Ames CSD - School Board Meeting - April 20th, 2026

001All right, let's go and call the board meeting to order. We have six board members present. Am I counting correctly? Yes, six members. Uh, first item is approval of the agenda. >> Right. Moved by the ward, seconded by Bon Garner. All in favor say I. >> I. >> Oppose. A passes 6. Next is our public hearing and we will I don't have anything special to read this. Right. All right. Go ahead and open the public hearing. Anyone that's here to speak for the public hearing B 2627 proposed certified budget can go to the microphone. Anyone just want to throw it in? All right. Then I will close the public meeting, public hearing, public hearing, and now we'll get to the good stuff. Celebrations and recognitions. I will give it to Director Dash to start with

002Battle of the Books. Good evening. Battle of the Books brings together our schools and the Ames Public Library to foster a love of reading, teamwork, and academic challenge. Students in grades five and six spend months reading a carefully selected list of books and this goes all the way up to 12th grade in our schools. Um they work collaboratively in teams and prepare to answer detailed questions in a fast-paced quiz style competition. At the elementary level, we're proud to celebrate Fellows Elementaryaries team, the Chapter Chasers, who captured first place. Um congratulations to that team. I will call you all up later um in just a few minutes. Um and this year in the sixth grade competition, Ames Middle School earned both first and second place honors. Um also congratulations to the seventh and eighth grade teams.

003They were very successful and missed qualifying for state by just one point. And last, but certainly not least, the team at Ames High School qualified and will be going to the state competition soon. A big thanks to the students who didn't place but played a huge role in supporting their peers by practicing alongside them and helping sharpen their skills. None of the success would be possible without the dedication of their staff coaches, Christy Franco, Kathy Stormer, Carissa Danielson, and Alyssa Calhoun. And congratulations to everyone who participated. If I could have our fifth grade team up here. Um, next our sixth grade team that placed first. and then our other sixth grade team that placed second. All the names are available in our board agenda. We would have been here a while me reading all of

004those names. Um so our second place team for sixth grade. Um our seventh grade team missing state by just one point. And then if we have any members from our eighth grade team who are here. Um, and then our Ames High School team who will be going on to state. Okay, I'm going to move on to our next celebration before we do pictures so that you all don't have to get up, sit down, get up, sit down again. Um, congratulations to Ames Middle School Band Teacher Peter Thompson. Thompson has been honored with the South Central Iowa Bandmaster Association's excellence in teaching award for a tremendous recognition of his dedication to students in music education. This award is especially especially meaningful as it requires both a nomination and a vote from the full Skea membership. Even

005more exciting, this is the first year the excellence in teaching awards have been given, making Thompson the first ever middle school director to receive this honor. He will be recognized at the Iowa Band Masters Association conference in De Moines this May. Thank you for inspiring our students every day. Mr. Thompson, if you'd like to come forward, congratulations. >> Okay, we'll do our pictures now. Board, if you'd like to come forward. >> We have one more that I'm going to go ahead and add from here. Or no, I'll come over there. I don't get to do that. as a public speaker. >> So, I get to do one of our celebrations today. Uh, the Iowa School Public Relations Association held its annual spring conference this month. The Ames Community School District entered projects into the annual

006competition associated with the conference and were awarded three blue and gold awards as best in the state and five awards of excellence. Their blue and gold awards were in photography for PK and beyond, excellence in writing for celebrating rare disease day, special purpose with the AIM storytellers initiative, and their awards of excellent categories were in photography for meer junk band where kindness moves us and Mary Poppins supercalifragilistic xpalidocious. Never thought I'd get to say that in a board meeting. uh also in video for teacher appreciation week and letters from students and social media caught being amazing amazing. The AS communication department includes director of communication Amy Dashmitt and communication specialist Maline Ericson. We congratulate them on their success at this year's ISP conference and thank them for their dedication to informing and showcasing our students,

007families, and staff. We very much appreciate We want to have all of our battle of the book. Oh yeah. All the Get up. Are you ready? Thank you. Congratulations. You ready? >> Thank you so much. >> Congratulations. That's why All right. Well, thanks for hanging on with us, folks. >> Uh, always glad to have a few students this time of year. >> The public forum is our next thing. I should have grabbed that sheet. >> Oh, no. Okay. We don't have anyone signed up for public forum. So, we will move to our consent agenda. >> I move the board approve the consent agenda as presented. >> Second. All right. Deward, uh, moved by Deward, seconded by Tipton. Um, all in favor of approving the consent agenda, say I. >> I. >> Oppose. Nay. That passes.

0086. And our reports. We will start uh with an update on the literacy curriculum from Dr. Hopkins. >> Thank you. Oh, yep. We're on. >> Well, good evening board. Um, I'm really excited to be having this conversation. Um, as you probably know from the updates that we've been providing you along the way, this has been, um, a nearly two-year process in the making. I'm excited to have uh some colleagues that have worked um really diligently in this process with me both here and in the audience tonight. And so again, excited to have the conversation. So I will start with uh you may be wondering well why why are we having this conversation? Why do we maybe need to have conversation about potentially new elementary literacy curriculum? Uh the the first thing that I would address

009is that um our our systemic processes call for a seven-year review cycle. So every seven years, it's a for us to get together, do a needs assessment, um we look at some data, we look at the current state of best practice in a given uh area of uh academics and decide are the materials that we currently have meeting the needs of our students. This slide uh the the content of it largely is taken from the the draft of our uh curriculum framework that we're working on as a system really just speaks to how having high quality instructional materials. Um you're going to hear me use that phrase a lot tonight. HQIM highquality instructional materials are a very key part of accomplishing what we're working to do as a system and that is to improve students

010outcomes and experiences uh in in our system. And so uh having a high quality curriculum is a very important key part of what we do in the teaching and learning department. So um this is often time this graphic is oftentimes referred to as the reading rope or scarboro's rope. Um, the reason that I addressed it here in why do we need a curriculum is the this graphic is intended to show that there's two main bodies of really important um consideration when it comes to a uh uh elementary literacy curriculum or actually any literacy curriculum. And that is the idea that we want to develop word recognition, foundational skills, phonics, phmic awareness, those type of concepts. And we want to develop language comprehension. I think it would be fair to say that in our system, we

011we have a foundational component in our system, the word recognition component, um that is grounded in the science of reading currently. Although you'll see in the next slide, we're we're not getting the results from it that we would hope to. I think it would be also fair to say that um the the material that we're currently using for language comprehension that we adopted seven years ago is not grounded in the science of reading. In fact, you're going to hear me talk a little bit later about some guidance from the reading league. and our current uh product that we use actually have some practices that are red flagged by uh some reading experts as as not um aligning well with best practice in in teaching language comprehension. So in other words, the materials that we're using

012aren't right now um grounded uh uniformly in the science of reading. And that's another reason why um we needed to examine uh not just because it was on cycle but because the the products that um were we're currently putting in front of teachers um are are not the strongest uh products particularly from a language comprehension standpoint. Let me review my notes really quickly. Make sure I'm not missing anything of uh key importance. All right. So, as I said, part of uh what we do in this process is look at our data. Um, our data would also suggest uh that we may need to examine a different literacy curriculum. Before I get too deep in this though, I I do want to say um I don't want a quick review of data to come off in

013any way, shape, or form as a condemnation of the really hard work that our teachers do. Right? they're they're doing hard work and a great job with an incomplete tool as I just described. Um and so uh over the last four so we've done some data analysis over the last four years four years worth of data both data around achievement and data around growth. Um 80% uh achievement is what essentially most literature as well as the state would identify this. If you can get to 80% achievement with a group of students, that tells you that your universal tier of instruction is working pretty well. Like you're if you can get 80% either sometimes um that's called uh at benchmark, sometimes that's called proficient. Um sometimes that's about uh a reaching a projected cut score depending

014upon which assessment we're looking at but about 80% of students being target is a sign that our universal core is working really well over the past four years whether you look at ISAS or fastbridge or map or auto reading or a reading our um endofear achievement scores uh hover somewhere between 64% and 73%. Right? So, as a district average, that's not one particular classroom, that's not one particular building, but a district average. So, we're we're not quite getting to that 80%. That 65% growth, the asterisk next to growth is uh indicating that the state has identified that those students who are identified as persistently after multiple assessments, they're showing that they really need some support. The state would say those students that are identified in that category as persistently at risk, 65% of those students

015should show growth from the beginning of the year to the end of the year. So not 65% of all students, in fact, we have more than 65% of all of our students showing growth, but 65% of the students who are identified as persistently at risk should grow if we're having both curriculum effective curriculum tools and pract and instructional practices. That's the state mark. You can see for the last four years, our percentage of those persistently at risk student uh that have grown hover between 25 and 28%. Again, that's not about one individual classroom. In fact, I I was uh very complimentary of a building recently because they were above 40% of growth for their students and and that was a high mark that I've seen in this district for a while. But um but on

016average as a district as a whole, that's that's where our data. So, in other words, our data would suggest that whether it's the tool that I'm referencing that is grounded in the science of reading or whether it's the tool on the top part of the uh reading rope that's not grounded in the science of reading, we're not getting the results for students that we would hope to get with any of the tools that we currently use. It's okay. >> You know, I I thought maybe Scott cued you like, hey, if he's spent more than >> times up timer. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. >> Okay. I got it. I got it. Speed it up. U Okay. So, you've probably heard myself and others talk um pretty consistently about the work we're doing in our system to

017improve our MTSS system. This slide is really just included and um I won't go into a ton of detail about all of the language on this slide, but this slide is intended to say you can't improve your MTSS system without addressing the idea of ensuring that all of your teachers are prepared with high quality instructional materials. So, no matter how good our intervention processes are, we cannot run intervention processes to get our students where we want them to go if their first blush at instruction through the universal tiers are not grounded in really high quality materials. That's the gist of this slide. So, I want to talk with you about the process that we've used. So, as I said, this process began in September of 2024. Uh, we first sought out one teacher uh member

018per grade level, per elementary. And then in addition to that, we sought out uh interventionists and others to join this team, right, over the course of two years. And those two teams were really split into two teams. There was a core team comprised of 16 teachers, instructional coach, administrators, interventionists, so on and so forth. And then a larger expanded team of 36 teachers, instructional coaches, uh interventionists, as well as coordinators and uh administrators, so on and so forth. And those two teams played slightly different roles in this process. And I'll describe that to you in some of the coming slides. You can see that the core team met multiple times a year, four times per year in order to at least in the beginning conduct a needs assessment, engage in um determining what is the

019vision of what we're trying to create. Um then we we worked really closely to provide a lot of professional development around the best practices uh and the tools that help us to evaluate those best practices. the expanded team uh met twice a year. Uh they were working to understand so what are some of the shifts that are identified in the English language arts standards and literacy standards in order to prepare kids to be college and career ready as well as really working to figure out okay based upon the tools identified what might that look like to pilot those tools. I mentioned the vision statement that we worked on and you can see here and you I hope you'll see the connection between this vision statement and the MTSS work that I described a few moments

020ago. Right? So our vision statement uh and this was uh constructed by the team actually uh crafted by one of the members sitting at this table uh right now. Uh we envision a literacy classroom that uses a multi-tered system of support to meet all learners needs through evidence-based curricula and high quality rigorous instruction. Again, that uh multi-tiered system of supports is a great reference to that previous slide where we were talking about the importance of providing high quality curriculum materials at that tier one level. And again, you can see that the team went further and said, 'Okay, well, what would that look like then in our classrooms? If we were going to do that as a broad perspective, what would that look like? And they said it would mean that we would be providing explicit,

021systematic, cumulative, and diagnostic instruction. I could go into the definition of each of those if you want me to, but I'm not planning to at this time. That we would be using data to make decisions to guide instruction. That we'd be delivering tiered instruction. You're going to hear that theme, tiered instruction. It became a really big part of how we chose to look at material. Said again in just a few minutes again. And then we would be focusing on educational equity, creating an environment that fosters growth, resilience, and academic excellence in support of the classroom charters that we have in our classrooms. So that vision and conversations with the expanded team really led us to what are we looking for in our instructional materials? Our needs assessment helped us to realize okay and to be

022really frank with you all of the teachers in the room were very adamant about we need a new curriculum. In fact, at one point as we were talking through like, "Okay, well, if we don't come to consensus, then we can extend the timeline and nobody says we have to get the" and they were all like, "No, no, no, Jeff. We need a new curriculum by August. The one we have is not working for our kids, and we don't want to move forward with our current curriculum any longer." There was uh that was a resounding theme in conversation. They they knew that they needed something new, but what do we want to look for? So through our visioning process, what we decided is what would be ideal is if we could find a product, a curriculum

023material that addressed both parts of that reading rope. So rather than having one material that addresses uh the foundational pieces and one piece of material that addresses the language comprehension, what if we found one tool that had consistent language and routines and processes that it scaffold that work together and we found one thing that addressed both aspects of highquality tier one work and then they took it a step further. Was really excited about this uh conversation. Many many times when uh districts do a curriculum review, what they're looking for is exactly what I just described, a really great tool to meet the tier one needs of their students. But this team decided, what if we found a tool that did that and had tier 2 uh options and interventions built in? What if we found

024a tool that both addressed tier 1 needs but also tier 2 and tier three support so that if we decided to use it that way in our system we had consistent language routines processes that we didn't have to build capacity around a different tool or with teachers and that one tool could meet the gambit of those needs. That's hard to do. We acknowledge several times in our process there is no such thing as the perfect curriculum. there was we would have skipped the process and just b recommended buying that, right? Um but um that's what this team decided that they wanted in a tool. No longer did they desire something that only addressed certain grade levels or only addressed one part of the reading rope, but our first attempt was to try to find tools

025that would meet the that broader array of needs. We did talk as a team that there's multiple ways to address this. Again, you can get one tool. You could get multiple tools that work together. Again, um having uh in our current situation, having a a tool for word recognition that's grounded in the science of reading, a structured explicit approach and a tool for um language comprehension that is not ground. It's difficult to mesh that, right? And um you can see that in our results. They're not meshing, right? Um so you could get two tools that mesh together. Um and we did explore that in concept a little bit but the preference of this team as they identified was to find one tool that could do all that right that's an important concept in our process.

026So I described those different teams um there from a screening standpoint there were really three processes that occurred. So now that we have a vision of what we're trying to accomplish in our classrooms and we know exactly okay well what kind of materials are we looking for we needed to screen a v various sets of materials to determine well what would work well for us. The first part of that screening process occurred with just our teaching and learning team. Here we have a rubric that we've used for many years over different curriculum products in order to look for things like do we believe that this curriculum product is representative of our student body? Do we believe that it's accessible to our students? Does it offer opportunities for this curriculum to be accessed by uh students

027who might have needs different than the traditional student? Right? It's it's an accessibility and representation um type of screening. Once we found um curriculum products that we felt met that bar, we took them to the core team, that smaller group uh that I talked about, and we spent days in this room mostly um pouring through products. And you'll see later in the slides a list of a number of curriculum products that we looked at. Not all of them were looked at by this team because not every tool passed that first bar, but many of them did. And they spent days and days and days um pouring through some rubrics that I'm going to share with you in just a moment looking for which of these do we believe represent the best practices that we can

028put in front of our students as well as which of these align to the vision that we've created. And then once we found those tools and said yes, we believe these might be the right answer for us. We took them to the larger that expanded team and that's who we capacitized to pilot. And here is the list of I think most we tried to capture all of them, but this is most of the products that we looked at. Again, some of them didn't uh go past that first screening. There's a a a number of them that um the these uh two folks here as well as many of their colleagues spent quite a bit of time pouring through in order to determine are these highquality products. We eventually did uh pilot benchmark advance 95% group

029and magnetic literacy. Those are the three things on this list that the team chose to pilot. When I talked about kind of pouring through that um that guidance and some rubrics in order to assess quality, one of the main ones that we used was called the reading leagu's uh evaluation guidelines. I've got a copy of them here. Pass it up if you guys want to look at it. But essentially, it's the the gist. So, the Reading League, by the way, is a nonprofit group who identify themselves and their sole purpose is to arm educational institutions with knowledge and information in order to pick the highest impact curriculums that they possibly. Again, we've already acknowledged there is no such thing as a perfect curriculum. So they don't say pick this one, but they say these curriculums.

030Uh again, if you see the graphic at the top, there are some curriculums that have what they would call red flag practices, not grounded in the science of reading, not aligned to evidence-based bre practice. And we looked at some curriculums that had those. Um, and then they have a number of things that say, "Okay, these are the things that when you're flipping through the books and looking through the teacher guide, you want to look for these things in the blue. These are evidence practices." And we used these this curriculum evaluation tool as we were looking through all those products. Now the reading league also produces something called navigation reports where they have done some of this work for us. To our teachers credit they poured through these rubrics even when there was a navigation report

031to say well I know that they said that this is a marks as blue on this part of the rubric but I want to see for myself. Right? So they were they did a very thorough job of looking through this tool just to really assess is this going to align to our vision? Will this provide us with the instructional practices that we've said we want to prioritize? Do we believe this is aligned to evidence-based best practices for our students? That was the process that we used. We used this graphic a number of times with that team to try to visualize the stages and the steps in the process of uh that curriculum review. So, you can see uh it outlines just like what we've talked about. The teaching and learning team does some screening. The

032that core team does some screening. We eventually landed on some products that we wanted to pilot. We did that piloting and we that brings us to this stage. We are now at the stage where we're ready for some team recommendation. I do want to acknowledge that uh in this process we rely uh some experts some experts that we pulled into the process some uh like in-person experts that we pulled into the process some of the uh expertise we pulled in through readings and processes um we we grounded many of our protocols and processes in uh learning from implementing change. It's written by Holland Horde. not a new um piece of writing at all. Uh but it's really about implementation science. How do we ensure that um really it's grounded in the idea of how do

033we ensure that once we select a product that gets implemented with fidelity and what are the steps that you can take during a planning process in order to make sure that there's fidelity of implementation in the end. I'll talk a little bit more about one of the key steps that we did in this process a little while later. Uh Sean Dachuk, who is the director of the Iowa Reading Research Center, joined us for multiple um uh occasions to provide information about current best practice as well as thoughts on how to go about um curriculum evaluation. Uh we did lean on some of the information from the Iowa Department of Education around our MTSS processes as well as heard me address the reading leads uh curriculum evaluation tool. We also had Aea experts or or um

034um staff come in and support us through the process as well. So here's our recommendation. So after that process and after piloting uh the team uh is ready to recommend to the board that we consider adopting magnetic literacy as the curriculum product for our system for the next several years. Um I want to talk with you about that first line up there 70% minimum standard of agreement. So um throughout our process going back for over a year now, we have decided that one of the most important things we can do in order to put ourselves in a position to implement with fidelity and to make sure that we're on solid ground is to make sure that we're not moving forward with a simple majority of people in the room who agree to something. And so

035maybe even in the second or third meeting that we had um after September of 2024, we talked about um you know sometimes uh government entities will use 60% as a mark to I determine like a super majority and we said well let's take that up yet another notch and essentially if we don't have 70% of the people that are agreeing and I'm going to talk about well which people in just a second but if we don't have 70% of the people agreeing then we haven't reached a decision and we used that mark from what kind of material remember when I said oh it's really important that we find one material that and we'd like one that addresses multiple tiers that was a 70% decision which products do we want to not pilot which products do

036we want to pilot that was a 70% decision are we ready to make a recommendation to the school board that was a 70% decision like every decision that we made was a 70% or a greater decision. Now, who is comprised in that 70%, we were very strict and very uniform in that and the only people who quote unquote got to vote in that 70% were practitioners who were going to use it in their room. So while I really value the instructional coaches that joined us in the process, the administrators meeting we had um we had coordinators there, we had people who are going to be instrumental in supporting the successful implementation of this curriculum, but they're not people who are going to use it in their classroom. So they didn't get a vote. So when

037I say there's people that are recommending this curriculum, the people are the practitioners who want to use it in their classroom. That's where these 70% votes come from. So on um March 30th, we had one of our most recent expanded team meetings and we began that meeting saying, "Okay, we've now piloted benchmark assessment. We've now piloted 95% group. We've now the first question we need to ask is do you want and or need more time with magnetic literacy before we're ready to make a recommendation about what we want?" 32 out of 32 people who were voting members in the room said we don't need any more time right we've experienced it enough we know what we want so I first asked like okay so um is there anybody or you know we kind of use

038a standup process in order to be very direct and transparent with you how we're voting so I said stand up if you want benchmark and I thought they didn't hear me um but so I had to repeat it a second time but it was clear after the second time there were zero uh staff members who felt like benchmark um was going to be the right next move for us. Um and when I asked about magnetic literacy um there were 24 eventually I'll describe the process there there was a few questions around like well we also piloted 95% group are you talking about piloting 90 like are we asking about having 95% and magnetic literacy come in together? Um, and I've I've committed to these teachers all along that we will get them the product that

039they think meets the best needs of our kids. But I was also very transparent with them at that moment to say, if you what you really want is benchmark and magnetic literacy, then we're going to have to make some sacrifices because both of those curriculums are multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars. And so if we want both, we're going to have to give up some things that I've heard from you you like about magnetic literacy. And at that point, we said, 'Okay, so where are we at? And uh at that point, 24 out of 32 people were like, I want magnetic literacy and I believe that this stands on its own as a fine product for us. There were a few folks who were like, if you would have told me we could have uh

040had benchmark assessment with it, I would have stood up too. be honest with you, there was also a few people who said, "If you told me I had to use 95% group, I would have sat down." Right? So, it's it's but when you get to the stage of like we're making a final recommendation on something that people are so passionate about, I didn't expect that we were going to get to 100%. I was actually pretty quite pleased we were at 75% to be frank with you. Uh and have done so in a relatively smooth fashion. So, why magnetic literacy? Um, the first place that I would start is that it truly is grounded in the science of reading. It offers, and you'll see this in some of the testimonials, it offers explicit instruction on foundational

041word recognition. In fact, the foundational portion of this curriculum, which has existed longer than the entirety of the curriculum, has a double green rating from Ed reports. Right? So, a really solid rating from a trusted uh curriculum evaluation um provider neutral that says yes, this will meet the needs of students uh when it comes to foundational skills. Another uh reason that I believe um the team uh is recommending magnetic literacy is that it is aligned and systemic and cohesive. In other words, uh it it fits our vision. It's one product that offers highquality tier one instruction opportunities, and you're going to hear that from our teachers in just a second. And it does have materials that can be used for tier 2 and tier three um instruction as well. Over the last two years, as

042part of our processes in order to make sure that we're ready as best possible to hit the ground running, we have promoted professional development and work in the area of elementary literacy. We've had 77 staff members attend the Iowa Reading Research C Center's uh summer reading uh series. We've had 83 teachers in the district or 83 individuals, not all of them are teachers, complete um letters training. We've had a professional development series that our teaching and learning department has run. Uh this year we're doing what we can to establish a foundation of best practice so that regardless of what material we were ready to implement, there was some co common knowledge and learning. And you're going to you're going to hear that in one of the recommendations. But magnetic literacy um is a good application

043of the learning that our staff have been doing through letters training and through other professional development about best practices. I also think again the the teachers might be able to speak to this as well because they're the ones living it but I I what I've heard from our staff is that they're familiar with the platform. Right. Magnetic Literacy is produced by the same company that produces I Ready math tools that we've been using for the last two years and so our staff are familiar with the platform and we're familiar with the company, right? Um I can tell you I've personally have been impressed with the support that they have for implementation for their professional development for um the the the work they do with us to say, "Hey, you just took an assessment. Can we

044do a data review with you? Uh bring your principles in. We want to talk about your data." Um and then results. Um as you know um we have gotten really really good growth and achievement results from I Ready Math and I have every reason to suspect we will get that from Magnetic Literacy as well. I did link into this presentation the 32page research base that magnetic literacy provides and the conclusion uh that they've uh that they've typed is here. Um essentially they've said that they believe it is a comprehensive structured literacy curriculum for grades K6 that integrates all literacy domains into a cohesive learning experience. I don't know how much of this you need to, but I will I guess uh what I'll say that's not on this slide. I know that when um some

045of our staff who are on that core and expanded team got a chance to look at who the authors and contributors were to this research, which by the way aren't just employees of the company that produce it. Um they felt reassured, right? um not not I think they felt reassured when they saw the tools themselves but when they saw some of the names associated with the research base they felt like okay I trust these names when it comes to expertise in the area of literacy we got that feedback from some of our our team members okay I'm going to take a break and let you hear some testimonials from people who participated in the pilot so I had asked uh some folks some of them couldn't be with us tonight and some of them can

046to to share what their experience with piloting was and maybe why they think this would be the right next so I'm gonna this >> sure hello my name is Carrian Fischer I teach kindergarten at Sawyer I'll read this first and then um it says I really believe this curriculum is a great choice for improving our students literacy outcomes especially based on on the growth I've seen in their confidence with both reading and writing. As a kindergarten teacher, writing time can be tough. Some students shut down or don't want to try. But after just one unit of magnetic literacy, every student in my class was able to write an opinion piece, which was really amazing to see. One thing I love about magnetic literacy is how naturally it weaves writing into the day. It takes away

047the pressure of writing time and instead has students writing about what they're reading, often without even realizing it. That shift has made a huge difference for my students. This unit also gave us a chance to learn about other cultures and create a class project that was focused on our own community which the students really connected with. The topics are engaging and meaningful and the students can see how what they're learning relates to their own. I also brought some of their writing samples if you would like to see um I can share those. But it's very hard to find a boxed curriculum that is developmentally appropriate for kindergarten and engaging. and my students have had a fantastic experience with this curriculum. So, I'm all on board. And then the same for me. I'm Angela Mont. I

048teach at Sawyer second grade. Uh my experience with magnetic literacy was enlightening. In my 23 years of teaching, I have never seen students curriculum. Number one, their engagement was driven by highinterest science and social social studies topics that are woven into what we're teaching every day along with meaningful opportunities to practice comprehension strategies, collaborate in discussions, and read grade level texts. Students worked together, these were my favorite parts, I will get very excited about. Students worked together to demonstrate their learning through projects such as persuasive presentations on visiting national parks and creating their their own readers theater scripts based on folktales and fables. I am more than I'm more than happy to share their work. I have their group work for their different national parks they want to visit that has their notes on the

049back from their research which most was provided within the curriculum. These sweet babies who are seven and eight sat in their small groups on those class project days working together in groups of two and three and it didn't matter the ability level. I was able to put mixed ability levels and every child contributed and was excited. They went home and talked about it at conference time. I cannot tell you how many parents were like, "We're planning a national parks trip though." So, there's some vacations coming up. But I I'm excited to show these and share these because again they're seven and eight and they wrote about the Smoky Mountains, the Everglades. They followed a rubric. They were excited to talk with each other and they worked so well. Like magnetic literacy just didn't do the

050phonics and comprehension. It showed them how to work collaborative which I think that's huge. That's a big big part of what we do every day. Um they also other things I brought. They're just in the process of starting this, so I don't want to lose their work, but they're writing together a script um of a fairy tale folktail that they chose and they could adapt it. So, we have the two ninjas and the big bad dragon. >> Um we have the the little red hen seeks help like they've got these different things going on which are pretty cute, but they're writing a script together figuring out who the characters are going to be. what's their lesson going to be that they want to teach or central message of the story. So for me, watching that

051engagement while still getting all that rich content in has been really cool and seeing how we are able to align social studies and science with this when we're teaching. So when we're doing our scope and sequence and our casing guides, how those can all align. So kids are really getting my students when we did earth systems and habitats and biomes. We were doing national parks at the same time and wow did that provide a rich experience. And so things aren't always fun. Phonics is not a party. We're not all excited to learn vowel teams, but it engages them. It has the moving, decoding, encoding, practicing in isolation, bringing it back to written text that they're reading all in one. And again, curriculum, there's not a quick fix for anything. There's not the silver bullet out

052there. But when we're watching in the one and a half units I've been able to teach and I get to see how excited they are and I'm excited and they see that I'm excited, they're they're ready. They're they're ready to finish this year with what we have left of Magnet. We did have a few uh teachers who um by the way I I didn't conjul anyone. I just said, "Hey, we're going to have a conversation." I think the teacher's voice since it was your recommendation is really important. if you'd like to play a role in this, you're welcome to. And so um I really want to thank Carrian and Angie for being here tonight. And um uh but all these voices were like I want to I want to make sure the board knows this.

053So I'm going to statements from teachers weren't able to be here tonight, but they really wanted to make sure that their perspective was understood in this process. So Elena Hansen teaches first grade at Edwards. She said, "My perspective comes from completing my master's in reading education, reading specialist certification and letters training while piloting magnetic liter classroom. This gave me the opportunity to apply the most current reading research while also seeing how it works with students in magnetic literacy connects the five components of literacy into a cohesive system woven throughout the day. Students might learn a phonics skill during instruction, apply it in reading, and use it again in writing, helping helping to deepen the understanding and retention. These skills are taught with contentrich themes such as the five senses, maps, our community, so students build

054knowledge while learning to read. Research shows that developing word recognition, language comprehension, and content knowledge together leads to stronger comprehension. Another strength is how clear and easy it is to use for teachers. The structures, routines, and supports create consistency across classrooms and support highquality instruction. Research shows that explicit systematic instruction and consistent routines are key to student learning, and this curriculum provides that structure. I recommend magnetic literacy because I've seen how effective strong tier one instruction can be. It reflects the latest research on reading and offers a structured, consistent approach that helps ensure all students have access to high-quality instruction. It's enjoyable to teach. Students are genuinely engaged and I'm seeing that excitement carry over into their learning. Mary Hard uh teaches uh fifth grade at Fellows. She was hopeful that she might make it

055here tonight. Um but I'd love to be able to share her contribution. She said, "I believe that magnetic literacy is the right choice to help students grow and improve literacy outcomes. As a fifth grade teacher, I'm looking for a curriculum that covers all aspects of literacy, provides explicit instruction, and is engaging. Magnetic literacy provides students with instruction in word study, grammar, and vocabulary that has been lacking. Again, a number of the uh teachers that teach Upper Elementary had commented throughout the process that their tools just don't do these things. Currently, students are able to implement this new knowledge in both their reading and writing. Magnetic literacy also provides explicit instruction that spirals throughout the year. Students are taught and given multiple opportunities to show the topics covered in magnetic literacy are engaging for students. I

056was skeptical at first. I thought the units would be too long and that students would lose interest in the topics. Thankfully, that's not been the case. Students have remained engaged and curious throughout the units. The excerpts of texts given to students are an appropriate length and larger texts are broken into reasonable chunks throughout the unit. My class really appreciates this and hasn't complained about the subject matter, which is huge for fifth grade students. And finally, Anna RDE, who teaches fifth grade at Mitchell, wanted to contribute as well. My experience with magnetic literacy has been extremely positive, and I believe it is the right curriculum for our district to adopt moving forward. As a fifth grade teacher, I also agree with the points Mary Hard made. They had access to each other's slideshow. The curriculum kept

057students engaged throughout the 30 plus day units by connecting realworld learning topics that are meaningful to them. It is visually appealing in design along with engaging content and relevant connections. It helps students stay interested and understand the purpose behind what they are learning. The curriculum encourages meaningful student discussion by giving learners opportunities to share ideas, connect content to their own experiences, build vocabulary, and engage more deeply with the material. Assignments aligned with each lesson help students practice and apply the targeted skills. Many lessons also include a right to respond component, pushing students to think more critically and at higher levels. Each unit concludes with a project that brings together students learning. For example, in the fifth grade unit 4, the beauty of ROT, the final assignment required students to create a slideshow presentation. The curriculum

058supports this task with lessons that model key components of an effective presentation. This skill not only strengthens students ability in school but also prepares them for future careers. Tools where tools like PowerPoint are commonly used to communicate information and ideas. The curriculum effectively emphasizes vocabulary development as a key part of instruction. Before each lesson, students are introduced to new vocabulary they will encounter in the text. Follow-up activities give them opportunities to make connections, use the words in their own sentences, and examine word structure and morphology. Since my fifth grade students consistently show the greatest need in vocabulary on a year on our yearly data, this was an important component for me to consider during the pilot. I'd want to thank I'd want to take just the opportunity here. There's so many thanks that are uh

059deserved in this process, but I would want to thank our our teachers that participated uh over the course of this project. I'd want to thank the teachers that contributed to this, the teachers here, and I would be remiss if I didn't send a huge shout out and thank you to Sarah Davidson who's sitting in the crowd tonight. Um anybody who's participated in this process with us over the last two years would know. Um it has been enriched completely and run so beautifully because of Sarah's work. So, I would want to take the opportunity to public publicly thank her for that. Okay. So, you you've heard our recommendation and a little bit of why. Here's the financial impact. Here's what we're asking for. Um, we there to to be frank with you. Um, uh, Magnetic Literacy

060gave us multiple quotes. They gave us quotes for what if we only purchased them for three years? What if we purchased them for five years? What if we purchased them without some of the things that teachers are saying are valuable to them? Right? We could mix and match. Um I'm presenting you the quote that asks for five years um with the tools with the tools that the teachers have said are valuable to them. I'm excited to be able to say to you when I present this uh in working with uh director Rusk that we have both the curriculum funds, the early title funds in order to pretty frugal in our teaching and learning department over the last couple of years knowing that this was coming down the road. And so we're able to accomplish this

061without necessarily taking funds away from future curriculum years. But uh what what $72,686.35 would get us is uh teacher hard copy text and online digital license for the next five years. Trade books for teachers which are in kindergarten in grades kindergarten and one uh for the next five years. teacher anchor charts and literacy boxes which include alphabet books, alphabet tables, decodables, super word cards, spelling cards, word building cards, vocabulary cards, uh consumable work student work texts for the next five years, digital student access. Uh maybe I'll skip through. The only thing that it doesn't include for five years is the 15 professional learning for imple. So the 15 days for implementation support is written as a one-year quote. If we would want additional professional learning support from them, that would be something else we would

062need to figure out how to fund. Other than that, everything listed in this list would come for for a five-year purchase. As you might know, an important part of our process that we've used for quite some time in our district, feedback from our community. So, following this board meeting, there will be a website uh that comes uh up and running. Uh Amy Dashman has been very helpful in preparing that. On that website will be a link to the magnetic literacy website in case people want to explore that. There will be a link to the a variety of resources. There is both a K2 and a 35 quote unquote teachers guide that gives a whole lot of information from scope and sequence, learning progression, unit design, sample lessons. There will be a grade level um sample

063unit uh for each grade for people to click on. Um this is an example of some of the things that are available to uh uh through that video and through some of those links. We will have that uh we'll have that on our website associated with a form where people can give us feedback for the next couple of weeks and then prior to coming back on May 4th and uh addressing any questions you might have here um I'll share with you what that feedback looked like before we ask you to to vote on that recommendation. Okay. What questions do you have? >> I had a couple questions. Is that okay? >> I I didn't have them prepped ahead of time. I'm so sorry. I thought of them as you were presenting. Um they were actually

064the I Ready uh link is actually what made me think of them. Um just knowing that there are some similarities. Um, one of the things that I really enjoy, and Carrian, you kind of mentioned it, um, in I Ready, is how it represents our students in the lessons. Um, you know, the different types of students who who will be receiving it. Um, is is that, uh, in baked into the text that they read and everything? That's that was a short question. Uh and then the other one is just um I know with I Ready we were using map testing, we were using all kinds of certain sets of data and then when we used Ready, we now have a different data set. So it took us a little while to baseline what measures success. Uh

065will it be similar? I I saw that there's an I Ready D or a diagnostic tool. It would be the same. >> That's a great question. So um the teams of people that uh have met through the process are continuing to meet. Like we said, there is no such thing as a perfect curriculum. So, we're already addressing like where are there holes? And assuming this uh does get um um approved by the board, uh what things would we need to do to fill those gaps? One of the conversations that taking place is what do we want to be our default screener? The quote that I just went through does include their diagnostic and when that diagnostic is completed, it does populate what they call personalized instruction. Most of our parents would know that as my

066path right now because that's what it's called with math. And so I believe it would be I would really like us to use that diagnostic in order to provide information to teachers on how to understand their students prior to instruction as well as get intervention ideas. What I don't know is will it become our new default screening assessment or will we still choose asbridge? there's some conversation that I think teachers will want to have in that conversation as well as principles. So, I'm not ready to speak about what our official um screening assessment will be, but I do think it would be wise for us to purchase that diagnostic and use it for instructional purposes. >> That makes thank you so much and thank you everybody for your hard work. You guys did a lot

067of work. Thank you. >> I want to say thank you too so much. what a big endeavor and this was really fascinating and you shared a lot of great information. Uh my question is around uh student feedback and what that looked like at level and I don't have you know the elementary education background or literacy elementary literacy background but is there such a thing as student feedback in this process? Have you um gotten any student feedback? We've asked some pretty broad questions uh of students uh at the end of pilot around how they felt about being a reader or being a writer in this process. Um and uh received relatively positive feedback regardless of the the tool being piloted. >> Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. >> Yeah. Of course you can. I actually gave the feedback

068form to all of my students through classroom. So again, seven and eight, they're so excited just in general that they didn't keep their results quiet. Like I would read the question and they'd hype up about how excited they were, especially through the national parks. Like they were trying to find more books about national parks. That's what they wanted to read during their read to self time. They wanted to bring those books home. they wanted to engage their grown-ups in the discussion. And so watching how excited they were and then how they produc their writing that was produced that came from it. Um the extra reading they wanted to do, it has got me to investigate other ways. We had one of the teammates on my second grade piloting team even had a Yellowstone Ranger Zoom

069meet in to talk with the kids. So that part mean they were just so excited about it that many of them didn't have a negative thing to say which we had a class discussion about it after they did the assessment or the the feedback form uh just about what their thoughts were and just generally positive of the 20 one kids participate in my room. I would say kindergarten feedback is in their emotions because we did paper pencil ones with like emojis and they got some of them they just circle the emoji that looks fun. Um but I would say in the when when I was piloting I could tell the difference in their emotions towards that time of day. Um in the fall it was like apprehension, didn't want to do it, scared and then

070with this it was like we were eager to learn, eager to go into writing time, eager to go to phonics. So yeah, kindergarten's feedback is more in my observation and their emotions around that part of the day. So, and I'll share um feedback with my fellow board members and you all and any community members listening as well. I have a fifth grader and when I learned that there was going to be a a literacy um curriculum review coming up, I just happened to just on a whim ask her on the way to soccer, what do you think about your literacy curriculum? And I didn't know that she knew what that was or what that meant or would be able to name it. And she said, "Oh, magnetic." She said, "I really like it." And I

071said, "What do you think about it? Why do you why do you like it?" And she said that it was um it was not, how she put it, not back fee and not worksheety, but more but more project based. And she called it interest. So, I thought, you know, I didn't even know that she had a clue what her literacy curriculum was, but there there you go. She she had a clue and she was um she had positive feedback around around I have a pretty pretty general question. Thank you again for all the work. I I two-year journey is a lot a lot of work, a big project. Um, in terms of the like the the growth that's sitting at 25 to 28%. Um, and then the target is 65%. What are I mean so

072that's that's provided by the state? I'm assuming >> the target. Yes, the target of 65 is provided. >> Are there a lot of districts is there a lot of districts out there getting 65% or is that kind of a very lofty goal? And >> that's a great question. I I don't I don't know off the top of my head and I would have to think creatively on how to to get that information. Obviously, I have uh access to um other schools Iowa school performance profiles. So, I could speak a little bit more intelligently about the concept of achievement with other districts than I could with growth because the growth scores on the um proficiency profile aren't measuring the same growth measurement that I presented to the board tonight. So, in other words, unless you're in

073that district or I suppose good enough friends with somebody where you're just chatting up growth of PAR students, um uh it it's really hard to get your hands on other districts data. I I would agree though when uh I I think uh we have well I know we have a very very dedicated uh group of staff members who are really really well-learned about best practices and they work really hard and they care a whole lot about the kids in this community. So to see that group of people um not necessarily get close to that 65 uh tells me that it's a lofty mark. >> I appreciate the uh uh the process that you follow. You know, lots of uh methods of of building consensus and then you know moving on to the next step um

074over you know a two-year process. Uh that's great to see. Um for those board members and anybody else here, this is my first cycle through big curriculum uh review. Did we follow a similar process uh you know five seven years ago >> we did two years ago for math? for math. Um it just it occurs to me that you know uh five seven years ago we chose a curriculum probably in similar uh kind of optimism and then to come out five seven years later and have you know teachers adamant that they need a new curriculum. So, I appreciate, you know, Erin, I think it was, no, it was Angie, um, somebody brought up, you know, how do we assess any red flag issues with this current curriculum and address it? So, that that's good. But,

075um, but yeah, just, uh, I encourage you guys as you're stepping into this is, you know, have that kind of critical eye. How do we, uh, ensure that in five, seven years, we're happy with the product that we chose? uh given the sign significant commitment that it is. So >> agree >> more of a comment but any any anything that up >> um >> I was just say I think that and Jeff well the amount of time we've all been here right uh >> we did a similar process with math and I think like with middle school science and we've done that but I don't know that this was what was done with reading seven years ago. I think it was was kind of chosen is my >> I was gonna say what what I

076would contribute to that is that and I don't know if any of you uh lived through that but what I what I can tell you is that >> um in that process unfortunately they were not able to come to a collective consensus and so a decision was made um differently than how we made decisions in this process and um potentially I I don't know maybe Angie you can speak more intelligently to this. Potentially what the team was looking for or maybe some people in the team were looking for was different because they they went into it knowingly. Um, ironically, uh, this is an interesting connection. The meet the board meeting in which that curriculum material was eventually proposed and and moved on and approved by the board was the same board meeting in which my

077new contract was approved. So, I was in attendance that night. Uh, that was interesting. Um but uh they went into the purchase knowing that the foundational reading piece and the language comprehension piece did not speak to each other and would not work um seamlessly and potentially went into it knowing that that the product recommended for language comprehension wasn't grounded in the science of reading. And so I would say some very different priorities came forward in in this process. Angie, what maybe would you share? >> I think that's the gist really that when there wasn't a consensus, it was someone overall pick to give the administration at the time. Um, but also the huge research hadn't come to light, I guess you might say. And so in these last five years as we've gotten so much

078more information about reading and how to teach reading as teachers I'm of the years at Iowa State where we learned of the three queuing system guided reading was the thing Lucy Cawkins was this thing all that was the the buzz and now as we've learned more and became more educated about it some of these systems are shifting too and these curriculums are shifting to meet the new research absolutely but we just weren't as knowledgeable then as we were now. And as teachers, we just can't sit there with this curriculum that we know is not working for our students and and have nothing else, especially if we want to be consistent across our elementary schools. Um, our kids move, they shift, and so we want to make sure if they are shifting, they're getting at this

079school what they're getting at this school, and things are aligned more for them. Um, and as teachers when we work together, when I work with my other second grade teammates at other buildings, we want to align our work. Um, we work better together anyhow. Um, and it helps with our teams as well. So, having that knowledge that we didn't have, I mean, I've watched, they always say this pendulum swings and I've watched it in 23 years of teaching, start here, go here, and we're coming back. And so, seeing that research has really helped and being letters trained, very helpful. um going to these the reading conferences very helpful just gave us that new knowledge the things that we need. >> Jeff speaking to your um you're hoping that we use the assessment tool that would

080probably help make sure we're using we're we're teaching with fidelity across the district as well right I mean like if we're >> I'm sorry I missed the first part of the question. >> I'm not even sure if the made sense so whatever. Um, but I I was just going to say I know you had spoken to hoping that the assessment tool that would kind of help make sure we're using this with fidelity districtwide as well, right? Like logically, >> we um Sarah and I have been ex processes to design not only work to get to a product that we think works well, but to design a process that builds um collective commitment, if you could around that product. So that's why it was really important around who got to vote. It was really important to

081set a high bar for the standard of our decisions because no matter what product we put in front of people, and um potentially the the folks sitting at the table here might roll their eyes because they've heard this from me a few times in the over the last two years, but no matter what product that we pick, um if we abandon that product quickly, if we don't implement that product with fidelity, we won't get the results that someone who is able to do those things does get. And so not only is it really important that we get that right HQIM, but it's really really important that we weather the storm of change and that comes through broad agreement that comes through thorough processes that comes through making drive the decision. And so yes, implementation is

082key and that's why we've been really intentional about designing the process the way that we did. >> I also want to add to that with within a district My philosophy is and always will be, it does not matter what elementary you're in, what grade you're in, or what teacher you have, you should have the same tools, the same access, and the same education. Um, I know that's the question between autonomy and, you know, the science of teaching. Every effective teacher is has their own science of teaching that works well. And most of them, if not all of them, have the science to be able to adapt curriculum to work for their children. That's some of the flexibility we have to provide. But every classroom in every building, it should not matter to be getting the

083same education. And I think that's part of that consistency piece. And from the history standpoint, when you bring in a curriculum or a reading process that did not have 100% buy in as well as turnover as I will pre I talk about consistency all the time. Um it's how you implement it's $700 and some thousand dollars that is a big ask but I think our public needs to understand educating our public school is not cheap uh that comes out of our general fund that's the same fund that we're used to uh pay for staff pay for transportation um but we know the importance of it and when we put dollars towards that I know the board's going to expect results but also in my mind I'm going to expect consistency among counselor district and our

084teachers as well as knowing that we have the administration to support that and with the hiring of the director of teaching and learning. That is one more way that the board is saying we believe in curriculum and we want to ensure that we have a full administrative staff support this $700 purchase to ensure that it's being done properly. >> There any other questions that I or the teachers could answer? One quick one. Um, last last one I square just sort of general public's kind of knowledge. This is meant to kind of address the universal tier one of the multi-ter. So basically tier one is spill over a little bit tier two, but we still have the other tools that we have in place to kind of address all the tiers. >> Um, well I'll I'll

085be uh if I'm if I'm uh if I miss the mark, you let me know. So um our intention is to uh buy this product that would be used in tier 1 and tier one intervention processes, tier 2 and tier 2 intervention processes. And then as we start to get more and more um uh intense and unique needs uh in that process, we will likely see the need to use this and or other tools. So, this has a tier three uh tool that uh we did actually have one of we had a couple of teachers pilot and they liked it. They thought it was pretty good. But I also recognize that when we get to really intense needs of students, um having only one product may not be the only answer for all kids. So,

086um, my recommendation and the way that I will want to roll this out is this is the product that we use tier one, tier two, maybe tier three, that's usually up to a team of people. If this if we've used this tool and it is not meeting kids needs, there's individual unique needs, then let's start looking at some of the other tools that we might have history or specific training. But that's probably by the time we get to that stage, that's not going to be happening happening in the general classroom. That's going to be happening with an interventionist. So to be maybe direct about it, we may see some interventionists still using portions of foundations, but not as their first answer. >> Perfect. Thank you. >> Thank you. Um, Dr. Hawkins, and thank you both

087for doing the work and coming to listen to Jeff talk even more. Sorry, I had to make a joke, but thank you so much for the work and for sharing your students stories. I really appreciate that as well. Um, it's exciting to see students excited. Uh, and it sounds like maybe they're not remembering that they're learning. They're just kind of having fun. And that's what especially those ages really helpful. Thank you. All right. >> Just gonna thank them. I'm not >> I thought you were leaving, too. I was like, is this I'm not leaving. Correct. >> Let me take a selfie with you first to make sure you were here. >> Prove I was here. >> We are ready to move to our super which should be shorter. No, >> you said you'd have these

088in in two minutes. >> There is a PT and beyond section. Um, enrollment, nothing new. We're keeping um still getting our enrollment numbers in. Everything is still saying consistently board goals. Uh, good class sizes and you still have the numbers in there. And we are accommodating with our size shift of decreasing numbers based on some of the um non-rehiring of staff that have um retired or resigned. Um staffing the growing list, most of these are transfers, but over overall I think we have 27 resignations. The rest of the list on here is either we added or a transfer. Once again, a reminder that the yellow are new staff into the district. the other names or people that have transferred into the positions. Um, how am I doing on time? So far so good. Tik Tok.

089>> Any questions on those two things? >> Uh, facilities really uh great to announce three things. I think the board will be excited about these uh kind of updates for facilities, but we are going to finalize. We've had conversations around the scoreboard at the high school. Um we are going to update the scoreboard at the high school. Um understand just like curriculum nothing's cheap but that is a need um when we talk about as we updated everything else within the um stadium scoreboard is next. We're also updating the middle school scoreboard at the same time. Middle school scoreboard was the old high school scoreboard that was transferred over. So, we decided why don't we uh Rob did a nice job of ensuring that let's we need to take care of both facilities versus hand-me-down effect.

090We also are putting in about 300 and recommending the board to approve a $300 and some thousand 370 some 60ome 364,000 plus um just on new furniture and some updates um within the um middle school. Uh they're also working on uh painting and um you know putting some well- needed uh care into the middle school and also it's providing that seating. Um as of I I've explained I've done this in previous districts when we've updated our cafeteria. I kind of think it's the central hub of the building. Um, a good cafeteria can be set up to meet the needs of a lot of different dynamic even food and in the setup of your cafeteria can actually reduce sound um but overall create more um accepting and understanding individual and increasing conversation between um students that

091maybe have similar um things in common. And I think it in middle school's time that they're trying to find those. And I think a dynamic lunchroom can provide that opportunity. It's not just a sit and eat, but it's preparing them how to sit and eat with each other in smaller groups. And then the last is the uh city did reszone um the master plan agreement for the 13th and Northwestern Avenue. I think twofold what I enjoyed about that was they are holding us to the master plan. We have no problem considering that's the plan we wanted them to hold us to. Um they did want us to shorten the name to just the Ames Center and I said no. I worked hard for the board to understand the Ames Center is that one building in

092the middle and until then it will forever be known until we have a better name the Northwestern and 13th project. But they they thought that was too long. >> James outer >> not you know we're not I said we had to >> change that. So >> just to solidify it I had 10 full produce uh boards and it has Northwestern and 13th Street. So sorry that was my Okay. PK and Beyond. How long's it been before I brought up PK and Beyond today? >> Um I just want to highlight the initiative and some major areas that are happening. Um I think just publicly knowing that we've had conversations at work session there's a lot of conversation of PK and beyond beyond just our district um beyond the name aspect of it but I do want

093to highlight some some major areas or at least kind of update publicly you know we've been working on a steering committee since October of 2024 um that has included myself Dr. Hawkins um Eric Sundermire Dr. Newman doll, Dylan Klein from the Ames Area Education Alliance, Shannon Teal from the Amesel Education Alliance, Heather Bray from ISU Research Park, Renee Hansen from SUKUP um manufacturing, uh Jeff Kelly from DMAC, Jen Volinsson from DMAC. Um there are a number of people that wanted to be part of this have tried to be part of this steering committee but we really isolated to this group to ensure that work is consistent. And also this individual and we can put this into the notes more but these individuals have attended pretty much 90% of the meeting. So it's not like they're

094thinking this is a waste of time. This is a monthly meeting we've been having um since the October 24. Overall, we've had sponsors and groups. I don't really want to call them partners or sponsors yet, but people we have had direct contact with either tour their facility. They've responded in a way that they want to support or we haven't continued donations from them without, you know, pretty much a little ask. Um, Ames Area Economic Alliance, ISU Research Park, SUKUP Manufacturing, DMAC, ISU Athletics is a huge partner now. Ryman Gardens, Krook Plumbing and Heating, they were the first company that we walked, we met with back over a year ago. Um, they're still on board and will be doing one of our high school career talks. So, they will be presenting at our high school. Sukup

095is another company that will be presenting at our high school as well as Mary Greley will be presenting at our high school. So those are three career talks which is part of PK and beyond. Um Ames Homebuilders Association they've donated um funds to transport our students to the seventh grade career expo which is happening May 1st. um Ames Education Foundation uh they now back together have put towards 30,000 for three years towards staffing um of the individuals that we're looking at hiring. Um although that was a big ask and they kind of put money towards what I've been talking about. So now I got to figure out how to get 90% more dollars. I had a great conversation today with um the alliance and trying now to put this conversation in front of businesses so

096that they um I think we're at a point now that and I can talk a little bit more I won't talk a little bit more on that but we're at a point now where we have things in place that companies sponsors and businesses are want to be involved and see the value of trying to do this for Tory County not just for our district but every public school student in the county which is over 2,000 or 10,000 some students. Um HY um is going to contribute all the meals for the fifth grade experience. United Way Story County uh is contributing transportation for our fifth grade experience. Uh 3M there's an ask for 3M and Dan Foss which they may not know about yet for eighth grade experiences that are coming up. City of Ames has

097been pivotal in these conversations where we've had city representation conversations with the mayor as well as the um city manager. We've been meeting kind of monthly or at least quarterly having conversations about PK and beyond. I work force development. Uh we have a connection within the state that has been meeting with us specifically on how to engage and make sure this work continues. uh and among others. And my last is not on the list now. Uh we did have a a meeting with our new president uh the president uh Cook at ISU. Uh we had a good two-hour meeting specifically with Dr. Cook at the high school. He is an alumni of the high school. Um but we did have conversations about PK and beyond and building relationships with ISU. um more I think there

098was some communication amongst ISU University uh Iowa State University that was connected to that conversation but we're looking forward to uh building that relationship as well. Um I can go on and on just the people we've connected with but now I'm going to just kind of briefly go through the five experiences that are probably first time experiences this district or is in Story County. uh May 1st uh newsworthy. These are all times that I want actually you to hear uh because you need to be showing up and then like Dorian Register or whoever you talk to. Get that out there. Um you taking notes now >> you make sure you have these down and then I you do timing me now and so okay here we go. >> Just record it. May 1st is our

099middle school career expo. This is we're sending all of our seventh graders at one time to the Central Iowa Career Expo. This is a first time for Ames to attend this event. We are doubling the population of seventh graders there. That is being hosted by the AIM home um the alliance and then it's actually in Boone. So this is a Boone sponsored event. Ames homebuilders is paying for transportation. May 12th is a career discovery day. Our eighth graders will be providing um business tours. Uh they'll be they'll be broke up by their strands. That is from 9:30 to 11:30 on May 12th in the morning. Um all of our eighth graders at one time will get on a bus. Each bus will go to businesses or an area to explore the careers that they showed

100interest in. Um, those buses will have around 35 to 40 kids on the bus. They do not know where they're going until they get on the bus. >> Um, but the kids, >> but we know where they're going, right? >> We know where they're going. >> Just making sure >> I give the middle school huge um in planning and preparing. Uh there's some excitement but a lot of as you can understand when you take out 300 eighth graders at once. Um so that is the EKM beyond eighth grade experience career discovery day. Uh May 21st is our fifth grade um experience. Uh we're bringing all of our fifth graders together. We'll probably get to Wyman Gardens around 9:30 p.m. >> AM. >> I did not. >> We're bringing all of our fifth grade togethers for

101the first time. We've also invited United fifth graders. They're going to be attending as well. I think there are 16 United students. So, we're once again reaching out. Uh this experience will be the first time all of our fifth graders get together at once. They'll be in the soukup end zone at the beginning of the day. Uh they will then find the groups that they're going to be in. And then we have nine career exploratory rotations on Rhyman Gardens, Jack Tro Stadium, ISU performance center, dark indoor practice facilities, guided tours by um anyway more details to come. Uh we also have a display um presentation from ISU president is going to be involved with the presentation. Dr. Cook, some athletic um individuals within ISU and also a message from their future principal on the big

102screen. You can envision sitting in Sou, you know that big Dumbo thing, that video board, massive presentation for the fifth grader students. We're going to take a photo op for all the fifth grade. Hi is donating all the lunches for that event. Someone else donating something. Oh, anyway, transportation that is being paid for by Story County United Way for their golf for kids grant which is usually early childhood, but they are they're extending that for these experiences. And then we have one more experience which is might be is our high school Purit talks. I talked about three of them. We're having ultimate goal next year is we will have a business come talk to our high school students connected to either some classrooms but open to all the kids. So we would look at every

103possibly every Monday next year we will bring a business in to have a career talk. Um and we have businesses lined up. So if you think of the amount of weeks we have in school, we will have a career talk ultimately for every year next year for our high school. Those are just big experiences that we felt we had to start doing some things because our businesses were wanting to see this engagement process. Last thing I have is we're looking um we have a job description for PK and beyond coordinator. So overall the ex conversations we've had to the public and in the businesses is for this work to happen. We need to have um three staff members um that are really dedicated to career talk or career work connecting to the curriculum ensuring that

104we have um goals and that we start from preschool about job embedded type career conversation. So it's PK through beyond. Um, we'd be looking at three at a max of those positions. One would work with high school, one would work with middle school, and one would work at the elementary. I believe that I can after a conversation I had today uh with a one of our partners, I believe we're going to be able to secure dollars for at least two positions for next year. Um, so we're now on the and when I talk about securing dollars, these are coming from companies, businesses, nonprofits, and we're trying to offset this work knowing that our SSA dollars are becoming less and expected to do more. This is a way for us to uh to uh create those

105opportunities for our kids. Would these be shared positions between the districts eventually with this being a countywide? >> The conversation I've had with other districts is since we are a district that has the size and capacity to support bigger initiatives or handle that. Um we're not asking other district I'm not asking the committee is not asking other districts for dollars but what we get when I talk to a company so I've talked to let's say Collins um aerospace met with them conversations about what they can provide I let them know any business we've had a conversation with that what we gain at Ames public schools when it comes down to these positions will be supporting ing all other Story County public school districts. And so I meet with Story County superintendents. Uh we've been meeting

106about once a month also. They're kind of just as tired about hearing about PK and beyond as some other people. But they also know that what we get in support um we are going to support their districts because that's the ask I'm giving to these businesses. So if you want to provide dollars to these um these positions or this work, know that that work will reach out to those districts whether that those districts you know their board's not going to have to go through a a 2080 agreement or every all that it's going to be if companies giving money to these those companies will know that that those dollars will be supporting all of the other public schools in Story County That's Boone, Madrid, all the other places there out of story county. >> I

107can go through the list of all of them, but >> that's okay. >> Okay. >> 98 other. >> So, yes, the ask for these positions in businesses is meeting the needs for all public school students and neighboring Thank you. >> I got a quick quick question. Circling back to facilities a little bit. >> Yes. >> Um about the scoreboard. So I I kind of looked at the the information shared, right? This is kind of more of a modern state-of-the-art kind of video board. Um will there be like some training provided? I'm assuming that whoever's working the scoreboard is going to need more than just the old school kind of up down kind of increase the point kind of deal. There's going to be video capability and like um I'm just kind of curious if we

108have a plan in place to kind of like it's a big investment. So I'd like to see that >> full capacity >> just like the 700 reading curriculum. >> Yes. >> I ensure whatever dollars we put out that we're going to make sure we're >> trained and using it. I didn't know if maybe it'd be like a student supported like AV club kind of deal or if it would be >> we're still working on student support of some of some of our other facilities like >> our uh for performing arts >> and and another question. So the old school board the old school board pretty much doesn't work correct because it's >> Yeah, we're not repairing that. >> Yeah. Okay. I just kind of made that >> there's a question asked about that if we're

109going to repair that. I I have a hard time investing money into something that is going to be gone in a month. >> Oh, they're not part of our insurance. >> That's the real reason. >> Yes. I believe he can be on gifts to the district. We have a couple gifts to the district. We have $250 cash from Tyler Perkins for the lunch hero program. $20 cash from Shimmering Cat Series Hope Pantry. Thank you for those donations and always looking to have more as they come in. Now we shall shift to our chief financial officer to talk about the audit. >> That's probably why everyone left because you know the topic they looked ahead and they're like oh audit I'm out. >> I mean if Jeff was doing it I would probably leave but >>

110Oh >> no. You talk about the audit that just wouldn't go well right? >> Yeah. We all have our lane. >> Okay. Well, we'll get started here. So, I did prepare just a short slide presentation. Um, I did link a copy of the a digital form of the audit in our in the board update and I gave you a hard copy um today that you can take with you um as well as the required board communication that the auditor has to provide. So I did look back to see when Noly Cornman and Johnson who performed our audit first started and that was in 2002. So this is the last audit that we received from that you will receive from them because remember we went out for an RFP and trust point will be our auditors

111at least for the next five years. So just want to make that clear. I mean and I have worked actually with no corman and Johnson since I started being a SBO. So and I started in 2008. So, I've always had a good working relationship with them and do want to acknowledge um the relationship that they've had with the school has been long-standing. Um so, in my in the um quick abstract and I gave you like different highlights of the audit and page numbers where you can find um different things at, but thought I'd go over a couple other things when I'm going through the audit. Okay. So the first thing that I'm going to talk about um is the the go back in there we okay the management discussion and analysis. So that's on page

112seven and basically that that's a narrative that's written by the district management and provides an explanation of the financial performance and risk that you know we see and the wise as to why results results occurred or different trends um and new accounting practices you know that maybe were taken on that year. So Gazsby always comes up with some you know different standard and so that's usually where we talk about that. Um following the are the financial statements then and then notes and supplementary information and lastly is the compliance section of the audit. So when the auditors okay next there we go. So when the auditors are here they kind of perform three different audits for the school district. Okay. One of them is the financial statement audit. Okay. And what they issued was an unmodified

113opinion, which is typically what this school has been issued for many years. I look back and I don't know if many of you know what that means, but it's the highest form of opinion that can be received um by a school district. So sometimes it's referred to as a clean opinion or a clean audit. When you hear those words, in auditor's terms, it's an unmodified opinion. Um basically it means that the district's financial statements were presented fairly and follow the applicable financial reporting framework which at this school is gap accounting generally accepted accounting principles and it indicates that the financial records are accurate and free from significant error. Okay. The next type of audit that well I will go on to say that there was a new accounting standard that was implemented last year and

114it required the resetting of all of our beginning fund balances. So what we had to do last year was take any unused vacation that would roll over and put a dollar amount to that and then we had to estimate kind of how much sick time was going to be used um by the employees in the district. And because we pay out a portion of sick time when for early retirement, that's an uncompensated balance. We had to kind of estimate how many people were going to stay and retire. And so these are all estimates kind of on our balance sheet, but we had to put a dollar amount to that. That was that was a new task that we had to perform last year. And then the next audit performed was a government auditing standards audit.

115And so what they do with that one is they look at our internal controls and then they test it to make sure that they were functioning as designed. So an example would be like my check reconciliation. You know I have like um an employee who enters invoices and then I have an employee that writes checks and I have an employee that reconciles the bank balances and then I have like someone that transfers money. And so what they what they do is they they come and talk to us and they want to make sure that you know we have someone different and not like what the same person is doing pieces of that you know in a row for just the checks and balances of it and then the second part is looking at compliance with

116laws regulation contracts and grants so an example of that would be my procurement so like if I want to buy an oven for the kitchen you know we follow you know our school board policy on procurement but if it's for the kitchen I also have to follow the federal threshold guidelines. And so that is something that they they look at especially as the threshold for governmental purchases is $500. They pretty much have to pull everything for the kitchen except for the food cost. Um another thing example of that would be they look at the master contract and then you know we we run everyone's wages in the newspaper. They'll pull contracts Mr. Grimes for sure mine and Jeff's and teacher and then you know pick and use them teachers make sure the wages in the

117newspaper are the same as what their contract says and that that aligns with the master contract. So that's another piece of what they audit when they're here. Um and lastly um the AIM school district qualifies for a federal single audit. So, um, if a school district receives more than $750,000 in federal revenue, they qualify for this type of adoption. So, not every school and district in the state um qualifies for this. Basically, what they do is they look at like program specific like let's say title one Sina fund, you know, like I cannot spend those funds on a district that's not on a Sina program. And so they'll pull those expenditures and make sure that they're for that specific school um for compliance. Um the district did not receive any Oh, and then after that's

118all that is I don't know if you've ever heard of the federal audit clearing house. All that has submitted to the federal audit clear house and then they on their backside say yeah they agree with our auditor or they don't. Okay. So we were um did not receive any non-compliance um issues were raised. So I was happy about that. Um there were three findings noted in our audit. Um one of them was the certified budget. While we did amend um the certified budget last year, I did not amend it by enough on the instruction line. And so that was um a finding. um our certified enrollment. We, you know, we go back and forth with with our neighboring schools about, you know, who gets this kid, if they're open enrolled or not, and there's always

119one or two that both of us will have to do adjustments on the next year. And then on supplementary waiting, we overstated a class that we needed to use for offer. So those are findings, they were not non-compliance issues. So Okay, next slide, Dan. There we go. So, the next thing I'll go through are just um some highlights of the governmental um fund revenues. So, you can see I just took a snapshot of 25 and 24 and essentially the revenues increased by less than 1% 818,000 and this was across all of our funds. Okay. And while there, um, we had an increase in our local property taxes, but because of valuations, um, because of the rate, you know, we didn't need to assess as much. And so, well, that could that could have shown higher.

120Um, we didn't need it on the property tax side. On the tuition side, um because of the state increase the amount of tuition um that we can receive, there was just a 5% increase in that line item, a little less than $200,000. And then local sources decreased. And while that is a a decrease by $450,000 and that primarily had to do with the interest received in the district, um we spent so much money um paying for everything at the AIM center and 24 our fund balance in PEPA dropped we did not receive as much interest plus interest rates declined. So that was a decrease of about $450,000 of interest in the PEPA account. um our state sources increased by quite a bit and that was uh we went after some foster care claim money. We

121received the STEM's best grant and the biggest part of it was is that's when the state started to give us the support staff supplement those onetime payments for the support staff to pay. So um most of that was like I said just increase in just overall state aid and just some grant money. Now the thing about grant money is when it comes in we also pay that directly out. So you know while your expenses go up there so does your your revenue goes up so do your expenses when it comes to that. Um as far as federal the federal sources decrease by quite a lot from 24 to 25 significant amount. And that really has to do with um while we received money for the school safety improvement grant that was quite significant and the

122learning beyond the bill. The ESRE funds really created a funding cliff. So we had spent $2.2 million in FY24 of SSR 2 and er 3 funds and we didn't have any esser funds in FY25. So that is what that big decrease from one year. Um, all of this information actually is on page 61 of your audit, schedule six. And you can see all the expenditure information as well. Total expenditures. Next page, Dan. Next slide. Um, decreased by or increased by $1.6 million. So, that isn't really too bad. That's a little over 1%. Um, and most of that had to do with, you know, the the facilities were pretty much complete at the high school and the AIM center. So, while you had a lot of expenses in the years prior, those leveled off in FY25,

123your pretty much your only increase was the increase for um, salaries and benefit. You remember in FY25, that was the year we had some pretty big settlements. um 8.85% for the EAS plus we offered them full insurance like 4.995% you know for the custodial and maintenance to only see a million dollar increase um from one year to the next help the other you know Jeff was saving his money for curriculum so um there's no new debt issued in FY25 Five. I I encourage you to read the audit. You know, reach out with any questions that you have. I will have it um on the next board meeting. You don't really approve it. I just have it so that you bring it into record is how we do that. So, I don't know if you guys

124read through anything. If you have questions now, I don't have any questions, but thank you so much. um 71 page audit that really nicely and distinctly and eloquently summarized for us. So, thank you. >> For the second year in a row, it's pretty clean. >> Oh, I have a great team, though. And so, you know, I mean, and there's great um support staff, you know, admin staff out in all the buildings and if they have any questions, you know, they they call up, you know, someone in my office and really ask, you know, is this who we should be coding it to? And the staff's getting a lot better about, you know, finding categoricals for expenses and monitoring all that kind of stuff. So, it's not me single-handedly. I I feel like I do a

125very small part of all that. So, Thank you. >> Anything for Nope. Did Representative >> I think this >> I think you're right. Um I have a a couple a couple three things. Three things. Uh we our next board meeting we will do the superintendent evaluation. Um and for our new members um that is we'll go into close session. You all were here when we did the midyear, right? Okay. So, kind of similar. Um what I will be doing over the next few days uh is putting together some materials so I can collect feedback from you beforehand and try to condense that so that we have kind of an we have kind of so we can efficiently talk through the the parts of the evaluation. This will be a lot easier in some ways than

126pre well in many ways because we don't have to do all 10 standards which most of us have had to do because the first year of a superintendent you have to review on all 10 standards. We only have to do the ones that we just two or three that we focused on this year. So um but it's also an opportunity to provide other you know feedback and stuff. So be on the lookout for that. Uh I will be meeting with Scott tomorrow and Sabrina to kind of talk through that and get that material ready for you all to look at as well. Um and have time to discuss uh review independently or ask questions if there's things you want to be raised. Um we also have the IASB has a metro board's workshop which I

127think most of us are going on April 29th in Inken. We can work uh if that is convenient to folks. And then just thinking ahead, which this feels like it should it's really far away, but if not, June 8th, we're going to have a a joint work session with AIM city council. Uh, and the scope of that, we'll try to be pretty focused and we'll work on ironing that out beforehand. Just get all those things extra things on your radar as well. Um I'll also add to we will have our IASB uh >> oh no um the ne the work session where we have the superintendent evaluation. Tammy will also be here to do some uh a work session with us too kind of about board roles but a little bit more nuanced than that

128since everybody's been on the board at least for a few months. people aren't brand new, but I'll try to tailor it kind of conversation. Okay. Any other items from board? Old business? I move the board adopt the 2026 27 certified budget as presented. >> Second. >> Right. Any discussion? Moved by Deward. seconded by Rodriguez and >> all in favor say I. >> I oppose nay pass 6. Our budget guarantee resolution. >> I move the board to approve the resolution for budget adjustment as presented. >> This one is a roll call by word. Seconded by shield. Bob Gardner. >> Hi >> Ward. >> Hi >> Rodriguez. >> Hi >> Fields. Cook >> I >> Typton >> I >> Winfrey >> I. >> All right, that passes 6. You can move to new business and gifts to

129the district. I move the board approve the gifts as presented. >> Second by Shields Cook, seconded by the Ward. All in favor say I. >> I. >> Oppose. Nay. Passes 6. Elementary. I move the board to approve Bloom's client acceptance form for the elementary audiovisisual enhancements project as presented. Second. >> Any discussion? Uh, move by the Ward, seconded by Bombgardner. All in favor say I. I. >> Oppose. Nay. That passes 6. Procurement of furniture. Move the board approve the procurement and installation of new furniture for the Ames Middle School cafeteria from Premier Furniture and Equipment as second. Any discussion? Moved by Schultz Cook, seconded by Typton. All in favor say I. >> I. >> Opposed. Nay. Passes 6. And Ames High video board and middle school. >> I move the board to approve the procurement

130sorry of a new video board for Ames High Stadium and scoreboard for the Ames Middle School from Dacttronics as presented. >> Second. >> Any discussion? Move by award. Second by Rodriguez. All in favor say I. >> I. >> Oppose. Nay. That passes 6. Um I don't have any requests for the superintendent. >> I miss and then we just kind of went over what was that? Did I miss anything? >> No, I think that was just a question of Yeah. Oh, just a curiosity. I'm gonna go home and ask Charlie now. Emailing uh was there anything else that I might have missed request? Okay. Board planning calendar. Our next regular meeting is May 4th, but I'll see most of you next week. And we have our Ames accolades. Another great read. And Oh, go for it.

131Go for it. I move we adjourn. Second. >> All right. Moved by Shields Cook, seconded by the Ward. All in favor say I. >> I. >> Oppose. Nay. >> Passes 60. And we were able to adjourn without Allan. And we were two minutes on the two hour meeting. >> Two minutes.