Board of Education Board Meeting - May 8, 2023

001good evening and welcome to the May 8th 2023 Board of Education meeting the meeting is now called to order first order of business is to appoint a board secretary Pro tem as provided in the agenda pertinent facts it is recommended that vice president Cindy Garlock be appointed to serve as board secretary Pro tem for this evening's board meeting all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye those opposed same sign do we have a motion to approve the agenda I move that the agenda of Monday May 8th 8th 2023 Board of Education meeting be approved as set forth and that each item is considered ready for discussion and or action is there a second this is a roll call vote human director marshbrock director Roundtree director humbles aye aye director borcharding president taminski vice

002president Garlock I tonight we have a public hearing for fiscal year 2023 budget amendment board secretary Pro tem Garlock have we received any written correspondence related to the public hearing on tonight's agenda we have not do we have anyone who has requested to address the board this evening regarding the published hearing no we have not the public hearing is officially closed next is a very special event for members of the board it is our distinct pleasure to recognize Cedar Rapids Community School District staff who have reached a milestone in their career with us to get us started I'll turn the meeting over to Deputy superintendent Quaker for the introduction of our staff I would like to invite the board of directors down at this time the Cedar Rapids Community School District and the foundation are

003proud to honor the following employees for their 25 30 35 and 40 Years of continuous service to the district the board the foundation and the district appreciate immensely the efforts of our employees especially those who have contributed many years of service some of the recipients who have achieved these Milestones are present this evening all of the recipient names will be read so they may be recognized for their years of service thank you to each and every employee for their commitment and dedication to the Cedar Rapids Community School District and we will start with a 25-year employees we have Kara osmussen [Applause] Lori Bateman [Applause] Christy Bell [Applause] Diane Blythe [Applause] Deanne Brown Julie Kane Deanna kamahan Catherine cater [Applause] Catherine Cervantes [Applause] Lori core Christopher Cruz Mary Cruz Stacy Dale Cheryl Deutsch Roger drello Shannon

004Ellis Christine Engel [Applause] Berto John Graham Courtney green Melissa hars Brenda Harrington Lynette Hauser Craig heapker Cindy Hutchinson [Applause] Brian Jeffords Stephanie Lewis Beth Mead [Applause] Curtis pack a bear Stephen Peterson [Applause] Joseph Pettit Tamara Pollock Ted pool Rebecca polica [Applause] Tara rust Steven Probert [Applause] Tammy Scott Terry Smith and Catherine Stapleton [Applause] now for our 30 years of service we start with Jean Ash [Applause] Judith brunes Ken sharper Nick Daniel Molly Donahue [Applause] Cindy freeze Heather Hazlett Susan Holton Suzanne Jennings Tammy konzen a Rhys Colbert [Applause] Kathleen lanat John McDonald Deborah Palmer Chad Szabo Carrie Thompson and Cheryl T lusky Marsh [Applause] and also Suzanne Jennings for 35 years of service [Applause] we have Dr Jim dosto Catherine Fritz Amy Hanish [Applause] and also Karen pink 40 years of service is next 40 years

005[Applause] Joseph Benedict [Applause] Timothy catmeyer and Steve Wallace give them all a hand [Applause] thank you so much to all of our employees for their years of service we really appreciate it [Applause] well tonight is all about recognition and I have the privilege to support our Board of Education in recognizing them tonight each year the Iowa Association of school boards designates the month of May as a time to show support and provides a relevant theme for school boards this year's theme is developing Iowa's future together in recognition of our crcsd school board of directors the members of the executive Council would like to take a moment to honor and recognize our support for our crcsd school board members many of them will be joining me in the foyer shortly over the past year our board

006members were faced with challenges and decisions no one could have anticipated they engaged in complex discussions and made heartfelt choices that ultimately led to decisions which impact the students staff and school Community while keeping student achievements in the educational Equity as their primary focus in a normal year these unpaid volunteers work diligently to ensure schools provide the best education possible for Iowa's future citizens during the past year they've persevered and led through uncharted waters to make critical decisions without having a map to navigate these challenges and so eloquently stated by the ISB board members are locally elected non-salaried public officials entrusted with the task of providing a direction for the education of students across Iowa the board of education is uniquely um is a uniquely American institution dating from the earliest days of our country

007it has made public schools flexible and responsive to the local community needs today public schools are being asked to raise the bar of academic achievement while remaining good stewards of the public investment in education board members pulled together as a team toward a common goal helping every learner be future ready here in our district while they may individually disagree on certain issues their role as a board is to consistently strive toward that goal during this year we can attest the amount of dedication our school board members continue to have for Cedar Rapids Community School District it is an honor and a privilege to serve you on behalf of the members of the executive Council our district and our community thank you so much for what you do for our students each and every day [Applause]

008experience foreign next up is the superintendent's report superintendent Grover I'll turn the meeting over to you okay well we've already started out with a celebration so I'd like to continue that here for a moment may is a month of Celebration we have a total of 1209 certified teachers in our district our teachers and staff deserve appreciation and celebration for not only this week but always our students lives and Futures depend on these Heroes to show up to work every day and give their best so please help me celebrate all of our teachers across the district as we celebrate Teacher Appreciation Week a most sincere thank you to everyone [Applause] We are continuing our listening tours I do want to thank all of our staff members who have participated we are down to our last two

009wow what a run and um I just want to also mention that while these locations are at Hiawatha and Grant if any school um or any part of our district wherever you are you can attend the listening sessions uh so far along with our survey we have collected 500 responses online and a number of different people have shown up to the in-person listening sessions as well as you may know our current strategic plan has run its five-year course the information from these sessions and the survey is starting to give us some Concepts that we will consider as we revise our strategic plan to go forward furthermore I do want to point out that I will be out with our student groups from our high schools here and I think I start this week actually and

010also I Look to be able to engage with our parents over the summer so just a maybe a quick little review of 30 days into serving you as your interim superintendent I think I just passed 30 days and we cannot wait another day to continue to start working collaboratively together to be able to address what we view as our opportunities here in the school district it will take all of us to be that beam of Hope as we strive to be a lighthouse district for others tonight you will hear some information from us that will let you know that we're not waiting to start we will present on Recruitment and Retention which we know is important to our staff as well as our board we have hired some key leadership positions and more underway we

011have been faced with budget issues that we continue to work towards together so that we can continue to serve our students I've had a wealth of information provided to help me understand how our system is built and how we respond to be efficient as well as inclusive to all of our staff so thank you all so much for this opportunity my goal is to use the foundation that we see here with the passion of our staff that already exists to be able to propel us forward a few priorities that are rising to the top include internal communication and we are we have a strong team here they're already making strides to improve internal communication such as the implementation of their internal newsletter we are also looking at our decision making processes and comprehensive system thinking

012and again how we increase diversity within our district these are of course uh below our number priority of our number one priority of student achievement and other ways that we can celebrate as I conclude tonight I want to say thank you to the Cedar Rapids Community Schools foundation for the 2023 series of senior walks this annual tradition allows seniors to walk down memory lane before they walk across the stage to receive their diplomas additionally it is a great time to wish our seniors well this is an exciting time filled with rights of passages I want to share the class of 2023's graduation schedule please note and you can find this information on their website along with ours Metro High School graduation will be Wednesday May 24th at 7 00 pm at the DoubleTree by Hilton

013Washington High School will be on Thursday May 25th at 7 00 p.m at Alliant Energy Powerhouse Jefferson High School will be on Friday May 26th same location 7 o'clock P.M the Alliant Energy Powerhouse and finally Kennedy High School will be Saturday May 27 at 7 00 p.m same location we look forward to joining all of our high schools to celebrate their accomplishments we are so proud of our graduates and excited for their future that concludes my report for tonight and thank you for the report are there any board reports director Garland yeah excuse me just a brief legislative update the Iowa legislature adjourned last Thursday uh so the session is over for for this year the only new legislation that we haven't previously noted was the property tax bill which which uh passed and was

014signed by the governor one part of that property tax legislation prescribes that school bond issues can only take place on the date of the November election which will of course impact us as we consider a bond issue in our in our future so other than that the session is over so hopefully you won't have to listen to me again any other board reports along with some team members at iasb's Student Success session program and I think about magnet schools I think it went really well it was all received and I think we'll be hearing a little bit more about that later I agree thanks to the team that assisted with that next we'll hear from those who have requested to address the board Cindy do we have any members of the public that have requested

015to address the board yes we do how many speakers do we have signed up for public comment we have 17 speaker with 17 speakers this evening you will each be given three minutes for your remarks please respect the time limit allotted to each speaker director Garlock will serve as your timer and indicate when your time has expired the time is yours to use and may not be yielded to another speaker if you have submitted a request to address the board and choose not to speak in the interest of equity and fairness your time may not be yielded to another speaker in order to abide by the open meetings law there will be no dialogue between board members and the public during this time except to clarify the nature of questions or comments from the individuals

016speaking we ask that the audience and speakers refrain from using inappropriate language and Outburst as a matter of respect for all in attendance this board has zero tolerance for profanity vulgarity demeaning language or threats of any kind lastly I'd like to remind our speakers that the board is unable to address personnel and student matters there is a process outlined in board policy which provides guidance on how to address and resolve concerns we ask that speakers refrain from using personal names and information during public comment before we begin I'd like to remind our speakers to please state your name and address for the record when called to the podium Cindy please call our first Speaker our first speaker is Jenna Breckenridge 190 Lindhurst Drive Hiawatha Iowa 52233 this is in regards to a complaint that I

017filed that has not been handled a few weeks ago my son walked into a classroom where a teacher was talking about him okay I adopted my son attracted three boys from Ukraine he has cleft palate he was not accepted there we almost weren't able to bring him home because the court thought we wanted him for his organs okay so I bring him to America for a better life and this is what the teacher says to him well he asked why she was saying his name and she said in front of all these other students that way we were talking about you um we want to know how old you were what your last name was asking you how many brothers you had she asked him how many siblings he had and he told her he

018had five brothers she said no real brothers from Ukraine my son stated three she stated she replied and asked if they were his blood brothers he told her no that only the twins that we adopted were Blood Brothers she said those are not your real brothers in your biological or my husband on my biological biological boys are not his brothers um she made a comment that he was ugly and that the only reason why he's here in America is because we gotta buy two get one free I have addressed this or she also asked him if he made it out of Ukraine before the war broke out or after we start again teary-eyed and she came up behind him and started hugging on him and made him a comfortable I addressed this issue uh on

019the 20th I filed a complaint I went through all the motions I met with the principal and the teacher the teacher actually called me the day before we were supposed to meet and wanted to discuss things today for her own peace of mind and settle things we had a meeting scheduled the following day and never called her back on April 25th I met with the principal and the teacher where the teacher admitted to everything everything sorry and nothing has been resolved to this point I asked this to be passed along whoever oversaw the principal and was put in contact with executive director of the Middle School who told me his plan was to ensure the teacher knows not to attempt to contact my son and identify a trusted adult for my son for when he

020was feeling uncomfortable about the presence of this teacher and a written apology so let me get this straight my son can't trust this teacher that should be a trusted adult excuse me Jenna your time is up our next speaker is Don Taylor speaking about the Harrison Elementary School Don Taylor 2225 River Bluff Drive Northwest Cedar Rapids Iowa um I was here the last meeting talking about the need to be concerned about kids first I think the final decision kept that in mind and I and I appreciate the fact that there's going to be a Harrison where there's going to be an elementary school where Harrison is now in a perfect world I would love to see it be an addition to Harrison keep the old Harrison there in a perfect world I'd like to see

021it called Harrison why simply I went there I'm from here it's you know that's and I'm a history teacher so you know go figure however there's a more important issue aside from the kids and that's the neighborhood itself I'm here representing the Northwest neighborhood board of directors I'm here representing Trinity St James United Methodist Church and we work with Harrison and while it would be nice to live in a perfect world it would be devastating if there wasn't a school where Harrison is I don't care if it's called Harrison or not I don't the fact that you you set aside seven hundred thousand dollars to to take some of the pieces of Harrison and put it into this new building is good for me as long as the mural's still around as long as those

022windows are still around I'm good to go that that that's enough for me as long as there's a school in our neighborhood without that school we can't Revitalize this neighborhood the neighborhood needed to be revitalized before the flood but it hasn't been revitalized since the city hasn't done much they haven't they put up they put up floods flood protection everywhere except the northwest side so I'm concerned about the neighborhood itself we can't Revitalize if we don't have young people with kids and we have to have that school in that neighborhood for that to happen um like I said in a perfect world I'd love to see the building be restored in and added onto and and have it work that way that's clearly not the way it's it it was decided and uh quite quite

023honestly I wasn't I don't know enough information obviously to say whether that's a good thing or a bad thing because I didn't I wasn't involved in the final decision I was only involved in the study group and the study group wanted to keep Harrison uh as far as I'm concerned having a building there whether it's a new building or it's Harrison is still having a school in our neighborhood and to the people I represent my church my my Northwest neighborhood organization it's critical that we have a building there it's critical that we have a school in that area thank you thank you our next speaker is Mary Stubblefield and she's speaking on the Harris Elementary decision Mary Stubblefield 1143 o Avenue Northwest um I am a mother of a fifth grader at Harrison Elementary and

024I'm also a mother of three children who finished there over the past 14 years I have spent countless hours volunteering and giving my time to Harrison for the second time in those 14 years I was just recently been acknowledged as outstanding building volunteer of the year for that school I believe in putting time into the community is important but I also believe when I see a wrong being done I need to speak up and hopefully I can help maybe persuade some Minds to put that wrong and make it right tearing Harrison down I think is one of those wrongs there the history happened here a sign in front of Harrison and part of it describes how it's the second building in that site for or the second Harrison building and it was built in 1929

0251930 due to a fire of the original Harrison building it was done for elementary school by a Cedar Rapids architect Harrison has many one of many schools that have that history Happened Here sign in front of it it was also featured on the cover of Time Magazine on November 14th 1988 when a Harrison teacher Carol Bowen was interviewed so it's been shown nationally because of its beautiful architecture following the 08 flood we were able to save Harrison not being closed and during 2014 a 10-year Pebble Levy was voted on and passed that seven hundred thousand dollars that was earmarked for Harrison only 355 000 have been used over the past eight years there's 345 000 left of my tax money go to towards Harrison that isn't slated for Harrison right now the board recently rejected

026the decision of the volunteer subcommittee who chose to renovate Harrison and decide that based on a community survey Harrison should be torn down and bricks and other salvageable materials used to build a new school on the current site was in order to save a million dollars what was so Brown groundbreaking about the community survey results that it was discussed internally costs were decided and then it was voted on by the school board one of I'm not a architect nor Builder but one of the selling points for choosing to have Harrison remodeled was because it was one of the oldest Elementary's in the school district in a 2017 Gazette article it was even described as an architectural gem among all Cedar Rapids elementary schools I would like you to please reconsider your decision in tearing down

027Harrison and improving the volunteer subcommittee's recommendation to remodel it the sediment to slow down the decision to tear down Harrison was also echoed this weekend in a May 6 editorial by The Gazette entitled gather more input on Harrison you talked about a 312 million dollar Bond vote coming up soon for your middle school and high school I believe that people here to support Harrison and people in the community feel that the district has already broken promises on what you're going to do with Harrison when we were told it wasn't going to be torn down I hope that your decision to tear down Harrison doesn't make you lose the 312 million dollar vote thank you Mary our next speaker is Lawrence winkowski and he will be speaking on transparency processes and procedures Casey's remember I'm Lawrence

028winklowski 4234 moreover I've got to change my topic uh anyway I like to also comment on Harrison school I have no skin in the game it doesn't affect me what happened at care whether you keep it or that it doesn't affect me my problem is the way everything transpired in it um what are were the processes and procedures for their committee I would have thought that through this process it would have been always going through the committee before it goes to the school board it didn't and that if some someone all of a sudden through an audible and we changed it what made it even worse or was the fact that the school board just went along with that Audible and that and you ended up disrespecting people who worked hard on a committee and

029you should never disrespect the volunteers um what was the amino you know what is the minimum amount of time that we provide the public before we have a public hearing a few days ain't enough there should be a limit and it should be in stone and that's what should be uh we should follow you know we keep doing the same thing over and over with this stuff and you know it's got to stop the school board makes the agenda we don't have to follow the one from the Iowa Association the school boards or continue using the one it's been used for the 18 years I haven't come into school board meetings it's insane the School Board needs to have a format that provides more transparency and give people a better voice you should come in

030here when you want a public hearing present the facts of the topic let the comment all people comment use discuss it and vote on it all in the same thing it works out so many so much better that way I've seen it at City Council meetings I talked to use about this and you're not willing to try that that that's probably the one thing that really bothers me because we wouldn't accept that in any of our schools people not willing to try something different please try something different thank you Lawrence our next speaker is Christine Layman engledown speaking about be smart hi my name is Christine Lehmann ingledow and I live in 1635 140th Street Northwest in Swisher Iowa okay 10 years ago a little more than 10 years ago all of us were glued

031to the news of the Sandy Hook Elementary school shootings we never wanted to live through such a horrific day again sadly scenes of families waiting to hear the fate of their children outside school buildings have been repeated over and over Memorials of flowers and candles continue to spring up outside schools as community members Gather in disbelief parents and Guardians look around with increasing fear at the inability to control these events since then Moms Demand Action every town for gun sense in America and every town for gun safety began to provide resources research and programs helping communities organizing organize around the idea of ensuring gun safety I was a member of Mom's demand action in Iowa City I wondered why Cedar Rapids did not have a chapter and then the Parkland shootings happened the next day

032I volunteered at a school where my daughter teaches art to elementary school children she had rearranged the classroom so the kids could Escape out the windows and had to tell all the children from kindergarten through fifth grade what to do if a bad guy came in the building I was horrified to hear her tell of this to such little children then I started the Cedar Rapids chapter of Mom's demand action while my feelings are my own this sentiment is echoed across the country nearly half of of parents surveyed in the United States worry about their children getting shot our National Organization developed a five-step program about gun safety for parents and guardian called be smart this is a movement that is growing Across the Nation districts in many states and even Iowa City have resolved

033to share the be smart message with parents and Guardians tonight I would like to urge the Cedar Rapids Community School District to give parents and Guardians a Common Language and proven strategies that ensure greater safety for all our students and Community we are here tonight to offer our expertise and help ensure that our town takes similar action and never sees a day like we saw at Columbine Newtown Parkland Uvaldi and so many others and just so you know what we gave you in the folder has all the references for everything our group is going to say thank you Christine our next speaker is Luanne Byerly I'm speaking about be smart Luanne Byerly 2435 25th Avenue Marion Iowa I'm a retired teacher and administrator and that's why this is important to me the impact of school

034shootings and incidents of gun violence covered in the media never ceases to alarm us and is all too familiar as families and schools in the aftermath of a tragic and largely preventable incident as gun sales surged in 2020 the issue of gun violence in schools continued to concern many people in our community leaving many with feelings of helplessness but we can take action together to keep our schools safer first let me share some facts about gun violence in schools in 2022 there were at least 177 incidents of gunfire on school grounds in the United States resulting in 57 deaths and 148 injuries and so far in 2023 there have been at least 44 incidents of gunfire on school grounds resulting in 19 deaths and 33 injuries as well as the mass shootings we see on

035the news gun violence in schools includes homicides assaults unintentional discharges self-harm injuries suicide attempts and suicide deaths while mass shootings in schools are rare and account for less than one percent of school gunfire incidents they account for 20 percent of School deaths in schools in the last 10 years all of the school-age shooters involved in mass shootings were current or former students 96 percent in self-harm incidents and 91 percent in unintentional discharges of a gun were current or former students overall 60 percent of school-age shooters were current or former students in 100 percent of incidents of targeted School violence there were warning sides signs that caused others to be concerned in 77 percent of incidents other people were aware of the shooter's plans research suggests that 75 percent of Shooters on school grounds under the

036age of 18 obtain the guns they used from their home or the homes of their relatives or their friends in April 2021 approximately 30 million children lived in households with Firearms the same study estimated 4.6 million children lived in a household with at least one gun that was stored loaded and unlocked another study of 5 to 14 year old children showed that 79 of the older children and 73 percent of the younger children knew were that unsecured firearm was stored we know the threat of gun violence at school negatively affects student learning and we also know that gun violence disproportionately affects students of color these facts suggest that we as a community need to do more to prevent the threat of gun violence thank you our next speaker is Jamie Maxson speaking about be smart

037good evening I'm Dr Jamie Maxson I'm a family medicine physician here in Cedar Rapids and I live in the Crescent View condo condos on the northeast side of town in 2020 firearm related injuries became the leading cause of death among Children and adolescents ages 1 through 19 in the United States between 2019 and 2021 the number of gun deaths increased among children adolescents in the United States by 50 percent an important component of these gun related deaths is death by Suicide unfortunately this has affected families in my practice and the impact is immense and long-standing in Iowa 62 school-aged youth died by suicide using a firearm between 2015 and 2020. in Lynn County eight youth died by Suicide involving a firearm between 2013 and 2021. when youth attempts suicide with a firearm they are more

038likely to complete the suicide as Firearms provide a lethal means in addition suicidal ideation is increasing 21 percent of 8th graders and 24 of 11th graders responding to the 2021 Iowa Youth survey indicated experiencing thoughts of suicide in the previous 12 months gun violence among school-aged children is a safety concern for all of us we can start addressing it by agreeing that everyone has a right to obtain and own a gun legally we can also agree that as an adult responsibility to ensure that all students feel emotionally and physically safe in the school settings or in order for them to learn and thrive in recent years our schools have followed good practices on student safety by enhancing security features on their sites outlining building building safety plans and protocols and providing support services to help

039students avoid dangerous choices and behaviors that can lead to violence one study found in households that locked both firearms and ammunition there was a 78 percent lower risk of self-inflicted injuries and an 85 percent lower risk of unintentional firearm injuries among children and teens compared to those where guns and ammunition were readily available the important takeaway here is that gun violence prevention is an adult responsibility we all must share thank you our next speaker is Angie Weyland speaking about be smart hi my name is Angie Weiland and I live at 1114 First Street Southwest I had two children graduate from the Cedar Rapids Community School District in 2016 and 2018 and I have been a volunteer with Mom's demand action for four years am a retired dental hygienist and a current property manager the current

040reality is that gun violence among school-aged children whether at home or at school is a community school issue that is going that is not going away unless we as adults do all we can to prevent it this is where the be smart program comes in be smart is neutral on the topic of gun ownership it also does not advocate for changes to gun laws rather it emphasizes the power of every adult to take agency over the safety of children and teens smart has been cited by the national PTO as an effective way to prevent School gun violence for the past several years we have given a well-received presentation of the be smart program to adult audiences in our community be smart is a gun safety strategy for keeping children safe in five steps first is

041s s is for secure curing all guns in your home and vehicles this does not mean keeping Firearms hidden or Out Of Reach it means keeping guns locked and unloaded at all times remember studies show most children know where Firearms are stored M is for model modeling responsible behavior around guns this includes secure not hidden gun storage A is for ask ing about the presence of unsecured guns in homes your children visit R is for recognize recognizing the role of guns in suicide and T is for telling others about the be smart message here in Cedar Rapids we have been spreading this message to adults we're here tonight because we'd like to help you join other districts to get this effective gun safety message out to every student parent and guardian in the Cedar Rapids

042Community School District thank you Angie our next speaker is Trisha wachter also speaking on be smart hello my name is Trisha wechter and I live at 7402 First Avenue Northwest in the Stony Point neighborhood in Cedar Rapids I'm a mother of three children in the Cedar Rapids Community School District one at Jefferson one at Taft and one at West Willow I'm a nurse in the operating room and I've been a Mom's demand action volunteer since 2019. so we're here tonight to ask the Cedar Rapids Community School District to make it publicly known through a board resolution that the responsibility for gun safety is an adult responsibility and an expectation for all parents and Guardians in our schools while School staff members law enforcement officers and students all play a collective role in that responsibility research

043shows the most important and effective responsibility for preventing gun violence lies with the adult Guardians to keep all firearms locked and unloaded in the home and in cars according to the U.S Secret Service addressing student access to guns is a critical component of any school-based threat assessment intervention plan informing and educating parents and Guardians that storing guns locked unloaded and separate from ammunition can be an important way to keep schools safer from gun violence the key is secure gun storage at home many school districts across the country have already implemented board resolutions like the one we suggest tonight including districts in Michigan Texas California Colorado Pennsylvania and now Iowa just last year the Iowa City Community School District voted to implement the be smart resolution these districts changed their handbooks and issued secure gun storage

044notification letters to all parents and Guardians informing them of this expectation it's also important to note that Iowa is one of several states that has a child access prevention a cap law in effect enforcing legal liabilities on adults in cases involving the possession or use of an unsecured firearm in their possession by a minor many parents don't even know this a board resolution informs parents and Guardians Of This legal obligation and the expectation that it has followed for school safety reasons we love we we have prepared packets for the board members with sample resolutions and models of the secure gun storage notification letters for parents that have been used in other districts as well as more information about the be smart program we thank you so much for your time and we welcome further conversation

045with board members about this important issue and our proposal thank you our next speaker is Mary Jo Elam and she's speaking on the support of Harrison School students my name is Mary Jo Elam and I live at 136 17th Street Southwest Cedar Rapids I'm a grandparent of a student at Harrison and uh you know they're just a couple comments I wanted to make the first one was that I'm very disappointed in the lack of transparency on behalf of the board when they push through this whole resolution to knock down the beautiful building the second thing is that I would hope that at some point you may consider just tearing down the old Edition that is not really aesthetically pleasing and and perhaps building a three-story um um addition to the existing Harrison building I don't

046know if that was ever considered um that could be an option four because we had an option one and an option two to consider and then option three was popped on us and and all of a sudden we're losing that school and I just I just don't think that's really very nice um anyway the we live in Cedar Rapids we moved here 23 years ago to raise our children we were attracted by the the quality of the schools here we're from the East Coast um the quality of the schools and the beauty of our city and I think we need to consider that if we're going to be attracting more people to our town thank you for your consideration thank you our next speaker is Ashley van orney speaking on Harrison Madison and the facility

047master plan all right Ashley van orney 2464 2nd Street Southwest so I appreciate that we started off this meeting by celebrating volunteers because I want to talk about some of the work that some very dedicated unpaid volunteers have been doing for several years now Not only was I one of those dedicated volunteers for the last facility master plan and the secondary or the the conversation regarding Harrison Madison but I'm also a product of this school system I've stayed here and I'm also so proud of the education that I had including one of the teachers who we just celebrated for 30 years of service that I have actually been funding a scholarship since 2018 to pay it forward to other students but I'm incredibly disappointed in the outcome of Harrison Madison we were not as volunteers

048involved in the final decision I had to find out about it later unfortunately the meetings aren't even broadcast live so I have to go back and find some time to go and try and read the the meeting minutes that are pretty hard to access and find out data too um in addition the lack of the knowledge of the historic preservation in the city of Cedar Rapids is pretty disappointing from the people who are running any of these meetings it's actually quite laughable that one time we were at Jefferson High School and one of the organizers actually said yeah why are we calling these historic buildings they're just old buildings they're just running you know falling apart matter of fact if you check check the text thread right now between some of the organizers of this

049you'll realize that they're actually monitoring the scuttlebutt of the Harrison Switcheroo and said in communication to one another thank goodness the speakers only get three minutes the RFP process for historical preservation of the new building actually included specifically monitoring historic preservation with new buildings that's important because that was something that was historically left out of any of the other conversations this facility master plan lacks communication with the city and unwillingness to meet with us too I have on dozens of occasions not only personally come to be a representative to the city but I am not the city I'm here as a council member I'm here as a committed individual to this entire process but at no point in time did anybody actually take me up on those opportunities for the city to meet with you

050know any of these planners we do also have an mou with the city I started that in 2018 after the last really terrible secondary elementary Thessalonian master plan that was quite disastrous and got a lot of upward in the community I will say though that it's been utilized for less than five times since 2018. so in essence I urge you to stop participating in a fast fashion society that only results in waste your newest buildings lack a lot of historical character and you can do better thank you thank you our next speaker is Rita McCord speaking on safety and support for Mom's demand action Rita McCord 5040 Willow Bend Road Northeast Cedar Rapids Iowa evening as a mother of two kids a senior and an incoming freshman at Kennedy High School the issue of children

051dying by Firearms weighs heavily on my mind it weighs heavily on all of our minds because we are a community who cares to try to do the right thing for our kids we agree that something more needs to be done in order to prevent but we don't always agree on what that something should look like people will say it's common sense and disagree on what that means as a great retired show choir teacher from Kennedy I think Mr Benford tell us sense isn't common we can break this phrase down and look at both what is common and what is sense working backwards we have the sense that something is drastically wrong as Firearms have risen to the number one cause of death in children in America we have the sense that we want to protect

052our community and keep it safe from the incidents we hear about we try turning on SportsCenter instead of the news as a father did this weekend in the breakfast room at a hotel where hundreds of teenage girls were staying for a volleyball tournament when an elderly couple wanted to watch CBS the father deferred in an effort to respect seniority and be a good role model to his kids news of the latest Texas mass shooting outside of a shopping mall came on we were less than two miles from our own shopping mall we were the picture of shared commonalities we stayed quiet we held our breath and prayed maybe if we don't talk about it it won't apply to us this is the reality of the senses we have in common we also have the commonalities

053of wanting to keep our kids safe we have in common that we believe in responsible gun ownership we have in common that we need mental health supports with these commonalities we can start to formulate policies that will be commonly agreed upon such as reminding people of gun safety and gun storage safety and the be smart plan we can start to talk about what to do if we as loved ones notice our loved ones in crisis and want to prevent them from firearm safety for their own good through red flag laws which also provide an extra tool to our law enforcement officers when we turn away from fake leaders and look around at ourselves we can find the sense we need please consider adding gun safety education as a priority for our kids and be smart

054thank you our next speaker is Mara Pilcher and she'll be speaking about Harrison Madison hello my name is Maura Pilcher from 523 Knollwood Drive Southeast in the interest of time I'm just going to run through a bunch of points without any kind of smooth transitions at the last meeting you voted on an update item this goes against Iowa Administrative Code that requires public notice listing something as an update is inadequate notice for an actionable item on your agenda and I even sat down looked at and thought Oh I guess we're not voting on it tonight but you did and that's against code next another thing that I want to clarify is that the Harrison Madison focus group was not represented by Mr Galbraith because he did not attend any of our meetings after Dr Bush's

055passing the focus group was moderated by Mr Gates and he said right out in front of you he says yes I attended those meetings he did not and that was fine because we understood that the the school was going through a lot the school district was going through a lot at the time I also found it interesting that the architectural firm was not present at the last board meeting when you were making this decision and I believe it would be in the board's best interest to hear directly from the professionals that you have hired when making multi-million dollar decisions for example one thing I'd like to clarify that wasn't I don't think made clear at the open houses or maybe even to you all is that we did discuss equity in our process we understood

056the perception that new is better and that every student deserves a state-of-the-art classroom we discussed that at length and Cedar Rapids the problem was is that Cedar Rapids is used to Band-Aids oh we're going to fix up that school we'll make it look nice we were not talking about mandating these buildings when we were talking about putting together when we we talked about it with the architectural firm we said okay when we talk about the renovation plus Edition what does it really look like and well programming is not set yet over half of the square footage of the Harrison Harrison renovation Edition project would be new I asked the Architects does that mean most of the students would be in new classrooms most likely yes most if not all of the students would be a

057new state-of-the-art classrooms that makes a big difference when people are discussing whether or not every child deserves a new space new state of the art when they're used to going into Old buildings in Cedar Rapids and saying oh no it's been fixed up that information and these these plans I don't think these were even ever all the charrettes and things I've ever gone to when you're voting you have pictures people have different ways of learning you need to see what you're talking about what you're voting about my understanding because those weren't shared in a very open way before these people were surveyed and as uh board member mershback pointed out they don't even vote on all three options that you then turned around and created and that is also not transparent and Incredibly frustrating um

058one last thing I wanted to bring up was that the cost Delta is always being talked about as being 1.5 million dollars between the two different plans and actually after the Salvage of the historic elements are complete as proposed the difference would be seven hundred thousand dollars and as you can look at all of our other projects seven hundred thousand dollars and 30 million dollar projects is not that much so thank you our next speaker is David Meyer speaking on the Harrison school uh hi excuse me hi my name is David Meyer and I live at 323 Crescent Street Southeast I'd like to start off by thanking you for giving us the opportunity to talk today and also to thank you for your service I think um you know we we honored that at the

059kickoff but I admire you for the volunteer work that you do to make our community and our school districts better um I uh I have to admit I'm skeptical of these forums I think it's just decisions have been made and it's just a little smoke and mirrors to give people's perspective um that won't have any influence but I was I was um motivated by recent events in Cedar Falls where a mayor had made a decision and after public discussion he he changed his mind so I decided to come today um and you know share my perspective and why I hope you reconsider your decision to demolish Harrison school um I hadn't been too involved in the process up until uh save CR Heritage had shared some information that I finally paid attention to but I

060I rode my bike uh from the southeast side to the building over the weekend and the building is so beautiful and so historic and being a relatively new uh resident of Cedar Rapids for about five years the the history and the architecture of Cedar Rapids is so important and I think other folks have made comments today where there's ways to make Harrison a state-of-the-art facility for for students while while keeping the structure and um I'm a finance guy accounting background finance and there's talk about seven hundred thousand in a million and a half and you know the lowest cost option isn't always the best option and I know budgets are tight but I I I really think this is a disservice not only to the students but the community that has lost so much in

061the past years between floods into ratio that this beautiful castle um and sense of Pride for not only the community but people like me who have the opportunity to appreciate it so I I do hope that you reconsider your decision to demolish that building thank you thank you David our next speaker is Sylvia popelka speaking about Harrison good evening my name is Sylvia popelka and I live at 2117 20th Street Northwest Cedar Rapids Iowa I am a proud product of the Cedar Rapids Community Schools graduating from Washington before there was a Kennedy so that gives you a little frame of reference but um my husband and his sister did attend Harrison school as children and in 1973 I returned to Cedar Rapids to teach at Harrison Elementary and I had many wonderful years there and

062then I taught for 30 years in the Cedar Rapids School District after that I went on to teach in some other places the university and then I came back and a couple of years ago I started doing Kids on Course at Harrison I was blown away with how beautiful the building still was and even better two weeks ago I took all my first grade books since my grandchildren who do attend a state of the art school in Iowa City there at Christine Grant Elementary have passed wanting to look at my first grade books so I I took boxes and boxes to Harrison and again they have two of those little public or little free libraries there I was stunned at how gorgeous the building still is and it's very hard for me to understand why

063it has to be torn down I know that things can be done to make it more Future Ready which seems to be the new the new term I've been retired for nearly 20 years so I'm learning the new educational buzzwords but I see that as a great asset not only to the northwest side but to our entire city the architecture the the stability of that building the windows the wood all of those things have a sense of History importance and as I said stability there is more than just understanding technology but there is a almost like a muscle memory that comes from being in a beautiful beautiful environment to learn and I think that that is very important for the children who are going to attend there not to mention the two fabulous the two

064fabulous native Burr Oaks that withstood the de Rachel which if you tear down Harrison those would be sacrificed I'm sure so I do think you need to go back and look at what are some other possibilities for saving a historically significant building against me Sylvia a few times okay thank you our next speaker is Joni McMahon speaking about Harrison hello Joni McMahon 606 Fifth Avenue Southeast safety our heritage dear Board of Education safe CR Heritage often hears from people lamenting the loss of Union Station in downtown Cedar Rapids imagine what could have been had that iconic building not been demolished to make way for what was then considered progress once a building of that stature is gone it can never be replaced the current Harrison Elementary was built after the previous school was destroyed by

065fire the grand structure was constructed to signal that Northwest Cedar Rapids deserved an awe-inspiring symbol of resilience crafted with materials designed to last for Generations this time there is no fire the future of Harrison Elementary is in your hands if updated the building could easily last another 100 years if not longer compared to the much shorter lifespan of modern construction materials basing the decision on fiscal responsibility alone updating Harrison could save taxpayer dollars in the long run as a new building will need to be replaced before an updated Harrison wood suddenly providing cost estimates at the last school board meeting for the demolition of Harrison and a new building on its site figures never presented to the task force or at public input sessions nor in the survey they come across as deceptive and underhanded

066at a time when public trust is needed for the upcoming School Board referendum we believe our students deserve the best and have faith that the architectural firm hired by the district would achieve that with their plans to upgrade Harrison your own website quotes the district's Matt Dunbar who stated there have been factors over the years such as enrollment shifts and economic recessions that have played a role in crcsd repurposing or selling buildings but very few school buildings have been torn down the schools have been repurposed for good within the community if you still believe there is no alternative to a new school please let Harrison go to an entity that will take proper care of the building and appreciate it for its value to the Northwest Community while there will never be another Union Station

067we can learn from the past and prevent similar losses in the future starting with Harrison Elementary thank you for reconsidering your decision on this important issue thank you thank you Tony our last speaker is Greg hoppel speaking about Harrison Greg hoppel 613 Bartlett Court Northwest Cedar Rapids Iowa I ask you to change your decision and support the subcommittee decision a couple questions what was the statistical size of your private survey how do we as Citizens taxpayers and parents know that you did your due diligence with this survey that was summarily accepted over the other decision uh getting here tonight I had to drive past the new and improved Jackson school to me it now looks more like a prison than a school earlier speakers mentioned desired Aesthetics and equitability and I agree is it more

068Equitable to renovate Harrison for the kids or to send them to a prison structure you betrayed those who volunteered you betrayed the rest of us by destroying what trust we had left in you please change our minds and your decision thank you thank you that's the end of public comment or do we thank everyone that came out to speak tonight I'm moving on to our consent agenda please note that item ba 23355 was pulled for additional review are there any items that a board member would like to pull for a comment question or a separate vote president Smith 3.1 through 6. the agreement with Vista with Vista Iowa just a question just okay um oh I'm sorry no any other things from the board to be pulled so I think we can address that question

069first thank you so so that just it looks like it was just a transfer of ownership of software I'm assuming everything is just going to be a continuous flow there's no interruption in service or reconfiguring of data or can anybody speak to that because I don't see Carlo I think Carly is on the phone hold on a second okay can you hear me yes yes okay yes it's just so that we have access to our previous data uh prior to switching to infinite Vision so it's all of our data uh that's in uh Vista all of our historical data so we have access to all that excellent that's what I thought I just wanted to confirm thank you so much yep thank you thanks Carla do we have a motion to approve the revised consent

070agenda due to the removal of item ba 23355 second any further discussion this is a roll call vote due to the Personnel report base wages for employee groups and the issuance of contracts director Newman Victor marshbrock director Roundtree aye director humbles aye director borchetting aye president taminski aye vice president Garlock aye moving on to Administration the board is asked to consider and approve the fiscal year 23 budget amendment all those in favor signify by saying aye aye those opposed same sign next up is the annual School Improvement advisory committee report Deputy superintendent Quaker is here to provide the update good evening board of directors um I'm excited tonight to be able to present and have some of the team from our school Improvement advisory committee come and talk tonight and give an overview of some

071of the work that we've done this year and some of the goals for the upcoming year and we've been focused on sense of belonging and looking at data and I do want to recognize if they're on the school Improvement advisory committee if you can please stand so we can acknowledge those members of the committee thank you for your service and at this time I would like Heather zwanziger who's a teacher at Kennedy and Bridget Williams Robinson who also is an employee at Kennedy and a parent and Braylon Henry a 10th grader at Kennedy to come up and they're going to share some information with us we have a PowerPoint super and it's a treat to have a student with us that's extra special on our sciat committee so do I click it I'm used to

072this so I guess I've I've served on sciac for two years and the school Improvement advisory committee and it's a nice way to meet people and get a lot of viewpoints you're looking at three representatives of views that come together that really work on the collective goal of creating a sense of belonging our data is showing that that is lacking among staff that's lacking in our student populations and so we are really dedicated in volunteering to kind of get to the bottom of that um I think I'll just speak a little before it comes up but I've been teaching at Kennedy for 23 years so sometimes I think oh I don't know if I can really give a a good well-rounded view because few people stay at one school their entire career and sometimes I

073wonder if you know I have the diverse you know scope for that but um I think that that's what I like about sciac is people from the community and people from different grade levels come in and share in different parts of the school process and lately I mean I'm not we do talk real stuff at sciac and people are leaving the district and you're going to talk about retention and students feeling included and I think as I was thinking about how do I prepare and what do I say to the board about what is our goal and I would really like us to think about um the question I get sometimes in the community is you know why are people leaving or you know and I want to talk about our goal is going to

074be like what makes people stay and I think you need to think about that like what why do you want to stay and I love that question and oftentimes and I don't want it to be like why are you staying right it's we want it to be like hey tell me about it why do you stay not gosh so many people are leaving so it's up there's a little bit about sayak in the the formal sense it is a relationship between a school and the community members so we will be back again to present to you on uh future work that we do having a strong sayak promotes the community's sense of ownership in the school system and gives valuable to direction to the school district and um my co-partners here can speak to that

075too but I find it very valuable to go into a meeting as a teacher so if anybody wants to be part of sciac at the end there's that information it's really valuable to hear the different perspectives on educational priorities its primary purpose of what we do is to determine major educational needs and to make recommendations so that's why we're here to you to the school board on prioritized student learning goals so we want that for our students and we kind of dive in and figure out what are their needs you just keep how about you be my Clicker what we agree to do for sciac is have an open mind we do encourage involvement so we like people to speak freely impact and follow through we believe in accountability and we're working on that and

076use a process or structure to help make improvements or change we are dedicated to actually you know being honest and finding some data and bringing some ideas to you about what would make our students or not situation but our student experience and inclusion better as well as our staff surface ideas from sciac committee members to enact positive outcomes so that's our goal sometimes we think a policy right you think it's going to be beneficial and then we put it into practice and it doesn't go the way that we thought so we are a work in progress a second layer of ears eyes and voices and different perspectives it's my favorite part of the evening when we get in our small group and we share out and then here comes that student perspective here comes that

077parent perspective here comes that teacher perspective and it really Fosters a good discussion the what if sense of belonging how can we improve our sense of belonging for all staff and students within the district and here's it oh I'm reading I could be reading from here here we go Collective voice across stakeholder groups like I said I talked about that I think before we had them um and then continuous improvement process again we want to give us some really great answers we want to have those policies where people can right away answer why do you stay what do you like about working here and and you know we need to ask ourselves why people are leaving and the last one is information I think the next slide is the information of if you if oh

078no okay Bridget me okay so the center part the outcome is that you belong and this is kind of the I'm looking at the other sayak people this is kind of what we thought about or all the components that give you that sense of belonging um so if you just take a moment to look at the the web there because you know there's a lot of teachers there so we like webs um and so things that accountability and consequences that's where school board comes in think about the policies we're putting into play think about do we have too many do we have some that you know we could get rid of do we have some that the core that we could really grasp on that makes people find that commonality and I like check your

079bias and your stereotypes at the door and then how do we Foster that no collaborative conversations around and you can read those because I've talked about those we do brainstorm I will tell you that we're ready for action though because we've done a lot of brainstorming so we are next year at this time put it on your agenda we're going to have some action plans and we're going to have some ideas and we'll have probably return or Braylon will be back he'll be almost a senior but we'll probably bring some of his friends hopefully okay I thought it was any question any questions is the last page closing items it's open I've I'm on recruiting I've got a friend here so I'm going to recruit people um and it's just a really good thing whether

080in the profession or you just care about the community which I've heard tonight um investing in people feeling including and wanted to stay is a good investment board members first director Newman thank you for your presentation tonight and thank you all for being here um there's there's an epidemic of loneliness and a lack of connectedness going on on a nationwide basis and I think we're just starting to realize some of those um the effects not only of the pandemic but just the world we live in right so are you are you incorporating some of the newer findings and newer Research into the work that you're doing we've really been looking at our internal data and where we're at as our system so School Improvement plans what are the goals where buildings how are they doing

081on sense of belonging data from Panorama survey but I think that's a really good point because it is an epidemic Across the Nation and what are other places doing to make sure they're instilling that sense of belonging in students and staff and even the community as a whole director Fortune um and maybe you covered this I'm sorry if you did how a sciat committee how long is the committee term it's voluntary so it's as long as you want to be a voice on that space awesome I appreciate that thank you for all of your awesome work um my other question is about um so you the sciat committee kind of decides uh what is going to be identified as a goal item um do you guys look at like District Improvement plans when you're do

082you take that into consideration when you're making those oh yeah taking those ideas that's awesome thank you appreciate that okay George Carla hello thank you for the presentation and thank you for serving on this committee I have just sort of a maybe a weird question but like as you've served on this committee what's the most surprising or interesting thing that you have found out about this Cedar Rapids school district and the sense of belonging he's really not that shocked this is my time he has some good insights really good insights Community School um since I've been going to the sayak meetings one thing I found surprising is like the fact that like the amount of people that like don't feel included or like like safe in like their school environment like whether it be teachers

083or like like uh staff members or like students thank you that yeah interesting um how about the adults anything stand out anything that was surprising to you um I guess I would say um because I'm a classroom teacher so I'm kind of unique so I I've emailed sayak people to say hey I just pulled my students on this I think what's really interesting is that um you talk about loneliness and you were talking about kind of the isolation and how students are feeling and kind of the data I was really surprised at how honest students are with their answer and if they are asked a question they are honest and so when I was curious about attendance and what makes the student attend a class what makes a student not attend the class and then

084I just kind of you know pulled them they're completely honest and you can get a lot of they're kind of an under utilized resource and so I think elevating that voice is really something that we need to tap into next time and with the research but you know Braylon has brought that to the attention and he vocalizes but students in the classroom will also you know give that honest they'll tell you and so I think that has really surprised me because I thought they would tell me what I wanted to know or wanted to hear and they are this is when I don't attend class or this is makes me feel on what I think is a policy that would be making them feel included across the board so I could share some of that

085because it's you know it doesn't have any names attached what Sometimes some of my practices I thought were they must be too old school because it was actually not resonating with them and so I think it's kind of changed how we do things in the classroom if you really hear them and this new generation or what kind of makes them feel included and what makes them feel not just awkward I guess but not yeah well do you think will there be something in your action plan to help student voices be Amplified well that wow thank you for asking I am hosting my students are hosting a Kennedy High School and I sent this to Chief of Staff for Dr Grover's Chief of Staff an invitation where I have my students doing a elevated voices on

086issues that young people have and so if I'm going to test it out and do it like it's a conference or a convention and then if that goes and collects data then I think we'll start that's something that we can use in the future too so you're welcome you'll get invited thank you thank you Drake Roundtree did you have some the correct pronunciation thank you for your student representation on the Fayette committee you totally Rock for that and hopefully you can encourage other students to get involved so that we can hear what matters to you with this okay can we give her a round cup for that [Applause] thank you can somebody speak to the current size of the sciat committee and then also the distribution like how many students how many teachers how many

087people from the community So currently there's over 70 members on sciac but we have a regular group of close to 20 that attend um small number of students thank you Braylon we also and we had two this last time about the same number I would say Community Partners parents teachers and some people wear you know multiple hats but we have a core group of about 20 that show up consistently every time we did last year we met every month this year we changed it to bi-monthly and the committee has decided that monthly meeting that consistency of that and those action steps and that keeping us on track for what that momentum would be definitely appreciated so next our next year would go back to monthly meetings and again anybody is invited and can be on

088it if you have a voice you're welcome and everybody has a voice so we really do want to increase that student participation because it's great if we could have students in all of those small groups it's really powerful so thank you to Braylon and there's like I said a few others that have shown up and we really appreciate it we also have um Child Care during that time and Joe Benedict from Kennedy has students that volunteer and take care of the the younger ones during that time that you know aren't going to give probably their feedback on school some of them aren't even in school yet and then we also provide you know supper so we try to remove those barriers to make sure people can come and it's really a tight group of people

089that work really well together and again that sense of belonging and hearing those diverse perspectives has been really beneficial and Powerful it's a great group I'm so glad I'm a part of it and I appreciate you know the members that talked and the members here tonight and everybody that has participated and again everyone's welcome how just out of curiosity how long are the meetings hour and a half okay 5 30 to 7. and I'll just close with um one of the things that I think is critical for next year to build that team up is that we do do some action and we do see some actual like feeling like our time is well spent and that it's going to be heard and that the voices that contribute to it so that's what people tell

090me is they're like well are we just going to talk about the problems are we going to tackle them so that's the thing that we're really working on next year is action thank you yeah I don't think I'm the only member of the current board that's served by Messiah Committee in the past but I really just enjoyed the time and just the engagement and you know it certainly felt like there was a good diversity of like students that were sitting at the table folks from the community teachers coming from different perspectives and if I remember right things like profile graduate come out of groups like that so appreciate the work of everybody on that committee um and you know looking forward to getting future updates thank you for the presentation [Applause] sport is going to

091take a short recess we have two work sessions the first one is on teacher Recruitment and Retention and then the second one will be on magnet programming specific to City View so we'll take a five minute recess I think Justin if that's enough time for you yep five minute recess all right this board is officially back in session the first work session item tonight Dr Grover who will provide an overview of the plan and invite participation and discussion from the board okay thank you all so much for the opportunity to have the discussion tonight around Recruitment and Retention as I have been going out doing my listening tours and just talking with the the team and really understanding some of the stressors that we're seeing within the school district certainly when we have vacancies in

092our school district it puts a strain on many parts of the organization what does that look like sometimes parents are having to cover classes so that means that they can't do their job sometimes principals are also trying to cover classes teachers are taking on extra students Etc and so on April the 26th with our cabinet team and hrd members we wanted to take stock of what is the current state of Staffing within our school district meaning how many vacancies we had open and think about our steps forward so that's what we want to talk about here tonight kind of elevating this as a high priority for the school district so you have a handout there you can kind of follow along with me so today we're going to talk about our more imperative so that

093we can address the immediate and long-term concerns with our Recruitment and Retention and commit to a unified pursuit of achieving a common goal I do want to say that as we have these conversations this is a first step it definitely does not cover all the concerns we have around Recruitment and Retention but we want to take advantage of the time we have left on the clock thus far so we took a look at what are some of the current strategies underway in the school district that includes quite a bit of posting on teach Iowa and other job boards such as handshake that allows us to be able to connect with individual Educators all across the country we do tend to attend some college fairs I believe that most of them have been in State this

094year not much out of stage we have been offering letters of intent for first semester student teachers probably as soon as uh practical for the organization we do believe that there is a sense of urgency to take some additional steps I want to give you some insight into the data I would invite Craig to come up now because this data is live thank you to the team I do want to say this going back to April 26th as you all know that was just a couple of weeks ago and we've had the folks in the room here folks behind the scenes everyone working uh to try to get this figured out along with our staff members I can't wait to share about their involvement so thank you Dr Grover um so we've got represented here

095is the Tablo vez oh is a tableau visualization of uh our uh vacancy data and this is really exciting stuff this is brand new and as Dr Grover alluded to earlier this is our first iteration and first step at this so just to kind of walk you through what's on the dashboard here uh is we've got a listing of and starting in the upper left corner we've got a listing of the number of current openings and the number of FTE so it gives us some sense of how many bodies we've got to fill on how much FTE we're looking to fill next over we've got uh if you follow immediately to the the right of that we've got the number of uh of attendance centers or our campuses that have vacancies and right now that's

096a 29 29 so quite a few of them now the next number in line is a little deceptive because we want to be clear about this we started this as Dr Grover said on April 26th since then this is when we started we filled 16 positions thank you Justin we've still we've filled 16 positions since then there's actually been more that have been filled prior to that but since we started keeping track in this regard that's where we decided to draw the line uh which comes out to be if you total it up from that date forward uh with the uh number we filled and the number we still have opened we're about 20 percent of the way home to getting that uh every High uh every uh classroom having a highly qualified teacher and

097do it um right now the other thing that I think is really important to highlight is the furthest value all the way on the right indicates the overall sort of vacancy rate in Cedar Rapids right now which is just about five and a half percent um so a reasonably low number and then we break it down a bit more just so you can see um these this will be data that that we can give you access to if you want to see it as well but you can see that most of our uh openings are at the middle or at the elementary level in a very even split at the high school and middle school with just a handful at places like Polk and Bertram which is what the next couple of bar graphs indicate

098and there's one that says TBD which are things like uh nurses or ell teachers who we're going to place later uh again we got a little thermometer bar telling us how we're meeting how we're going towards our goal you know our goal is to get that 100 by uh early uh early August and then we've gotten a listing by attendance centers I know this is rather hard to read at this distance but when you have it on the screen in front of you it's a little more clear and you can see very clearly um broken out from from most to least in terms of which uh attendance centers have them and then finally at the bottom there's a line graph here and what this sort of indicates is uh when we are getting the uh

099postings up and when we're filling them so the blue line is when we're posting and the green line is when we're filling and what we're really hoping to see here is that we can start historically moving some of that data back so we hope that we can post a little earlier and fill a little a little earlier as well again um this data gets updated as we update our HR data as it comes through it's my understanding that there's about 10 more uh offers in the in the in the making here so the data is going to look even better probably in the next day or two but we're monitoring this in real time and uh again a huge shout out to uh our HR team and to particularly Angela Billman are are just incredible

100data analyst who just does amazing work with us and turned it on a dime so I'd be happy to take any questions about this sure actually I guess it's just really a comment I'm wondering um so if we're looking at open positions by type and then so we're looking at gen Ed and then sped and then teacher leadership so this is by type not by percentage so I'm wondering if that could be expressed in percentage because I know that we have less special ed teachers than we do General Ed teachers so I think that is significant to understand that um because even though it's more of a divided out group that that vacancy is actually really high and that's a critical field need area yep we can certainly do that thank you okay on the

101date posted date field is that is there a typical time of year when most teachers are considering making a move and is that why it's kind of compressed at the toward the end of the year yeah I think you know for my lunch it would be purely speculative at this point um I think one of the things that's exciting about this is that we can actually gather data so we can make some more informed decisions so anything I would tell you beyond this would be a little speculative in nature but I think that there's there's internal factors we've got in here we've got some internal barriers that we're working through trying to get positions posted faster um and uh I do think it's also a a function of you know of my 30 years in

102education that yeah teachers think about moving in in Spring so thank you that they attract is how quickly a position is filled yeah I think that's exactly what we're trying to get at is we're trying to we're trying to move that the whole process up get it not only uh starting earlier but moving quicker and compressing those two lines so that the distance between the the post and the fill is tighter yeah I think that obviously that's important but you're making sure that we've got the right candidate too so just absolutely going to weigh too heavy on how quickly we fill a position totally agree most important work we do selection another question in that top corner where it's 667 open positions are there new open positions I mean how does that that number Grows

103Right so your n is going to change yes and that's why we had to say the start date was April what had this many open positions since this day yes and then we're just going to keep tracking them going from that point forward so it's not inconceivable that that number will Flex up and down a little bit as we go on because we'll add positions but they may be lateral moves so we may open up some other stuff internally which may cause other additional openings so there may be some of that that happens too afternoon me again do we have any Benchmark data for other districts that gives us anything comparable to what we're tracking here rather than just open positions at the end of the year beginning of the year it's a great question

104not that I'm aware of but I think it's something we should look at George Fortune oh go ahead director humbles I can wait when I look at the current strategies underweight and I know we have postings that teach Iowa and other job boards what are some of the other job boards that were like handshake indeed you know those were the two that were shared with me anybody else that's what I remember okay yeah LinkedIn and mostly LinkedIn for administrator jobs okay mm-hmm okay all right if you have other questions um please just pop on let us know and so there's a lot of discussion but I think the main thing here is we're starting to track some data so we can get started and love the questions and we can make the adjustments that you

105pointed out so as we kind of think about this more imperative that's in front of us uh it's real simple for us it's why are we doing this and that is we believe that our staff deserve our schools to be fully staffed and our students deserve a highly qualified teacher in every classroom with that being said here's our North Star going forward that we want 100 of our vacancies to be filled with highly qualified teachers by August the 17th and like when is the first day of school so it's like a week so new teacher orientation is on August the 17th and we like to see uh those positions feel at that particular juncture so we kind of put together some strategies from a leadership perspective with an initial opportunity to share some Thoughts with

106our staff so last week I did a district-wide zoom call where all staff members could log on to the webinar and uh thank you to the communications team for facilitating that and so basically we provided feedback at that particular time to More Than 3 000 employees so there was a 78 open rate of the information that we sent out it included a video and just a survey so we're trying to figure out how to get people input but also kind of respect their time so some people watch the video some people did some people just answer the questions so 48 of the people that clicked on the link and we had 514 views on that we had a grand total of 882 people that engaged in this process I think that tells us a lot

107about this is an important topic to our staff so those that participated um I'm going to kind of walk through some of the questions that we shared with them so you can see here the first question we want to know from staff members and we kind of asked ourselves this too is this important to staff will this make you feel more confident in doing your job better if we're able to get vacancies feel 75 said yes the other question that we wanted to raise our staff members uh it was around should we have an incentive to recruit uh black indigenous people of color to the school district this was interesting because our first proposal did not include having an incentive uh to recruit people of color when we went out this that came up during

108the um feedback really from the administrative team so I said you know what let me put the question out to staff so overwhelmingly 64 of the people said yes we need to invest uh in some type of incentive so so we actually made some changes to our initial uh strategies that we had so we also wanted to know whether or not people would refer other people to our school district that's important word of mouth I work here come along you know work with me so you can see that 38 of people uh that they would be okay with sharing with someone about coming to Cedar Rapids Community School District we did get some feedback there some people they don't know a teacher like so depending on what part of the organization they work in they

109may not know another teacher but what was interesting I think this kind of ties into what was shared here earlier about why do people stay but people feel like there are areas that they want to continue to see us work on in our school district with some of our systems the way that we continue to advance learning and they would feel more comfortable when they're able to see you know some some changes or some areas that they feel may need some attention so that would be something we would probably want to go back and Survey as we continue to do this work the other interesting part we're always hearing about benefits what kind of benefits can you offer how do we compete with other entities and we ask the question about child care so with

110the child care initiative that we talked about was students of families that have students that would be in our before and after school programs so for us we saw this as a win-win your kid is enrolled in our school district and you can have before and after school care and we would supplement so that the employee will only pay 50 percent of the cost and that's to our Champions program where you can see that 12 of the people responded yesterday and I'll give some more a little bit explanation as we move forward but some of the feedback that we received around this particular one is number one I don't have to uh what else do you have to offer me the next one was more about what about children that are between the ages of

111zero to three maybe they're not in school yet so our so our conclusion to some of the feedback that we received was more or less around we need to diversify our benefits options so give people a choice some people were saying you know I'm I'm not at that stage in my life where I have children I would rather have some type something going towards housing so can there be some type of housing can there be pet insurance um can there be something for the younger children so just different uh options I do want to say too that um in developing these questions I work hand in hand with you Reese uh from our teachers union uh group probably to help draft these particular questions this is something that's important to them as well as part

112of negotiation something that we want to study even further but I do appreciate their collaboration and blessing us to give us the opportunity to try something now okay so what did we kind of come up with the proposal that we want to move forward so the first one is recruit hire and stay bonus of fifteen hundred dollars for any of our current employee employees so the way we looked at that was more or less we do want to try to figure out some kind of way to honor the people that are here how do we make this a recruitment and a retention so if you refer someone then you will receive fifteen hundred dollars over two years we would make those payments out by uh the September of this upcoming school year that's a 23

11324 school year and then the second year if that person is still here so again we're trying to keep them and we're trying to keep the person that they refer I'm sorry sure um so is that 1500 per teacher who is in our system and has been in our system and 1500 for a referral no just 1500 just a referral and any staff member let me say that in a staff member can't refer we have a process in HR you know to kind of get into some of those details but any staff member can refer and they will receive fifteen hundred dollars just for the referral okay thank you okay and I do and I can talk about the budget here at the end so a hiring bonus of special education so to your point

114uh direct abortioning uh earlier we recognize that the special education positions are very hard to feel and we've tried some incentives um before a thought about them but basically we're looking to provide five thousand dollars for a special education position in over three years and that means we will give the 2500 the first year fifteen hundred dollars the second year and one thousand dollars the third year again trying to get some sustainability there as well so we did decide to go ahead and move forward with the child care we thought this would be a good opportunity to kind of see how these added benefits how that rolls into just even getting it through our benefits office and when we looked at the number of people that said yes it was actually 98 people that said

115yes so that kind of doubles the number of participants that we currently have but it also put us in that sweet spot of our budget so we were right in the middle of knowing according to how many people would accept it where we wanted to be so we decided to still go ahead for the ones that wanted it maybe it wasn't a high number of people but for the ones who did we wanted to see an offer for them okay and so this is where we kind of Switched so we were going to offer fifteen hundred a thousand dollars to anyone that signed during our campaign and so after we had conversations about recruiting more diverse teachers to our organization we actually end up redirecting those dollars and so what we're looking at is a

116hiring bonus of three thousand dollars for our bipark teaching staff if the person stays for three years so that allocate that would be a total uh we're looking just maybe if we can recruit I want to say three thousand dollars based on 20 applicants is that where we are yes sixty thousand dollars is that right am I right somebody tracking me and then also here's what we also heard about this though when people of color come to our district they don't stay what does the support look like so we are looking to allocate about twenty thousand dollars to try to see what would be ways that we can provide support for teachers that we hire of color whether we get somebody to Mentor them have activities Etc we'll be looking to pull a plan together

117uh for that but we went ahead and allocated the funding based on the feedback we received from our staff do want to give you just a little bit more context in regards to maybe why people are feeling that sense of urgency right now for teachers of color they own and for black teachers uh specifically they only represent about 2.2 percent of our overall teaching staff in the district and if I include other uh races and you can see the um thin lines there that is about three percent overall of any um teachers of color in our school district okay and then just the last one that we are researching a little more and that's the offer letters of intent to all qualify student teachers and possibly paying student teachers there are Avenues to do that

118uh but it's uh a little bit complicated and so we are just researching that a little bit more but we do want to continue to hire the student teachers uh as quickly as possible so our next steps of course we'll take any feedback uh from you tonight hopefully we have your support uh additional questions you might want us to add change some things and we're happy to do that but we are ready to launch this as soon as we get your blessing um and so our Campaign theme and thank you to our Communications team I really like this approach that they were able to take here uh be the one to come and teach with us and up to five thousand dollar bonus I have shared all the breakdown of what that looks like with

119you and you can they share some of the social media Graphics here um and they kind of got this inspiration from going out talking to teachers about you know why is it special to teach what do we need from teachers in our school district so be the one to create aha moments be the one to ignite passion be the one to create a sense of belonging you heard that here tonight so that would be the call of action as we go out and recruit they're already working on a website Banner you can kind of see that here as we try to make things actionable in our school district they also will have a website that will have all the the Q a type of information more details that people would need to know to understand

120this campaign so that concludes the overall nuts and bolts of it this will be funded for the most part through Esser dollars so we have the opportunity to take advantage of the Esser dollars here over the next two years um so Carl is not here but she did give her a stamp of approval along the way they're the only caveat is the last year that third year for the special education uh bonus that lasts one thousand dollars that would come out of special education funding questions and this oh one last thing this is for the 23 24 school year we will continue to evaluate along the way again we're taking advantage of extra dollars so we're not asking for a commitment Beyond this next school year at this particular time I have a couple um

121one I first of all this this tremendous work and thanks everyone I'm sure it was a lot of information a lot of collaboration to kind of get here so really appreciate that I think this is an item that has been clearly identified as a need so appreciate it being addressed um my question is about child care I think that's a tremendous option that 98 people are saying they're going to say yes to be added to that child care option I'm wondering if um I'm wondering if other options um as had previously been discussed if there were help towards housing or a different need so that we can be Equitable to our our providing that maybe we can take a look at it we were up against the ending time for like benefits enrollment Etc and

122we were more familiar with this program than maybe what we were with some of the other ideas but yes we're happy to continue to look at it if it's something that we can do we can bring it back to the table okay and then my second question uh you said this is 23 24 school year through the Esther dollars so my concern there is just about sustainability if this proves to be a valuable practice I just would like to see some thoughts moving forward on how to sustain it financially and for examples first of all thank you um uh putting together uh Recruitment and Retention campaign that's something I believe we as board members have been waiting to happen so and I like that we're in at the beginning and getting an understanding of the

123process that is helpful that is helpful for our community to see where we are going and we know there is a teacher shortage so whatever we can do to to recruit and retain our students I liked the beginning of this plan so I thank you guys for who was all involved yeah everyone so so it's nice to see a plan that has been being put in place and to have continued updates uh to the board that would be great you want me to give it to you thank you uh no I just want to say thank you and I I'm especially glad that there's collaboration with the administration and Crea to work with the the teachers to make sure that everyone has buy-in to this plan um I think I think it's great and I'm

124amazed at the amount of work that you've all put into it so quickly and I love the data that you're keeping the questions from the board okay all right I'll make moving for the next appreciate that this is a priority and that we're moving so quickly on it um certainly hopeful that this strategy works and I'm sure that the team will come up with some additional strategies if we see this isn't the only thing that we need to actually start to close that Gap so thank you foreign agenda item is programming a City View Community High School I would turn the meeting over to Adam thank you we're here thank you for having us tonight we're grateful to be back at the table and in a dialogue um this time we do have just a

125couple slides but we're going to get into the deep dive conversation and hopefully get some feedback one um but two and more importantly just do it the clicker foreign feedback one but two Clarity and so we want to give this as an opportunity to say there are any of these Concepts as we get into our Deep dive do you say that doesn't make any sense or or please explain more this is an opportunity that we won't really want to grow and understand what your concerns and what your excitements are as well so two agenda items for us one is the Deep dive where we go into the school model go all the way into the nuts and bolts and hopefully you understand um what our concepts are but also what the day-to-day will look like

126for a student a teacher and then two we're gonna at the end of this bring this back to how this connects to our broader magnet Vision as well with that I will hand this over to trace and Dan who are joining me tonight um we're going to start with end of mind and these three value ads are what we want all of us to walk out of here um or our first draft of where we hope the value ads will be to say this is why we're doing City View I mean these are the concepts we're pushing so first All City View students will earn a high school diploma and either college credit or professional certification and that's really what we want people to say if you want this value come as City View two

127we're going to do this in this being they're going to master their grade level standards and profile of graduate competencies through personalized competency-based approach this is Progressive and this is innovative work and then finally we're going to create an inclusive environment that values every student voice and make sure they're heard in their school and they're helping co-create that environment so with that we'll talk about the how now um well I'll head it over to Dan thank you Adam and thanks for having me like Adam said as well um you have a couple handouts sorry for the dump of paper I wanted to get us rooted first in the transcripts that we put together so the the most recent handout I have given you has a glossary I believe page 10 as well as a couple

128transcripts and as Adam mentioned our goal tonight is to keep this engaging you've already been here two hours right it's been a long meeting there's been a lot that's happened so we were told we get an hour if we go short I understand um but we want to keep you engaged so we're having a conversation about what questions you have as they arise so what I'd like to do is for this first group over here David to Nancy if you could focus on Chantelle so what I would like is if you would look at Pages 13 through 15 in the in those sheets that you have right now in your hand that is a transcript that Trace put together with the Persona of a name Chantelle of a potential uh student at City View and

129what you'll see there is potential experiences in terms of Pathways as well as discoveries so if you could look at that over and think of what excites you about what you see on this page the pages 10 and 11 that's a glossary to help you with any terms that you may see on there that are confusing and then Dr Grover to director Newman if you could do Brooks I believe from 16 to 18 we're just having you split it up for the sake of time can y'all see the do you need them to read the classes down this side yeah they are kind of blurry aren't they yeah yeah what I think is also in the book it is a little bit better in the book but it's still a little blurry so for those

130classes on the side are your basic core classes so English social studies US History social studies U.S or government Associated economics and so on is what it reads down the side of that picture right underneath Chantelle those are grades yeah those are the standards so that's satisfaction of the standards so exceeding proficient and so on Thursday yeah no nope it succeeds proficient nearing proficient and developing so before we have you share out with with the parts that you're excited about I wanted Trace to talk for a second about uh what we did here what these are what a Persona is a little bit I know we had some questions on this uh whether or not these are real people and and where these uh stories came up from yeah thanks Dan so uh personas are

131a tool that um lots of people use when you are trying to create something new that people can't really necessarily haven't experienced themselves and seen and so you use personas to do several things one to create a picture or a glimpse of what's possible and what could be to humanize it by putting an actual human face and name to uh to a potential character and then be able to tell the story of what it is your desired state or your desired end is and so what we did with these that actually many of these were developed like a year and a half ago and there are long form stories we can you can read about the entire week in the life of these characters the work was based off of the concept design team from

132a year and a half ago that kind of came up with this concept of City View and so we took that information and began to create these personas and so Chantelle and Brooks are just two of those that you can see tonight to get a glimpse of what you know in four years what a student might and their story and so forth they're not our current students just the clarity yeah they're not ours yeah these are these are um what are the common Creative Commons photos they're actual human beings are just not our human being but as far as we know based on AI yeah it's hard to say anymore it's hard to say um but so if you have thoughts that you're excited about we'd like share those out and Trace we'll we'll get

133those down as we share so it's something that I'm excited about so I know that the 21st century 21st century skills were developed in conjunction with local employers um and that's that communication being able to use a PC et cetera et cetera so it looks like some of those same local employers that were involved in that 21st century skill development are also listed as resources or partners for Shadows internships and interviews and visits so I do like to see that because I think it's a continuity of a local employer and us being able to work as a community school district to meet a community need there oh there's positives things that you're excited about from what you saw I think I kind of felt that there was a little bit of confusion with the charts

134right so I mean if you've looked at a report card you know I mean some of this stuff will look familiar but you know really the powerful stuff here for me was at the bottom of that first page where it said personal statement right so I'm in that little box up top where it talks about purpose and plan um certainly is really powerful but really that personal statement I think was was far more powerful so again depending on who this is really designed for um would determine what order you want to see this in but certainly for for us and I don't know what you know the profile of a graduate like the way that chart looks um I think once it's described to you it's probably really powerful but on first Glimpse it's probably

135difficult to decipher exactly what that's trying to tell you I would say that as I looked through it it was nice to see the projects right so I think you know again I'm looking at this you know as you know it this is this is far more powerful I think to a future employer when you look at relevant experience right when I look at the projects that the the Chantel worked on where she was I think by the time we get to that third page you can see her schedule and you can see that she is at places like Co she's doing an internship at Bradley and Riley that becomes clear so again when I'm looking at this I could see a student presenting this to a future employer instead of a resume right so

136I mean I think that's really powerful um you know so I mean I'm excited about I think you know the the experience that Chantel is getting looks looks powerful but again I think I was distracted by the charts in the beginning quite honestly so I'd almost rather see them a little bit low or after we talk about what her you know what her passions and what her what her statement is all about other comments positive negative I'll go to Cindy first yep as president taminski referenced it shows her attending Co and Kirkwood uh each of the days of the four days of the week I mean is is that the type of schedule that we anticipate for for our students by the time they're a senior that they'll be leaving campus so to speak to

137go somewhere else the goal is by the senior year they're out much more whether through internships or classes elsewhere okay but still connected to us one of the things that I've discovered in education is sometimes that seniors leaving is really difficult so you can articulate a real clear pathway and then getting them to take those steps with us is important so that they can start to learn and still come back to us as a resource as they go through those steps okay okay we have some sort of agreement Kirkwood and Co about these student services like post-secondary enrollment yeah the Kirkwood the district post-secondary enrollment options would be what we'd go through okay while exploring others okay other feedback um so I just I'm excited to see what we're writing what we're excited about I'm

138excited to see um the inclusion of project-based learning just having had children that were in magnet schools first at Johnston and then at Roosevelt I know that project-based learning really um encouraged a lot of investment and excitement about their work so I'm really happy to see that moving forward um I do have a question about some of the online courses are those live online courses or are those courses that would be pre-recorded and then pursued at a student's own pace or both um Edge annuity would be the online courses so for instance with PE right now we don't have a PE teacher but through the Edgenuity online and we have quite a few students in the district that take PE online we could have them actually complete their workouts record their workouts at the YMCA

139which is agreed to be a partner with us and get that validated through a PE teacher through the online Edgenuity platform Spanish is another option to do that for students that are interested in going that route okay other questions anybody from Brooks this wasn't as exciting so one thing that comes to mind so you just said you know Brooks isn't as exciting you know um and you're looking for students across the gamut and some will need more hand-holding and some will be very self-directed and very capable of doing that um so how what's that approach look like um for for Brooks yeah and if say he needed a little bit more guys there is one typo here it says on 16 that Brooks is a senior he's actually a freshman and that's Illustrated on page

14015. um so a freshman experience isn't going to be as robust right there's still a lot of exploring and I think as we get into going through the manual a little bit of the prospectus we'll highlight some of that but what we want for a student like Brooks is to have opportunities to visit the five key Industries or main industries that have been highlighted by the economic Alliance and see different opportunities so what we hope for him is that he does site visits that he does projects that touch on those different Industries and learns career clusters within those industries that he could focus on and then we'll also talk about our advisor piece that we we expect to be a Cornerstone of City View where we get to know students that are having those regular

141conversations so that as Brooke starts to articulate a pathway we can start to push him in that direction through our counseling office as well as our teachers supporting that or if he's just lost that we have somebody there to listen to him foreign maybe just a comment I mean I think we should be as excited for both students right so looking at this is only a freshman so there's limited experience again maybe that feedback on the reordering of this because the schedule is impressive to me like what the student is actually doing just in their freshman year um you know talking about exploring trades so how do we really pull that out so again if you're looking at a future Community partner or following like a volunteer Mentor you know what opportunity do they see

142to assist this student with you know moving from unsure to a little bit more sure right so you know I you you say exploring the the TR you know the um the categories or the industries in this community I don't necessarily see that stand out here so it would be nice to see that you know exploring trades and then go into that schedule and really seeing that stuff pull out because I think the opportunity that this this student has feels like it would get them there but there's a lot of you know white space on the page right so again I don't know what the final looks like right I mean there's a printout there's a Persona so I understand it's going to improve but you know even looking at that second page where it's

143just you know half the discoveries are empty does that mean that the student isn't pressing right are they supposed to have something in all of these boxes or not so yeah I'm cleaning that up I think would be important yeah right it's a full so that those spaces are kind of method to show you how that that's going to yeah and again I'm mapping this to a resume where it's like somebody with less experience is going to have a one-page resume with more experience can have a five page but you know showing like a five page with half the space empty is not what a resume would do right so yeah I want to keep us moving for the sake of time um questions before we move on that haven't been any any other questions

144in your head okay I want to start here because um as we as we discussed what would be the best way to go about this we get much more excited about students than the goals and some of the other stuffs that are super important but the student story and the student um Vision that we want to create I think is is always in our heads much as it is yours so with that we'll transition to vision mission um so if you go to page three and we're back to the booklet now you can yep you can cast aside that package that was meant to reduce confusion I'm not sure if if we succeeded in that the working partner so the vision mission um every learner Future Ready is our vision much like it is for

145Cedar Rapids our mission is to unleash the human potential existing within every learner through authentic Community embedded learning experiences that prepare all Learners with a plan passion and pathway for future success and I hope that you saw that a little bit through the the transcript that's what we were trying to highlight is what that looks like with that in mind any goals that you have for City View based on what you know about that transcript and what you know about the presentations we've already given as well as our vision and Mission what goals do you have so I think there's it's just um important to be clear that that vision is reflective language that is reflecting on our entire District um because this it's not separate from us and it is part of our district

146so I I think just making sure that we're using language that really ties it all together that City View is not separate but is part of the Cedar Rapids Community School District I think would be important it's like I'd really like us to be able to track the success not just of our students but how it's impacting our community whether it's projects that projects that impact our community or that they become connected with employers and they stay in our community or where they're going to school whatever I just want to see the the outcome data um across the board I would like to see larger capacity a larger in language around diversity this needs to be part of the main picture overview of what City View is all about and this is missing in here

147I think there's clearly a place where equity and safety on here I think I mean it's you know looking through it on first first glance it certainly feels like it covers a lot of ground but I agree with the director Roundtree that you know seeing a specific Equity goal um and then you know really kind of talking about safety my feeling is that the community might have some concerns with the idea that you know students are moving around and maybe they're not aware of how much students move around already right so the thought that they're going to have this Hub in downtown and then go to places like Kirkwood and Co and other places um you know making sure that that is something that is that is clearly articulated here I think would be important

148I would like to see what's in here expanded on and tying into diversity and tying into what we just talked about with um Truman and retention of teachers that not just those five main uh economic you know areas of the city but any and all essential um I guess jobs and employment and so you know we need teachers like how to City View set someone up from within the school district to get the education they need take the next steps to become a paraprofessional get on the path to be a teacher and contribute to that side um you know so we're not sitting here with thing we've got these five economic uh areas and we still don't have enough teachers at the end of the day so um great Point education technology is in one

149of those so we were kind of counting education in general as one of those Industries I would just you know I would just let there's like a couple things that are super important to me and trades are one of them um and I know as a district our one of our goals is college or career ready so just want to make sure that that's really clear that that a career in trades or a career um outside of a college-bound career that the skills and the networking and the opportunity that's being provided through City View for those options is also included and highlighted and pretty clearly defined following up on that um just looking at the I don't know if this is the board what do we call this the uh design team here the community

150Advisory Board um I don't know if you've had any conversations with local Trade union groups or if there's any representation on this community Advisory Board from union members specifically that's important to me obviously our teachers are union members as well and so that would be something that I would say would kind of expand what director board training was talking about yeah the union and specifically trade representation is low on that and that's something we need to adjust maybe a sense how how big would you want that Advisory Group I mean is that something you would expand or would there be other groups that you'd be expanding to get engagement yeah that's one of the things that's tricky is that that group is already getting quite big um you know there's a reason that a school

151board's seven and not 50. um however we it's being represented is also very important so I think I mean it gets to 20 gets a little big in my mind but if it's one or two extra so that we have trades better represented in there then that's what's going to happen yeah I hate to say it but we could lose a CEO and get some Union people on there uh real easy it seems like I I agree with director marshbrock I think we need to have Union representation there as well if you haven't already to like The Advisory Board just making that understanding with them that trying to get representation and diversity in that group is the goal and that there's only so big that that group can be so you know if somebody needed

152to roll off that they're not thinking that they've got some you know long-term commitment right yeah there's it's really the benefit of the of the group right yep we also have some staff on here too I think we adjust them from being on the edge before okay I do have a question when I look at the achievement goals and since we were closed the achievement Gap at a higher rate than the district average has measured by mass and Isis how how do you go about doing that what how are you going to change yeah the reason I think that we'll be able to do that better is because of giving students voice and what they're learning so students all over the district are choosing not to read the things we want them to read right

153that's been happening since I was in high school I know um sorry director Garlock however um the you know I know come on you love that Tech all right getting them um to read something that's interesting to them is much more likely to happen right so developing their curriculum around things that they see a future in they see a purpose in and they see goals is the ultimate goal and they'll be more likely to engage with the content that's going to help them grow so that contextualization of the learning helps for students to really get engaged and then also it helps them remember it because there's something that they're tying to it that's a little bit more of interest rather than the thing they just did I do want to transition to the achievement goals

154we were getting there so if you want to go ahead and go to that next page no you're you're good page four but other questions or comments as well I have a question or a comment um has has there been and you guys are probably going to get to this I I just maybe I should wait till the end um like is has there been any opportunity to engage with like the city of Cedar Rapids to look at um kind of some continuing Pathways I know that they're pursuing some scholarship opportunities I don't know how robust they are or how many there are just wondering if they've been um included in the conversation that's a great question in general about some of that Junior Senior experience we're drawing on from what we've already done there's

155a lot to develop there yet um right now we're really focusing on that freshman sophomore experience and then knowing what we know about junior senior to build more now that we have a counselor on board and she'll start effectively July 1 and things like that can really dig into that so the city I haven't done that I don't know Trace if you have in the last year or so but we haven't had that conversation yet but we know we have had other conversations with City uh employees that are excited to help with whatever they can we've worked with the city of Cedar Rapids at Big for 11 years but not Civic conversation um so a couple things I wanted to highlight with the goals we wanted to hear from you about your goals and to

156see if they're represented here and then the things that aren't such as tracking um how we're doing as a program to fulfill the needs of Cedar Rapids um I wanted to highlight the every student graduating from high school is a goal and something we believe we'll achieve also that Adam highlighted the credit earning two college credits at a minimum or professional certification as as they leave one I wanted to highlight and I highlighted this earlier today and I loved braelyn's conversation with sciac um the 90 percent or above feeling a sense of belonging at City View that is something that we think we can hit and we're confident we can hit that as a goal and we're not just putting it on there our current High School average isn't 45 and having been in a

157high school I understand how difficult that can be so developing that mindset around our staff and the importance of connecting with every single individual child and helping to hear their voice and as they articulate their path in education again as a Cornerstone of what we're doing and that's why I think we can hit a much higher number there um and then some of the other things that we talked about is the five main industries of Cedar Rapids to give you an idea um those are highlighted as bioscience which we believe includes the medical fields in a variety of capacities education technology Logistics and warehousing I shouldn't have started this I'm gonna miss one now Advanced manufacturing and oh food processing thank you so what we want students to be able to see is all of

158the different careers that are involved in those different industry clusters so that they see what Cedar Rapids on the surface has to offer the other thing though that is important so we're saying every student's going to experience that freshman sophomore year the other thing that's important that has been highlighted already by director marshbrook is that students get to choose a different pathway if they're not interested in one of those we think that is very important just like we think that if they choose a pathway junior year and they want to change we're not going to tell them nope we said you're going to earn a certification you got to keep going these are kids and we want them to explore and get a better sense of what's out there and that's the ultimate goal stream

159like like is that a junior they don't want to do it anymore then they still will graduate by earning all their uh graduation requirements by the Cedar Rapids Community School District so those 40 credit hours in the variety of different courses will still be out of their graduation metric we just added another layer that we want to see them do yeah well no I was just going to say the thing about it is being clear and upfront because this does represent some of the goals that we have earlier when students Even Flow out of different programs which is fine they should be able to do that it makes it difficult for them to earn an industry certification so knowing their end goal right like what they're trying to accomplish some because they just want to

160try a lot of different things I think we're okay with that but if they're looking for example um the student that we had here what was his name Ron Brooks Brooks uh he specifically said I want to learn more about trades we know he's trying to go and get a job right so we're probably trying to make sure we keep them on the path to making sure that he's certified and he can step right into work one of our partners um nationally that we met with a little bit ago and by partner I mean another school that has a similar model that we were just sharing ideas um they said you know one of the things that we've told our kids is when they tell us we don't want to go to college we say

161well it's fine but you're not shutting the door yet right so it's those sorts of conversations like well you've got one more class for the certification let's just finish uh knock that off your plate you have it you don't have to go that way those sorts of conversations are will be important and just for clarity too because sometimes people get this confused but with the certification for most of them they're going to be taking classes too right so even at the college level they may not go into four-year but they will probably for sure have some classes at the two-year level yeah the Lynn Regional Center is one area that we have had multiple conversations with as well including using their um facilities for things like our science equipment because they they'll have some access

162that they think we can get in there to do and the reason again we think that's important is because if we can get a student in their site sophomore year then the idea of going there as a junior becomes easier because they see some faces they know they know what to do when they get in the door those sorts of things and that's why we want them to experience that type can you share how engineering is H I've made industries of Cedar Rapids um you know I can just from a personal experience the food processing I actually coach baseball with a guy who's an engineer uh he was at ADM and it was that's the food processing right so it's again the career clusters take different shapes throughout the different Industries um so that's one

163way the um similarly coding I I talked to um Phil westa from I'm not sure how to pronounce his last name so if I butchered that I'm sorry um we talked the other day he's the executive director of the med q and he talked about their need for programmers in the hospitals and so another example where we know students that want to code but they don't always know what's out there for them what's that mean what's that look like as a job so let's expose them to the different folks hiring in the community and then as they develop that Career Cluster they can still go that direction knowing that this is an Avenue they can go on right Advanced Manufacturing right just that Raytheon is our largest employer Collins or whatever whatever the name is

164now yeah um just to not Overlook that resource because I you know I know they have a lot of um interest right in in making sure that that they're fully staffed along their their different work groups to the point we want to make sure is that these five main industries are identified by our economic Alliance as high need and so we need we need to be attentive to their needs but there are so many others and we're not going to the the five are the Baseline right we want the kids to see Collins Aerospace visit a power plant of Alliance all those different kinds of things as well as well but we want to make sure that we're supporting our City's Economic Development efforts do you think that's clear in the messaging that people understand

165that it reaches outside of the five the five has really been developed intensely in the last couple weeks so we haven't had to to reach that yet but it's a fair question that we'll need to make sure that we're clear on yeah I think going back to what you write your merge product said to I like the idea of our community being involved with helping design that but I also like the idea of having our students passions and their interest driving that too so as we understand what the kids are looking for and what these students are looking for making sure that we're actually providing those opportunities for them as well because I think that's good at good feedback to the Employers in the community it's like kids are not interested in advanced manufacturing let

166me learn why you know I mean it's um I appreciate the fact that we've got clusters in the state and certainly in our community I want to drive to that but really focusing on the students passions and their interests I think is key we talk about and I this might be a little bit more District related than City View related but we talk about closing the achievement Gap at a higher rate all students graduating from high school big goals right um we also want that at our other high schools and so do we consider this a bit of a testing ground then for our high school our other high schools as well uh yes Adam you can please join me absolutely this we really do see this as a prototype that we will utilize so

167that all of our students have the same experiences it would also tie into our facilities master plan the conversations that we're having now is like how do we ensure that students have the opportunity to be exposed to the different areas that you're talking about education we should have an academy for Education students um it's all across the country there's no reason why we can't have it here engineering and Technology Aviation all of those different uh areas so I think we'll learn some things here we'll figure out how to get that information from students and where to drive our resources I think the question will be um is do we put all the same things at each of the high schools or do we have different offerings similar to what we have now and so those

168will be more conversations to come so the simple answer is yes laughs she said it better than I will but I would add um this is a primary function of the magnet schools in general and as we reframe and repurpose um those that magnet Vision we were thinking about how we're learning lessons and feeding it back into our traditional schools but this is a prime example of doing just that um I wanted to sorry I got too excited about the next Point anything else can I just say one more thing on that the other interesting thing about this so we get a chance to really it's a small enough group where you can recruit teachers with a certain skill set a certain passion around some of where the changes need to be so when we

169start talking about project-based learning competency-based grading students being engaged in internships apprenticeship that is a huge paradigm shift for how we teach in our classrooms okay and so now when we have teachers on board that they're trained and they're able to kind of move that back we could put an idea and a vision out there but our staff that we have to come along with the ideas and Concepts so I think it's critical in this team they already know we have to get this right in regards to understanding how it benefits kids because when kids are passionate their attendance goes up they come to school they have they're working towards something that they're interested in they can see how it connects to the rest of their lives and so I'm very inspired by the opportunity

170but there is a lot to learn here so all the questions please don't hold back it's just because we're going to miss something we're going to keep learning um and kind of adjusting it as we go that is absolutely correct if we go to page five quick um I want to highlight uh director Roundtree you mentioned the need for more explicit conversations about diversity and Equity this is where we dig into that a little bit one of the things that our goal will be is in those five Industries we talk about to have a diverse Workforce that our students can interact with so that we're finding folks that are in those fields that look like our students and can talk with our students so that they see themselves I know in my work when I

171was supporting the academy on their board one of the things that we heard from students was when they went on that trip in the summer and were able to go down to New Orleans and see somebody that looked like them wear a suit and walk the streets as a banker it blew their mind they didn't they weren't used to that right so helping to highlight those Avenues in Cedar Rapids is a goal of ours and it's a stretch goal too because we need to get to know more folks and so that's where we'll need help of who those folks are and we we want that help sincerely but that is absolutely how we intend to to tie some of that together there is your staff completely hired for the we well it depends on what

172we are allowed to hire yet um but as of now we have four teachers that are hired we have a special education posting and then um a secretary posting currently we're also one of my my joke but honesty is we would like to hire an engagement specialist either this year or next but all the teaching positions except for special education and next year the plan is and you can see this in the Staffing plan every year for the next two years we'll hire four more as we add those teachers so there will be new hiring um positions that we will use the strategies that Dr Grover talked about to try to get a more diverse staff because we see that as a need we know it's a need it'll be an area of focus for

173us it is one of our explicit goals as well um on page four with community that um maybe not there I'm sorry yeah teacher capacity the percentage of staff at City View reflecting diverse backgrounds and experiences we'll move up proportionally so it is it is an area that we know that while we're super excited for the team we've hired so far an area we missed the Mark was on lack of diversity how are we on time Adam I'm not sure when we just yeah okay fair enough all the questions yeah other questions that's right okay I'm still on page five that's all right um with student Recruitment and and maybe this is related to student recruitment but I think another important part of this is is communicating to the public what our students are doing

174so I'm just wondering like at the end of the first year if there wouldn't be some sort of showcase or demonstration for the community of what the kids are doing yeah thank you we've talked we've talked through how we want that to look or that we do want some sort of Capstone each year for students to be able to explain yeah yeah I think that would the community doesn't understand City View so I think that would go a long way to educate people I think the Capstone certainly a bit like even an open house like closer to the beginning and just the sooner I think the community can meet the students um and interact with them and just learn about what they're looking for I think the more that we can get the community engaged

175in this certainly focus on that Capstone and what they accomplish but I I personally love just seeing like just that progress right so when you first meet a student maybe you know the student that we saw earlier is unsure you know you come in at the end of the semester and it's like all the experiences they've had and to be able to articulate that I think would be really powerful so you know think about multiple engagements for the community one of the other ideas that the last one on here that I'm excited about um is the idea of a summer camp for kids in middle school to get them exposed early so they can have that same experience we can start to build recruitment recruit my plans uh as the kids go back into their

176traditional schools and say hey have you thought about um for that same idea of let's let's let them see it feel it talk to the people that are doing it to get the excitement bill with that I know it's getting long um and you've had a chance to look at this and we'll have more time to look at this uh one other thing I want to highlight is number eight and we've talked about this already are payday I'm sorry um where this is one visualization at the bottom there where we show students exploring those first two years left hand side just kind of being an articulation of their grade the the middle there the core academics that will still hit those standards and we'll track those standards so that we're able to to show progress

177and to show parents how they're going coming along on those standards and make sure students understand how they're coming towards graduation the amount of students that could articulate how they were doing towards graduation is fairly low because they're not normally real engaged with that process they just take the classes and move along and so we want that where they can articulate what they're doing and how that's going and how it's coming and then on the right side again that that when we say they're going to have these interactions in in the major five Industries we mean not just the site visits and job Shadows that we often think about but a project-based learning opportunity with somebody in a different industry that that counts that checks that box for us because sometimes that's where the real

178meaningful networks start to start to take shape the other thing I would mention too I think Dan's hit this before but 9 through 12 should become much more concentrated so when we're igniting passions that's exposure right and each year you get a little deeper as you start to really understand your passion area and pursue those credits and or certification and I'm going to keep us moving but feel free to jump in with any questions um if we go to the implementation plan uh then on 18. I'm not going to draw your attention anything against in particular here but this is one thing that we're developing with our team right now um we know we have a lot of work to do we're not this is very we're very aware of that we've already had one

179four hour work session with our team um on a Sunday they are all willing to come in they were excited to come in tells you a little bit about who we brought in I mean there's another one in the works coming up here pretty soon so in that we are going to articulate what is it we're going to hit really well in year one because um I I wanted to make it clear that all we have these ambitious goals we're not going to be great at all of them in year one right so what are the things we have to nail for ninth graders and 10th graders next year that is what we're developing right now and what we show a little bit with this implementation plan of how does that phase out year one

180to year two and so on so we can eventually be where we want to be with this prototype as Dr Grover said um and then on page 21 we've talked about some of the feedback structures uh the idea is um to have the and I we already got some feedback that that should be called to council because you are our board you make those important decisions this is an advisory um more of a council um and that that holds weight depending on who you're talking to so that's something that we will be changing and then like I said if you have uh director merch Brock if you have ideas of folks that would be good on this Council serving in those roles that you mentioned we'd love to hear the names um not necessarily here

181but share them with us in case it doesn't work out I also think Tara truster would be an excellent resource she's already on your Council and she'll have those connections within skilled trade to be able to make some recommendations absolutely we also see student leadership as a discovery so I wanted to highlight that for a second so when we talk about all these different ways kids can learn we see a weekly meeting with student leadership to talk through some of the hurdles we have talk through some of the data we have things like that is a way to to certify learning again there's reading there there's Discovery there there's all sorts of opportunities so we see that as one of our feedback groups as well as a parent Board of some capacity um I we

182haven't asked yet but I would hope Bridget would be part of our board as well to talk more about the parent experience at City View and what that looks like um so those are different we have four main groups that we hope to get regular information from as well as you all um and then also the economic Alliance boards that we'll be wanting some updates on how's this going what are we doing and so on the rest of the Staffing and budget and just say yes to that and we'll be good no I'm just kidding again this is nothing in stone but this is our our belief of what we see coming next that you all get to decide as we go we really appreciate this opportunity and this is the beginning of a dialogue

183so like I mentioned if there's things that still don't make sense to you or things that you feel like you heard that isn't what we said please reach out with those questions because we want to help with that and I just want to say I want to say I think I think what they have worked extremely hard over the last couple of weeks to kind of get everything down on paper in a very comprehensive way so we know that this can be overwhelming but they've been trying to respond to what they've been hearing from at the board meetings from parents as we move forward so we would welcome any last final questions or you want to email us we will try to get a timeline together where we can come back and give you reports

184as we move forward but I do think that this is a great step forward in regards to trying to get a holistic view we should have brochures marketing videos and all of that coming soon and so certainly we will keep you informed and engaged along the way whatever can you share in what way were students involved in the process have they provided feedback have they like and what we were students involved in conceptualizing and building this we had several students um former and current in tensive design team a year and a half with some feedback Dan was saying now that we have a student body we can really engage them as we develop these things and try things out to go is this is working for you is this not so I think you're going

185to see that student voice really amp up now that we have students so it's a cool part we also held design days where we invited all the the students that were signed up at that time and their families to come in and talk to us a little bit I think I shared this with you all before but they talked a little bit about what do they expect out of school and how do they want to be treated and how they want their son or daughter to be treated or their child excuse me the um the so in those conversations we also took the students over to a separate room with a teacher to talk through like what is it you want from this experience you know what are the what are the discoveries what are

186your interest areas what are those things so we've tried to capture their voice in those ways thank you for including that yeah and that'll be a huge point you know our next Sunday meeting is to start to get those in front of teachers to say here's what they're interested in now let's go here's your standards here's what they're interested let's design let's get the the curriculum set so we're ready I just want to respond to another piece of feedback we ran the numbers today we've recruited eight more students from the last time we've seen you and we are just a point and a half for proportionality in terms of demographics so we're making progress in terms of the student recruitment as well and what our student body will look like so we're excited about that

187as well as well but you know what my question is oh you want me to ask it how many black or students of color because with that before okay we have have okay okay I think maybe one last thing I'd like to share just to put some context to it is I I have the Good Fortune of traveling around the country I have for the last 10 years visiting highly Innovative places and so the much of what we are designing isn't just out of our head it's work in other put it in the context here and the schools I visited especially the the ones here in the last year without exception everyone has led their District in achievement scores graduation rates sense of belonging all of those important measures lower discipline rates so this isn't

188uh this isn't just some crazy idea there is solid entry that putting kids in these kind of learning situations makes a difference do it better isn't 100 brand new to us I mean we've had Iowa big and you know I can speak firsthand with my own kid that that was a really engaging path and I'm already seeing it pay off for her in college right now so this isn't starting from complete scratch year we we do know what we're doing right like I I have complete faith that we know what we're doing here it's just a matter of putting it into a practice at scale right now that any of the less thoughts questions I'm excited thank you me too that's my last thank you thank you with no further business we are adjourned