001good evening everyone and welcome to the November 6th meeting of the Ames Community School District Board of Directors I will call the meeting to order and entertain a motion to approve the agenda so moved second moved by Smith seconded by Winfrey all those in favor say I I I oppose nay passes 70 and we will now put our mission statement up on the screen and would invite you to take a moment to read it okay thank you um first on our agenda tonight we have our celebrations and recognitions and we will begin with um celebrating the Iowa State schools educator of the year for 2023 step shares and I'll turn it over to Amy lashman good evening Steph sheriff is an Ames Middle School ELP teacher and Club sponsor for National History Day writers Den
002Muslim Student Association the orange and black literary magazine prism and the pad program and was recognized as the Iowa safe schools educator of the year for 2023 Becky Taylor the executive director of Iowa safe schools said we're honored to recognize Steph shares as the 2023 educator of the year in her work she has demonstrated an outstanding dedication to her students regularly regularly encouraging them to get involved she has also been a key supporter of the Ames Middle School prism club club which is a vital Lifeline for lgbtq and Allied students uh a little bit about Iowa safe schools it is the mission of Iowa safe schools to provide safe supportive and nurturing learning environments and communities for lgbtq and Allied youth through education Outreach advocacy and victim Services Steph would you stand up we would
003like to recognize you and applaud you for being [Applause] recognized thank you and Steph thanks for being here tonight uh we are appreciative of everything you do to support students throughout the district and our next celebration and recognition this evening is the Iowa all state music festival yes congratulations to the 38 a high musicians who were selected to participate in the Iowa all state music festival auditions for the 278 piece All State band 214 piece All State Orchestra and 602 member Allstate chorus were held on Saturday October 21st 2023 at Indianola approximately 177% of the students who audition are selected for membership in the All State ensembles this year the 77th annual All State musical Music Festival concert will be presented to the public at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday November 18th in Hilton Coliseum the
004students that are with us tonight reading 38 names we'd be here for a while so if you were accepted into the all state music festival would you please stand up I do specifically want to recognize our fouryear all-staters for those people that are unaware uh getting the recognition of being in Allstate four years is really an outstanding achievement there are countless hours of practice time lessons it's it's a huge dedication so we do want to recognize mangy Lee Sarah Park and on Lea walk ER who are for your all Staters also we need to recognize the Fantastic teachers who are behind these students and support them every day in these Endeavors we do have Andrew Buttermore here if you'll stand up Joe Strong Liz Driscoll and Sonia Johnson [Applause] congratulations congratulations to all of you
005I know that this is such an honor and recognition for you as students and all the time and effort that you put in and thanks to all the teachers for giving them this opportunity all right we will now move on to our discussion items and we'll begin this evening with our board committee updates starting with the equity committee isn't that you that's me I can't remember all the stuff we did um no so just ongoing presentations U you can see the details in the the meeting um there's some discussion about the equity core teams and some of the work they're doing and we also discussed um when we get into the next uh year with board leadership to have board leadership look at ways to bring some of this great information is being done at
006the school buildings to maybe the board through some things um through some sort of cycle so any questions all right thank you and Facilities committee facilities met last week and uh the minutes are are attached to the agenda and really thorough thank you JD um the one thing that I will note um that I think is a celebration is is that uh story count story construction is hoping to demobilize uh on November 15 November 15th meaning they are hoping to remove their trailer from the site and I think that that is a really remarkable thing to say we are finally almost there and they've done a phenomenal job so that's just a little celebration but uh that's the new uh High School update uh the aim Center renovation update and Facilities planning all of it's
007there in the uh minutes if anybody has any questions for me all right thank you uh next update or next discussion item this evening is our teaching and learning update and tonight we have the homeschool assistance program and we'll turn it over to Kathy guys thank you for having me tonight um I'm just going to be using the slides that I shared with you can you pull that just a little bit closer for our people at home yes thank you yeah um well first of all thank you for having me here tonight it's nice to be able to um sit face to face with you and just share a little bit about our program thank you um I'm just going to be quickly going through the slides that were shared with you and um um
008the next slide just gives you a our purpose which we have intentionally kept very simple and stated in um very simple short words we um actively seek to be well equipped to accommodate families and students who represent a very wide variety of needs and so that is incorporated into um that purpose um the the next slide I'll give you just a few minutes to look over again and um I tried to just highlight um some of the program services that we provide to our hsap families um hsap being home school assistance program so I'll give you a chance to just glance at those and um as you read through that list one thing that you'll notice is our Focus us on connecting connecting families um both parents and students to our teachers connecting parents and
009students to other parents and students and connecting parents and students to the materials that they made to successfully homeschool um I'm I would like to give you a chance at the end of I just have a couple slides but to just ask questions if you have any questions about the programs that we provide to our families all right if not I will keep and the next slide is just going to show you the numbers that our program reported to the registar this year um I realize that's a whole lot of data but I think it also gives us a really good idea of um who makes up our program um so as you look at those numbers I want to point out that the last three columns before the total are not hsap those are
010homeschooled kids but they are not homeschooled through our program um it's not very many kids there but but I do want to just point out that th those 13 kids are not ours um on October 1st first I believe we were at 330 students in our program um you've got the the little key there to tell you about you know it's interesting to look at how many of our students are open enrolled um how many are dual enrolled meaning they they do some of their cours work at home and some in a school building some are both of those they're open enrolled into as from other districts and they're also duel enroll and then we have a few students each year represented by whole grade sharing um as you look at those numbers um about
01162% of all of our students are fully homeschooled and about 38% are dual enrolled for at least one thing um incorporated into those numbers are also open enrolled students which make make up almost a third of our program our current enrollment today is 340 so we're already up about 10 more students which is typical um for us each year um do you have questions about any of those numbers all right the next slide is just um uh an idea of how our program has grown over the years um I went back to 2013 just to show you um a relatively steady growth of our program um but of course you know there were we grew hugely in 2020 2021 and then came back down um the next two years to pretty much where we had
012been before and um and we're still covering about in that same place close to 340 any questions about those numbers um as you all know um our program will be moving next year into the as Center we're very excited about that um a few of us have been working closely with um Jerry Peters and with the Architects and it's been really fun and I want to tell you personally thank you for um giving us a space next year um I cannot tell you how many times we've already said this year um how much we look forward to just having a space that is ours where we can um make last minute decisions to to have things there in our space so we're very much looking forward to that so thank you for that do you
013guys have any questions for me about our program I have a question actually for Chris senson Chris can you maybe educate the public on what the waiting is for students um maybe on the slide before Kathy has up um homeschool assistant program students are waited at three if they're dual enrolled we get an additional 0.1 um the um ones that you see that she said there are not in the homes School assistance program we would only get the 0.1 for them so if you take 330 divided by three you basically get how many how many students we get funded for anything else for Cathy can you remind me of what whole grade sharing means Chris might be better at that so we we whole grade share um 712 with United schools they are a k6
014building and so um their parents have a choice once the kids hit 7th to either go to us or to Boon um a lot of times they will open en roll in sixth grade um so that they're not starting Middle School at seventh grade but um that's what it okay all right well thank you Kathy for coming and sharing with us tonight and we appreciate the service that you provide to families thank you very much thank you and our next discussion item is our board handbook um which we did previously discuss at um a work session at our last meeting so just just putting it back out there again to see if um board members had any additional comments or any any points that we wanted to further discuss on the on the board handbook
015thank you yeah was thank you thank you everybody contributed and especially to Sabrina and Alissa Alisa for um putting all this together Alisa do you want to recap what was kind of updated if you if you sure I will do it at the top of my head um so just a second like I have it open if you want well I've got my notes oh she's got notes I do um so uh if you recall when we uh had our work session on this some of the feedback was that if we could have a link to some simple Roberts rules so many thanks to Kelly because it is now linked um I did add maybe I'll start from the top I did add kind of a contents at the beginning just so that it would
016um maybe be make it a little easier for folks to find it no page numbers just because it's going to be online but hopefully that gives you a general sense of the order of things uh so there is um a couple links to some simple Roberts rules um there was also a request on consent agenda and um if you uh go down what I did under and I'm sorry I did this right away so it's been a couple of weeks but under our um I think it was under just the initial being a board member board meetings the third bullet there I included more information about the links to all of our policies because the consent agenda the regular agenda everything is laid out really well in our policies so really um if you re
017remember what we talked about that night we really tried to make it a living document so it links to our policies it links to stuff on iasb so that as those things change this doesn't the order of this doesn't necessarily have to have to change um Alan also provided me a link from um isfis and that was put under the board finances uh to provide some information uh JD collected some information from the district on org chart um information on our strategic plan which is really helpful and uh JD also is really doing a lot of work on the board calendar and we uh the link is in there and he's continue to add and we're kind of if you recall from a few meetings ago overhauling that to make it much more user friendly
018so appreciate JD's efforts on that there are some requests on some uh Legal Information so went ahead and made sure that we put the link in for from IB on the legal authority of the board uh so that it's easier for board members to find through this and then the last thing is that just at the very beginning of it we put um just the statement about that this is updated at the will of the board but that it says approved hopefully will be approved tonight but then that our suggestion is is that it's reviewed annually when you look at your uh the board looks at the goals for the year thank you Alisa you're welcome any additional questions or comments on the board handbook good all right then we will move on to our
019Communications plan and we'll turn it over again to Amy good evening hell thanks for the opportunity for us to sit down and talk a little bit about what it is we do every day and our plans going forward um I do want to in introduce for those of you that don't know um Jared lson Jared is our communication specialist here at the district um and that is who makes up our Communications team so if we'll go to the next slide already met our team but really when it comes to Communications um if you go to the next slide Dan our Communications plan in visions of future where effective communication is at the heart of every interaction um we want this to forge meaningful connections and drive a lasting impact for our district we take a
020very strategic approach to how we create our Communications plan um so it's not just what uh what medium we will use it's also about uh what we hope to accomplish in some strategies that go behind that this year we took a very very big look at making sure this also aligned with the Strategic plan for the district um there's so much work going on there that it felt our Communications plan should align with some of those goals coming out of that plan as well next slide so our communication plan is really a two-pronged approach it not only details the information that will be communicated the fre quency what delivery methods we will use the channels but we are also getting into our goals and our strategies um these serve as a road map road map
021for our district Communications and it helps keep us focused there's a lot of different things that come out of Communications Department and it's a little it's easy to get lost in the weeds sometimes we want to have a document that keeps us focused so that we really know what it is that we're striving for overall next slide hello thank you for the opportunity it's awesome to speak with all of you about our communication plan for this school year so our vision as one can read up there is in creating this plan we wanted to have a vision for while we want to be you know if we don't have a vision we really are not guided and with this we will be as Amy after mentioned we want to be recognizes recognized as a trusted
022and influential resource driving meaningful conversations shaping perceptions and building lasting connections throughout our district next slide please so to focus on this plan some more we're gonna we will have several different ways to get our messaging out there and such as the amazing education podcast your stories we've been putting on our website the photos will be posted like that awesome student at Northwood very cool how they're smiling like that and you know we would like to provide the direction that aligns with the district goals that we have with the amazing names Community School District next slide when thinking about our goals and our strategy uh there were three areas we really wanted to align around and those are we wanted these to positively impact internal and external stakeholders it needed to align with the district's
023strategic plan and also we wanted to feature those items that could be accomplished in one year uh we create a communication plan annually and so we wanted this to really be focused on one year um so then these are things we continue building upon year after year so on the slide that talks about establishing consistent guidelines for Communication channel usage we will be measuring success and that will be done by not only the handbook and training that we completed and delivered in August um before August there were no consistent standards previously so this is new to each of our buildings and by doing this it creates minimum expectations for each of our buildings for how and when families will receive communication also consistent review of data measuring the specific guidelines to keep buildings accountable we
024try to have our buildings post on social media twice a week and they're doing a great job of that and it's been awesome to see them improve in that facet of communication additionally when those are not being met we do reach out and offer assistance and retraining because if people have ideas ideas I've been telling them reach out to me I've got so many fun ideas to make your social media engaging or exciting and another thing we can do to be more numerically faced numerically definitely a word um we will review parents Square data being mindful of consistency and possibilities of overc communicating and we will Implement monthly reporting to buildings regarding these standards and possible methods for improvement because there's always places to improve I tell myself every day when I get to work
025like to be 1% better than I was the other day and by reviewing a parent communication survey ratings and as an example for this these efforts impact sense of belonging parent involvement open communication with the school which one can find in the Panorama of culture and climate survey next we wanted to implement a new communication platform to to be used by The District in all buildings um we jump started this one a little bit going into um this school year and uh parent Square says this might possibly one of the be one of their quickest implementations that they have had so um the big purpose behind this was by implementing a new communications platform um we could leverage the technology that's in place and be able to deliver messaging in translated Communication in real time
026previously there was a little bit of a a lag behind that happening and we did a great job of how we communicated with families but we didn't take pride in knowing they didn't get that information at the same time as everyone else so that was really important to us to look at something that would get information out to families in every language that is needed within the district um so we developed a timeline for implementation uh we worked with technology we created a team of people that worked on implementation we coordinated all of the training for staff uh we developed a tiny Communications plan for how we would inform people of this rolling out how we would phase that and any additional training that we needed to do um so it was really important to
027roll that out and roll it out positively so some ways that we're going to measure the effectiveness of this um we did want 99% data accuracy in a 12- month rolling cycle what I mean by that is because this Feeds out of Infinite Campus we have to have good data so we are presently at 99.3% um that just means we have a couple things we need to check into and clean up um but it's still a really great number for data accuracy we wanted 60% of our parents utilizing the app by November 2023 we have not met that goal I'll talk a little bit about where we're at later in this presentation we wanted administrators and secretaries to be fully trained and Champion the program at a building level um Jared and I are two
028people and while we would love to be in our buildings all the time we can't and we're there as much as we possibly can but that's where those administrative assistance within those buildings can absolutely champion and help answer questions about this program they're fantastic we couldn't do what we do without their assistance um as a result we do celebrate those um accomplishments when we do our professional development um and we encourage further use of the program we talk about other areas within parent square that aren't being used and how we can better leverage those spaces uh we also fully on board The Homeschool assistance program which you just heard from uh with 100% participation by December of 2023 um Kathy and I have been meeting and we are already in progress of making sure that
029we have that rolled out and homeschool assistance program is leveraging parent Square um presently the way that they message their parents is really cumbersome for their staff um so they're very much looking forward to something that is just better aligning and saves them a little bit of time so in regards to developing professional development of her building administrative assistance to maximize communication efforts we do have some measurements for this as well so we review former data for communications effort and know where there are missed opportunities and when we have PD days there's timely delivery of training to cover new and up-to-date topics today I gave them the social media tip of the 70201 rule like 70% of your social media post should be used to educate inform Etc 20% should be self shared shared content
030shared content I don't have my note card in front me it's okay and 10% is shared content so by uh sharing this and by me relearning what I taught earlier that goes a long way but also we input training into a format that can be explored by anyone not able to attend and by doing this we can increase the confidence and knowledge of administrative assistance to be able to handle their own Communications to expand our efforts as say for two people but they are awesome in what they're doing and we will survey attendees quarterly for topics and enhancements as well as rating their own confidence level because I would also like to know where they're feeling about these things and there's to measure social engagement I have a mathematical equation that I use that I
031celebrate with a golden thumbs up trophy to showcase the best practices and how to build engagement and it seems to be received very well among the buildings and I hope they continue to do amazing things yeah it's really fun to bring that golden thumbs up trophy um out to our buildings it's a great conversation piece to people want to know what what's the thumbs up trophy room together oh so for goal I'm sorry goal four um we implemented targeted and engaging communication campaigns to create a vibrant and inclusive community that encourages active participation and F Fosters a positive educational experience so really what we're doing is we're creating and delivering cohesive marketing campaigns um through compelling messaging storytelling and we want these to deliver results for the district the way that we're going to measure
032this goal um is we are going to set goals for metrics for and metrics for things like attendance um perceptions of the school Community enrollment numbers do we have goals going into the next year um because these campaigns will align throughout the district no matter which one of these areas it might be and we are also going to do audience segmentation so we're going to Define our Target audiences um for each campaign and measure the effectiveness of Engagement Within These segments um we're going to monitor response rates and interactions and really diving into our data that we have um speaking of data when we get into digital communication channels we have click-through rates that we can study um and really looking into our Google analytics as well um the more data that we have in
033our hands the better able we are to make decisions um in Communications it's really easy to make a decision with your heart um and while your heart's a good thing you really have to rely on the data um so Jared and I are always leveraging the data that we have available to us because that's how we can truly make an informed and educated decision um also we'll be looking at conversion rates um related to the campaigns called action um this will help us to know how successful this campaign is we'll be measuring return on investment and then we do plan to often speak with our community um we want to survey get feedback also any chance that we have to stand in front of parents and ask their opinions um that's the best way to
034really really know what our community thinks is to ask on the next slide this gives you just a little bit of a teaser um this is the new cover photo that we put on the district's Facebook page um so this is the new campaign that we'll be launching uh which is ames's me you might notice some familiar faces in there we really love that photo a good photo it was fun you never know when we'll capture you out there doing amazing things and for our fifth goal um we want to enhance planning of districtwide events creating a more active and impactful presence while aligning with strategic messaging um so this involves creating a planning committee comprised of representatives from the communications team key stakeholders and relevant departments this is really just knowing these are our
035Outreach events this is what's touching our community while our messaging is doing that these are our actual real physical touch points that we can have um so we really want to standardize our events and ensure a similar experience for all participants um it allows us to ensure that a broader communication perspective is taken and that the messaging is aligning throughout the district uh we want to monitor the growth and active participation over time so that we can assess the impact of these events I'm not always launching in an event means that it is something that's successful we really have to dig into what our community is thinking about that and we want to evaluate the impact of Partnerships and collaborations that are established as a result um these are joint initiatives sometimes and we want
036to have the opportunity to talk with our constituents and measure is this really effective for us um we want to study the demographics of attendees and that helps us better understand our engagement um and for large scale events we again want to get feedback from our community to determine if it was an effective event we also want to monitor social media interactions because we know that these things all operate um over a variety of communication channels um but we do think consistency is key um and we are always looking for areas of opportunity that are untapped so um Jared is currently working on some of these so hopefully we can report on some of these amazing new events that we have planned coming up okay so we're going to dig into just some Channel updates
037and data as we close out the presentation so to uh remind you all uh we are we did at parents square and it's a really fun thing I love looking at it every day because I'm still learning new things about it which is pretty cool we are discontinuing the publishing of the amazing magazine and our podcast known as the amazing education podcast has seen great success and am will go into these further okay Dan if you'll go about two more slides uh we wanted to just give you some information in regards to parent Square um so as you know parent square is true two-way communication um that reaches audience in the manner they prefer and it does have those instant translation capabilities uh last week we sent a test of the emergency alerts that will
038go out through parent Square um the data that came back from that was that was sent in 14 languages and it was sent instantaneously in those languages currently 81% of families and secondary students have accepted their invitation to join parents Square that doesn't mean the other 19% isn't getting communication they are um it just means they haven't accepted the invitation by accepting the invitation there's other things that families will be able to do fill out forms um sign up for conferences um volunteer um bring a an item for a classroom activity um so there's a variety of ways that they can interact with the platform that they do have to accepted have accepted their invitation before they can do that we have a 42% interaction rate and this is per person um so if you're
039thinking most families are going to have two parents but in the household it's a really large interaction rate um this one astounded me a little bit it's a it's a very we could have upwards of an 84% interaction rate within parents Square so it truly is collaborative um and then 44% have down downloaded the app you remember we had that goal previously we didn't quite achieve that that just lets us know that we need to do a better job of talking about the app and what some of the perks are um to having that platform right in your hands by moving to this we did have an estimated savings about $60,000 um across the district and um we have a variety of add-ons that are available within parent Square um and we're we're using using
040quite a few of those add-ons but also the chart that's shown here um shows the interaction rate and you can see that about half of our parents are regularly interacting with the platform in some way shape or form next slide um amazing magazine so we did cease publication of the amazing magazine in the 2324 school year a big reason for this was the lack of trackable data um we had started implementing QR codes for people to read more we would put a shortened version of the story click on the QR code to get more information and that trackable information wasn't a very large number um we weren't seeing a lot of data coming out of that that was really impactful um it also had a very large amount of staff time to prepare um so
041it would take on average about 90 hours to prepare the amazing magazine um one thing that we're doing is we are our stories were published through a variety of channels so it wasn't just we had some exclusive content that was available in amazing magazine um but we shared those through other ways to date we have produced more amazing stories from the district than in the same time period last year so I don't want anybody to think that okay because we are not publishing a magazine just the amount of stories that we're telling about the district is going down now actually we're sharing more stories than we've shared before um and the estimated savings by not publishing the magazines is about $40,000 to the district next slide and the amazing education podcast so the podcast allows
042for storytelling with a conversational component um the cost to the district is traditionally less than $200 per school year and these are very very easy to put together um podcast downloads when I dive into the data this is where it gets um pretty impressive to look at so podcast downloads are up 660 from the previous calendar year they're they're up tremendously um we achieved 10,000 downloads in the last school year prior to that we had a very very low amount of downloads one podcast alone produced last school year was downloaded over 4,000 times in multiple countries it was downloaded 2200 times in the first month alone we are currently on track to surpass 25,000 downloads this year um so we do take a look at uh when we publish a podcast um how many times
043it's downloaded within the first day within the first month um we can get all of that data through the platform that we use for our podcasting so um it's really great data and we're seeing that uh people are really downloading and listening to the stories that are available so in conclusion um we just want to stress that we think a well executed Communications plan not only enhances brand reputation but it Fosters transparency trust and communication um we are continuously evaluating measuring um making if we have to adapt a little bit with the plan we won't do anything large um but we want to ensure ongoing success with the plan we also want to stay ahead of an Ever evolving communication landscape it's changing every day um and then we believe that through a carefully designed
044and exe executed Communications plan we can navigate challenges seize opportunities and cultivate a positive impact that resonates with our internal and external stakeholders and increase our school pride and now if you have any questions for us Amy can you tell us how the $60,000 Savings in parent Square was realized uh that is an example or two of how that money was saved uh so we evaluated the money that was being spent on translators that were specifically uh translating our email communication that was going out um I tracked this over a lengthy time period and we realized that it it was becoming quite expensive for the district um by being able to have real-time translation now and mind you that was only um six five or six other languages at that time period we are now
045doing 14 other languages um and still saving a large amount of money so that was really mostly just from the cost of the time that it would take for for translators to turn around communication all right thank you do you have I'm just curious um that's amazing with the amount of podcast downloads like way more than I would expect for a district um with the software that you used is there any idea of the audience that's downloading like do you have any sense if it's um alums current students families any of that sort of stuff guesses getting getting actual demographics out of any piece of data really really hard anymore even our Google Google analytics don't show our demographics in a manner that they used to um we can tell probably more about the location
046um so we can see location from where things are being downloaded um but otherwise we don't get a lot of data in terms of who's downloading um in a platform it doesn't gather that data um from the people that are downloading so we are more looking at regions um I'll tell you in our local region it's downloaded far more um than other locations when it's downloaded is it to what to what your computers set to so like if if I was visiting from another country and I downloaded my computer might would say that country I was right correct okay sorry so yeah so it is possible um I'll tell you the the podcast that was shared the most was the one with I am curious about that it was with well she was Emily Lair
047um who oversees the egg program and we talked about the egg program and FFA um also after I do a podcast I highly encourage those people who are on with me that when we publish it to share it and that's exactly what Emily did and that's why that had so many downloads and she's very well connected in the FFA community and people wanted to hear what she had to say um and so so it just spiraled and when I saw that number it was a little staggering we hadn't had one that was downloaded I mean 2200 times in the first month was a lot um but I it was really just engaging content that people wanted to listen to I'll just say generally you all have done a great job I think that Communications improved
048a lot in since I've been on the board and I really appreciate that I I will say the the um overcommunication challenge of how do we not get something alerts from four different place that test we my husband I like oh we got the what's a quad FR is the phone call the text but it's better to make sure people get that information than not so I'd rather it be that way than and that's another thing that we do want to dive into as we get further along is how our families prefer to get that communication um because that was a little you could call it Overkill a little bit because you did get it in multiple ways um that's how we've done it traditionally but we can back off on that well and that's
049you know I'd rather it be multiple ways I will say I don't know was this plan our teacher and our parent teacher conference asked of how we wanted to be communicated with I don't know if that was standard or not but she asked about parent square and other places so I was like oh are we collecting data on this so maybe some of the teachers have some data for you is it yes and and we can get great data out of parents where so we know who's using it most who's not using it um we can really look at a building level all the way down to a teacher level yeah that's at some level our choice when we sign up how we want to get messages correct and you do have control in parents
050Square um so parents can go in and control how they prefer to get that information whether they want their text instantly um would I rather just get the digest um and you can turn off your text and just get your act notification um so parent Square does put parents in the driver's seat for how they prefer to get that communication I will tell you when it comes to anything that is emergency or um like Crisis communication um we bypass those settings because we think it's important that you get that does some of that come out of Infinite Campus though too some of the texting is separate I'm still learning all this so so when it comes in from Infinite Campus your settings are all set to digest in parents square and then a parent has
051to go in and change those to what they prefer and we're in the process of trying to educate all of that with our community um some people but also being aware of if a person is selected digests if I'm sending communication that goes out at 6: pm. that might not catch the digest um so we have to really be thinking through all of the communication that we're doing and when we time those pieces of communication so it's a full educational process across the supp I have a question about the U magazine so has it been announced to the general public the magazine has been discontinued and like where they can find stories about the district if not in the magazine so we did a social media post it didn't it didn't get a lot of
052interaction um it didn't get as much interaction as when we post just general stories so that's the way that we've alerted the public so far um it people who are getting it by direct mail it's a little hard to educate they won't get that by Direct Mail anymore um so we relied on social media to do that one thing we haven't done I'm glad you brought that up we haven't updated our website to be able to let people know that we are not publishing the vaccine anymore that's something we can do that's a good question I I saw a lot of community related stuff and reach out to parents what about students I mean students use communication and social media and all that way more than their parents do what's the the plan for helping
053students to build their sense of community and belonging as it relates to communication and what's going on in the buildings yeah I think we really have to take a close look um so with strategic planning I did have a student on my action team um who was very vocal about what she felt would be uh most used best utilized and was important for students um some of that really came down to the timeliness of when things were timed coming out of the high school um so there's just some continued education that we can have in making sure those things are appropriately timed but also getting the opportunity um to work with students and find out how they prefer to receive that communication we did move right into so for students it's called student schol Square
054um it's not parent Square um but we did move right into that without a lot of opportunity to work with students so we would like to go back and have some discussions perhaps even using our um student Representatives on the board to help leverage um what that feedback is with students yeah it seems like it would I would love to see students telling some of their own stories and sharing those with other students and with the community um that would be awesome to see uh we have worked with a couple of classes at the high school um in regards to their content that they're generating and there's also a class that's working on some podcasting so we've been working closely with them because we would like to share some of their content as well um
055student stories are very important to be told is it possible to see you said you had like 42% I think participation rate are you able to see what group of parents or what age group the parents are participating more we don't have age demographics um in parent Square so we would have to go person by person to get that information so we don't see that amount of data um we'd have to make some educated guesses um we can look from a building perspective uh we can look at this number of people in this building have downloaded the app this number of people in this building um have downloaded the app that could help us to know if we need to have better education at a buing level of what it means to download the app
056but we can't get the demographic data we don't have that level of data within parents where all right thank you well thank you both for for taking the time and it's great to see this plan coming together all right next on our agenda is our homelessness services update and we'll turn it over to director Thomas good evening board hello thank you for the opportunity to talk a little bit about um students experiencing homelessness and bikini vento um I wanted to start with just a quick definition of homelessness this comes from the bikini vento act um so homelessness is defined as individuals who lack fixed regular and adequate nighttime residents so just put some bullet points in here to help explain and further Define each of those pieces so so fixed is stationary so it doesn't
057move around like a car an RV or something like that might um it's permanent or relatively permanent so you have some consistency over time and not subject to change without someone's control regular predictable routine consistent again relative permanence and then adequate so it's um reasonably sufficient to me physical and psychological needs of human beings um little bit more information about that last that last word that last piece adequate or inadequate or substandard housing um lacks one of the fundamental uh utilities electricity water heat um has some sort of infestation um lacks fundamental Parts such as a working kitchen or a working toilet um or present unreasonable dangers to again human beings um a lot of times when we think about people who are homeless or who are experiencing homelessness um we think about people who
058live outdoors and the reality is that a lot of people who are experiencing homelessness are not living Outdoors they're living in hotels they're doubl up with friends or family members they're living in cars or condemned buildings shelters um other kinds of transitional housing like that in our district we have about 71 students currently who are experiencing homelessness and this chart just shows the breakdown um of how they're experiencing homelessness so overwhelmingly most of our students who are experiencing homelessness are doubled up with a friend or a family member um we have some who are living in a hotel or a motel some who are in transitional housing and then some who are in some other form um of of housing situation that meets that definition of homelessness so we have two kinds of students who
059experience homelessness we have students who are experiencing homelessness with their families um some of the common causes for homelessness among families are economic challenges so underemployment or unemployment um catastrophic hardships um just general poverty things like that health challenges disability substance abuse um or other serious medical conditions under insurance can contribute to some of those health challenges and then domestic violence is also a common cause for family homelessness the other type of student that we have um who are experiencing homelessness are um unaccompanied miners so they are homeless and not living with their parent or Guardian they are are on their own common causes for this kind of homelessness abuse or neglect acute conflict so um common reasons for conflict in families that result in homelessness um rise over pregnancy sexual orientation gender identity um
060and substance abuse of children or or parents or other family members um economic challenges can lead to students youth being homeless and unaccompanied um so often there's a there's a pressure in families for especially the experiencing some kind of economic challenge for students to take on a more um adult or independent role which will sometimes result in them being on the company minors and then shelter policies so for example um a lot of times shelters won't allow adolescent boys to stay with with their families which can create this situation as well um some of the impacts of of um experiencing hom on education according to the National Center for homeless education um students who are experiencing homelessness are more likely to be chronically absent from school um unsurprisingly students who are chronically absent from school
061and experiencing homelessness tend to earn lower grades you can think about this in terms of um Meeting those basic needs uh the impact of trauma on the mind all of those kinds of things are at play here um they're more likely to have unique or special um educational needs um again more likely to score poorly on assessments um because of some of the things that go on in the brain when we when we don't have basic needs met and all of these things lead to a higher likely jumping out of school ultimately so in our district we um are trying to identify the potential barriers and work to disrup or or tear down those barriers as fast we can for students who are experiencing homelessness so you'll notice on the left hand side are some
062of the barriers and on the right hand side are some of the things that we're doing to respond so enrollment requirements can be a challenge for um students and families who are experiencing homelessness they may have left a previous resident without the appropriate um paperwork to to register under your cical um registration requirements we of course we wave those we work with various um agencies to get families what they need and to get kids in school as soon as we possibly can um frequent moves create a lot of disruption to education and obviously there's a transition when we move and you move to a new school so you think carefully about what the what's in the best interest of students and try to keep them in their school of origin um to the greatest extent
063possible when that is in the students best interest um issues with hunger of course are challenging again from that basic needs perspective we have food pantries in three of our schools we're working right now to get a Central Food Pantry established um to serve our other five schools and the community at large um a lack of school supplies can of course be an issue um we have our back to school blast in the fall and then we also stock throughout the year backpacks and and basic school supplies when families come in or have a change in circumstance we can help them as quickly as possible lack of adequate clothing you may be aware that we just had a winter clothing Drive um we also work with some of our Community Partners like the um overflow
064thrift shop to make sure that families and students can access um floating and and other Goods like that that they need unreliable transportation is another barrier that students and families experiencing homelessness um need to get around we collaborate with Durham and with our neighboring districts to make sure that we can support students in getting to school we also have student family advocates um who help assist families and students in getting to appointments medical and dental appointments getting prescriptions when they need it or um different things like that that that accompany that kind of areer so in our schools the the folks who are actually doing the day-to-day work we have um five people five student family advocates Jee Muhammad is actually our um homeless liaison and the Mitchell student family Advocate Jackie Burkhart is the
065SFA for Ames High School Anna figer is um serving Sawyer and Northwood this year Amber frine is at Edwards and Liz SLL is at and follows and I would be happy to answer any questions that you have all right thank you so much for presenting to us thank you next agenda item is our October 1st 2023 certified enrollment and we'll turn it over to Chris denin good evening um each year on October 1st we um take account of the students who are attending our district and every District in Iowa does the same with the students attending their District each district certifies by October 15th and then between the end of the middle of October and the end of October they kind of work all all the conflicts between all the school districts the Stu the
066districts serving the student counts the students and if it's to be funded by a different District it flows over through certified enrollment so just kind of a reminder on how the how the certified enrollment works is line one is um students who are residents of our district who are attending aim School District so um our resident students who are attending our schools went up 62.7 and if you ask how do we have 7 well that homeschool assistance program just showed you one of those reasons why um line two are students who are residents of the school districts but they're attending another um Public School District in Iowa so we had 40.7 more open en roll out to other districts um those middle ones are just little ones dealing with non-public shared time um dual enrolled
067Etc so we get down to the actual enrollment which we call line seven which I'm not sure is actually line seven but we still call it line seven so these are all of the resident students of ases who are attend attending a public school district not necessarily ases but are attending a a public school district if there are residents of aims we count them we get the money that um our um resident count went up 107.9 now we don't get to keep all that money so the kids who are open and rolled out to another District we receive the funds the other District bills us we write them a check just like we build the other districts and they write us a check for their students who are attending in AES the next line are
068um students who are residents of other public school districts who are attending in Ames and the number of students who are open enrolling into De Moine or De Moine sorry ases um is went down by 9.6 the next line is really just out of place there but that's our preschool program and preschool students are counted at 0 five so if you take those numbers times two that shows you the number of kiddos that we have over there in the four-year-old preschool now those are truly only four-year-old uh Statewide voluntary preschool we also have a large number of Early Childhood special education students at Northwood those um kiddos would be in line number one okay they're counted as a full student if they're ecse so that's just your four-year-olds that um get the the preschool dollarss
069the next line is the import line that is the number of school AG students that am is providing education for and will be able to receive or um keep the funds that those students generated so the number of students that we are serving um increased by 57.6 6 so a better year this year not quite back up to where our high was but at least it it came up a little bit any questions on this page the next page um I just put this in here because I wanted to um just show what is happening with open enrollment um Dan if you could go up just a little bit more um the the trend in open enrollment is a little bit concerning um the net open enrolled in is down to 26 students so we
070have 26 students uh more students choosing to open and roll in than open and roll out and that's been as high as 200 157 um and that that's come down the last four years and the uh four or five years before that had gone up so um just wanted to point that out because that could be something that we need to look at as far as funding in the future um obviously if more students open enroll to us more funding is available to provide education for students new this year is the um the students who are going to be funded for an educational savings account um more maybe more commonly known as vouchers um so um of students that reside in ases we have 88 students who are um have have secured a spot in
071a non-public school and will be funded for esas um of those 23 were kindergarteners and if you remember how the um esas are staging in all kindergarteners who um secured a spot in a non-public um School this year were automatically funded and then in grades 1 through 12 um if they had a spot in a non-public school they were funded if they met certain income guidelines in the first year it's 400% of the um federal poverty level of those that were in grades one actually just for us one through nine 11 of them were students who attended Ames last year you'll go to the next page so I want to just talk a little bit about funding so if we look at funding um without knowing what the um State Legislature is going to set
072for State percentage of growth um we have um Regular new program dollars of 800 4,592 there's a little bit of an adjustment there for the enrollment adjustments we didn't have as much of a decrease this year as we had the year before however I talked about the fact that we count all the students who reside in ases whether they attend us or not and so some of that funding is going to go out to other school districts so we had 40 those 40 students more who open and rolled out and the 10 less that open and rolled in so that means um the we will have 386 $387,000 that's not available for ases to fund our educational program so um without any addition to um State percentage of growth our new funding next year will
073be four $459,000 or about 1.34% and to talk a little bit about how the esa's work um if you were following that legislation last year you probably heard a lot about the extra $1,200 that school districts were going to get for each of the the students um that were funded with an Esa that was a Statewide average that $1,200 um each School District gets a little bit difference amounts per student for the categorical funding for as that amount um for FY 24 was $1,176 45 so we're just a little bit below the state average and the way this works is is that each of the students are going to generate additional dollars for those four categorical programs and I want to stress that because the dollars stay with the program I I think there was
074a misunderstanding last year when they talked about the 1200 that this was they kept saying it was a windfall for for Iowa schools that we were going to get this for the students that were enrolled in the non-public schools and I it's absolutely wonderful that we're going to have more money to put into the teacher salary supplement and pay our teachers more but that's up and above any negotiated salaries um so it's not available to fund the the education or to make additions to the educational program um early intervention funds I think we fund two teachers right now and it doesn't completely 100% fund two of them at the elementary level um the professional development and the teacher leadership compensation um so you'll see without an addition to State um percentage of growth based on
075those 88 students we should receive about $13,570 that will go to each one of those categoricals I do kind of want to point out the numbers at the bottom down here though because I think that's important to understand is that um for those 88 students um funded without an increase to State percentage of growth that's $677,000 that that's going to be going into those educational savings accounts that will not be available to fund public schools and keep in mind this is just ases this is just ases portion I was a little bit I'm I'm anxious to see what happens with the Statewide numbers because um it was reported that 113 students were approved for esas now now the fact that you were approved doesn't necessarily mean you'll get funded if you didn't secure a spot
076but if 113 applic ations were approved in Story County and we have 88 of them that's a pretty high percentage and you've got to believe the other school districts in Story County I would especially expect um Gilbert to have students at at State Ames Christian and St C's that's a really high percentage and I don't know that all of us thought it would be that high so and that's with the restriction on the income um levels at this point um and then I just um put out that for those 11 students that that were attending with us last year and are now in a in one of the non-public schools um that's a loss of $85,000 to AES any questions so have you heard anything about is there any speculation at this point about what
077the legislature is going to approve or I guess we're way too early we're way too early they're not if we go to my the next page um this would if if we we got the same 3% um this is where we would end up we would um increase from that 528,000 to 1.5 million which is certainly a much better budget year than it has been I would caution that they originally estimated about 14,000 esas and they approved 19,500 now I think we all thought oh well the all those are getting approved but they won't get spots and be funded but if our percentage is as high as it is that's why I want to kind of see those Statewide numbers um it makes me wonder whether they're going to be able to do 3% again
078this year I have not heard anything from any of the associations on on what um they're speculating I will tell you that the the esas are much higher than projected the tax cuts the first round of tax cuts are really starting to come hit hit and those State revenues are starting to come down from those tax cuts that were made a couple years ago so and they do have a large Surplus but if you think about your savings account a surplus is onetime money so if you put recurring costs on your savings account your savings account's probably going to be gone pretty soon um so and just to put it in perspective um our set our salary and benefit percentages are typically just over a million dollars and um to add um to the pain
079I guess is the way I would say it is we have just over a million dollars of ongoing salaries and Ben benefits right now being funded by Esser funds so the 1.5 is not going to go very far if if it is 3% um maybe I'll be surprised and they will be able to do 3% um I feel like last year it was kind of they wanted to show they weren't not funding public schools and so they did the 3% so um as an kind of an exchange for approving the esas but we'll see when they get into session in January I'd be happy to answer any questions um this is really a question here but just further details maybe we could look at in the future if you have it easily available the Open
080Enrollment out I'd be interested to know what district that open enrollment out is going to like I know a lot of parents in town that are enrolling into like online schools that aren't kind of the traditional places that people have only enrolled so separately like in a board update sometime or something like that if we could just see because we are sending money to those districts I know we know who they are yeah certified enrollment certainly has um detailed um how many students in each grade going to each district and coming from each district um and while I I think online schools like Clayton Ridge and can are going up a little bit our um our significant numbers are still at our surrounding physical school districts but I'd be happy to provide that that' be
081curious all right thank you Chris uh that is the end of our discussion items and our next agenda item is public comments on discussion items which we do not have any this evening um I will go ahead and open our public forum and read our statement on public comments residents of the district students attending the district parents or guardians of students attending the district and District staff members May address the board about any topic relevant to the district whether on the current agenda or not those who wish to speak must sign up at the beginning of the meeting speaker participation is limited to three minutes once per item the views and opinions of citizens addressing the board do not necessarily reflect those of the Board District administration or staff speakers are to remember that Iowa
082law prohibits the board from discussing specific employees emplo students or their performance student speakers will state their name in school others will state their name and address and we did not have anybody signed up for a public forum tonight um nor do we have anybody signed up online so I will go ahead and close our public forum and move on to our consent items and I'll entertain a motion I move the board to approve the consent agenda as presented second move by seconded by Franzen uh superintendent Lawson gies to the district yes thank you the superintendent's office received the completed form for and recommends acceptance of the following gifts two cellos valued at $4,000 from the jenx family for the benefit of Ames Middle School Orchestra program $500 cash from Mary sand for the benefit
083of the lunch HERO program Tyler Perkins donated $12.48 cash for the benefit of the lunch HERO program and an anonymous donor gave a Bundy flute um for the benefit of the as High music department thank you to all of our donors and that's it for the evening thank you moved by Smith seconded by fransen to accept the consent items all those in favor say I I I oppose nay passes 70 moving on to our action items we'll begin with our policies for Action I move the board approve the policies as presented second moved by Smith seconded by Franzen discussion move by Winfrey oh my gosh thank you for catching that I did was it no it was it was Winfrey yeah she's saying she didn't catch that I said the wrong name yeah I didn't
084yeah I bet JD caught it moved by Winfrey seconded by fren sorry about that okay all right all those in favor say I I oppose n passes 70 and the board handbook I move the board approve the board handbook as presented second move by fransen seconded by beer bomb discussion all those in favor say I I oppose nay pass the 70 student representative board and staff items we will begin tonight with items from our student Representatives nothing for this evening okay um items from the board and we did have a request for Chris on where the Open Enrollment um students are going and I did not note any other requests for staff this evening any other items from the board I would encourage people to go out and vote tomorrow I've been told there is
085an election yes thank you anything else all right items from the superintendent yes really quickly first wanted to say say thank you to our presenters this evening Kathy gist um Amy delash Jared lson Dr Thomas and Chris enlin I want to send um just a quick shout out to um director delashmet on her work with the communication plan um since probably near the end of the last school year um Amy and I started to talk about her work around the communications plan and she was um really thoughtful intentional about the improvement work um that she was going to put into uh Communications for the district and so just a few things that I noted around her objectives goals the professional learning excuse me alignment to the Strategic plan um Community engagement strategies progress monitoring of
086the data and just the overall health of of our Communications program um I greatly and genuinely appreciate that Amy so um um and Jared he's gone now but thank you for your work thank you all right that takes us to the board planning calendar um our next meeting will be November 20th which will be our organizational meeting uh where new board members are sworn in and all of that good stuff um and then we will have a meeting with a work session on December 11th any questions on the board planning calendar okay okay we will take a 3 minute break and we'll reconvene for our work session and we'll be ending our live broadcast at this time