversations but it's also important to engage the staff in those conversations so that we understand some of the unique differences between bargaining groups between buildings between so different different ways and and that I know you can do with Qualtrics but I'm not sure if
040there's already a template set up for so as we think about how this evolves in this work happens I think it's really important to not just theorize how people want to be connected with are engaged with but to actually just ask them because they're fairly captive audience but I'm super excited and I look forward to way more presentations by you about this yeah I think you did a nice job but I hope the other thing is is that we've done a lot of work with recruitment of people of color and I hope that you will do the survey climate and culture and see where those people how they are engaged how they and all of that so I just was engaged in a workshop with the YWCA in Minneapolis and their diversity team and they
041had a piece and the new buzz is not just diversity but as an inclusion but it's diversity equity and inclusion and I think we need to encompass that because then you get a sense of belonging in the middle without all three of those you don't have belonging I will share that mr. James McGee in our district used the Qualtrics software as a part of the affinity group work this year to try to break down and try to understand from a data perspective and quite frankly a human perspective the experience of our staff of color and so I know that this tool is is available to that and James certainly would be able to speak much more eloquently about the findings of that but we we share your passion for that and I think the opportunities
042are right so the only other question I had is we use something very similar at work for our engagement surveys and they finally added comments so you can actually kind of get an understanding of why people are you know reading the way they're rating our I mean is that not something that we could do or it's not we did we asked follow-up questions so for example if they if someone responded that they felt unsafe we asked a follow-up question in an open text field what specifically makes you feel unsafe if it was a if they responded negatively to I don't have the resources to do my job what specifically could we do to get you the tools that you need and so the the text responses were or many and as a meet leadership and
043and talk to different employee groups we often look at those comments and try to understand okay what's the follow-up what are what are what were the exact words that our staff are feeling so yes I'm just gonna ask if we just triggered the open-ended comments on like strongly disagree or if we trigger them in other words other if it's strongly disagree or disagree it would trigger the follow-up question of what specifically can we do if they were and answering in the negative and we can set other triggers as well and there and that's been I think Mike's my excitement for the for the following year is the other layers that we want to potentially add to this as we move forward but you try not to get too far ahead because a 25 question survey
044is already pretty long and so talk about an engaged staff member you don't want to disengage them with a 50 question survey and the potential for 25 open-ended responses is also a lot of data to code and to theme and I don't do something like I have to give Kevin credit for that he reined me in quite a bit I wanted to ask more and he's nope we're gonna stick with this Brian right now it's just been once a year so I just wanted to add right now is once a year as I learned more about Qualtrics - I had my first official training with them this week we can also do mini engagement surveys throughout an employee's lifestyle cycle all the time and then do some more real-time changes if we need to based
045on the data that we receive so any other questions awesome thank you 8.0 information items Aimpoint one first reading of several policies assistant superintendent Mike Johnson good evening chair brunet board members dr. Jacobus and fellow cabinet colleagues we have our yearly policy review with with 10 policies they've been reviewed and revised to reflect updates in statute state statute definition of terms legal references and cross-references Sharon Heather and Michelle have reviewed them made recommendations for board information and subsequent action current policies are located online we've taken one of them the review of policy 506 which is a yearly that's student discipline that's part of a larger ongoing district effort this year we've met with dr. Jacobus Heather Hirsch Julie Nielson Christine Schaffer and me and like I said that's going to be ongoing so we've got
046nine today to to review for a first reading we had done these last year I believe and they were approved November 1st so there's not a lot of editing with this I had gone through MSB a model language but also consulted with some cabinet colleagues for example on 410 FMLA would be Kevin Bob Berkowitz on technology acceptable use in safety 524 on policy 616 would be Kelly and Brian and then finally Napoleon general for crisis management policy what I'd like I guess what I'd like to do with this first is go over a couple where there have been some changes for 13 harassment and violence it is not in your packet but I'd like to let you know that the language on Minnesota Human Rights Act I did not make that consistent into the form
047so I need to place that into the form and make it parallel so I will that will be reflected in the August 29th for the for the approval hopefully and then the second one was school district of system accountability and I shared this with both Kelly and Brian we had one part where there was an introductory statement that MSBA had on there it been changed it had been changed this past school year we didn't catch it before the I guess November 1st when we approved it there was an introductory statement and then there was a definition section and then an MSBA ad near the very end and then just a couple legal references so with that I'll I'll take any questions on any policy and then I'll go to them and start start writing if
048you have some questions so on the 410 the Family and Medical Leave it's bad for so that is again is that for all employees I mean are there do the bargaining units have things that supersede thank you these or is this standard for for the state of Minnesota and they're the bargaining units just some people bargain for more different things I'm just not an FMLA okay so that's a standard oh you're supposed to use yeah okay they may bargain for the number of time their days of time off or reasons in those sections but Family Medical Leave Act is entirely different is the whole just about the act and illegal okay do you want to ask questions about all policies not anyone I'm ready to take all of them and I can go to that
049policy so I'm 524 the technology use one I know it's a big section 13 and B it says it talks about let's see it basically says that the parents are here and notify the students with the using district resources accounts to access the internet and that the school district provides access provides parents the access to request in writing alternative activities not requiring internet access and so I'm thinking about all of you know with Schoology and all the things we have is this can we do that like have a child that's a great question with Schoology and with our one-to-one access that's an excellent question and what I think what I could do is I could enlist the help of Bob Kelly we could contact Trevor helmers to see if there's any language on that especially
050with what we especially at the secondary level what we dedicate to that occasionally there may be a principal who gets a request for a certain assignment please don't let my child use this or what have you but we really need to explore that a bit further and we can definitely do that within the next couple weeks when this comes up I with that I think I'm thinking of our new e-learning policy which would require our students to be using the Internet to access educational services their teacher things like that in the event that we are using the learning days for weather and things like that so I'm curious also how that might and these are all new things you know so it may be that no one's had to figure that out yet for those
051extended learning days if we use them we want to have some accommodations for kids it's not going to be all or nothing but that is something to look at / - and even with this policy that with personalizing and trying to work through there may be ways we can do things but it's going to be really difficult if it's an all-or-nothing if there's concerns about never utilizing it makes it very difficult so that's something we'll have to how would we address that for kids and what would be the reasoning and how we work through but the extended learning days I think we'll have we'll have some alternatives in place so that should not be an issue you want if people wouldn't have access for some reason or they just absolutely wouldn't want it to take
052place because we don't anticipate really that would be done with our elementary kids be more of our paper type type assignments reading and things the secondary we all have to work through that and I think most of all I know what secondary they do have things when my daughter had her concussion she couldn't use an iPad obviously for like six months and all of her stuff was I mean it was already there and ready and everything so I think they have it for kids that don't for one reason or another or don't have the iPad so I don't think it's necessary something necessarily something that they don't already have in place for those situations that happen that's a good point with a concussion piece because you can't you can't have any screen time during that
053and with the increase of the time frame with kids healing so okay I mean it's like right yeah I mean I don't I don't know I mean that's a it's an interesting with a new day I guess there any others I will just say that it was 64 pages of things put together with notes and in very logical order and coding and all sorts of made it very easy to review 64 pages I can't imagine it was very easy to put those together so thank you but it was a I did spend an evening reading 64 pages of policy so it's fun it's very fun thank you I'm just kidding you guys warmed up it's back it's back to school Thank You 8.2 is our negotiations update and chairman Larry will update tonight ok the
054South Washington County Schools is committed to providing regular updates for the collective bargaining agreement negotiations with the teacher United Teachers of South Washington County UTS WC the district and the UTS WC share a common interest the success of our students and we are committed to working together to reach an agreement that will benefit our students and those who contribute to their success the negotiations committee members from district 8 33 and UTS WC met for the ninth time on August 14th yesterday 2019 meetings continue to be positive and collaborative during this meeting excuse me during this negotiation session UTS WC presented a counterproposal to the district's original financial package offer additionally two tentative agreements were reached as UT swc agreed to the district's proposed language regarding emergency closing and teacher protection and discipline the district also
055agreed to add an additional position to schedule C extracurricular the district then caucus and provide at UT FWC with a financial package counterproposal that included withdrawing two of the districts proposal and a flexible work day option the district looks forward to a response at the next session the committee meeting the committee meets again on August 21st 2019 an update on that meeting will be reported at the August 29th school board meeting the district will also continue to provide regular updates at the negotiation discussions proceed you can find information on our website at WWF so I realized I forgot to ask for public comments on our policy so if there's anyone who wants to make a comment we can't accept them now all right thank you ten or sorry 9.00 our discussion items we don't have
056any this evening ten point always our action items ten point one is the approval of policy 61 which is our homework policy and mike johnson wall as well good evening again this policy is attached for review information and editing the recommendation to vet to develop 621 was an action step of our 1718 strategic plan this is a product of the work of the superintendent's Advisory Council this policy has been reviewed by select district staff and stakeholder groups over the past two years Sharon Heather and Michelle have reviewed the policy made recommendations in the past for board information and subsequent action we had taken comments and questions at a first reading one month ago and tonight we wish to gain approval this evening since our last meeting we had a couple edits to this as well
057as I could share some of the feedback when we when we took some questions from the board getting that from high school principals for example first off with the edits homework should be considered a formative assessment and switching that only classified in the formative component of the total academic grade we wanted to make that consistent so it wouldn't be confusing at the end of the grading period and then a couple instances in definitions for formative assessment and summative assessment generally instead of weighted zero to twenty percent or zero or eighty to a hundred percent as a former principal and we've talked to principals about this too if let's say if there'd be something in dispute if somebody was 78 percent summative and then it would just be a very I think a very difficult procedure
058for principals to follow but those were really the two edits that we made in the past in the past month and we did get some feedback from our high school principals regarding workload on teachers workload on students the nice thing about this when we asked the high school principals the burden on students in advanced courses could be substantial and is there a process to communicate that concern to teachers and all three of them Jim smoker which has been a principal for 21 years Sara Sorensen Wagoner's is her sixth year Todd Herber sixth year as a principal if they do this they they had these discussions they've shared every year as a principal reminding teachers for example they have discussed this in department meetings and staff meetings Sara Sorensen Wagner mentioned at Woodberry at the AP
059with the AP courses sometimes they'll alleviate that burden on students by having some summer reading not real popular for students but yet when you can do some of that work in the summertime it alleviates some of that stress during the school year that's just one thing that had come up a second one has this been discussed you know how often and it just seems like all three of them every year and they're they're always what what they really like about it though is that their staff members are very amenable to when kids when they notice that a little bit stressed out or they've got this and this and then they've got this other course where there's a project you know that the kids and the students work together to alleviate that but those were just
060I guess a couple of feedback some of the feedback that we have gotten when Jim was a principal up in Grand Rapids and they had an IB they were an IB school they went so far because it was a little bit of a I guess it was more of a problem Mondays social studies was able to test tuesdays math so they they went that far but he said we don't need to do that here we have a pretty good understanding and in the future what they want to do is they want to see how this policy goes and then you know get some feedback from their staff whether it's a through google or small groups but they all felt that the small group discussion and getting some consensus that way really works a little bit
061better so that everybody's voice is heard but ultimately those are some of the comments that the the three high school principals had made about the policy they feel very supportive of it and they feel that their staff would be as well so I will entertain a motion to approve policy 61 so move okay so moved by Pat and second by sharing any questions or comments I just wanted to say I mean this might might be a little place for Qualtrics to after I mean as a new policy I think it'd be really good to revisit this and then next year with really good data I mean I feel like it's a it's a good start and it's a good attempt and it's to be very generous to students um but you know I just people
062have to go to college and I I don't have the same feeling like oh my gosh homework is this horrible thing I think the idea of defining homework and the value of homework what is homework what isn't homework I think is extremely helpful so that people aren't like go buy paper towels that's your homework or things like that but I would hope that we'd really look hard you know it's are we getting to what what the point is here so one example was given that one teacher an AP teacher AP teacher had gone so far as to really limit the homework when they used to be pretty homework heavy and what happened was there wasn't the difference in the grade or the final or the performance of the students so that was just a signal
063for the teacher to to do away with most of it and would really worry about you know those 53 minutes that those kids are in the class and in front with the teacher so that was just one example but I think very supportive with the three principals and I really appreciate the work that dr. Jacobus had with with the teams of teachers that had worked on this from multiple levels after the the board meeting last month we brought this to the instructional directors too and talked about it so I think a good team effort with this and I think will be ready to go for the school year great thanks all those in favor say aye any opposed motion carries thank you 11-point reports and comments 11-point whine is our superintendents report a few things
064report and I asked a few cabinet members to help me out as we get ready to start the school year first thing you just report out in public we're very proud of our district and and our finance department receive the certificate of excellence on financial reporting for the 12th straight year this is in addition to receiving the Minnesota school finance award from the Department of Education and since we're lucky enough to see Dan each month and the updates and sitting on the citizens Finance Committee that and having our auditors come in they're always very complimentary about our the way we function here as a school district and with a budget that with grants and everything really is in excess of two hundred and eighty million dollars it's it's really commendable how close we are with
065our projections and and how wonderful they do with the reporting and tracking so I just wanted to thank Tim and his staff in public and then as we get close to kicking off the New Year our district communications department put together a new promotional video that we're not we can find now on our website under the back-to-school page as well as about Us section and I'd like to take a moment to have you look at it I I think it's a fast-moving and and gives a great focus on our strategic plan [Music] I think they've done a great job and it makes me want to get right into class tomorrow but I just mentioned that 18400 as of today over eighteen thousand eight hundred and a little bit over we've had just a really an
066uptick this summer in enrollment at this time in August were farther ahead than ever before we know that we still have kids in the system that won't return and that'll adjust down a bit but today every time I walk past our enrollment window there were folks waiting so all of the housing that we've been seeing is is really taking off and so the next piece on reporting is I asked Stan if you would just give a quick update as you all know and just to have the public continue to know we are moving into our long-range facility planning process to update our ten-year plan and ask Tanja's to give us a quick summary of where we are and how that kicks off or has been kicked off okay thank you and I don't know what
067if you notice not in the video a lot of space in those rooms that those kids are in so the long range totally planning process includes change document and and approve the creation of a steering committee and also a facility task force so far the steering committee has met two times to review the protocols and processes that will be used as we be in our long-range facilities work the areas of focus will include reviewing understanding the growth in the district and the need for adequate classroom space and reviewing the needs assessments that were completed across the district that addressed changes in the delivered delivering instruction one example would be the need for an adequate space for online learning to occur a building grounds director Kwame ìiím and the Assistant Director Dan Hynes worked in conjunction
068with some contractors we have used over the years construction managers to assess the needs by interviewing every principal and talking to many administrators and we've collected those needs and and we will see those come out as we go through the steering committee and the want and the task force and then also reviewing the needs assessment of addressing modifications to address structural deficiencies and aesthetic shortcomings for examples bathrooms and special education spaces one thing that I didn't introduce and I probably should as we begin as why are we doing this now just a little history back in 2015 we had two questions on the ballot that concerned our space issues and one was to build new middle school and to improve the spaces at the other middle schools that one passed and then we had one
069that would expand the three high schools by 500 at East Ridge by 300 at Woodbury high school and by 200 at Park High School and then also fix up the bathrooms basically in the elementary school as well that one did not pass so just because it didn't pass to me the needs weren't still there so then we employed a demographic firm called Davis demographics to project what's going to happen or what they we think will happen enrollment over the next ten years that information has been disseminated to the steering committee and on Tuesday August 20th the next Tuesday Davis demographics will present the information to the task force for the first time we anticipate that it will show that we have a huge growth bubble going through and that will have an increase in students
070over the next ten years but we'll give you more details as that comes out as we know the district continues to grow and there will be a need for for adequate spaces so that's where we're at right now and in Tuesday's meeting will be the task force and that will include community members that have those interested and as Dan mentioned wealth of 2015 that came we started this process in 2013 the ten year update so in 2014 the projections we made I'm very happy to say that will will show that we were right in the projections of where where we thought we'd be now and going forward which is good for our community to know as we look at what are we gonna do about our space needs sometimes as you look at these growth
071projections and folks are concerned is this accurate and we had some questions back then well now updating five years later and showing that where we thought we'd be were we're really when we meld them together very close which is great so it's a it's an extensive complex process but I'm excited about that kicking off next week and working throughout the school year as we go forward then again as we get started or getting closer to the school year we had new teachers come back this week it was really exciting that's always one of the most enjoyable mornings to meet our new folks and and talk about a number of things but I always think back to just starting out as a teacher and what my very first meetings and the excitement about anticipating your kids
072coming in that first day and so I asked Brian to talk a little bit about how that day looked and our first day was new new folks don't worry about your wellness set me up for failure it's okay we had 79 new staff members join us for breakfast on Tuesday at River Oaks and I just want to give a special thank you to River Oaks Dennis NEETs helped to set us up with just a beautiful morning and great food and then it's an awesome opportunity to partner with the UTS WC who helps co-sponsor the breakfast and so thank you Marty Keith had the opportunity to welcome staff and give them a positive message for the start of the year our principals assistant principals other systems leaders and cabinet members were there as well and then
073the staff the new hires stayed and they had the opportunity to meet their induction mentor and learn about our mentoring process to make sure that they know that there is support for them going into the year it is always difficult to come into a rather large system so who can I call for help who do I get to go to when when I have questions and so they learned about their mentoring process and then they had a chance to go to their to their school get keys meet the office coordinator oftentimes have lunch with leadership at the school and then they went to East Ridge High School for the remaining days of probationary teacher Academy which just finished up today it's a three day training and so special thanks to James McGee who left organize
074all that in his new role he did fantastic and Peggy Jo's back who also helped with all of that as well and so and then our basically our entire teaching and learning team was involved in some way shape or form in probationary teacher Academy it's interesting with all the hires not as many first-year teachers there do you remember the number maybe seven eight it looked like it the room so I say that it's always exciting to have the first year folks because it's such a great time for them and we it's to welcome into the profession but it also we're able to attract and hire a lot of experienced folks from around the metro area out from outside of the state and so there are really high-quality great folks that will be able to come
075in in our experience so it really feels like the school year started already after this week because there's so much activity and so many different things happening in next week everyone's coming back to be prepared as as we welcome kids right after Labor Day 11.2 is school bed okay we'll try that one more time eleven point two is school board member reports so Pat would you like to start sure I will just say I'm getting ready next week I get to learn how to go back to middle school so I'm very excited about that my dad I'll be starting at Cottage Grove mid this fall and she goes to camp six next week and I get to go to parent camp six I guess and I'm wondering my daughter keeps asking what she has to
076pack and and I'm like no middle school is not sleepaway camp although I wouldn't be opposed to that so if we'd like to consider that I would sign up for the pilot so huh but no so getting ready for back-to-school as my daughter participating in the negotiations meeting over the summer over negotiation meetings over the summer and then doing some having some side conversations with Christine and Keith and others about the mental health work that we're doing and discipline and obviously school climate so very excited and yeah yeah I wanted to thank all my school board colleagues as well and the community for supporting the Joe Slavin golf tournament this summer too and the work that that builds into with our mental health as people know I am not running for school board again which
077is very sad but especially remembering Joe and my great colleagues but so I'm sort of like a seen parent of a senior now everything becomes nostalgic yeah I saw a few moments yeah yeah yeah and those of you have been around awhile knew who I was far more vocal before I got on the school board so you never know where where that hits but anyway I did want to say how much again I it's an exciting time which I think my other colleagues running for reelection which is exciting and a candidate of 10 I think so it's a great public service to be able to watch these kids go and I look at thinking of our own kids but watching the growth in our district and you look at the profound amount of services that
078we provide is just such a privilege to continue to serve so that's it no no kinda mental stone mmm I continue to serve on the negotiation team which I just love being with all of you and I think that's it I'm not trying to do nothing else all right and I will pass as well so 12.0 future meeting dates Thursday August 29th is a regular word meet meeting and September 12th is a regular board meeting so 13 point oh I will entertain a motion to go into closed session pursuant to Minnesota sancho 13d point zero five subdivision 3a for superintendent evaluation and as added at the beginning of the meeting pursuant to Minnesota statute 13 D point zero three four in the labor negotiations we will not be taking any action when we come back
079so I will entertain that motion that was that was exactly so moved by Katie second by shear and all those in favor say aye aye any opposed [Applause] [Music] I don't think you don't think she's coming yeah we'll call this alright so we're back so I will take a motion to reconvene the meeting you guys are just like right all right all right so moved by Katie second by Sharon and all the favor say aye aye any opposed all right and with that fourteen point oh 34 oh we are