001last meeting. Just make sure so fast. No, I tell them I told you it was I mean I know but right. All right. Thank you. Good evening everybody and welcome to tonight's regular board meeting for Monday, May 12, 2025. This time I'll call this meeting to order. We have met compliance with official notifications. Roll call, please. Katherine Gman here. Laura Gapsky here. Nick Olson here. Sir Schubber McCone here. Shelley Men here. President Steve Olsson here. Nick Schumacher here. Can we all please rise 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 right behind that. This meeting is a meeting of the board of education held in public for
002the purpose of conducting the school district's business and is not to be considered a public community meeting. There is a time for comments by members of the public during the meeting as indicated on the agenda. Members of the public wishing to address the board on any of the topics included on tonight's agenda may do so by signing up on the public comment signup sheet by the entrance prior to the start of the meeting. The board requests refraining from making any comments involving personally identifiable information about students, staff, or administration. Comments should be respectful, focused on the items being considered by the board, and will be restricted to three minutes in length. Action taken at today's meeting will be final approval unless otherwise noted. Do we have any members of the public wishing to speak? No.
003Then we shall move on to our report from our superintendent. Amy, you want to just take these one by one then? Sure, I can take them. So, our firstformational item is our student representative at her last meeting representing our students population. Congratulations on your graduation coming up. Thank you. All right. All right. Um I guess I'll start with this past week at the high school. It was kind of a busy one. Um well just this past weekend theater performed um their spring musical. It was High School Musical and I've heard great things from that. Um just last Wednesday there was Spartan Fiesta where the art department displayed their ceramic photography art projects that were created by students. And then also that same Wednesday Spartan Manufacturing had their open house with raffles, tours, demos, food, things
004like that. And then also last week was spring fling with spirit days and and an assembly. Um it was also a staff appreciation and student council um with some help from PTO appreciated the teachers with our annual staff breakfast. Um otherwise 9th grade trans transition happened at the high school for incoming freshmen. Um we had pro prom and grand march which was meet me at midnight theme. It was successful and a good time. Um, I just wanted to mention that Paulo Pagnucci was selected as the WIAA scholar athlete to represent the high school. Um, there were some state trips from FBLA, the speech team and solo and ensemble. Um, Interact Club hosted a personal hygiene drive through the month of April. And then, um, there are some fundraiser games. So Hudson Helenius had his senior
005project for baseball which was strike strikeout cancer. Um last Friday soccer had their kickout cancer game for breast cancer awareness. And then softball has an upcoming um battle for the Bong Center on May 19th which is Paige Johnson and Ariana Roal Arts Senior Project. Um there's some upcoming band and choir concerts later this month. Last week and this week, AP exams were taking place. Um, this Thursday there's a wellness and mental health awareness night. Um, this Wednesday is scholarship night. Next Wednesday is honors night. And then graduation, all night grad party, end of the year. That is a lot of things. It is. Taylor, may I uh may I ask about the hygiene drive? Um where was that for the high school or the district or somewhere else? Um that was for the or where
006the stuff went. I'm not sure actually. Yeah. Um I don't know. They do it every April I think for the past couple ones. It's called power to the shower and they collect hygiene but I'm not really sure if it's okay. Wonderful. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks Taylor. Okay. Well, we always try to have students in front of us as often as possible. So, tonight I'm going to pass it um to our orchestra program at the high school. Hi. Hi, Amy. Thank you. I'm Amy Ankers. I'm the orchestra director at the high school and uh Tim Dy. I'm the choir director at high school. Yes. Dan Eaton couldn't be here. He's our band director. Um, but we're really excited to be here tonight to recognize four Superior High School Music students that earned spots in the
007WSMA State Honors Project Ensembles. So, um, if we go Okay, just the button here. Okay. All right. Um, so it the WSME State Honors Project uh started in 1967. It provides musically accomplished students with an opportunity to rehearse and perform with the nation's finest conductors in a professional, highly disciplined setting. Selected through a rigorous audition process, students are challenged to perform at their musical best throughout the short rehearsal period which culminates with a performance in October in conjun in conjunction with the Wisconsin music conference held in Madison each year. For many of these young musicians, the WSMA State Honors Music Project offers the experience of a lifetime, creating friendships, memories, and skills they take with them in whatever path they choose. This year, we have four SHs music students invited to be in the WSMA
008High School State Honors Ensembles. Almost 1500 students from across the state of Wisconsin auditioned for 430 positions in five different ensembles. It's very competitive and our students spent a lot of time preparing for their auditions. This is an incredible honor that makes these students some of the finest musicians in our state. So, we have Dylan Blake. Still Dylan wasn't able to be here tonight. He is ill. Um, he's a junior this year. He uh earned a spot in the state honors orchestra on violin. And then we have Raven Pugshan. We want to come up Raven. Raven's here. David's in the 10th grade this year and he earned a spot in the state honors orchestra on cello. Well done. Congratulations. Zach is in grade 11. He's a junior and he earned a spot in the uh
009state honors mixed choir singing tether. And we have Nick Bra. Nick is a sophomore, grade 10 senior in a spot in the uh state honors jazz ensemble on trumpet. This will be Nick's second year in the jazz ensemble. Way to go. Thank you very much. Congratulations to all of you for your hard work. Thanks for Did we already get a photo or is that bad? Dylan's not here, but we could cool. Good. Thanks, David. Okay. And then my lastformational item is Bryant Elementary uh with an update. So, you have some folks here to help you. Very important people. Yes. Thanks for having us. Um congratulations to the two of you. Excellent job. great additions to our board. I have with me tonight um two people I brought some people that could speak really well to
010our data and I want to celebrate them as well because a lot of it has a lot to do with their work inside of our school. Also our teachers and our overall community inside the building. But I brought Matt Caspac. He is our counselor. Uh he's going to talk a little bit about some of the behavior data and things that we've been seeing and some changes. And I brought Kelly Join who is our EMLSS interventionist at our school who works with a whole bunch of kids and teachers uh directly collaborating throughout the years. So they'll be speaking at a couple of moments throughout and um provide you with some really interesting stuff. So let's start out with uh just some schoolwide celebrations I just want to briefly touch on and they're going to touch on
011a couple. Um PBIS this year has been absolutely amazing. Um James Maluke uh is uh our leader currently and Mr. Caspac is going to be our leader next year. So James is stepping down and and Matt is going to be taking over. Um it's a great transition. Matt's been working with the PBIS team here at the district level for the entire year and he's been on our team ever since he came aboard three years ago. Um this year we had something new started by our fifth grade teachers Penny Hudson and Stacy Berfield. We actually got some fifth grade ambassadors. um they join us at every PBIS meeting and they kind of tell us what we should be doing differently. Um some cool things that we uh are adding um we have an end of the
012year celebration. They wanted a photo booth. So between the PTO um our PBIS team we put together and obviously um sounds unlimited. Uh Corey's going to bring the photo booth over and just something fun to add. They also are picking out um our craft activity and our rotations at the end of the year. So they're getting involved and it was our first year. So trial run and so far so good. So Rean u Lorbach Lurbach in fifth grade and Naa Rockward are two fifth grade ambassadors. So um and they are chosen by their peers after they give a presentation in their fifth grade class. So it was in the fall and it was kind of like a student government project with the elections. Our fifth grade teachers thought it would be really good for them
013to present and and have ideas and they were elected by their classes. So, that's how they got to be student ambassadors. And then we uh we just I think really focus on our relationships, but I'll let Matt kind of talk about that. Uh referral data. Matt's going to drill on on that as well. Lay down. You're going to be shocked at how much um improvement we've made in that category. I'm going to celebrate some student and community activities here in a second with some cool pictures. And then Kelly is going to kind of focus on our academic data and what we're doing in our in our classrooms throughout the school. Mult anyway. Yes. Okay, I can speak to that one. It's an exclamation point because we took seconds in the tugle board for the first
014time. I think it had a lot to do with the bracket we were in. Um, but it was a huge celebration for us. our fifth grade crossing guards over there. Right now, they're actually mentoring our fourth graders. Yay. So, we have fourth grade and fifth grade mixed on our um crossings. Um Sarah Burkquist, our family engagement coordinator, kind of heads that up. Uh we just had a huge celebration for all of them. So, it's awesome. They do a great job. That picture on the right is our first grade. Um they dress up for our 100 days of school. Um we have some kind of cool costumes. Um some of our teachers come looking like they're 100 years old. It's kind of funny. Then they're not not even close. This is a problem we've not had
015before. Um well, my secretary pulled these pictures off Facebook, so I'm guessing that might have something to do with it. See it when we're just in the regular um slides. So, I wonder if I'd hit escape and then I can just scroll through them if you want me to to see. Um if you want to. Let's see. I don't want to take up too much time. See, it's showing on my personal computer. Let's refresh the page. Whoa. Yeah, there we go. Right. A little bit distorted, but so our back to school assemblies um part of our PBIS initiative. Every month we meet and we celebrate and we talk about a new secondstep mission. And uh this particular picture on the right um sometimes we'll do a different group that presents to the entire building. So
016we're all sitting in the gym and our third grade got up and they presented honesty. So each kid you'll see is holding a piece of paper and the microphone go microphone goes down the line and they came up with the sentence and the expression as to how we could show honesty in our school. Um so it's super awesome. Um James kind of puts together all of them but we have several grade levels. Matt did a cool video one one week or one month and um so every year we focus on a second step um characteristic and um it's it's pretty awesome. this week, this month is perseverance. Uh, and then that's our back to school assembly. We finish every assembly with the school song. It's great. Every kid knows it by heart now. I feel
017like I'm at a Spartan football game singing the school song. Um, and the kids are smiling when they're singing. It's the best thing ever. Oops. And then this was an Earth celebration day. We had some PTO involvement, family engagement coordinator, and then all of our all of our uh grade levels went outside with their buddies um and cleaned up our community area. Some went to Webster Park and cleaned up that area. Um Mike Gable uh gave us some equip uh gloves and pickers and we got garbage bags and we went and we picked up we even arranged to get uh an extra dumpster run. Um and it didn't cost us more than like 23 bucks. always thinking budget here. And um and then our kids on the bottom right, they went on a a parade
018around town that's right on Tower Avenue. So we had pretty much every class out there and they were chanting uh we love the earth and um they had posters that they made and everybody comes by and hops. So it's just a great celebration uh good day for us. So those are some of the events that we're doing and then I am going to turn it over to Matt to celebrate that. Okay. So this is showing our behavior referral data over the last three years. Blue the major referrals and red and minors. So as you can see the two prior years to this one we had over 400 referrals total in our building. And I believe we pulled the numbers from this year just last week. Right. Last Thursday. Last Thursday. And so you can see
019the numbers are down significantly. Um, so it's super exciting for us and not only do the numbers show it, but you can feel it in the building and it just feels a lot better. Um, and I think some of the biggest things that helped us make this improvement. We restructured our recess structure where I am outside for recess as well as our physical education teacher and with other pair of professionals usually two per grade level. Um, and just it really helps to have all of that extra supervision as well as the ability to solve a lot of problems outside there in the moment because when we looked at the referrals, so many of them would happen outside during that unstructured time at recess. And so having more bodies, having those people who are good at
020those problem solving skills, it's made that significantly less. And it's been super fun. And I think it's also really helpful for relationship building. And the better relationships we have our students, it makes our job easier to teach them and work with them and help them become successful adults someday. And so that part is also really fun for me because it's fun. You get to watch them even though it's hard sometimes, but it's super exciting. Um, another thing that also helped was we restructured our PLC's where Jason and I meet with each grade level and we uh kind of hone in on what's going on. We talk about the students in each class and what the needs are and being able to identify what we can do to support them, whether it's working in a counselor
021group with me or reading interventions or whatever the case may be. Okay, I'm going to flip this. I don't know if I'll do it right. Okay. All right. And then this one shows just the number of students and how many referrals they have. So you can see our building was pretty good where most students have zero and they and they don't have any behavior referrals. Um but the last two years you could see there was a good chunk handful of students with either one or two to five behavior incidents as well as six plus. But this year we can see that we kind are shifting and moving that needle even farther and farther towards students not having any behavior referrals or having less than they have. That's also super exciting when you can see the
022growth in those students, especially the ones who maybe have had a lot. Um, and kind of what Jason mentioned too, I think just the overall buyin from all of our staff top down and just everybody being on the same page and spreading that same message of where respect belong and all of our PBIS initiatives through the monthly assemblies and the whole resource recess structure. So, it's been really fun to see the change this year compared to the last two especially. So, thank you. Uh, just to add on to that, um, I I know Amy talked about it when we were doing our scheduling and stuff, but we have like our specialist teachers. Um, Rod Amos, our PE teacher, Lynn Psky, my music our music teacher, and Carrie Gordon, our art teacher. Lynn and Carrie also
023had like two sections, but declining enrollment, it was a lot more. They have a little they have a few extra sections in their schedule, but because we've kept them full-time. They kept them full-time and they're in our building. I mean, because it would have been a waste to send him away for 45 minutes. Um, but bottom line, I got I have Lynn in my lunchroom two days a week and I have Carrie in my lunchroom two days a week. And those two ladies and and those two come out to the front of the building and they're chatting the kids as they're walking in in the mornings before their first class. But in the in the lunchroom, they're going to kids and it's it's wonderful. They're going to kids who maybe aren't sitting by anybody or
024just having a tough day and they'll sit down and they'll chat with them. I'm in there during lunch doing the exact same thing. My custodial staff is doing the exact same thing. They run a table of honor and they serve the kids. So, those kids get to eat first. They get served by my custodial staff. Uh it's just a really awesome thing. And then on top of that, our teachers are doing a phenomenal job of mitigating everything. We're trying to mitigate things coming in from recess and they're doing a great job doing it going to these unstructured environments. So, I think like Matt said, total buy in and it's a lot of fun. Jason, when do when when do you get the chance to share with your staff this information? Are you going to have
025a meeting towards the end of the year and show them this the same information? Wednesday. Wednesday. Good. Wednesday is our celebration and I'm going to have these two kind of stand up and talk at our staff meeting, but this is where they're going to see all that. A lot of them already know that, but it's it's phenomenal. Um and we're just having a a really good time with it. Can I ask a quick question? Yeah. Have you seen maybe you know or don't know um the kids mitigating issues themselves over the course of the year? I mean the modeling of that with you guys out there. I'm just curious to curious to know if they've been doing it themselves more and more. Yeah. Yeah. You can you can see the difference even in the lower
026grades in kindergarten and first grade. You can see they're connecting some of those skills that they're learning either from watching us model it or uh they're in with counselor time with me where we're talking about all of those skills. Every student receives that in the tier one instruction. Um so yes, you can you can see them applying the skills. Awesome. And when we meet every 3 weeks with our PLC's, Matt and I with our be behavior and attendance PL it's seal group and then Kelly and our sped team meets with the teach two two groups and then two groups are on their own. So it's a three-week rotation. We are setting up his groups. So his schedule is jam-packed start to finish every day. So like he'll be meeting with um the teachers decide when
027Mr. K will pull kids from their grade level and meet with them to work on conflict resolution um executive functioning. What else? Anything. So, it's been awesome. In addition, um Community Health Center is in our building once a week now on Thursdays providing therapy to um students whose parents have already done the intake meeting and they wanted their kids to be able to talk to somebody during the week at school. Sure. So, it's it's great. Um, our academic goal this year was 83% of our students um in K5 will score at or above the FastBridge low-risk benchmark um which is above the 40th percentile on the early reading composite and then the A reading um FastBridge assessments. Obviously, ACT 20 threw a little kink in the ointment and we're doing a little bit different with
028our uh our younger groups with Ames Web. Kelly's going to talk to this because she's a magician when it comes to the data and I would not do a great job. Not anywhere near what she's going to do, but I just want to touch on just a couple of things. We talked about a few of these already. The action steps we're taking, the PLC documentation tool that we all use for accountability, our structure of meetings has been working really well. Um, we've done some learning and some texts throughout the year on best instructional strategies to use for students who are struggling in reading. Um, and then obviously we are just clarifying our our adult roles in the building. Our paraprofessionals have time to meet with teachers and kind of decide what interventions they're going to
029provide or while they're working with students who are maybe on IEPs. And then of course uh Kelly fits in uh hugely and you'll see that here when she starts talking. I just wanted to touch on our forward data even though we don't have it yet. It's coming at the end of May, which is like the earliest ever in the history of forward data, which is going to be great. But you'll see our green line is our are our students meeting or advanced on the ELA portion of the forward test. You can see in 21 22 22 23 and then um 23 24 our lines going green line to go up and you want the red line to go down, right? Yep. We want the red line to go down and the green line to go
030up. Winning. Yes. Um and then uh this is our math data. Obviously our math data is something that we are talking about in our SLT group coming up here in the next couple of weeks. Um it's probably going to be on our agenda, our CIP for next year. Crystal talked about it last week, too. Yeah. Yeah. I think districtwide, I mean, our focus has been on ELA and we're making things happen, but um we know that we need to all hands on deck when it comes to math. All right, this is Joel. Um I am really excited to talk about um the growth that our students have been making. So this first slide shows our progress over the past three years. Um as Jason said earlier when we set our CIP goal, our goal is
031for um in the spring of this year for all of the students or for 83% of the students to be at or above that um 40th percentile to meet that benchmark. The data that you're looking at right now is a little bit more muddied because we are right in the middle of our fastbridge testing window. So, some of the grade levels have taken their um spring assessments, some have not. So, if you look at the blue bar, um that was this the result from spring of 23. Last year, we made more progress. We went up to 73% there in spring of 24. Right now, with our most current data for literacy, we are at 74%. But that is only um having two grade levels having having taken that fast bridge and having that reporting. So
032and then for math you can see it as well. We only have first grade is the only one who has taken that spring assessment. So for the yellow bars from this year a lot of that data is from our winter data and historically over the years we do see significant growth from winter to spring. So we're really hoping and we're optimistically thinking that that number should go up. Okay. call it. All right. So, this is the breakdown of where we are right now. You can see in kindergarten and first grade, those are the two grade levels that have completed their spring assessments. So, right now they are at 82 um% and 85%. So, that is really exciting. Um second through fifth grade, those were the testing results and the percentages from the winter um in
033which we said we are with the progress monitoring and everything we're seeing in our building, we're expecting those numbers to go up. some of the celebrations and things that I wanted just to touch base on is with the kindergarten first, second, and third being up there a little bit more. We've really really been working on um early intervention. So really catching those kids who have reading difficulties right away in kindergarten and starting targeted interventions and talking about how we can support our littlest learners because we know if we intervene early and we give them the support they need at that younger level we will not need to intervene as much as they get older. So so that is the celebration and we're hoping second third you know will go up there as well. Fourth and
034fifth grade are a little bit tricky. Fourth and fifth grade are those two grade levels that were um really affected by the co years as well. So, it's we have seen like the numbers are not where we want them to be, but we've been working really hard to pinpoint um those foundational skills that are lacking in the fourth and fifth grade. And I want to say our fourth grade teachers have been doing a phenomenal job this year. When we when those kids entered and we looked at our forward data, fast and our fastbridge data from last year, we noticed that there were pockets of foundational skills that were not strong that were affecting their phonics and fluency development. and they have put many different things in place within their classrooms um in addition to the
035tier one curriculum to really help strengthen that piece. So with this um with the fastbridge they take two assessments. The one that we are looking at now is the A-reading and that measure measures a student's broad reading abilities and they also take something called auto reading and auto reading in grades four and five measures automaticity with select reading skills including encoding and decoding and fourth grade we saw those numbers really increase from um the fall to the winter and a lot of those kids that were struggling with that fluency piece um we're really hoping to see that transfer over into the A reading because we know that kids have to be fluent in order to have strong comprehension skills. So, we're excited to see within the next two weeks what those numbers look like as
036well. And then you can see our math data as well. I know I deal more with the reading, but you can see um also especially like K1 with those early foundational skills, we're working really hard to make sure that those are strong and carry out through the grade level. So, um, this year we had act 20 and we had personal reading plans in place. This was brand new to us. Um, all of the students in grades K through three took an assessment through Ames web plus and it measured their um, fluency. So, they took one minute tests in kindergarten. Um, they did letter naming and um, letter sound fluency. And in grades 1 through three, they read passages one minute um one minute to see how many words correct per minute they could read. So
037in the winter, um there were there were 42 students who were flagged that were below that 25th percentile on the screener. From there, all of the kids that are flagged, we pull and we do um diagnostics to look at what foundational skills they may be missing or was it because this was a total two minutes. wasn't really an off day. So, of those kids in the winter, we put 37 of them on personal reading plans. A lot of them were really close and could go either way, but we wanted to air on the side of caution and make sure that we were communicating to parents really well and that they could see the um specific supports that their children were getting. Um, a celebration was that when we did this in the spring, we only
038had 33 of those students swagged. So, we um were able to exit eight students from personal reading plans and I believe we put two kindergarteners on them just because they knew their letters and sounds, but they weren't at the automaticity point. So, we wanted to make sure that we had those targeted interventions documented well, too. So, we had 31 reading sounds. So, then um I can just one more thing. Sorry. So, um, one of the things I really wanted just to mention though was because we're seeing really good results and one of the things that we are seeing is that strong collaboration in our building and that has been super critical. So, I've been teaching the district for 19 years and I feel like this is definitely the most cohesive as a staff we have
039been. Every single person in our building is working on helping that whole child and develop them and see how can we support them not only in reading but just in all aspects of their life which leads to that academic data too. Um teachers in our building are sharing students with each other at grade levels. They're sharing they're sharing um amongst other grade levels. It's just really cool to see everybody working to make sure that students don't fall through the cracks. Thank you. That's really cool. Thanks for sharing. Thank you. Thank you, Matt. I walked into a fourth grade classroom the other day to observe my teacher and I'm like, "This isn't your class and there was a smattering of kids from his class and some from another class and I'm like, because in the last
040nine weeks we as teams, we were like, what are we going to do for the last nine weeks to make the most difference? You know, how are we going to get the most bang for our buck?" And our teachers are very specific with their interventions. They like some things they're really good at. So, we put the kids that needed that with that teacher and they did an amazing job. So, awesome. It's been really fun uh across the board. We're using our adults the very best way we can. Challenges, state testing act 20 was new. Um it's not that it's a challenge, just we're testing a lot. I'm just going to be honest. I'm going to tell you that we're testing a lot. Um yep, agreed. Um we the best thing about our district is we
041are already doing all the interventions. We don't need personal reading plans in the city of Spir. We already have that in place. That's the most beautiful thing about what we had going. We had our fast bridge. We were getting data. We had our systems and our structures built into our day. We didn't need it. However, we're doing it. Um because we we need to. Um but it that's that's a challenge. Scheduling is it's not always my favorite part of the job. Um attendance. Um I'm going to show you something here in a second. It's a concern, but also a celebration. And then housing and community resources in our neck of the woods. Um I'm going to be honest. Um I I I spend a lot of time talking to the county um Carrie Hennessy here
042at the board office about many of our kids who are Mckin Vento and just trying to provide them with resources the best way we can. Um we have kids that are in less than fortunate situations and we just want to take care of them and make sure that they're in school every single day. Right. Um right here is a concern but also a celebration. Take a look at our chronically absent. Um, chronically absent in the state of Wisconsin is greater than 16 absences. And you'll see that we've dropped that number over the last three years from 15 to 12 to 10. But my favorite statistic, does this laser work right here? So you see these red and the yellow. Yeah. 11 plus basically red and yellow. We've shifted it. Yeah. Um, we are uh doing
043attendance postcards. All of our teachers have 20 attendance postcards. So the kids gone for a long time, they come back, we're like sending a postcard saying, "Hey, great job. Keep it up. Keep going." My secretary is um just a very integral portion of this. We used to have um uh Eva Gray used to be a part of our and Natalie Lein they would send us all these things and kind of do it for us and all I had to do is make a phone call and talk to the parents. Now we're doing it ourselves. So every Tuesday um Nicole Booker, myself, my secretary, we meet, we line up truency meetings, um and we're just communicating as often as possible. Um, but it's getting better and I think a lot of that has to do with
044our culture, our climate, the relationships that we're building with our kids in class. Like Kelly said, we're not just there for the academics. We're trying to build the whole person. Yeah. Um, so we're uh every day I kind of end my day with, you know, don't forget to be kind to one another. Uh, and that's what we're trying to do is just build that culture in the building. So long update. I'm sorry. It was a very good update. Had to bring these people needed to be here to talk because had a lot of good celebrations. Yes. So, thank thank you all. Excellent. Appreciate you all. Oh, I was going to ask is the Lake Superior Community Health Center. Is that exclusive to Bryant or There's a couple other schools that also I think all of
045our schools. Well, most most of our schools. I think Great Lakes for sure. Cooper. Yeah. Northern Lights. Yeah, I think I think they are in Oliver. We have one person that comes over. I hope we keep it. I really do. Y and they are continuing with our kids all summer. Yeah. So, they're transitioning from the school and providing the same care throughout the whole summer. So, it's great. Yeah. Thank you guys. Have a good night. Bye. You too. Okay. Cool. You want to take over the rest of my report? Sure. I'll take that from there. Thank you very much. Action items. Consideration of overnight field trip request from Michael Hart for 8th grade students to attend Washington DC and New York City during spring break 2027. Motion to approve. Second to approve the overnight field
046trip request. Can I add just a little bit to that, Steve? Yes. No, not Steve. Sorry. Um Mike did a nice job of getting back. He did a little bit of research to find out kind of how other EF districts have handled these different trips either um overseas or across the country. Um he did sort of an informal survey of people he's connected to, uh he said of the 27 other um coordinators that he talked to, 20 of them continue to have those go through the school board. He said some of them seven of them don't go through the school board. I told Steve, I I kind of prefer if we keep having these conversations at the board level. I just think for transparency and clarity knowing where our kids are going for these events
047I think is important. Um plus I think it's good to highlight that we give these kids lots of cool opportunities too. So that just be my recommendation. We keep bringing it forward. Was there any rationale for why the other seven don't or just Okay. Not really curious. Just says it didn't require board approval for their district. So Okay. Thank you. Bring back to us. There any further discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor signify by saying I. I. Opposed. Motion carries. Consideration of overnight field trip request from Leah Herman Gunderson for students in grades 9 through 12 to attend police in June of 2026. Motion to approve. Second. Second to approve the overnight field trip request for Leah Herman Gunderson. Is there any further discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor signify by saying I.
048I. opposed. Motion carries. Just a a comment a little bit on to follow up Amy with what you're saying a little bit. I think it is probably the right thing to do that that we are approving these the transparency issue. our policy alone. Um I I after reading it when you know a little bit more um I know Sarah you had a a question about um do the athletic teams on an overnight have to have permission and stuff. Um that part of that policy I I'd like to take a little more look at that with the policy committee. um the athletic teams, at least the Hishian, and I I think I can speak from Ella having served in that position. Um you you build the schedule. Sometimes um the hockey schedule I build with Jason
049or we would have a a conference that we're in and you build your schedule and stuff and then all of a sudden here comes a a weekend trip or an overnight u you play on Friday night and Saturday night. um in place. And again, I can't speak for her on this, but um we al always had to have notification to parents of where they're going, where they were staying, how many coaches were there. Uh we had to do a list so where all the kids were in what room and stuff. So it was pretty structured um to what the way we did it. Now the the extra and co-curricular, that's where I always struggle and always did when I was a Uh what is the difference? It says in here that the athletics with the
050approval of the athletic director set their schedule. The co-curriculars in my mind are our mock trial model UN or DECA. Um they're part of our curriculum. They have to have certain uh uh permissions. No, not permissions. When when they have their regional or sectional or state and stuff, they too have to follow same procedure as the athletics. These other outside ones um were not as stringent as far as them providing us with room lists. I don't know if they always have a lot of overnights for those. They one day events too, right? So, I mean, just to take a look at it and see, you know, is it really saying what we we want it to say? And sir, I don't want to speak for you question you might have but no I was just
051I just wondered why athletics does not get a board approval for overnights was my main concern and my other concern is how many students are they taking or how many athletes are they taking versus how many adults are going with them. That's my other concern. That's I mean I wouldn't want to be responsible for 15 to 20 children on my own especially at the high school level. So I can't imagine uh coaches trying to juggle that on their own. The other conversation we've had separate from that process has been from a budget perspective um how many overnights are we funding and what does that look like? So just kind of taking a look at that in general. I think about going to state too, you know, as a I was a student and then I
052was a coach um for cheerleading for hockey, you know, state and I mean the policy sort of talks about the state aspect, but there are procedural and budget implications for that as well. Yeah, I think it would be a good idea to look over it. I agree with Steve that it it's it it feels very vague and it's not very descriptive. I guess be helpful to get a couple of the district examples. Yes. Yeah. Very good recommendation. The state tournament for instance, I mean, first of all, you you get um information from the WIA of what you will be doing as a school when you're attending. They're very prescriptive and everything. And then we had to follow up with our own letter to our parents and everything and showing them a very detailed uh chronological
053order of each day. And so it it's time to review it, I think, a little bit for sure. Says I think it was last reviewed in 23, but that might have just been for like minor changes, I think. Isn't that what it says on there, Steve? Yes. Yeah. But that might not have been for content. It might have been more for minor changes. Right. And I want to think about per pupil. So like I was responsible for like 10 students, right? And then Kayn was responsible for how many hockey kids there were. And in that was their assistant coaches and then exactly the athletic director, the principal, and if the principal didn't go, he had to have he or she had to have another designate in their place and stuff. So Mhm. So for sports
054though, um for an example, uh parents were told to stay at a different hotel than where the students are and and maybe that's some of the policy stuff um that I'd just be interested in looking more at. And I'd like to involve coaches and Ella and for sure. Yes, definitely. All right. So sidetracked there first. Thanks, Sarah. That's good question. Next are board committee reports. Teaching and learning informationational items. Hello Jan. How are you? I heard you are a little ill. Are you okay? You ready to go? You okay? Okay. I'm all right. Um been coughing a little bit over there. Um I have quite a few updates, but I wanted So that's why I wanted to be here tonight to share some things that are happening. um kindergarten transition. We um every year we
055have kindergarten transition night um in April or May. Uh we had our night on April 29th at every one of our elementary schools on the same night. Um it was a 4 to 6 p.m. evening. It was um kind of a openhouse style. So we always do a scavenger hunt um and some activities that kids and families can participate in. teachers are always there, kindergarten teachers, um principles, 4K teachers. It's a really um it's a nice evening. Um so I was able to bounce around to all the schools and um yeah, it was it was a a great event. The signing day pictures were the big pencils kindergarten. I love that. 20 38 I think it was. Right. David, did you do that? No, I think was it you or was it? Oh, I thought
056it was the principal. Oh, it was so cute. Yeah, I got to go with Bryant. Yeah. Well, I I got a couple. Some principles got some, but yeah, every school did it a little differently, but but yeah, we had a signing day component added on, so it was it was fun. Um, and then there's a meet and greet opportunity for our incoming kindergarten families, uh, the first day of school. So, that's also part of our kindergarten transition plan. um 4K enrollment. Um we're kind of right on par with where we were for last year's enrollment, which is good. Um however, with Head Start not being a partner with us for next year, we'll see kind of how that shakes out this summer. So, more to come on that I always share out in September. And
057Jen and I work closely. If numbers increase to where they're too high, we would look at hiring staffing in August if we needed to do that. So, yeah, as of right now, we're okay. Um, but yeah, we probably won't know till later this summer if we have to do any of that. Um, summer school update. We are underway for summer school enrollment. Um, enrollment ends May 30th. Uh, so we extended the deadline a little bit this year, uh, I think by about two weeks, um, actually. So, we had a lot of late enrollments in previous years, and so we looked at just extending that deadline to May 30th. Um, but we've got programming at the elementary level. We've got four weeks of summer school from June 23rd to July 17th. Um, no school on Fridays
058and we're not skipping the week of the fourth this year. With the fourth landing on Friday, we're just running four straight weeks. Um, and middle school runs the same time as does drama camp. Um, Spartan Athletic Development, they're going to have four sessions this year. So they've just based on feedback from previous years, we made some changes in their structure and how um how they're going to handle things a little differently at the high school level. Um and so our starting their first session I think starts at 6:30 this year. Uh so they've got an early group coming in and then their seventh and eighth graders uh will come 10:15 to 12. We've got a bus that runs between the middle school and the high school to get the kids over there after their first
059session at the middle school. Um, and then it'll get them back to the middle school at the end of the Spartan athletic development session. Uh, this year elementary classes are offered at Cooper and Great Lakes. Our plan is to alternate schools. So, next year our plan would be to be at Bryant and um Northern Lights. So we uh that helps with the custodial staff and just maintaining the buildings over the summer. We'll do that. Um at the high school, we've also got credit recovery geometry for students that um meet that eligibility at the middle school to take that geometry and get a kind of background course. Um and then we also com um collaborate with the YMCA for Camp Fall Pines and teaching staff out there um for the summer. So we've coordinated with them
060to make that happen. Any questions about any of those three updates before I move on to Native American stuff? Do you know if food service is still offering locations for free meals and everything? Yes. At the um I have not received the flyer yet. I believe they're still working through that. Doing some last minute details on that. Uh but as soon as we have that flyer, I'll post that out to our summer school website as well. But yes, and the busing runs from our schools to the parks programs as well. So we transport kids to Rap Care at Great Lakes for the YMCA and we also transport them to the parks. Um so we've got transportation and food happening all summer ed update. I have a few different things in here. Um we'll talk money
061first. Um I'm very excited about this. We uh we've been working really hard this year to increase the number of forms that we're receiving from families. And we received funding from two sources, Title Six and JOM. JOM is Johnson Ali. Um we've received an additional 30 forms for JOM this year, which is awesome. Uh later this week I meet to verify all of them, so I don't know how that equates to dollars just yet, but um I'm excited to find that out. I just know we're going to get more more money because we have more forms. Um and then our title six, we've seen an increase of six $6,000 that we're receiving um for title six funds due to the number of forms the additional number of forms that we've collected. So um that'll continue
062to be um a goal of ours moving into next year. We'll just keep keep going with that. I mean obviously our goal is to get all of our students forms that we can. We have a lot of families in this particular area um that um for whatever reason are not are not closely connected or tied to their tribes. And so oftent times we have families that struggle having that information. They don't you know they don't have um a tribal number for parent who is registered. And so we do have a a handful of students that we still provide services for through our Indian ed program that will never get forms for because they just don't have the ability to obtain that information. But um but it's it's important to us that they're included in everything
063that we're doing. So we make that happen. Um we also have a grant that we've uh that we've used this year and it rolls over into next year. It's a Native Pathways Grant. It's specific for providing students with information um and support for applying for college um and career um opportunities after high school. So, we held a FASA night um at the high school. I've met with high school students during their lunch hours to do um little sessions with them on talking about how to pay for college, uh talking about how to apply for scholarships, um just being aware of what's available and what's out there. There are many, many native scholarships that are available on top of what our schools and our foundation offer. So, just helping them be aware of all the different
064opportunities for them. Um so, we've been doing that. We'll continue that next year as well. Um then follow up from um previous months when we talked about native drumming happening at the high school graduation. Um I know that we had talked about having some information in the program available for families um and community members to just hear about the um the lyrics and what was being spoken uh the translation. Um here's what I have here's what we have that we're including in the program. I've shared this with um Erin says already to include but um the Native American honor song performed today is composed of vocal vocals. They they are syllables without specific meaning. These are commonly used in Native American music to convey emotion respect facilitate communal singing across different language groups and are
065deeply meaningful in indigenous cultures. This song is offered in honor of all of our graduates recognizing their accomplishments and the support of their families and communities. So that's the little blurb that'll be in there. There is no translation per se. Um so where did we decide did we decide where it landed in the sequence? I don't know where he's going to put it. Um okay. Do we need to still figure that out? He and I he and I have talked a little bit and I just I I'll follow up with him. Yeah, it could be I mean it really could be anywhere. So yeah, there's just a couple intro things that we do at the beginning, so we just need to figure out where it best lands. Yeah. Um and then last but not least,
066I'd like to invite all of you to our native graduation ceremony. Um we are having a native ceremony on uh May 29th at 6 p.m. Uh we'll be at the Billings Park Civic Center. So you have invitations. Yeah. You're welcome. Thank you. Um and Uh we always have a dinner. Um this year Oh, pretty. This year we're having Mama Tease cater and she is working closely with family engagement coordinator um to provide a traditional um indigenous menu meal. So that'll be really special. Um and then we always have some drumming and we'll have a speaker um and a little presentation for the students. So we hope you can make it. Any questions for me? I do. Um, any involvement with Junth? I mean, I know there's not school, but will we have a presence there?
067But yes, um, I do. I just shared it with Donald today. Um, people don't know what Donald is. Sorry. We meet once a week. Um, our department of teaching, Department of Teaching and Learning. So, I just shared it with uh with them today. I do have a resource ready to be pushed out. Um it's similar to Martin Luther King Jr. resource that I've shared before. So um just lots of videos, stories that um teachers can read with students of articles that teachers could have students dig into. We like how you had it kind of divided by age and developmental level. So that was nice. Yes. So yes, it's ready. Um, once I once everybody says it looks good, then I'm planning to push it out later this week or next week. Great. Thanks so much
068for all your hard work. It's amazing. Done. Thank you. All right, moving on. At the committee of the whole meeting on May 5th, we had a very energetic, enthusiastic, slimy, slimy, slimy, interesting presentation from Lori Dance from our school forest. That was quite the quite the experience. Um I suggested to her and we'll follow up later, but having an opportunity for us to go out as a group to the school forest at some point next year. Yes, there could be a site site visit. Yeah, exactly. Just excellent. Um Crystal Hinsman also gave us an update on the new math curriculum. Kate Tesh doing her job as she always does, the state assessment update and then the strategic plan, how that's going to be moved forward and then what it'll look like next fall and then
069some other steps that'll come along the way. Great. Yeah. I'll make a motion to accept the teaching and learning committee report. Second to accept the teaching and learning committee report. Is there any further discussion? I have a question about the universal school supply list. I know it's not on the agenda, but um I've heard quite a few teachers concerned that not concerned, but there's a lot of things that they get donated by parents that they either don't use or they maybe have a whole stockpile of something that they never use um that they're trading, you know. Um, I just was wondering if there would be any possibility to maybe revisit that, maybe reach out, do survey, see if somebody wants to include something that's not on the list. Every year we review it. We never
070make everybody happy. It's kind of the school calendar. Um, but I just want to kind of go back to um, we have really tried to scale back the school supply list. Like we believe we should be supplying pencils, we should be providing postals. like those are the things that we should be supplying. We had been putting I felt like it kind of got a little out of control for a while. We were putting a lot of burden on families. If you had three kids, it was going to spend you're spending well over $100 um on school supplies. So, we really tried to scale it back to what do we need to do? So, we have scaled it back a lot. Um I thought you were going to say we needed to add more things. Like
071that's the opposite. That kind of I know that there's some things on there like um you know like what Lysol wipes and things like that that teachers really want on the list that maybe aren't on the list or just things that they use every year. And I know that a lot of them will send out lists once school starts again. But by then, you know, you go to the store and everything's kind of picked over or gone. So, um Well, I will say that we we do revisit it every year with our teachers and give them the opportunity. Um, so tell them to speak up. Yeah. Sarah Sarah Hollings work does a really nice job in kind of facilitating that process for us. She's done that this spring, too. Thank you. We'll keep revisiting it.
072Thank you. So, any further discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor signify by saying I. I. Opposed. Motion carries. Operations Committeeformational items. We are introduced to our new buildings and ground director, Steve Gustin. He gave a short uh brief update on what some of the summer school projects look like. Um and then I know that he's very amanable to trying to put together the type of list that we're really looking for shortterm, long-term, and then the effects obviously with David with the with the budget. I would accept a motion to approve. Motion to approve the operations committee report. Second. Second to approve the operations committee report. Is there any further discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor signify by saying I. I. I. Opposed. Motion carries. Personnel and negotiations committee action items. Administration recommends approval
073of the updated May 2025 new hirees and separations report. Motion to approve. Second. Motion and a second for the up the recommending of the approval of the updated 2025 May list. For those of you that are res resigning from the district, thank you very much for wanting to be part of our spectacular organization here. And uh Janet Anderson retiring. Oh my. At at the middle school. Well, she she's been with us quite long. Any further discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor signify by saying I. I. I. Opposed. Motion carries. Motion to accept the personnel and negotiations committee report. Second. Motion second to accept the personal negotiations committee report. Any further discussion. Hearing none. All those in favor signify by saying I. I. Opposed. Motion carries. Legislative committeeformational items at the committee the whole meeting.
074Dr. Darzeki, our administrator, provided an update on the joint finance committee. Motion to accept the legislative committee report. Second. Motion and second to accept the legislative committee report. Is there any further discussion? I'd just like to mention that it's still not too late to uh make our thoughts known either individually, collectively, or with other community members to our our state representative about the dire straits that not only are we here in this school district, but across the entire state. So, is there any further discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor signify by saying I. I opposed. Motion carries. Budget insurance action items. Gifts, grants, and bequest. Administration recommends approval to accept gifts, grants, and bequests received in April of 2025. Motion to approve. Second. Motion second to approve the gifts, grants, and bequests for April
0752025. Is there any further discussion? Thank you very much. Hearing none, all those in favor signify by saying I. I I opposed. Motion carries. CISA 12 shared services contract administration recommends approval of 2526 shared services contract with CISA 12 in the amount of 101,892.94. Motion to approve. Second. Motion and a second to approve the CISA 12 shared services contract for 2526. Is there any further discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor signify by saying I. I. opposed. Motion carries. Informational items, update on student recruitment efforts. David, you're working hard on that. That's everybody of everybody. So, thank you for doing that. Hopefully, we bring some of our children home to our district. Health insurance update. David C provided us with information on that. Premium increase will be 4.3%. We received our fund 10 revenue and
076expenditure preliminary reports for the month. Motion to accept the budget and insurance committee report. Motion and a second to accept the budget insurance committee report. Is there any further discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor signify by saying I. Opposed. Motion carries. Other reports by members of the board. I I do have one um from Brooke. Brooke was on the scholarship committee and she provided us with some information from her last meeting on April 24th. I attended my last scholarship foundation meeting. It's always my favorite time of year to share the exciting numbers with everyone. This year, the foundation was able to award 131 scholarships totaling $382,200. This is amazing and is an increase from last year by $54,000. Every student who applied received at least one scholarship. Thank you to all the donors and
077board members who make this foundation such a huge success and such an amazing asset to our district and our students. It is been wonderful to be part of the scholarship recognition committee. And um as you mentioned, Taylor, the the scholarship night is this Wednesday, May 14th. The honor night is the 21st. Going on throughout our district, our spring concerts at the elementary, the middle school, the high school, and um it's just May is always kind of cool, not only getting to the end, but watching the excitement with all of our programs, what's going on in the schools. Any other reports? Yes. I feel like it'd be a miss to not acknowledge the, you know, the incident. Um, that is being taken very seriously by our school district and our staff working really, really hard to
078ensure that all of our students are safe and our athletes are conducting themselves in a way that keeps everyone safe and respectful. Um, and just our sport our Spartan morals, right? like our code of conduct here. Um, and so, um, again, just wanted to reiterate, we're taking that very seriously and very much care about the safety of all of our students. Any other reports? Any other district program highlights? Taylor pretty much took them all. I think I think she covered them well. Again, Taylor, thank you very much for being part of the board and we sure enjoyed your reports and wish you very well. Best of luck. Thank you. What's your next year? Um, I'm going to UMD. I was wondering. Yay. I'll be running track and cross country and majoring in civil engineering. Oh,
079lovely. Awesome. Thanks. All right. The last thing, consideration of bills and pre-approved bills. A motion. Make a motion to pay the bills. Second. A motion and a second to pay the bills and pre-approved. There any further discussion? Hearing? None. All in favor signify by saying I. I. Opposed. Motion carries. The next uh committee of the whole meeting will be Monday, June 9th in the regular board meeting June 16th. I might entertain a motion to adjurnn. Motion to second. Motion and second. All those in favor signify by saying I. I opposed. Motion carries. Thank you. Thank you. It is June. So June second Oh, the second. Do I need make Are you still Are you still live? I need a motion. You're moving. You're making a motion. This is the actual Guns are actually he is