001The September 9th meeting of the 197th school board to order and ask you to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. 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. All right, a couple housekeeping items. I'd like to thank John for the wonderful idea of all of us wear spirit wear instead of our normally maybe stuffy clothes. So thank you, John. And then I also wanted to briefly introduce our two new student reps, Patrick Baumbach and Noel Hassan. They get to introduce themselves later when they give their student report, but wanted to acknowledge that we're happy to have you here, so welcome. Okay, now approval of the agenda. can i get a motion to
002approve the agenda thank you morgan second by tim all those in favor signify by saying aye aye those opposed that item passes all right uh consent agenda any motion for the consent agenda if there's nothing to discuss john you're making a motion got it can i get a second second by byron all those in favor signify by saying aye aye those opposed that passes as well All right, for the listening session report, I turn to Director Schwab. I almost can't say your name. Thank you. We had three visitors and two speakers. They came to speak about a gender-inclusive policy and practices. We thank them for coming. Does that conclude your report? That concludes my report. Thank you, Byron. All right, our favorite item on the agenda is recognitions. I'll turn it over to the superintendent.
003Thank you, Chair Larson. We're excited to kick off the school year with another round of recognitions, and it's a packed house tonight with lots of great things happening in the district. We have three groups tonight, and we'll call each one up at a time. So to those who are being recognized after your group has been called up, please take a seat and stick around for some photos at the end of the recognitions. Then you're welcome to leave if you'd like or hang around for the action-packed school board. business items afterwards uh we'll stay we'll start with the warrior hall of fame class of 2024 inductees and then we'll move on to the moorland arts and health sciences students and finally to somerset elementary so to start can i please have the warrior hall of fame
004class of 2024 inductees and their representatives please come up to the podium So I'm going to introduce you all. We'll clap and we'll ask them some questions. So hold on just a second here. So the Warrior Hall of Fame recognizes individuals who have significantly contributed to the School District 197 community and excelled in various fields, including athletics, activities, the fine arts, academics, and philanthropy. This year's inductees include Eugene or Jean Atkins, Henry Sibby Class of 1955, Laura Ashley Groton, Class of 1999, Aaron Pasch, Class of 2005, and Scott Vann, Class of 1974. Let's give them an overall applause. So tonight we'll celebrate all of our inductees, and I think we have everyone, or at least a representative for everyone except for Aaron Pash, who was unable to attend. So let me introduce, we'll start with
005Andy Adkins, Gene's widow, who will represent him tonight. And a few words about Gene. Gene served as a beloved history teacher at Francis M. Grass Junior High, which is now Heritage East M. Magnet School. Also as a mayor. also as a county commissioner, and one of Minnesota's longest serving judges. So let's give Jean and Andy a round of applause. Questions? All right. Do you mind if we ask you some questions? All right. Who has a question? I can't hear you very well. I have to talk louder. Okay, someone needs to have a question. Go ahead, Marcus. I'll ask a question. Did Gene share any fun stories about his time in District 197 and at Sibley High School that you're willing to share or is shareable? Well, I tell you, Joe, you come up here. Joe
006does a better job than me. Joseph, get up here. He listens to me. That guy looks kind of familiar, by the way. I don't know. We've seen him somewhere. When your mom tells you to come to the front, you come to the front. Well, there was one of my favorites was when he got into the, so quite honestly, you guys, he wasn't necessarily the greatest student. He was smart, but he kind of, you know, there's some troubles. He was from a single parent home, and so he struggled a little bit, but he joined the Navy when he got done with school. And he always thought it was funny that as soon as he got into the Navy, they asked him where he went to school. And, of course, he said 197. He said Minnesota. And
007he got a better job in the Navy because he had, even though he kind of struggled at school a little bit, he did really well in the Navy because of that. And then the other neat thing, it's not so funny Marcus put it, is I still run into former students of his. I know my mom does. My kids do. who are former students who talk about the fact that he was their favorite teacher. He taught for about four years at Grass, and that just fills our hearts. I love it. That's fantastic. Thank you for sharing. Did I do okay, Mom? You did good. All right, let's get out of here and let him focus on these other things. You did a lot better than I would have. I love it. You would have done great.
008You're doing wonderful. Thank you. Doing great. Thank you. So next I'd like to introduce Heather and Steve Ashley who are representing their daughter Laura. A few words about Laura. While at Henry Sibley, Laura had many achievements in sports, academics, and service, graduated as a valedictorian, and later excelled at Dartmouth and Harvard Business School. So let's give Laura a round of applause. I think on a similar note, do you have any favorite stories about when she was in school in 197? Well, I was probably recognized more for her athletics. It's more visible than academics, but for athletics, I think the highlight of her career was when Sibley, call him Sibley, won the big school state championship in soccer in, I think it was 1997. It was a fantastic experience. First time that Sibley girls had won
009a championship, and it's one that she'll never forget. Funny stories. I don't have a specific one. It's not really funny, but it just shows how much she enjoyed athletics. She made varsity as an eighth grader in soccer. And they had a team party and of course she couldn't drive so dad had a driver. And on the way over she says something to the effect of, dad, I don't know what I'd do without athletics. I love it. Yeah, she just had just a wonderful experience at Sibley at the time and still has a lot of friends and memories and she will be here. next week around the 26th. But she lives in Boston right now and just started a new job today where she'll be traveling to New York a couple days a week. And she
010just had major shoulder surgery. So she said, Mom, can you do my hair when I come on the 20th? Because she's right-handed and she's, you know. So anyway, she's going through a lot right now, but very excited to come. I just had surgery in May. I get it. You do a good job in her hair. No, thank you. It speaks very well for the soccer program, so thank you. All right. Next, I'd like to introduce Scott Vann. Scott was a standout athlete and leader at Henry Sibley, and he has served on the ISD 197 Educational Foundation Board for over 15 years. So let's give Scott Vann a hand. All right. Questions? Any funny educational foundation stories you'd like to mention? A couple things I can mention. I was fortunate to be involved in several firsts.
011First of all, the first 10th grade class when the new Sibley opened up in 1971, fall of 71. So I was there for the inaugural year. And then... Funny thing that happened after that was they got us out of school After about a month of being a few weeks or a month all the tenth graders They had us line up on the field below the the main part of Sibley between this frontage road and Sibley Line up shoulder to shoulder and walk across the whole thing our job was to pick up rocks. So the grounds crew said, Carrie, get as many as you can and then make piles with the people around you. And the grounds crew will pick them all up later. Now, I don't remember how long it took him to pick up
012all those piles of rocks, but that was the start of our practice soccer field and actually where we played games. And that was another first. The second year, my junior year, we had our first soccer. team at the high school. Dean Verdu's long time athletics director volunteered to be the coach and he said, I'm going to learn along with the rest of you guys. We had a lot of fun and did quite well because we didn't grow up like kids nowadays in soccer programs. We played kickball in school. It was all new but fun. Good experience all around. Good memories. Thank you. And finally, Erin Pasch is not here, but I do want to take this opportunity to say a few words about her. Erin is the CEO and founder of LA Mental Health Services,
013volunteers with the Two Rivers Athletic Association and the ISD 197 Educational Foundation. So let's give Erin Pasch a round. We're excited because we have more opportunities later this month to celebrate all of our inductees. You heard it mentioned earlier, so there's lots more to come. So now I am honored to introduce the students from Moreland Arts and Health Sciences Magnet School and their principal, Rob Solley. So, Moreland, as our students are organizing here, Moreland is being recognized for their new large-scale community mural on the backside of the building. And just a little shout-out here to the City of West St. Paul for changing their sign ordinance, which is what allowed this project to happen. So, Rob, I'll hand it over to you. Alright, so I'm just going to take a quick minute to recognize first
014our families. So well over half of this room seems to be Moreland families. So I just want to say thanks to the families who have chosen to come out and support our amazing building. Students from Moreland helped raise the funds for the mural through our annual kindness fundraiser, which was in place of other fundraisers that was about trinkets and cash donated, but more about what we were doing for our community in the hearts of our students. It took three years to raise the funds. for this mural and in turn for the donations that the students received they completed acts of kindness in the community. They did everything from donating art to the Wentworth Library and West St. Paul Police Station. They donated a van full of cereal to Neighbors Incorporated. They baked bread and delivered
015it to our neighbors. They visited a senior living center and colored with the residents there. They decorated grocery bags for Oxendale's market shoppers to enjoy, packed over 200 self-care kits for neighbors in needs with our friends at ROCC, and they did way more than that. And so it is because of their acts that we were able to come up with the funds to be able to create something that was funded by our community, painted by our community, and now is enjoyed by our community. This evening I've brought a couple of our friends who happen to be on that mural, along with just Moreland friends who are excited to be up here with us. So three of our friends that are on the wall are Nicholas Vu. Alexa De La Cruz Flores and Zach Ali. That's
016all I have to share. I'm sure we have some questions, especially for the children. Who wants to go first? Go ahead, Morgan. First, I love looking at the mural and driving past it. It just makes my day so much happier. I am wondering to the students what your favorite part of working on it was. What was one thing you liked? Like, what was one fun thing? Probably the teamwork. Yeah. Thank you. Good answer. Teamwork. We saw a lot of our students in our art program and then later some of our family fun events where loads of people got to participate in building it. So there was a huge team that had to build it. Other questions? Sure. Again, for the students, what do you like most about the mural? That it's so colorful. Good answer.
017I agree. The mural just brings pride to West St. Paul. Beautiful. Delightful. I'd say it's an honor to meet the faces that we see when we drive by every time. So how do you feel about being a little famous and on the side of a building? What do you think about being famous? It's fun. Zach, what do you think about being famous? Not that fun. Not that fun. That is a fair assessment. And Nicholas thinks it's a little bit fun. Okay. Good balance. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Well, let's give them one more round of applause. Finally, I'm honored to introduce students and families from Somerset Elementary and their principal, Libby Huddle. Somerset is being recognized for their new fully accessible and inclusive playground. The playground installed by the community in August
018includes multiple ramps, sensory panels, a communication board, various heights of slides, and an in-ground merry-go-round, along with a rubberized floor for wheelchair access around the entire structure. This makes Somerset Elementary the fifth school in Minnesota to feature a fully accessible playground. And Libby, I'll hand it off to you. All right. Hi. Hi. So we... Ann and I started chatting last fall and started going out to different playground companies to see if we could make this dream a reality. We have three students at Somerset currently that utilize wheelchairs, and we are up to 31 students in our Shine program who are... nonverbal and working on sensory processing. So we really wanted to create an environment where the inclusion from the inside was happening outside as well. And the goal was summer of 2025. but we're standing
019here today. So it's a huge testament to our community and the community businesses and organizations that help donate. We also had a $200,000 anonymous donation from a woman who saw the story on the news, and we were able to just push up that timeline, brave the heat, brave the rain, have a big community build, and we've been playing on that playground for a week, right? Do you have a favorite part of the playground? I'm sorry, I'm taking your questions. My favorite part is all the music things. Yeah, there's a lot of great music things. We actually have a student in our Shine program who has never left her wagon out at recess. And last week, she was out of the wagon playing on the bells. And it was like, oh, bad. That's why we did
020this. So, Ann, you want to say something? No, I'm good. You're good? Okay. Ann's good. Okay, do we have questions? I know we do. You did steal one of my questions. Yeah, sorry. Okay. Will you introduce your friend? Yes. This is Sam. Sam's a first grader at Somerset in Mrs. Rall's room. And Sam sometimes uses his chair and sometimes... Runs around the school right? Yeah, good deal. All right questions for Libby or Sam. Go ahead Tim. I just want to Compliment you so my time when I was on the site There's a lot going on. It's interesting. You mentioned the music. I don't know if you remember the day I was there trying to align I probably had the misconception that something like this is a cookie cutter, right? You got your square and you
021put it, but you were doing a great job, and I could see your brain going through the steps of saying, but if we put it here, things will flow this way, and especially the kids to get to that semi-circle of the drums and whatever. Great job. And, you know, I believe I was working with your husband. Yes. Yeah. And so shout out to him. Well, I was really glad that day he had the automatic post hole digger because we were trying to do this. That's not a lot of fun. But it was it really was reflective of what a community can do when it comes together. And everybody felt that and it was infectious and rewarding and enjoyable. So thank you. And a big shout out to the two of us football team came. There
022was a teacher who sent her son and a bunch of his friends over. So it really was a lot of fun. Good old teachers from school and the district shut up. It was great. I think Sam's dad told me that he went out and bought like 10 shovels because there was too much to do. And we finally returned them. We did. He donated five shovels to the school. Did you need shovels? We did need a lot of shovels. And, Scott, you could have come and picked up lots of rocks. Yes. Lots of rocks as well. Other questions for these folks? Go ahead. Yes. First, thank you. And my first grader and fourth grader are loving this playground also. So Libby and Anne, just kind of thinking about families who might be feeling like they want
023to follow your lead and do something similar in their communities. How would you start? We've actually gotten this question quite a bit from other communities. And I think it just, we went into it unapologetically, with positivity, and we just, we refused to think otherwise. I mean, after the first news story ran, some of the comments on social media I heard were very discouraging, but I refused to look at them because we were not going to let any other mindset, but moving forward and making this happen. be a part of our work. So I think that's where it starts. And also really defining what is accessibility and inclusivity. You know, I think a lot of people think, well, it's a public school, so of course by law your playground's accessible. And if you have a child
024in a wheelchair like I do, my son Leo is a little kid in a blue chair, he can't get on things. It's one thing to be able to touch a structure, it's another thing for him to drive up there with his friends, play tag, you know, all those things. So I think making parents realize this is what we want, this is really what accessibility is for, and going after it. I'm writing a lot of grants, and like Lucas said, she was much more positive than I was. I got rejected a lot. But I just kept doing it, and I figured there was somebody out there. I think I called them daddy warbucks. I'm like, we're going to find a daddy warbucks somewhere. But we got a fairy godmother instead, so. Thank you. One more question
025for Sam. Sam, I'm wondering if you feel like your teacher is giving you enough time on the playground, or if you need more. She's giving enough time. Oh. Yeah, you go to M-City. We love you. Very good. Thank you. Okay. Pictures. Pictures. We're going to take a short break to take pictures. Feel free to stick around afterwards, but you don't have to if you don't want to. But everybody that participated in recognitions, come on up, okay? Not an indication of the next item on the agenda, but the next item is the superintendent's report. Well, good evening, everyone. To our devotees that are staying here a little bit longer, we're happy to be back after our first week of school, which, honestly, it's exciting every year. You get that fall feeling. It's a wonderful time. Lots
026of hope and excitement for all the... for all that the year can be. We have the honor of welcoming students back into our buildings and watching our teachers and our staff making meaningful connections, which is right there in our mission statement, starting with caring relationships, and that's what they are doing. That's what they are building right now, and I'm appreciative of that partnership. So last Tuesday, we welcomed our kindergarteners, our fifth graders, and our ninth graders back to school as part of our efforts to smooth that transition. So we give them the entire day. day on their own to get familiar with this new for many of them bigger space than they've been in previously to meet their teachers figure out lockers i think i've got some photos of some uh there we go some
027of those first days here with our kindergartners and fifth graders fifth graders i think we've got yeah some more first day of school activities going on there's our ninth graders coming in you can see some of the link crew there that welcomes them in And they're also thrilled, of course, to welcome back our teachers and staff. So if you could hit the next slide. We welcome back our staff a few weeks early when you add everything up. So the week before kids come back, we do our workshop with all of our staff. The week before that, we welcome back our new staff. And the week before that, we have even some optional trainings for staff that happened before that. So we've been busy throughout all of August. ramping up for the school year and making
028plans for that well before. A fun new addition this year, and you can see them in the picture here, is our new staff t-shirts, which was generously funded by the South Roberts Street Business Association and ICS. They are our owners' representatives on our construction projects, and of course we all know South Roberts Street Business Association being an ongoing partner for our schools. We are excited for the year ahead and grateful for the continued support of our community as we work to make this a great school year for all. I will say that... Can we go back just quick to the t-shirt? So nurture, inspire, prepare. And then on the back of it, it says together we thrive. And as you all know, that's the headliner for our strategic framework. And I see it coming to
029life every day with our students and with our staff and how they work together to achieve great things for the whole community. So with the new school year, we've got new student representatives on the board. And I'm excited to introduce them. chair larson has already done so uh so and they'll introduce themselves more on their report which follows this uh and then so finally before i hit and get into a little bit of a first day enrollment report I just want to take a moment to say thank you to our school board members. They changed the school board month up on us this year. They didn't give us much notice either. But it is school board month, school board appreciation month. And I'm just thankful for our dedicated officials who have been elected to serve
030their community. And it takes a lot of time and commitment and heart work. So please join me in recognizing their contributions to our school district during the Minnesota School Board Recognition Month. All right, well, let's talk about enrollment. We have a lot of kids. I could stop right there. We have more kids than we've ever had. But let's get into some of the details. If you're looking at the chart here, what you're going to see is an increasing trend over time. And we've projected an increasing trend over time. And with the exception of 21-22, which was we weren't quite sure what to expect kind of coming back off of our distance learning year. So we did over project a little bit that year. But since then, the number of families that want to join the
031School District 197 community has exceeded our expectations. You'll see that 5 52 56 that was first day There's still things that are that's actually inaccurate as of right now That's that scaled back a little bit because what happens is once the kids start coming to school then you start taking Attendance and then you figure out all this student that was on my list didn't actually show up So we're still over 5200 I believe as of Friday. So the fourth day of school, we were at 52.27. But that's still over our projected growth of 51.96, and we don't know what it's going to be yet in October. So more to come with our official enrollment report later on, but I'll show a few more pieces of data. So next slide, please. Was that all I had?
032Oh, there we go. I just, it wasn't, I wasn't seeing it there. Okay, so this gets a little bit more specific into the differences between what we projected we were going to see and what we actually saw. Our kindergarten is something that we want to spend a little bit more time studying. So kindergarten, we have increasingly over-projected. how many students would be coming in kindergarten. So this year, we do have a lower kindergarten enrollment than we've seen in a little bit. But what we've seen is that they catch up as their cohort progresses through the grades. So more people choose to join us in first and second. The people who are here choose to stay here and lots more people choose to join them. So that's what we've seen. So although that is a lower
033class, I wouldn't be surprised if that was a... at least average size class by the time they get to middle school or high school. In terms of elementary, we were pretty bang on with our projections with two students. It was middle school this year actually that was the most under projected. So they were 40 students over our projection. You can see that we didn't have that massive bump in our high school that we did last year. Still 18 over projection, but not the 101 that we had last year. And that was tough because we were trying to fill with overages and having teachers teach extra sections. You're trying to hire people last minute. And it's a tough thing to do when your projections were that low. So the 40 and the 18 and the two
034those were much easier in terms of the kindergarten We started sensing that it was going to be lower than we expected earlier on so we were able to Because not not lay somebody off but because there was a section that we hadn't filled yet or hired for we were able to recoup some of the otherwise Staff cost there that we wouldn't get in revenue from those students that would be coming in So that is what I'll talk about on there. I'll be redundant a little bit here. That reduced section of kindergarten at pilot knob, that's what I was just referring to. We continue to look for different ways to market kindergarten enrollment so that they are with us from day one as opposed to joining us later in the year or in first or second
035or third grade, as we've seen in the past few years. Later on in the agenda this evening, I think it's our first business item or they're close to, is our proposal to close grades ninth and 10th grade to open enrollment. Just a little note here because I always get this question when we talk about closing open enrollment. Dear open enrollment families. If you are already enrolled in our schools, you will be able to continue to be enrolled in our schools. So starting in kindergarten and moving on up through, I mean, there was a little bit of joking there, but in all sincerity, I don't want you to worry. So if you're in elementary and you're an open enrollment family and you hear that we're closing at the high school, you will have a spot should
036you choose to stay with us through that time when you get to high school. We may return with other open enrollment closure recommendations as the data solidifies. There's two reasons you typically close to open enrollment. One is space and one is staffing. And the further you get into the year, if... The tougher it is to actually make any changes to your schedule or to do staffing and so right now we're closing for both Mostly for space and a little bit for staffing but as the year as the fall progresses It's the more closures will likely be more around staffing than it is around space It might be the end it is so I would stand for any questions from the board on our first day of school open enrollment presentation questions for Peter All right,
037you're off the hook for now. You will hear a larger presentation disaggregated over more years after we get that official date of October 1. So I believe it's scheduled currently for the October work session when you'll hear a more detailed analysis of our enrollment, both historical and future projections. So having waited longer than they typically would, except for this is their first time, so they don't know how long my reports take, I would like to hand it back to our students for their report. Good evening, everyone. I'm Patrick Bohnbach. And I'm Noelle Hassan. We are so honored to be on this board tonight. So thank you to all, everyone for this incredible opportunity. Now on to our student report. Okay, so this summer there's been like a lot of changes and different events and activities
038happening in the district. So here's our recap of some of the standout things that have happened in our district. So starting at the elementary level, as previously mentioned, Somerset recently became the fifth school in Minnesota to have a fully accessible playground. And I just want to give a little bit more recognition to that because I think that's just an amazing feat for our district. And I agree. I know we just like recognized and we saw the little cute students and everything. We just want to like, again, recognize the students for their role for creating that beautiful mural at Moreland Elementary. And it really did transform how Moreland looks. And it's just like so aesthetic. pleasing so I'm so grateful that they did that and then also students age 12 and up from our district volunteered
039at the summer stars program which is a summer school program at Garlo and they assisted younger students who are kind of like lacking and reading and math and help them boost up their levels so they'd be adequate enough for the upcoming school year and then also moving up to our middle school This summer, Tri-District Community Education introduced a middle school girls' flag football team in partnership with the Minnesota Vikings, which included students from both Heritage and Friendly Hills. The girls competed in a tournament mid-July, and they did have a lot of fun. And moving up to our level, high school, even after the regular school year ended in June, many Two Rivers students kept busy at school. Sports and activities continued to train even in the humid summer weather. I, for one, was at the
040school nearly every week doing something new with debate or speech or even some volunteering opportunities. On the first day of school for the freshmen, as we saw up there, link leaders helped to acclimate students to the new environment. My favorite part about... being a link leader this year was probably watching the slightly embarrassed looks on all the freshmen's faces and watch them slowly disappear as they became more comfortable at school. And then some like updates on sports recently Friday night our football team had a win against Hastings Raiders and then the boys soccer team and the girls soccer team both won their games against Kennedy and Eastview on Saturday and then the girls tennis team beat Hill Murray Wednesday night and then they're currently participating in a match at Tartan right now. No, they're at
041Park Oh, halal food. I wanted to mention this because it's so important to me because I'm also part of it. So after many talks with Mark Fortman, the director of operations of our district, and Jeff Bulford, the children's nutrition manager, I'm so excited to announce the options of halal food being opened up to the district this year. And I'm so incredibly grateful to have been a part of this opportunity and create such an option for Muslim students, not only Muslim students as well as Jewish students, because halal food is considered Jewish food. Not too shrewd. Sorry. Kosher, kosher, yeah. And yeah, I'm so happy that that's being made. And thank you, director. Oh my gosh. Superintendent Peter Olsen-Skog. And now on to some upcoming events going on in the district. Starting at the elementary level,
042Mendota Elementary is hosting a culture night on September 17th at 5.45 p.m. to celebrate the diversity in our community. So please reach out to Principal Goldad if you are interested in hosting a table to share your culture with the community. And Mendota is also hosting their fall festival on September 26th at 5.45 p.m. So that should be really fun. And that same day, starting at 4 p.m. both Garlow and Moreland are hosting separate parents in education nights to help families come together to learn about education and moving up to the middle schools Friendly Hills is hosting a PTA meeting on 630 on the 16th and heritage has a 2s LGBTQ parent meeting on the 18th at 6 p.m. Kind of moving back to the high school and it's kind of like a whole district-wide thing.
043Warrior Rally is upcoming on September 14th, which is this Saturday, to all District 197 families where we will celebrate our school, explore... It will be at Explore Two Rivers clubs and activities, and there will be a multitude of activities, events, and funds, and this is going to be located at the district office's parking lot. And then high school-wise, homecoming's coming, which is so fun. It's coming up on the week of the 23rd, which both of us are so excited about because senior year, homecoming, it's so much fun. And then... Yeah. So thank you all for listening to our student report on the district. We are both so honored to be part of the school district board. So thank you for giving us the opportunity to do so. Thank you. Thank you. I can tell that
044they're going to be a joy. You two are going to be a joy. Wait, don't turn your microphones back on. We probably have some questions. I have a question for both of you. Just introduce yourselves a little further and tell us if you went to any other schools in the district before Two Rivers. Yeah, so I went to fourth grade at Mendota Elementary, and then for a majority of my middle school time, even though part of it was distance learning, I went to Friendly Hills, and now I'm here at Two Rivers. I went to Moreland for preschool, and then I went to, like, different schools, and then I came back sixth grade and went to Heritage, and then seventh and eighth grade I went to Friendly Hills. Very nice. Thank you. Other questions for these
045two? as we get to know them. Oh, go ahead, Byron. It's nice to have you join the board. Thank you. Tell us a little bit about your activities and interests at Two Rivers. What are you involved in and what subject areas do you enjoy the most? I'm currently at Two Rivers High School. I am involved in basketball and track. I'm also part of the speech team with Patrick, who's the captain by the way. I'm also part of Liv Green Key Club. I did create the Muslim Student Association at Two Rivers High School as well as the Student Curriculum Advisory Committee with Miles Lawson. I'm also on the Equity Advisory Board and... NHS and other stuff. Some, oh what is it? I like science and math at high school. It's really fun. And then I also
046like history too. I really like my AP World History class and I think it's the best class I've ever taken because Mr. Myers is a great teacher and I love world history. I don't nearly have as many activities as Noelle does. I think one time she showed me a list that she had, and it was a couple of pages. But I do speech and debate. I also am a managing editor for the school newspaper, which recently started back up last spring. I just do a lot of community work at the school. I like to be involved in a little bit of everything. And I think... In terms of what I'm interested in, I really love social sciences, and I can thank that to a bald man that may be in the audience right now. But,
047yes. Good answers. Go ahead, Morgan. Could you share what made you interested in being the student representatives and what you're looking forward to this year? Do you want to go first? Sure. Well, ever since I was in ninth grade, I've been involved in a lot of district stuff, and it's honestly been, like, such a great opportunity seeing how the district works and how, like, student voice has such an importance in what we do and how it really does matter. So once I heard from Larray at a key club meeting that, like, the opening for student board representatives was coming up, I was really interested just to see where I could take my voice and how I could have a bigger effect on people. For me, middle school was kind of not great. I didn't really
048have the best experience, and so I kind of drew away from school. And then I think it was my, yeah, my freshman year, I just started becoming more interested in school via speech and debate. And I just slowly worked my way up. And when I found out about the opportunity, I had some senior friends at the time who had... who had interviewed last year but didn't get the position. And so I was like, you know, I might as well try out. And I really wanted everyone who was in the interview rooms to get it. And so I'm happy that I was able to get it along with Noel, who I would consider one of my best friends. Good answers, again. Anything else for these two? We're going to have a fun year. So thank you,
049thank you, thank you. Welcome. Okay, we actually do have an action item now, everyone. All right, the action item is the approval of the resolution to close open enrollment for grades 9 and 10 for 2024-25 school year, which you've already talked about, but go ahead. Thank you, Madam Chair. No, Chair Larson. Chair Larson. I can make quick work of this. We are exceeding projections. The high school is getting tight on space. Our cafeteria is getting tight on space. And because of that, our 10th grade is approaching 500 students. So I believe at last count, they were 497. And you can see the enrollment growth that we've seen at our high school in the background document. We've well exceeded any minimum expectations that is required to be permissible by law, so we're well within our jurisdiction
050and our rights to close open enrollment, and the administration would recommend doing so. And you have a resolution in front of you. It's the majority of a page, so I won't read it out loud, but I accept a motion. so that we could discuss. Motion to approve the resolution. Thank you, Byron. And a second by Morgan. Are there any questions or discussion about the motion? All right. Not a question, just reiterating for anyone who may be watching at home that this is closing open enrollment. It is not closing anything to anyone who lives in the district. Correct. Good clarification. So if anybody new who moves into our district, we will... Gladly welcome you into our schools. All right, and this one is going to be a roll call vote So I would call the question
051and I'm gonna go down the line Tim. All right Marcus hi Randy hi. I am and I that's hard to say John hi Byron yes Morgan. All right that passes. Thank you everybody Okay, next item on our agenda is the 2024-25 strategic framework implementation targets and proposed superintendent goals. Again with Peter. Thank you, Madam. Thank you, Chair Larson. Seven years. So I'm going to be joined by Sarah Lean as well as Kerry Jo Draywitz. By way of introduction to the topic, for anybody who has not seen this process before, the board adopted a strategic framework. That strategic framework remains in place for a number of years. It includes our belief statements. It includes our mission statements. But then we set annual implementation targets that... talk about how we are moving towards the goals expressed in
052the strategic framework. And the board has identified three focus areas for us to grow and improve. Those were generated from multiple hours and thousands of hours and hundreds of people giving their input that drove us to improve in three specific areas. There's lots of efforts that are going beyond these areas, but these are the ones that we report to the board given the focus. in our strategic framework. And so our first focus area will be presented by Sara Lee. Good evening, Madam Chair, Superintendent Olsen-Skog and members of the board. I am here to talk to you about focus area number one, social emotional learning. I had the opportunity to talk to you, I think, several times about this topic and excited to see where we're going next. Just a general overview, we've talked before about
053the Collaborative of Academic Social-Emotional Learning, kind of as an organization and their work and research and implementation. Really guides our work here in the district. So we'll use their ten indicators Additionally, there's been a lot of collaboration. I'm not doing this in isolation You might see me up here, but I'm certainly not the one doing all the thinking so partnering with both the curriculum team the equity team Getting feedback from our staff that were involved in our SEL training academy over the past year And then again just some consultation that we get from Castle will again be part of their community network partners this upcoming year So excited to continue that partnership When I think about the value when you think why social emotional learning, what are the values? There's sort of three overarching goals
054improved improved academic achievement We really hope to help our kids succeed academically and a lot of that is really connected into having social emotional competencies and That's one of our big goals contributing to health healthy well-being and safe schools. I think that's a something we can all wrap our heads around as a community and as parents and staff that we really want to make sure that our schools feel safe and have a supportive environment and space for our kids to grow. And then finally, just really building those skills for future readiness. When I think about the folks that we've interviewed for jobs this year, the ones that have the high EQs are the ones that we want to hire. They're the ones that can communicate. problem-solve and think and be responsible decision-makers. So if we
055can have any part in equipping the future, it's a big goal for us. As I mentioned, we have the ten indicators that come directly from CASEL. So this is a very small-sized font. I don't expect you to read this, but I wanted you to have that as a reference point. So when you see me go through the different slides, those are the ten overarching themes for each of our areas. The first one is explicit SEL instruction, and I think this is one that we had hoped we would get to. People were ready to jump in a long time ago, and we took a slower approach to really build our own foundational understanding of our own social-emotional growth and well-being as adults. And now we're excited to really dive into some of this real explicit instruction.
056The big one we'll see this year is that we're adding some curriculum for our elementary counselors. Character Strong is a research-based, evidence-based curriculum that has been promoted by CASEL. And so we're doing some training. We've got counselors already working on that. Our health and science, our health classes across 6, 7, 8, and 10 will all have some additional focus areas around SEL instruction. Our warrior seminar has done a lot of work already in this area, so it's just really refining and maybe being more explicit in calling out where that instruction is landing. And then finally, within special education, we have a lot of students that are working on social, emotional, and behavioral goals. How can we use the competencies and some of the learning targets that are set to build some goal banks for our
057staff to help align them with what's happening in the gen ed setting? Integrating the SEL within academic instruction. So you've heard the talk about the AmazeWorks curriculum. It's happening fully at our elementary level, and people have been really excited about it. We have seen great feedback from staff that have been trained. Just last week, our ECSE and early learning teachers were all trained in it, so we're getting it right from the onset of kids entering schools. I brought two books just because I couldn't help but share. The beauty of it is that it is creating inclusion for all types of identities, including students with disabilities. So you've got students learning from an early age what it takes to succeed in life and how to interact and get along with all of our friends in our
058classrooms. So great, great books, great connections with the maze works. It's fun to see the equity work and the SEL work intersecting, and it's not sitting in two silos. Again, we've got the flex options that are happening at the middle school. So looking at ways to bring in some SEL work there. Some of the work they've already done around setting goals and time management and checking their assignments. is part of that self-management. So using that flex time to integrate more SEL work. And then finding ways that our high school teachers can begin to implement some SEL. They are working in collaborative teens this year as a focus on social-emotional learning. So working with Jess Kabeck, Dr. Kabeck at the high school to build some really concentrated work on understanding social-emotional learning for our high school
059staff. The next area is youth voice and engagement, which, again, hearing these high school students here today and their voice matters. And so how do we find more opportunities for that? One of the things that we're going to do this year is I'm going to connect with some of our student leadership groups. We've got both a middle school group, a high school group. I'm going to get in and just get some feedback from them. What's working? What do they need? How can we help them have some success? So any way we can get some student voice is going to be a win-win. Building supportive school and classroom climates. I think that's been a goal always in the work of education. A couple of the ways that we're going to continue that work is building some
060look-fors, if you will, like if a principal is doing a walk-through in a classroom, these are some of the things that we can call out that are specific to social-emotional. learning. Kevin Sheridan, our equity coordinator, and I worked with our principals last year on building some of those. We practiced. We went into classrooms. We saw it in action. We debriefed and talked about it. So we'll continue that work again this year. We started some training academies for our new staff this year. Kind of the brainchild, I think, of Kerry Jo Dreywitz. And one of the sessions I got to... Provide was on classroom climate. So getting our new teachers to really think about what are they going to do to set up their classroom for success? How are they starting to build relationships from the
061minute they meet kids? They were eating it up and having those conversations in August before they even got the school year started. The work in adult SEL never really ends. I think I've said that before here. Like, we're always growing. We're always going to be working on our own social-emotional competencies. One of the ways we extended that this year was offering a training academy for staff. So I have 22 staff members that are participating in that. We started it this summer. We brought in guest speakers. Dr. Olson-Skoog was one of our guest speakers at one of our sessions, and we picked his brain a little bit. checked on his social emotional intelligence. It was kind of fun. I'm taking volunteers. If there's a board member, that would be fun to have one of you join
062us. So stay tuned. Supportive discipline. Again, we're always looking for ways to help students have success so that we don't have to get to the path of discipline. So proactive, positive, building support strategies in place on the front end so that we don't have to do discipline. Kelly Kudrowski is a program support specialist within special ed. She's built some really great staff development around student support strategies. Again, she provided that both to our... new staff this fall and to some middle school staff that we're looking for a little refresher. She also does one-on-ones and comes out to buildings and does some additional training. And then I think the use of restorative practices. We're finding that if we can get kids thinking about their actions and talking about it and processing it, it just leads to
063greater success and more supportive climates. The continuum of integrated supports. Again, it happens across all levels. So how do we make SEL happen at the problem solving process? So if a student is struggling and we're learning how to meet their needs, what does that look like? So Somerset's been planning. their multi-tiered systems of support process and building it, expanding on it, and hoping to move that to other buildings. We are adding some additional work at our elementary level for like a tier two support. So when a student is struggling in the kind of core instruction and maybe needed another dose or another dip of some support, our counselors provide that. Character Strong has some curriculum that we've also purchased. give them another level of support. And then the work with our ninth graders, the building
064assets, reducing risk, the bar process has been a great way to catch kids on that early end and give them what they need. Building authentic family partnerships. You're going to see a little peek at a one-pager that we've built. We're looking at ways how do we build more partnerships in the work with our families. So communication, training, offering opportunities to support families, and that is a goal this year is to get some more resources out to our families. Community partnerships. You've heard me speak here before about some of our partners. So we have our 360 community family support workers. We have mental health provided both by Ellie Mental Health and ACP, Associated Clinic of Psychology. I'm going to do some training with them so that they're hearing the same language. And it's not like, oh,
065and now you go to mental health. We want the systems to be aligned. So we'll do some training with them this year so that they are aware of our work in SEL. And finally, our systems for continuous support. Again, as I shared, we work really closely as a department. I think as Kerry Jo and Peter Mao and I meet with our teams, this comes up on a regular basis. How does this fit with equity? How does this fit with SEL? How are we making sure that we're thinking about those things with all the decisions that we're making? And then we're going to still keep working on what are our annual measures. We've done some surveys the last couple years and just looking at ways to take that data and tweak it and find more relevant
066data that can help drive our practices. That's the ten items. So that was a lot. I'll just pass it over to Peter. Oh, here's the sneak peek. We talked last year about building a one pager that would really highlight what happens at each grade level in social emotional learning. So the goal is to have those ready for K-8 this fall, ready to go out. I've got the drafts of K through 4 this week. It's a one pager that would be helpful for a classroom teacher. It would also be helpful for a parent. I think if I saw this and knew that this is what my kindergartner was working on, those could be some of the same things that I can be doing in my home. So that's the goal with those. And with that, I'll
067pass it over to Peter. Thank you, Sarah. As I was listening to Sarah, I have one bullet here on this next slide. You can forward one. That third one talks about how specifically the implementation targets in this focus area are split up, but I think it's worth noting that this is a long list of a whole variety of projects, and as staff and families will experience different ones in different ways. the work as as you see noted here many are district office led and some need site support and in this particular list sites are only fully responsible for one and you could see similar types of spreads of responsibilities so i don't want to you to get in into your head that these are all new things that we're expecting our teachers to do in
068in one year it's a whole variety of people that are responsible for it and they are our staff are responsible for different ones in different levels just just to note that um So the structure of the implementation targets in the equity focus area is really based on the policy that you all passed already. So you passed a policy that is Equity Policy 106, and it has seven commitments. Expectations for us to make advances to creating a more inclusive and equitable school district in seven areas. And those are the seven areas that we have committed to establishing implementation targets each year. It's based on input from our equity advisory, which is a broad cross-section of the people in our district, from students to families to staff members, trying to be as representative as we can of
069our population. And the admin team as well gave feedback. And then it was further refined in another round of feedback after the admin team gave feedback by our equity advisory. I'll skip the next one because I've already touched on it. And I think every single one of us in each of our presentations for the three focus areas would say, well, this one's under the equity focus area in name, but it really reflects some college and career work or some social emotional work and vice versa for all of the other areas. So having said that, this is trying to summarize everything I'm gonna get to in the next five minutes is our equity elevator speech for this particular area. So I will read this aloud. Our equity implementation targets reflect the desire of our community through
070the strategic framework, which prioritizes creating equitable systems and supports. They align to the school board's equity commitments outlined in policy. Further, the targets were developed in collaboration with the equity advisory, including strong student voice. The targets reflect where our school district wants to move forward in making our schools more equitable, inclusive and welcoming for all. Together we thrive when we all belong. So memorize that and share it wherever you go. All right, so now let's get into the seven focus areas, first being staff quality and diversity. So we have a host of implementations under that, which includes implementing supporting Native American students' professional development for all of our licensed staff. We also are offering staff opportunities to learn a new language in a couple of varieties. And we've set aside some budgetary funds to support
071that and some staff time to support that. We are updating the school district 197 teacher evaluation rubric to include a cultural competence component. So the work is happening this year and it'll be implemented next year. As the board has heard me say through a variety of updates, we have the opportunity this year because of some of the extra professional development days that our teachers are taking for the science of reading that also gives us professional development with other staff members in other areas and we're focusing a good chunk of that on equity training for our non-licensed staff we are providing training and for supporting our lgbtqia people to non-licensed staff as well as new teachers because that's a perennial thing that you have to consider is You've done all this training for all the staff
072that have been here, but how are you trying to encapsulate that as best as you can when new staff come on? So we're doing that in the two areas listed there. And then we are continuing to work on partnerships with historically black colleges and universities to increase recruitment and ideally hiring and retention of more staff of color. The second commitment that the board has established for the administration to work on is equitable family partnerships. So we are looking to have even more family representatives on our equity advisory. We want to increase the opportunities that we have like Parent Academy because they've been well appreciated and people just want more of them. And we have increased the number of cultural liaisons in our district by two more. Then we have equitable resource allocations. So this is
073really just looking under the hood of our finances. And are we spending money in a way that matches our equitable, the value statements that we've put in our policies? And that is going to be done through regular meetings with myself and the finance director. There he is. Hi, Jason. To analyze and increase the equitable allocations of budgets and resources. And then finally, oh, this is an interesting one. We have great financial assistance for activities fees, but people don't necessarily know about it. And they find out about it after they've already decided to register. And we believe that if we can just increase awareness around the financial assistance that we would provide, it might actually create more involvement in something that we know is. good for our students which is involvement in extracurricular activities the next
074component uh the next priority or should say commitment from the board is equitable curriculum instruction and assessment we've already discussed ma's work so i won't hit that again we won a grant which for Oh, we are awarded a grant. You won. No lottery ticket, I guess. But we wrote and were awarded a grant for native language course offerings and native language development in our schools. So we're excited to see where that can take us. Thank you to those people that helped write it. and others. Then provide resources. We also want to provide resources for our schools on look for is aligned with culturally responsive instruction. You heard Sarah mentioned something like this, right? So it's part of the system. I was on a tour of the Vikings, forgive me for this little detour, but I
075was on a tour of the Vikings in one of the facilities and one of the halls they have is the team over the year. and you'll see the team members and then you'll see the coaches in a different color, right? And over the years, more and more and more and more coaches in the system. And why do I bring that up? I bring that up because if you want your system to perform well, you need to be giving feedback to the people that are doing the critical work. and this is part of that how are we giving feedback and how are we equipping the people to give feedback it's not that we're hiring more and more and more people in those roles but we want those people to be well uh good at going in
076and taking a look at how people are playing the game if you will or how people are teaching the classrooms and good and provide solid feedback for what they're doing next update area is equitable school and classroom environment Here again, we've got a tool that was developed by the Equity Advisory for looking around, not only in classrooms, but also in hallways and other common areas of the school to see if we are achieving our goal of creating an equitable and inclusive environment in our schools. You heard from Noelle about the school menu options for religious dietary needs, and that is part of what we're going to implement this year. And then just more generally beyond religious dietary needs, just increasing the diversity of our cuisine offerings for school meals to be more reflective of the
077diversity of our student population. Then we have diverse classrooms and schools. And here we want to implement a plan to increase inclusion. I've been here, this is my eighth fall, and I realized that I had never been to an activities fair at the high school, the one that they have, and to see all the ways that they talk about the different activities. So I went, and it was great, and there was lots of... students showing all these wonderful activities that we have and the not necessarily mind-shattering idea was to have more of those so that's the plan is to have more of those so that students throughout the year are giving more opportunities to see the different types of ways that they could get involved give our two student representatives four more times to get
078people involved in speech so in order and our debates they can all come out to be part of it so that is part of the plan for this year and I have one more which is equitable student leadership and voice One of the things you actually you heard, I think, Patrick talking about knows is Noel, who talked about how Loray had talked to her, right, and said, this is the opportunity. We don't necessarily want to rely on friends telling friends about these student leadership experiences. So we want to increase the advertising in different ways that we can talk to people about where these opportunities are so that everybody knows and can put their hat in the ring, if you will, for what these opportunities may be in the future. We want to provide opportunities for
079students to share their stories so that we can publicly celebrate the diversity of backgrounds, cultures, ethnicities, and abilities in our student population. We want to increase the number of student ambassadors to Beyond Our Walls, the summit, and we want to update the student equity survey. And that is the sum of the implementation targets in focus area number two. But we're not done yet. No, not yet. We've got one more. There's more. So good evening, Chair Larson. You picked up that that's what you were going to do. Members of the board, our student reps, welcome. I'm here to talk a little bit about college and crew readiness, and I'll remind everyone and listening audience that this was a focus area in our previous strategic framework. So in my tenure in the district, this has been a
080focus area for us. So in this following the same sort of format so we have structured our implementation targets into four central categories of work that I'll talk about and Where these targets come from is from a whole lot of input that we gather throughout the entire year So we have a set of committees that always provide input that we've got board reps that sit on. So our curriculum advisory committee, our gifted and talented advisory committee, our student curriculum advisory committee, our career and technical education advisory committee. We're part of the Dakota County Perkins Consortium, which helps us with that CTE. uh funding we have post-secondary partners so colleges and universities technical schools we use curriculum review and we use um rely heavily on our high school admin team you'll see a lot of these
081actions continue to be focused at the high school we have branched out and included more activities at the middle level as well And these implementation targets are refined through feedback, through the curriculum team. I mean, really, it's a lot of Miles and I looking at that and gathering, here's what I heard from this group, here's what I heard. from that group and then meeting regularly with the high school administrative team to say what's tangible, what can we make work. Just like in the other areas as both Peter and Sarah mentioned, you'll see overlaps between our targets. You'll see things in the other targets that look like college and career readiness because they're never in their own silo and that's really really important to us in the work that we're doing. Feedback that we got from
082our principals was we need to understand what you're after. And so you heard earlier Peter read an elevator pitch. And so that's really something that we took to heart. And so I too am going to read this because this is what Miles and I have put together. So I want you to imagine. A graduating class where every senior is equipped not with just the diploma, but a wealth of experiences and achievements. At School District 197, we're dedicated to ensuring that every student walks across the stage not just with the knowledge, but with the tangible skills and connections that set them up for success. From college credits and certifications to hands-on internships, our students are primed for the future. But we don't stop there. We also emphasize the importance of giving back with volunteer opportunities ingrained
083in our curriculum, ensuring that each graduate leaves a positive impact on their community. Join us in shaping the leaders of tomorrow where education isn't just a path, but truly a transformative journey. I think that does a really good job of talking about the passion that Miles and I have for this area. I can't even tell you how proud I am of where we've come in the past 12 years. You won't just see it in the targets. You really have to walk in the halls and see the building and see the academic planning guide. But I would love to have had my children have the opportunities that Two Rivers offers. Truly from college credits to certifications to hands-on internships. And you'll see that next month in the annual, or later this month in the annual report
084when we talk about some of the amazing numbers in terms of the involvement, the certifications, the activities increase we've seen in participation. But we'll save that for next time. We've also set some really lofty overarching goals and we will start measuring these. So it's our goal by 2030 that every graduating Two Rivers student will have taken a course that bears college credit or has certifications. We're working really hard to make sure that the breadth of our college courses and certifications meets the needs of each student regardless of what services they may receive at school. We want each student to have had some sort of community service or volunteer hours or at least the opportunity for that and have had an opportunity to participate in some type of immersive experience, whether it was a college or
085career related field trip, an internship, a job shadow, a mentor or something like that. But that's our goal and what we're striving for in this area. So our four areas are core school instructional support, direct student supports, career and college readiness, and then career technical education pathways. So starting in the first, our goal is to expand and sustain our opportunities to improve student outcomes. We've had a really hard time trying to show where curriculum review fits in all of these focus areas. But we really have landed on, if you're going to be college and career ready, we need to make sure that our curriculum is meeting standards. I struggled to figure out where I was putting signs of reading and all that, but we're doing that too. One of our big things we're doing this
086year is supporting the implementation of the new middle school schedule. We're going to review and refine our approach to what's called the personalized learning plan in statute. But what that really is getting at is saying that students no later than grade nine need to be have a personal or personal learning plan that allows us to understand their progress and track towards graduation and what they're looking for after. We had a great plan pre-COVID. And then we had COVID and then some things happened and we added Warrior Seminar and some other things. And so we're going to spend this year digging into that and resetting some priorities and outcomes related to that. As Superintendent Olsen-Skog mentioned, we did, we were awarded a grant to offer a native language course. And so we'll begin the year planning
087for that with the hopes of having that in place for our native students in 25-26. And then we're working with the high school admin team to figure out ways to expand the opportunities for students to earn credit through an alternative learning program during the school day. Some of our students will leave and go to decals to recover credits because they're behind in credits and we're looking for ways to try to keep more of those students with us at Two Rivers. In the area of direct student supports, we are looking for ways to expand tutors. We will be writing another grant. Our student tutors that were part of our rigorous course grant that we've had the last two years has been fantastic. It's had a super positive outcome on our students that are in our rigorous
088courses in ninth and tenth grade, or AP Human Geography and AP Biology. We've got some ideas on how to expand that, and we've got a grant that might be able to help us get that off the ground. We're looking for a way to expand our bar program to at least one cohort in grade 10. The middle school schedule has this amazing thing called Flex. We're off to a great start at both middle schools. I met with both Principal Headey and Principal Corey today to talk about the first week I spent all day Friday over at Heritage connecting with staff, connecting with students to hear about how that's going. So we're really excited to see how Flex. how flex can support the day we are going to we're working on widening and diversifying our student focus
089group feedback particularly with the addition of a middle school curriculum advisory committee that we're hoping flex will allow us to add during the school day continuing to sustain and expand our strategies for providing our immersive experiences. We've got some great experiences for students in a number of our classes, whether they're field trips or internships or job shadowing. And then we are probably always going to leave this last bullet on because we're always looking for ways to get better around transitions and supporting our students as they move from pre-K to elementary, elementary to middle, and middle to high school. Our November day for our eighth graders last year was a huge success. It will be back. So eighth grade families, if you happen to be listening that Tuesday before Thanksgiving, all of our eighth graders will
090be coming to Two Rivers again. In the area of college and career readiness, I've already talked a little bit about this. We're going to be reviewing and refining our scope and sequence for students creating those personal learning plans beginning in ninth grade. And then we're super excited about the exciting new middle school electives. Our highest enrollment is in Teenager 101. And so we'll see, we'll be hearing about that when I come back to do an update in November in this area. I'm hoping to bring a couple of middle school elective teachers with me so you can hear from them how the experience is going. Then in the area of current technical education pathways, we're working, the work-based learning program is off and running. You might remember we started it last year. We're looking for ways
091to continue to expand that. It's providing some great opportunities for students that needed it. That's helping those students stay in school. We are really excited to be expanding our CAPS program and offering a course, hopefully for 25-26 in the area of agriculture. So more to come on that and that will be one of the updates we'll provide for you as well. And then we continue to look to add college credit bearing opportunities or industry certifications in each of our program areas in our career wheel. Believe it or not, we're already meeting this week to talk about 25, 26, and what some new courses might be at Two Rivers High School. And then potentially I hear some middle school teachers have some ideas about some additional electives they'd like to propose for the middle school. So
092with that, that's the end of my portion. I think I turn it back over for questions. Just a couple of things before the board gets into conversation. a view down the road and for a view in public in case you're wondering. So what is in front of the board for approval this evening is my goals, which do reference these implementation targets, but you'll have another shot to actually approve these implementation targets as part of the annual plan that will be presented for the... which will include all these implementation targets at the work session later in September, and then back for official approval at the first meeting in October. So just wanted the board to know that in terms of time to think about, digest, and talk about these implementation targets, you have at least two
093more opportunities for that before we are calling upon you to approve them. The only thing we're asking you to approve tonight is my goals, which... we'll talk about how they tag on to this and add a little bit more after the board has any conversation they want to have on this portion so we're not approving this this was for information and now we will ask you questions correct all right questions for anyone who spoke up come back up there go ahead morgan um can i give a comment on a question sure i really really appreciated the way that you talked about the intersection of equity and sel sarah i just thought that that was important and i i liked that viewpoint in listening to everything that you were saying because i think that um all
094three of these areas intersect so much and when we do things properly and with fidelity they are intersecting and they should be um my question was about the character strong in elementary school. And I was just wondering if that is the counselors at the elementary school pushing into classrooms or pulling out or both? Yeah, so we're starting initially with just the tier one. So it's a push in model. The counselors will be going into classrooms. I feel like some of them are eager and ready to jump in. They have been doing lessons like that for a while. They still have a scope and sequence that they've built. The character strong is going to just add another layer of resources and some additional supports for them. Hopefully further down the road there will be some Tier
0952, which could be a little bit of pullout. So for a student that maybe needs a little extra support and some friendship skills or recess self-management, they might do a little small group pullout. But right now, starting as a Tier 1 push in. Yep. I'm going to pile on to Morgan's comment, your comment at the beginning. I mean, i over the years watching the equity piece go into both of your presentations and how all three are just i don't know aligning together so nicely i mean there's just no siloing happening anymore and it's really delightful to see everybody working together and you mentioning each other's targets and your goals i love it all right sorry other go ahead tim um i like how your incorporating the sel and including getting into the parents i mean
096just that general awareness of how it all ties together is good a very specific and somewhat selfish ask that page one pager you had for kindergarten through eight and you said you're hoping this fall to have one in nine through twelve i would love it if ben cush could hand that to all the mentors if they're getting this type of information, a warrior seminar, and then all the mentors who, people like me, are not professional educators, but if you can see that and be given a little bit of guidance, yeah, this is how it all ties together. This is how it's going to be reflective when you do a job interview or how you telegraph. This is how I would interact with my fellow employees, especially if the employees were from a very diverse background,
097whatever, fill in the blanks. That would be, again, myself, if that's ready, tell Ben, give this to people, because that would let, it would serve the other, again, somewhat selfish purpose of any opportunity to tell people, this is some of the stuff that... It's not the read and write and arithmetic, but really important, powerful, and just useful life skills stuff that we're providing to our students. Yeah, I think for many years people called them soft skills, right? Like, what are your soft skills? Well, those are the real skills. Nothing wrong with a ninth grader knowing what an EQ is. Yep. No, that's good feedback. Well, I'll certainly follow up with Ben and start thinking about what that could look like. Anything else? Just a quick comment for me and then a couple of questions, so
098I'll pile on to the intersectionality and I really found myself honestly sort of geeking out over this over the weekend. I read it three times and the word that continued to come to mind is just very holistic approach to how we're thinking about our kids taking care of their mental emotional needs upfront preparing them for all the great work that you're doing and taking in the equity lens as well as we think about kids in SEL and I think about the cultural nuance that's involved with each of the kids and the things that they bring to school every day so i'm happy that you guys are thinking about that we're thinking about how do we plan for that um and you know my geekiness was thinking about the data can we use ai to create
099individualized sel plans and educational plans different day head in the clouds um some questions around activities so we talk about resources for activities. Does that include sporting events or is it just club activities and fees? We use activities as a global term to incorporate athletics, clubs, things that people would call activities, but as potential subset of the larger activities. So it's all encompassing. The research talks about involvement in any type of extracurricular group. I'm struggling not to say activity when I define activity. So is really helpful for students. It builds connection, it builds grounding, it builds a tie into real world applications of the things that they're learning in their classroom, teamwork. I mean, the list keeps going on. So it is our intent and desire to have as many students participating in extracurricular activities
100as we can in a global sense. I thought that was the answer. I just really wanted to call it out because I think it would be great for all kids to be able to go to a football game or a baseball game and have that sense of belonging. As it relates to culturally relevant meals, is that all schools, all levels? or is that just at the high school is there a plan to roll it down to middle schools and elementary if they're not there yet i would have mark fortman when uh speak to that more and i'm happy to have him include some of the information in the future board report and or board update but yes i mean we're not looking at just uh having meals for our high school students that that are
101culturally responsive it would i i would fully imagine that we're talking middle school and elementary as well okay it hit me because my now high schooler was saying that the food is so much better at high school than it is at middle school. So it sparked a whole thing at home the other day. Yes. So as I was reading through this, I was like, it'd be great if that was also in the middle schools and elementary schools. And I'll stop there because I know John has questions too. Go ahead, John. Thanks. I also hear that the food in middle school is just so superior to elementary school, too. No. I don't know if that's true. Number one, I really like the elevator pitches. So I feel like that is, there's a lot here, and there's
102a lot of educational, both jargon, but also technical language that is not always accessible to the public. But I feel like the elevator pitches really sort of bring it down to a more concrete level that I think is, you're demonstrating some inclusive behaviors there. So I just want to really appreciate that. I think that's fantastic. It helps me even, it helps me too. The SEL work, I also feel like. We've heard stories about attendance as a challenge, both in the state, but also locally as well, too. And so, like, and I think it's not just for that first area, but each of the subsequent areas. Like, when I see the goals and the strategies that you talk about, I also immediately think and hear, oh, that's likely going to result in hopefully more students feeling
103a sense of belonging. feeling included feeling like there are opportunities for them that are individualized for them so i i just want to highlight i see a real clear connection there because i think attendance is an ongoing challenge it gets a lot of attention but i see that embedded everywhere and that's thank you I don't want to go a second time if somebody else wants to go first or has something, but I did have a... Okay, Byron can go first. First of all, thank you, all three of you, for the report. I really like the way it was laid out, and maybe it's just me, but it's the way I am, that we've got our three focus areas. One of them has ten components. One has seven components. One has four. And it's like it's
104easy to explain it to somebody else because it's just... laid out so well and the other thing that i really in listening to all three of you i'm gonna take a little background from my growing up on a farm and i really appreciate that we don't have three silos we put all the hay in the hay barn and it's all working together and it's for everyone so thank you the content is is fantastic where we're going is such a wonderful direction i've been here as long if not longer and i it's so exciting to see that we're the progress that we're making it takes time but we're but we're doing it and it's a lot different than it was 10 years ago thank you okay um First, this elevator pitch, Carrie, like I could see
105it. I could see the classroom. It was a video in my head, so I'm sorry, Peter. No, it's better. This was a really good one. Clearly I need to build one. I think that it does a really great job telling our story. I did have a question about that equity tool and the look-fors that was mentioned. I don't know what page it's on. Just wondering if that is something that is... the intent is to use it in all of the spaces in the district like not just classrooms school offices district office any space that anyone enters and also if that's something that we could just take a peek at also so we know what's on there Yes and yes. Okay, thank you. Good answer. Yeah, the look fors too, I mean, both equity and SEL
106talked about it. So we use the CASL look fors, the indicator look fors, and we use the ready for rigor by Isaretta Hammond framework and built the look fors based on those two pieces. So Kevin and I... and others kind of worked on building those together. So kind of two different tools, classroom walkthroughs, but they could be used really anywhere. We're looking for environment. We're looking for connections. Thank you. And I think you, Morgan, may have been referencing there's a couple of tools, but this particular tool that Equity Advisory developed is intended to be used in many spaces throughout buildings. Thank you. And you'll see that in the tool when it's shared. And for the record, you're allowed to ask questions too, but sometimes you have to like wave your arms, if I remember, to
107look over there. Any other questions or comments? Otherwise, we'll just say thank you. Oh, good. Patrick, go ahead. I just wanted to make a quick comment and then a question. First, as a student with an IEP, I find it amazing to see that my district is, you know, making such a conscious effort at, you know, providing so many students like me with different opportunities and different ways to enhance their instruction. So kudos for that. I did just wanted to ask a little bit more of a, I guess, a clarifying question on the... SEL instruction, there was mention of like added curriculum. How would that affect kind of just like a SMARC notes summary of how that would affect, you know, different students at all levels pre-K to? you know, high school. I can take that.
108Oh, go for it. So at elementary, our counselors already provide lessons in classrooms. And so we're supplementing the curriculum that they're using by purchasing character strong. So they're still going to provide lessons, but these are aligned to that framework. And if they're not using character strong, then the idea is that what they were using is in alignment with our SEL standards. At the middle school, in fifth and sixth grade, we added health and wellness as part of the new schedule. It replaced a course called digital citizenship, but it also increased in time. And so students in fifth and sixth grade are, it's a whole brand new curriculum they get for an entire semester. All students participate in that regardless of what their services are. I think I scheduled with all the heritage kids in that.
109And then in seventh and eighth grade, all students take health as part of their Phi Ed class. And so they've aligned that health curriculum to also align to the SEL standards. So that's where we make sure that SEL is intentionally planned for every student fifth through eighth grade. We'll move next in future years to saying how do all teachers help support. At the high school, it's in. the health curriculum and it's in Warrior Seminar or it's in AP Human Geo in Richmond if you're not taking Warrior Seminar or it's in AVID. And then what Director Lean talked about in terms of the collaborative teamwork is the high school teachers are really looking at a specific competency in each. six-week time frame and saying how can I help support this and what I do on a
110daily basis with students and so it should just intent it should just intentionally feel like part of the lesson so in terms of a student where you're gonna see something new is if you're a fifth or sixth grader in that health and wellness class but you won't know it's any different because you didn't know that class didn't exist before and then it's just new curriculum and seven and eight thank you mm-hmm all right well thank you now we'll let Peter Connect the dots sure well and just one more reminder for the board and for public So next steps for all of that you just heard is that it'll get encapsulated into our annual plan And then so at the next meeting, if people are interested, we'll go through the annual plan, which will include that
111along with a few other things. And then our annual report, which is the look back on what targets we set last year and how those all worked out and how that led into this year. And then in the... what would typically be the listening session before our october session that's where we'll have the opportunity for the public to give input on this annual plan that we have coming up So with that, I don't have a presentation for it. It's in your packet. I'll read it aloud in case people are watching at home and want to hear them. My goals that I'm asking for the board's approval for the upcoming year, goal one is as it has been in the past because the specifics are enumerated in the annual plan, but it's the superintendent will oversee
112the implementation of operational plans in support of the strategic plan with parts A, B, and C. being the three focus areas that you just heard so in addition to all that you just heard i have a couple that i'm asking for your approval and setting my goals one is that i want to increase staff engagement and feedback through one-on-one interviews i started this work at the tail end of last year with our staff who had reached milestones in terms of years of service for the district and i really enjoyed it It gave me the opportunity to not only get to know our staff on a personal and professional level but also to Just get one opportunity with each individual person regardless of role. We're not just talking Teachers we're talking everybody in every role and
113and sit down with them individually and it's my goal to have those types of conversations with one-on-one with each member of our staff within four to six years. So I believe that's going to take me about 150 to 200 interviews per year during that period and I will enjoy every minute of it. And then my last goal is to increase alignment and coordination among and between district and site leaders. We've been working really hard and I want to continue that work with an explicit focus in my goal on how do we make the team of leaders in this district as aligned and mutually supportive and... feedback cycles between each other and new professional development to up their skills and up their game in the important work that they do. So that's the focus that I
114want to have. So some specific examples is the principal support framework, continuing and deepening the implementation of that, as well as increasing feedback cycles between district, between and among district and site leaders. and those are my proposed goals oh i guess i should also provide as feedback that these goals were presented to the results committee as is detailed in the superintendent evaluation plan and in accordance with that they did provide some feedback which i modified my goals based on and these goals are coming with their recommendation for approval as well okay thank you If I can get a motion to approve the goals. Thank you, Byron. As chair of the results committee, I will make a motion to approve the goals. Delightful. Can I get a second? Oh, Morgan, thank you. Any discussion or questions
115for our superintendent? I'm just thinking 150 to 200 interviews sounds like a lot. He insists he will enjoy it. Every minute. Chair Larson, this is a scaled back larger timeline than he initially had. Good job, committee, that helped him scale back. Any other questions or comments? Otherwise, let's vote. All those in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye. Those opposed, that item passes. Good luck to you. Are there activities for me to read about before we... I feel like I could name about 20 off the top of my head. So, wonderful. This Saturday is the big day, Warrior Rally from 11 to 1, high school parking lot. No, district office parking lot. September 18th, there's the, oh boy, 2SLGBTQIA plus parent guardian meeting. September 23rd is a school board meeting at the district office, our next
116one. September 27th is the Homecoming Parade, which, yes, some of your friendly school board members will be in, and a game. On the 28th is the Warrior 5K, which I think many of us will also be in. Not running, maybe, so much. Maybe running? Oh, no. And October 4th, no school for professional development. September will be busy. Make sure you get out and attend some events because they're all a lot of fun. And with that, I accept a motion to adjourn. So moved. Thank you, Marcus. Second by Tim. All those in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye. Those opposed, that item passes. We're adjourned. Thank you, everybody.