001either choose. >> All right, call the meeting to order. >> We will start with the pledge of >> allegiance. I aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation indivisible and justice for all. Roll call, please. Kristen Cambenzi >> here. >> Jennifer Ray >> here. >> Jason Zadun >> here. >> Jennifer Clip. >> Cheryl Maddox Smith >> here. Cassidy Thomas >> here. Eric Smith >> here. >> I would entertain a motion to approve the agenda. >> Make a motion to approve the agenda. >> Support. Motion made by Mr. Zudnick. Ms. Ray. All those in favor? I >> I >> uh moving on to the superintendent report. >> Thank you, President Benzy, and thank you, Cherry Creek, for hosting us this evening. Would like to
002start by having our host, Principal Holly Musco, come up and give us a an update on Cherry Creek. If you could please come up. Thank you. >> Thank you for joining me at Cherry Creek tonight. Happy to have you here. Um there's a lot to celebrate. I provided an update on Cherry Creek last year and I'm happy to say we're moving forward. Um I brought a book that I'm reading right now by Bnee Brown called Strong Ground and um that is where Cherry Creek is. We are really working together as a staff. We have strong ground to stand on and to move our students and staff forward in their learning, adults and children alike. So, I have a few fun facts um most important points and highlights to share with you. Um so far in
003our 25 26 school year, we have our students, 420 of them to love. We gather together at least once a month in our gym. This is a picture at one of our assemblies. Um and we gather to celebrate the things that we're doing together. And within that 420 students, we have a lot of future leaders. Um they take initiative and they do things on their own. So these are just a couple samples. There are many more throughout the days and weeks here at Cherry Creek. Um the bottom photo is a picture of some of our fifth grade students um celebrating our guidelines for success at Cherry Creek. We have our four Bs kind of we talk about them as being the path. um not rules, but if we stay within our guidelines, they will guide
004us towards a success in the schools, in our homes, and in our community. And so, um they took their free time that day to do a poster for be respectful. They posted it in the middle hallway and then they were visiting, you know, every couple of days to bring me something new to hang up and show. And so, there's a really strong identity with being a Cherry Creek Panther. Um the top picture is one of our students, a fifth grade student, Beanie Hendrickson, who heard that there were people in need of food. And um she had a been given a small scholarship um at her church. And she asked her mother, "Mom, could I use that scholarship to buy food for people at Cherry Creek?" And so she asked permission from me to put together
005a small pantry that we had in our entryway. And we had families coming on Fridays uh to fill bags. We left it out there so that you didn't have to, you know, it's a private space to come and fill a grocery bag for the weekend. But, um, our family utilized that and I think that is leadership, you know, recognizing need and doing something about it. Um, we have 58 dedicated staff members at Cherry Creek. Last year, I shared we um read and followed a book called Be the Sun, Not the Salt. And we studied the word helotropic. when plants turn towards the light, people are like that, too. And so, um, that's a guideline for us as adults to continue to be the sun for kids and for each other. Um, we were extra sunny
006that day dressed in their tutu. Uh, our students won or made a certain um, benchmark within their fall fundraiser. And so, we have little whole school rewards, but lots of joy uh, and and fun moments like that. But, the sun is every day at Cherry Creek. Um, when I think about our staff, we are learners. Um, really engaged in professional learning to do better for our kids and to do better for each other. This was in June, the week after school departed for the summer vacation. Um, I had almost every teacher at our building um, attend a literacy training for our upcoming new curriculum, which was exciting, which included even one of our teachers who was on maternity leave. She brought her newborn baby in for two days of learning and was happy to do
007that. So, it's pretty special. Um, we learn in other ways. Um, this is a our fifth grade team working on some release time that I provided for them to dig in. It's a really robust uh literacy uh curriculum that I had shared about over the summer. Um but just diving in and loving the learning they're doing together. We also um have our instructional coach Jen leading the staff grade level teams during learning labs where we're going into each other's classrooms um with intention. We're pre-briefing and debriefing after those classroom visits. And that's a way to calibrate our teaching so that um along with MTSS we're giving our students the same or similar experience from classroom to classroom within our school. Um part one is to do it with grade level colleagues. Part two we're going
008to be pairing our kindergarten, first and second grade teachers together and then our third, fourth and fifth all the grade teachers together to calibrate and see that development over time. Um so I want to thank the board for your continued support of our instructional coaches. that work is really really making uh big signs of improvement at Cherry Creek. Um our staff I say we are leaders. Um last year I shared with you that we um are really took the district focus of positive behavior supports and interventions um to like the highest degree that we could. We developed our behavior leadership team and um we improved behavior support and practices across the building um grew in our consistent practices and encouragements for our students. And this year we have a small team attending an attendance training
009at MARISA through that same company and our behavior leadership team is taking that work on. So um I'm excited about that. I put a little sign. Our music teacher at Cherry Creek is also just a leader getting our students involved in honors choirs um and making a move so that we're creating those that love music so early on in their career and finding kids who maybe have a gift or a passion for it and finding spaces to celebrate them. So that's kind of exciting. um along with our students and staff. I just would like to share that the Cherry Creek community as a whole, we it's just incredible. We have supportive families um our community partners and our parent association continue to go above and beyond. Uh I know I shared similar pictures, but these
010are from this year. Our local um Chocolate Township Police supports us even ahead of the school year. They fill backpacks for our kids to have an opening house open house for um children that or families that may be in need. And I know there's somebody I can call throughout the school year if I do have a need. They will provide. Our chocolate Township um fire and rescue provides 420 little gift bags for kids during fire safety week. They put on two assemblies and then they bring their trucks over um for our back to school night for excitement for the kids but also for fire safety. and they invite NEA safety trainings. Um, our fire chief, Lee Gold, is part of our county emergency management. And so he and I and the chief of police out
011here have worked together like in the summer and then throughout the school year to make sure that our community that's close by is ready to to respond if we were in need. So that's that's really special. They volunteer to come here every day before school um at arrival and then are mostly here after school at dismissal when we have a lot of parents coming in and out. Um our parent group CCSA uh funds a lot of different things for students within the school day and within the school year. Most of their work when I really funnel it down is um targeting connection and joy. Our family dance night was something we started a couple of years ago and it is so big that we host it at the um Lake View Arena because it's multigenerational.
012We have grandparents and sometimes aunts and uncles and older siblings and younger siblings and so we have hundreds of people for this glow dance and celebration and it's just about being together creating community. Um the other pictures are we have a glow dance party for kids um during our field day to have one indoor space out of the sun and then we have this inflatable opportunity which I have to say I thought was a little overboard but so many kids never have a chance to do something like that and it's something that becomes a favorite you know core memory. Um how do I sum it up? I thought this picture just does that for me. There's Cherry Creek. We were waiting for our annual monsters, mummies, and math night, which we get like between four
013and 700 family uh or people, individuals in. And this year, a storm was brewing. And usually our games and activities are inside and outside. So, I was a little panicked thinking, how can we support this event safely? But just before it happened, the rainbow popped up and it was a beautiful night. And that's what I feel like Cherry Creek is. It's a beautiful place to learn and grow. Um, I couldn't do it without our superintendent. Your support uh with our strategic plan has been absolutely like the most important thing that has moved our building forward. MTSS um and the district's support of all the changes that we're making really are are creating a pathway forward for us. Um and I just couldn't be more proud to be the principal at Cherry Creek. So, thank you
014for being here and entertaining all of my stories. >> Thank you, Mrs. Musco. Well done. Great lots to celebrate at Cherry Creek as usual. Next up, I'd like to invite our high school PR Marquette Senior High School principal, Gavin Johnson, up to discuss some curricular changes, uh, course changes for his building. Mr. Johnson, thank you. Uh, I don't like following Holly, but I'll try. Um, I've been here 20 weeks now, and Zach hasn't ran me out of town yet, but I'm working on it. But uh this is the time of year we bring new courses forward to you folks because we are starting to schedule for next year next week already. So our kids are starting to meet with counselors and starting their scheduling process. We had to make sure you're aware of some curricular
015changes that we have for next year. So um I thought I would come here for a year and watch and learn and wait to adjust. We have some exciting opportunities to make some big changes. So the biggest change you might see um at our high school next year would be the first two lines here. Our freshmen have traditionally been taking a class called seminar in cyber security that was started many many years ago with a grant and it's more of a home room um than it is for a than a curricular challenge for freshmen. And so when we started looking at all of our scores across the board, our social studies and ELA scores are lower ones. And so we had a staffing adjustment occurring in that class that made us decide we had to
016rehire to keep that class going or make a curricular adjustment. if we're going to make a curricular adjustment and remove that class from our graduation requirements and bring our social studies courses down to the freshman level and increase that rigor of writing and reading and social studies at the 9th and 10th grade level. Um so our social studies scores are average um in in comparison to our other ones. And so this was an opportunity for us to readjust curriculum and bring rigor down to a lower level. So more challenging for our freshmen. Um my entire staff's on board. It was the right time to do it with staffing. And so it's something we're really super excited about. So we're going to be bringing US history down to 9th grade and world history down to 10th
017grade. And we're meeting next Friday with the Bwell staff to tightly align that US history course and work with them on uh adding a bunch more rigor and reading and writing into those two courses aligned really tightly. So we're super excited about that. Bobby and I have been talking a lot and we are making that work happen right now and it's going to be a good change for our freshmen and really push some rigor and achievement in that building. Um any questions on that one? >> It's a pretty big change. Is there an opportunity to do cyber elsewhere? >> Yeah, we're looking into that um Mr. Smith. So, we are looking into that in the business department because there are jobs in cyber and so there are some jobs offered at um the ata and
018there's some offered at NMU but our business department is looking at that topic right now. The cyber part of that was a small portion of that class. It was really lowle things. So, the cyber security stuff we'd like to bring to our upper level. Our juniors and seniors have a ton of opening elected areas. So, we're definitely looking into opening up some courses in that area. So, good good question. I knew it would come. >> Yeah, I talked to John Young who was originally um there when the grant started. He said it ended ended four or five years ago, I think, for the cyber course. The other thing we're doing to make sure we're supporting um our kids is we're the fourth one down. We're making some changes to learning center. Our learning center is
019another room that's uh kind of like a home room. Um, a lot of our upper level kids who are taking three or four AP courses go in there and then a lot of kids who have a 504 plan are going in there for support. We want to build a bunch more rigor in there and structure in there to support our kids across curriculum. We're going to be moving a bunch more of our services into that in that area and consolidating services. And that's going to be what we call our MTSS support room at the high school. So, we're making some um cool changes in there. One example is we are piloting six seniors right now that instead of sitting there and if they caught up on their homework, we are sending them to classrooms to
020help a chemistry teacher teach chemistry. So if a kid is an excellent chemistry student, instead of sitting there and playing a video game, if they're all done, that chemistry teacher can request that student to come down to their chemistry classroom and be like an assistant in the classroom. So we're piloting something like that. Our long-term goal is to build a senior year almost exit slip course in where all of our seniors are doing one of several items like dual enrollment um CTE health ox aviation a bunch of different stuff that really push them to the next level and as a senior year elective. So these pilots we're trying this semester are chances for our seniors to try those things and then teach us how to do them better. So some super cool things. I could
021go on and on about these things that we're super excited about, but that's kind of a big change. We're also making some other adjustments. So any great high school to take their We have good scores here. We can show you data where our scores are really good, but they're not great. Getting a school to go from good to great is the hardest thing in the world. So how do you do that? What you do is you open up exciting curriculum to lower level age students and you get more teachers involved in that curriculum. So this year we have a student, Mr. Lancor, teaching what's called preAP world. And so it's using AP curriculum in his world class and letting accelerated students step into accelerated curriculum early. This year he's going to next year he's going
022to change it through regular AP world history. So for the first time ever Marquette Senior High School is going to have a 10th grade AP offering to our senior or to our sophomores who want to accelerate quicker, earn college credit quicker, save money for you on college credit quicker. So our AP world class will be offered to sophomores as an opportunity for them, not a requirement. They can take regular world or AP world. And then when that was occurring, a lot more of my teachers started asking about pre-AP. This doesn't mean we want every kid to go to pre-AP, but AP curriculum offers a lot of resources for my teachers to accelerate your students. So, we're going to be offering pre-AP courses to a lot of our students. And I might have to get my
023lookers out that are on the back side. All right. PreAP Chem, PreAP Geometry and Stats, PreAP Algebra 2, and PreAP T, PreAP English 10. So, four or five more opportunities for our accelerated students to go faster if they choose to. And the good thing is these teachers get excellent training in curriculum and they can use excellent AP resources and they get better prepared for future AP courses. So, these are some really good opportunities for younger students to get involved with good curriculum. The side kicker is my teachers get excited because they have all these new resources and they have these new things that they can do. Wow, you're going to give me an AP course. I've been teaching all English 9 for years. So, they get excited about being more rigorous teachers and getting more
024training. So, it's a trick on the kids, a trick on the teachers. You get the kids involved earlier in good curriculum with good teachers and you trick the teachers into going to work harder and getting tra PD up. So, do you have another question on that? Do do those precourses show up on their transcript as pre Okay, >> they do and they read really well to colleges. >> Okay. >> Yep. So, that's those are these are great questions. They're just evolving with my staff and so my staff is super excited all of a sudden to try to get going at some of these these new kinds of curriculum and resources. So, we're super excited. Other questions on those? All right, I'll kick back the first page. We're adding um something I think is a requirement
025in all grade high school. We're going to add a applicationbased leadership class. So our mostly for seniors, maybe a couple juniors are going to apply to be in a leadership class. This is not just a class where maybe a board member visits and talks about leadership or a superintendent, but they also help us run our culture events. They help us run our homecoming week. They help us run our events throughout the school. Think student council on steroids, but with a lot of leadership curriculum and lessons taught. And so we're going to reward our best kids for seniors by offering them an opportunity to be leaders in our school. connect with the community, bring community members in to talk to them. And so, Mrs. Reicho, the teacher we selected to do that, she's already deeply invested
026in that kinds of stuff for our kids. So, I told Zach, give it a year or two to bubble and you're going to be amazed at what this leadership class is going to do for our district. You're going to they're going to connect other levels. They're going to be visiting lower levels and building a lot of culture events for our school. It's going to be a game changer. Um, might take a little bit, but that's where we're headed. Um, we're going to add a Shakespeare course which is going to be tied with removing poetry. So, my English teachers keep offering a variety of electives and none of them are really hitting the kids. We'll get four kids trying out four kids here, six kids there. So, Shakespeare is our latest attempt to offer some creative
027curriculum at the senior and junior level for these kids. So, that's a change from sh they're going from poetry to Shakespeare. And then we are also adding in some uh senior year math options on page two. Preap chem aviation pre-engineering and AI the AI class which Marica helps us with. And these are math year options where your senior can take these courses that are really career oriented but also get a math credit for those. So these are creative ways to get kids energized into their career early and trying courses out that might be their their career path or college path. We're going to add a social media and marketing. Whether you know this or not, we probably have about 90 Instagram pages among all of our clubs in sports and schools because if any of
028you have had athletes, you know, you get a freshman Instagram and a JV this and a varsity that and a leadership class this. So, this class we're trying to use our kids who know social media 20 times better than this old man. We try to create some aligned things with social media and marketing in our high school. So, this is kind of like cyber but not really. This is going to be a business course. So, these kids are going to be literally reaching out and maybe if I'm a student in there, I'm going to be in charge of the volleyball team and I'll connect with that volleyball coach and I'll do social media for them and we're going to align it better. Maybe have one spot where you can all go and have a selection
029of those different pages rather than searching all around because you're one parent involved in sport. That's a new course coming along and it's in development. Question. No. Oh, thought you had one. I can talk quick and fast. So, um, we will have some changes in grad requirements, real, um, some name changes mostly. You'll see down there below. Mrs. Hopper and I talked about, um, coming with the student handbook later in the year when we put those grad requirements in there. So, that will be listed in there. The main one is some name changes for coursework, but dropping that seminar and cyber class requirement and having another elective offering for um, a grad requirement to all kids. Okay, quick thing go. I can talk all night on this stuff, so don't don't t any questions. >>
030Okay, thank you. >> All right. Well done, Mr. Johnson, in your first year. So, so much for adjusting the seat in the mirrors. Right. >> All right. Well, thank you both uh Mrs. Musco and Mr. Johnson for for that important information. I do not have anything else under the superintendent report. So, I will pass it back over to you, Mrs. Cambincy. >> Um, let's see. Comments from the public. See if we have any. Anyone else want to say anything while you're here? Uh, moving on to new business. Approve the new course operates offerings at Marquette Junior High School. So, entertain a motion to do that. I make a motion that we approve the new course offerings at Mudpatan Senior High School. >> Support motion made by Mrs. Maddox Smith, support by Mr. Smith. Um, any
031comments or questions? >> One one quick question um for the curriculum changes when the courses are getting adjusted for students that are kind of caught up in between that I'm assuming there's a process laid out where >> there is a great question. So the class of like for example 2030 will have a little bit different grad requirement for the 2090. Yeah. Now all that will be all outlined in the in um the student handbook. >> Okay. >> Yep. Exactly. Thank you. Good question. I should have mentioned that. >> Any other questions? All those in favor? >> I. Any opposed? Motion passes. Um moving on to board member comments. Mr. Smith. Um I'm just really glad to see these course changes that you're proposing and um to see that the district is not standing still taking
032into account the staffing changes and also you know scanning the environment to see not only what colleges and universities are after but our CTE folks as well. Um this speaks well for the district and thank you for all your work doing that and I think to Mrs. Must um what you're talking about at the elementary school level is really exciting. For too long, I think our students have thought they come to school, they do their work, and they leave. And what I'm seeing in your presentation is the community that they're building. And that's going to assist them as they get into the upper grade levels where things get harder, relationships get more difficult sometimes. and I think you're giving them the tools that will make them successful. So, thank you for all that work, >>
033Miss Thomas. >> Yeah. Thank you to both of our speakers. Thank you, Mrs. Musco. And thank you, Mr. Johnson. >> This is Mik Smith. Ditto to what these guys said. Um, Mrs. Moscow, I love your um presentation. And I always love all the stuff you guys do out here here. Your community involvement is amazing. And I I hear that throughout our community, I love that you're making our little future leaders. And I mean, it's what the world needs right now is is that humanity and that connection. So, thank you so much for being here and doing that. And I know it's a lot of work. It's like nailing jello- to a tree with the littles. I get it. Um, Mr. Johnson. Oh my gosh, thank you so much. You have just jumped in running and
034I I love seeing these um curriculum updates, you know, um equipping our students um college ready CTE. I just love seeing these changes. So, thank you. >> No additional comments. Thank you for the presentation. Right. >> Um just reiterating that uh the theme I kind of hear from both the younger ages and the high school is the leadership piece that um you know we don't always talk about with kids and that the fact that you're bringing in the community and the engagement and the humanity is one big piece of that. Um and doing things for other people. That's what leadership should be and looks like. And I'm just excited that that's kind of being brought through all ages in our school systems. And that's exciting. It'll be fun to watch that over the next number
035of years. Thank you. >> Thank you. Um, board president comments, just thank you so much for having us here. Thank you, Mr. Johnson, for all your work, too. And moving on to announcements and other new dates. February 11th is spring count day. Uh February 13th is a PD half day for students. Uh February 16th, another board meeting at Superior Hills at 5:30. And I would entertain a motion to adjurnn. >> Make a motion to adjurnn. Support. >> Motion made by Mr. by Mr. Smith. then it's a wrap.