001[Music] finale was a terrible error the careful slips [Music] yesterday for today [Music] [Applause] the team in a line and a B and good evening everyone welcome to the Monday January 28th meeting of the Bloomington school board before we begin I just want to say that there was a closed session scheduled for tonight but we have postponed that until after the next board meeting all members are present please stand and join me for the agenda thank you all favor please signify by saying aye all right thank you it brings us to recognition of students staff and public and this evening I will call a pattern John Weiser who is going to introduce our friend best prep good evening chair Bartolotta superintendent food shock and board members I'm here with Kristin Donnelly career in college development
002coordinator at Kennedy High School and bonny begat Lagasse VP of educational programs at best prep and Anderson also from best prep to honor best prep as a friend of Bloomington Public Schools if you'll give me a minute just to set the stage I think it'll be to give you some good context about how we value why we value this sort of partnership our pathways to career in college is our vision for every student in this district so no matter your background where you came from what your upbringing is we aspire to give every student the opportunity to to leave us with career goals and the college preparation needed to achieve those goals we follow students passions and so you see that in some of our programming programming like a BCC a programming like at our
003da program our dimensions Academy program the Nobel program even at our Elementary's like the Steam focus of poplar bridge and the artful learning focus of Hillcrest Community Schools our job on our side the staff of Bloomington Public Schools is to create these pathways and to know that we are whether we're being successful and how we can continue that success so how are we creating these pathways on the academic side it starts with our pathways to a career in college readiness you all know of Dave high studs work but the listening audience might not so here's a little refresher we have pathways milestone metrics dr. heiss Ted has looked at the successful achievements of our former students at various levels of post-secondary institutions using a measure like the a CT and a CT score and then
004he's mapped back other school data other academic data such as reading and math assessment scores standardized tests and GPAs and grades things like that our career pathways are ever developing so like I said we are getting better and better at following our school our students passions and for our high school students those plans are getting more and more concrete every year the place they track those plans is called the personal personal growth plan the PGP every student sets a goal and the and the PGP app helps students track whether those goals are being successful whether you're on track or whether you're on course with the activities around that success it also alerts students of opportunities like scholarships speakers internships and mentors how do we know we're being successful in all these efforts well we look
005at data data like number of post-secondary number of students going to post-secondary institutions over the last three years we look at data like the number of students getting dual credit at our high schools so this dual credit is the opportunity for a student to get a college credit at the same time they're getting a high school credit and the number of students looking are taking advantage of our flexible learning opportunities such as the bloomington public schools online courses which we launched this year this work is really heavy lifting as you all know and it can't be done without good partners and so who are those partners we know most most well about our post academic partners like Hennepin Technical College in Norman Dale in the University of Minnesota but remember we have a whole wall
006behind us of strategic partners including all these folks and tonight we're here to honor best prep so with that I'll let Kristin tell you a little bit about their work ok thank you you know best prep has been a company that I have been working with alongside with Bonnie and Julie for years by vets I mean it's been a long time and so best prep is Minnesota nonprofits company and they prepare students for working with business career financial literacy skills and they do all this through hands-on experiences and they help students with success for life and so without the help with Beth best prep it would be hard to get all of the connections that we get with our biz businesses that we can connect students with best prep started in 1976 I did a
007little digging to find out a little bit more about the company that some things that I didn't know and they have served more than a million like 1.6 million students and teachers over that time period and they help students in grades 4 through 12 all across Minnesota and so we are just really grateful that best prep has been such a wonderful partner and friend to Bloomington public schools some of the partners are that bait that companies have founded best prep include 3m collab Cargill General Mills so a lot of companies that they are partnered with and that's how we are able to get the connections for our students so some of the programs that best prep has that I personally been involved in one of them includes classroom plus that's a program where I can
008reach out to best presence pacifically is julie horror here and i reached out to her and I say you know I really would like to get a speaker in on financial literacy skills or someone in on this specific career and so Julie does kind of the hard work of reaching out to their partners and they try and find those volunteers to come into our classrooms another program that we're actually working on right now we have a couple of other students that are working with a mentor or a couple added classes that are working with immense errs and there's another class also working with immense errs emailers is a program that's through best prep where students are partnered with a business and so for example one of our businesses is United Health Group and theirs professionals
009from United Health Group and they're connected to each one of them with one of our students so there's a one-on-one mentorship where they email once a week and that's all guided through the teacher and through best prep and so then the kids get to ask questions like what's college like or how did you if you knew something in high school if you knew then what you know now what what would you do differently what's it like balancing work and family and so they are able to ask questions like that and so they get a little bit of connection for after after high school the Minnesota business venture camp is something that specifically for students but that's something that a lot of Kennedy high school students especially our avid students have taken part of where they
010get to have a full week of learning all about the ins and outs of running a business and really a lot about leadership skills and then the last one I want to touch on that's my absolute favorite is a technology integration workshop this is a workshop that's just for teachers and so you get to go for a whole week it's usually at st. Thomas downtown so it's a beautiful setting and you get to learn how to integrate technology into your classroom and so it's it's a highly 30 different breakout sessions you get to choose from and you get to learn all about how what can I do with technology and how can I integrate that into my classroom the highlight of that experience is when you get to go and do a job shadow at
011a company and so last time I went I was able to go to eco lab and I got a whole tour of eco lab I was met with a business professional there and learned all about what it what it's like on the other side of the other side of the world with working and in big companies and so with that we are this year working on spotlight speakers so at Kennedy High School this is kind of a new thing with a career in college development that we are trying to get spotlight speakers to come into our classroom and so with the help of Julie she has been helping get some variety of different speakers to come in where we can market that to our students and kids who think they've completed their PGP activities we're
012able to see which student is interested in different types of fields and then I can reach out to those kids and invite them to come to specific speakers so some of the great speakers that we've received we've had someone from marketing from the Mall of America we had a whole panel and for that accounting Travel and Tourism we've had Human Resources we have the construction trades we had HVAC plumbing and electrical professional we've had the city of Bloomington we had somebody Eric Johnson who is the Bloomington community development director came and then in the future for trimester 3 we'll have a healthcare education Human Services manufacturing production transportation distribution logistics and an IT and so we're just really thankful to both of you and for best prep for helping us with our students and helping
013them achieve a path to success thank you it's truly a pleasure to be here thank you for this recognition and Julie and I on behalf of all of the best prep staff there's 14 minutes of us full-time and 6 of us that work part-time it within best prep and we're just thrilled to be able to receive this recognition and to be here tonight so thank you thank you Kristin thank you John and I know Cheryl's in the audience as well Cheryl Martin so thank you as well for the recognition we really view this as a partnership in our office we talk about Bloomington public schools a lot and we recognize that it takes the teachers that takes the educators takes everybody within the school and within the district to make the partnership work and we're
014extremely grateful for that and we really do talk about Bloomington a lot in in our office because we recognize this is a school series of schools in a district that we want to be engaged with and there's great things going on here and we want to be a part of that and we feel lucky to be a part of that this is one of our strongest and our best partnerships so we're really pleased to be a part of the district and to partner in that way and we do talk about it all the time all of our programs as Kristin mentioned there's that relationship that we have and and the schools are utilizing everything that we have to offer and we're thrilled about that over the past two years I went and did a little
015bit of number tabulating we've had over 2000 student engagements over the past couple of years and that ranks high within our office so we're just so pleased and so thrilled that we can do that having been a past educator myself coming out of the teaching field I recognized all the work that teachers are doing day in and day out in their classrooms and and we love supporting teachers and coming alongside them and providing that enrichment and providing that enhance of it - what classroom teachers are doing and recognize that they're busy so if we can lighten the lift and if we can take some of that load off and be that intermediary from whether that be making those email mentor matches whether that be Julie and her team in making those speaker matches providing those
016professional development opportunities for teachers or whether it be any one of the other numerous things that we're doing a staff room with and best prep that's exactly what we want to be doing and we want to continue to be able to provide those opportunities for your students and for your educators in that way and thrills about the chamber partnership as well and that we can create that spotlight series series relationship that's been just a huge boost as well and so glad that we can continue to work with the chamber in that regard again it's just a pleasure to be here we love being on the wall thank you for putting this on the wall that's that's awesome to see and we took a couple pictures of that so thrilled that we can be one of
017the partners and thank you again for the recognition and continue partnering with bus prep whatever we can do to work closely with you and your schools and your teams and your students and however we can support them we definitely want to do that so thank you again for having us here tonight we appreciate it and let's continue to build on that 2,000 student number engagement thank you thank you I'm sure for you before you leave your presentation was great but now comes the tough part Kristen you've been doing this at Kennedy for how long um this is my 24th year yeah oh the facts teacher before this year I took a potion but I have seen the evolution of all of this stuff and what best prep we've tried to work with the chamber you
018know and different things like that realizing value that companies have for sharing with students you know be at middle school all the way up through high school in their learning and giving them an opportunity to say oh that's what it's like I took my ten-year-old into the pharmacy when I was picking up my pills and all of a sudden me because I know the pharmacist I said hey would it be okay he comes back and watches your work she said that's great you know and I said do you think you want to be a pharmacist any is kind of like you know but at least there's an opportunity and as we explore more and more and work with more and more companies to give the kids the opportunities that they can participate in at least
019on a small scale or blarney internet and read all about their company or something like that so it's been really encouraging and you would say it's multiplied how much since five six years ago I mean we're utilizing so many more things that they have to offer and even you know for example we had the nerdery which is a company here in Bloomington they came and spoke to one of my classes I just wanted to try to get a speaker on i.t or something like that and so then can we go look at the nerdery so they let us come and see what it looked like and it was just an amazing experience and I think that when students get to see companies they get to me me imagine themselves just like going on a college
020tour yeah they can imagine themselves like huh this could be me someday I could work here someday and so for them to see these different companies it gives them a reason why why would I go to first post secondary what are the all these options and so setting experiences in a variety of different areas is really crucial for kids so we can talk about in the classroom but that hands-on pieces really excites force especially at the nerdery where we are allowed to bring your pets I know I mean it's it's a really unique Darth Vader on board rooms and so that's what they're names of their their board rooms are and it's just really a unique work environment so it's neat for kids to see and that's that middle part that we want to be
021Julie and her team are able to provide those tours or be that middle part to make those connections as well and and that's how we want is important to do what I'm able to do with providing experiences for students without best prep so now you may go last week the Minnesota School Board Association leadership conference was held and as part of the conference there's a recognition luncheon which I'm SBA presented its annual awards our own dick Bergstrom received the President's Award for 2018-19 this award recognizes members have completed 300 or more hours of attendance and MSBA sponsored meetings and activities congratulations dick we will have our board representatives our reports and Jackson would like to go first all right um hi I'm Jackson I'm Agathe I'm a senior at Jefferson High School and starting off
022with a parent-teacher conference on Friday from 7:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. Jefferson cheerleaders are traveling to Nationals in Orlando in two weeks also the Jefferson one-act play won first place in the Metro West Conference the Jefferson Theatre Company will present its competitive one-act production Fahrenheit 451 at 7:00 p.m. on February 8th in the Jefferson High School Auditorium Jefferson was on the news twice recently one for the Jaguar proud wall which was a wall that they did over winter break a students would come into the flag hall and there was all graduating classes of the four years that were in right now with every student and right next to the student's picture was a quote from a teacher about their leadership skills or how they're bringing a positive attitude to the classroom so a lot of
023kids were going out of their way to look at the wall find their friends or find themselves and then the other thing that we were on the news for was TJ coffeehouse which is a coffeehouse that is run at least once a month during the mornings where kids can buy doughnuts cookies or Gatorade and then Kelsey Johnson and Samantha let earned high marks in this year's Minnesota scholarship art competition gold ketta entries were on display at the University of Minnesota and the Regis Center on paper and 5th through the 23rd and qualified for the national scholarship art competitions students receiving honorable mentions include Jeffersons Johnson Brian velvety Lucy Bianchi and Elise cook nominations are now being accepted for the 29th annual public schools senior achievement awards which recognizes outstanding Jefferson High School seniors Jefferson also
024had that talent show on the 14th I sadly did not go I only heard fun things about it or kids just reveal their secret talents to school in front of a audience I guess I don't know if I could do that Bloomington high school seniors Samantha Sonnenberg and Ryan Nene are this year's Triple A academics art and athletics Award nominees and then Bloomington students key Leisha mark Ibaka Benjamin Rosella and Ally Starks are the 2019 excell excellence and community education Leadership Award nominees hopefully we're going to finish the rest of the trimester strong with a couple of snow days to allow us to keep up on our homework thank you you can ask a question real quick do you uh mind sharing what floats were next to your picture on the wall but I just
025would mention two if you haven't seen it go over there and spend a half an hour it's one looking at all the different pictures and all the different things and I even found my my grandson's picture after the half hour themselves it's kind of nice because they're not alphabetical according this they're just okay I'd like to begin with congratulating on our rhythm and Golda varsity shell choir for their Grand Champion win in La Crosse Wisconsin which is first place and they also received best vocals best choreography best closer and best female soloist to Sarah Khouri oval chose our Colleen's dance team which is a co-op with Jefferson um got second place in their kick and second place in jazz um access testing begins today which is where our two hundred and sixty English learners that
026Kennedy will take four tests two required by law to assess their English learning and comprehension a quick shout-out to kanesha Bell who is a Kennedy alum who is making her mark on the University of Minnesota basketball court making record oh she's a beast and then like Jackson said the 2019 Minnesota scholastic art competition where we had our best turnout ever where we had on five gold keys out of the 309 to qualify for nationals five silver keys out of 384 in three honorable mentions and coming up.we on February 12th we have our career day for juniors where we get to select different speakers and we rotate throughout the day to different speakers of our choice which is super fun I'm super excited for it and on February 23rd in the week leading up to that
027we have our Sadie's dance which this year is under the stars and it's informal and we have super fun spirit days like hoodie day and twin day you know that's what we get for not having a large voter turnout but it's but um thank you for everyone and their hard work at school and their attendance throughout the cold is there anyone who wishes to address the school board on an item that is not on the agenda this evening seeing no one come forward I will tell you that a requirement of a 12th grade government class is to observe a governmental meeting of some sort things they may attend our city council meetings school board meetings or courtroom procedures the social studies curriculum guide identifies essential standards one of which is to understand the role and
028influence of political processes and organizations by examining the role of interest groups think tanks the media and public opinion on the political process and public policy formation I see there's some students in the audience I'd like to invite them to come forward state your name and who your teacher is and I believe you all do go to Jefferson and at the close of this session or after one hour whatever shorter you can ask for a signature on your agenda over on the side from any of our administrative cabinet members okay um I'm Nate Johnson and my teacher is Daniel starlene okay hi I'm Lucy Bianchi I go to Jefferson and my teacher is also mr. Stirling I'm Colin Anderson I'd also go to Jefferson my teacher is Daniel Daniel store Lane I'm Cosette Burk holt
029Sarkozy I go to Jefferson and my teacher is Daniel Stirling and finally I'm grace I go to Jefferson and my teachers Dan sterling thank you it brings us to the part any of the agenda put someone like you move card a second thank you party is our board business field trips contracts and agreements and finances all in favor of part eight please signify by saying aye hi any opposed brings us to Part B and first off is a resolution stating the revised intention of the school board to assure general obligation bonds 2019 a to finance out facility projects and our executive director finance Reds if kovitch is here to tell us about it but first who would like to review our resolution they resolved the school board of Independent School District 271 state of Minnesota
030as follows the school board hereby finds and declares its necessary and expedient for independent school district 271 the district to issue its fully registered general obligation alternative facility bonds the bonds pursuant to Minnesota statutes section 123 B point 59 subdivision 3 and chapter 475 as amended to fund a portion of the cost of the following projects as included in its ten-year facility plan approved by the school board and the Commissioner of Education and related financing costs miscellaneous deferred maintenance projects at various district facilities as included in the district's approval approved ten-year facility plan the bonds would be issued in the total aggregate principal amount of not to exceed 25 million 300,000 the district will can conform to all aspects of the attached extract of meeting minutes and exhibit page thank you to tacky board members
031this is a very similar resolution that the board approved back in December 10th the only difference is in Section six of the attached and schedule a it details out the process that Ehlers will use to sell the bonds this process is used so that we're not locked into just one day of selling the bonds it gives elders the opportunity to see how the market is and at that point in time selling the bonds at that that point and then will contact the board chair the superintendent and myself to get approval of the sale date on that day and then we'll bring it back to the board on the 28th of February for final final sale also in your packet there is the information about the actual sale itself that we will send out to investors
032thank you any questions hearing none all in favor of this resolution please signify by saying aye any opposed no thank you next we have a resolution establishing 2019 polling places with some light reading the result that the school board of Independent School District 271 approves the attach list of polling places for the November 2019 as provided by the city of Bloomington thank you this resolution is a new process that was put together by the both the county in the city that on an annual basis we need to approve all our polling places for future elections questions we have an idea or if you have top of your head of how much the district has to what our portion is to pay for these these elections I I'm not sure I can I can look into
033that okay thank you madam chair this is interesting to note that most of them are at churches and/or other than most of my red churches rather than at the schools because I think we did passed at least a policy or something on it that that we didn't need to have them come into the schools the safety of the students and now that we have the new safe and secure buildings so that what pretty well as far as having that accomplished there's still 32 pulling places and every once in a while we still hear about how crowded they are and it's hard to believe in her in our city of debt that we get that type of response hearing no one else come forward all in favor of this resolution please signify by saying aye next
034we have some policy review I'll start we revised policy 407 madam chair sure we resolved that School Board of Independent School District 271 approves revised policy 407 environmental health and safety standards thank you this was a policy update that part of it was a annual or our normal revision process but also back three years ago when the legislature changed the long term facility and maintenance program this policy wasn't needed for legislation but the board policy committee felt that this still needed to be in process so we more change it for the process of taking care of what needs to be done handling of chemicals on that on the school property versus a legislative reason for having this policy questions or comments hearing none all in favor of this resolution please signify by saying aye and
035opposed no revised policy 706 donations resolved that the school board of Independent School District 271 approves revised policy 7:06 regarding donations second this is another policy that was just on a plan to be revised or to be reviewed very minor changes on it more just clarity of different items that will come to the board versus ones that won't don't have any questions or comments hearing none all in favor of this revised policy 706 please signify by saying aye any opposed next we have new policy 534 unpaid meal charges resolved the school board of Independent School District 271 approves new policy 534 unpaid meal chargers second thank you this is a new policy that's being required it it outlines how we handle both the payment of lunches and also the payment or handling of if a
036student's account is low how we communicate to parents and families so it says the student will be served a school reimbursable lunch what does that mean reimbursable lunch is going through the normal lunch line it's not all apart okay I'm sure I just like to say thanks to the policy committee for first of all for the work that they do on all the policies I'm not sure if the students in the in the audience understand how the policy committee works there's three of us board members that sit and work these policies over so that when they bring them to us they've already been vetted we have an opportunity to ask questions but that's the reason that all seven of us are asking questions you're speaking on these I would like to say thank you specifically
037for this particular policy it's nice to hear this see this language clarified just wanted to add my two cents worth thank you well I like about this policy is that um what would Ally kind of pointed out that the student will still be served a reimbursable lunch because I think that's important especially with our elementary students that oftentimes when they're they run out of funds in their or their account it's not the students fault and we don't want to be punishing the students by not giving them a lunch so I'm glad that they still get the lunch while we're still trying to recover those funds um just a question because I don't have students in the elementary schools anymore so when it says that we'll have we'll be using or we're using the reminder system
038that means that we have already gotten rid of that old system of the stamp in the hand right the reminder system is all done through either Robo call or a direct call from principals or counselors from the school to the parents right but that older system is not longer in use right for a few no that hasn't we haven't done anything like that for I think it's been five to six years thank you anything else then hearing none oh man I'm sorry I think it's important to have this policy because there actually are those students who do have significant needs and then there's some people who learn the system and take advantage of it and so we needed to have some recourse as well in order to recoup tens of thousands of dollars that are
039lost through people not paying for meals so we want to make sure kids get meals we also want to make sure there's some teeth to be able to realize that they do need to pay hearing none all in favor of this policy please signify by saying aye it brings us to revise policy 457 respectful and professional workplace it's a luncheon be resolved at the school board of Independent School District 271 approves revised policy 457 respectful and professional workplace okay thank you Rick Kaplin our executive director of communications this year Community Relations Perry ma'am chair members of our interpreter fidgets Aki what I bring forward to you is policy 457 this is a revision to a policy that was originally adopted into February of 2017 originally a respectful workplace which was new at that time this
040revision specifically includes language that addresses workplace violence within the policy and the accompanying regulation includes language the regarding threat management and protection protocols thank you a question hearing none all in favor of this policy please signify by saying aye all right next we will have a revised policy for 14 mandated reporting of suspected child neglect or physical or sexual abuse detectors are be resulted School Board of Independent School District 271 approves revised policy for one for mandated reporting of suspected child neglect or physical or sexual abuse second thank you assistant superintendent Eric melodies here to talk about this Jared a lot of Superintendent future talking members of the board purpose of policy 414 is just to ensure that we do the required reporting required by law of suspected child neglect physical or sexual abuse the
041policy has been vetted by the policy committee follows MSBA pretty closely and recommend approval thank you just to comment on this one it's a significant policy to have something like this in writing so that everybody knows and that we know as a district you know that if there are a lot of potential situations and yet there are so many different types and definitions of all of the sort of stuff so we had to clarify and put it into a policy some regulations which identify what really needs to be done and just a good thing that the Minnesota School Boards Association has staff that can check into the laws and various aspects of it and this did take a bit of time to discuss with Eric and his staff in order to find out if anybody
042has fun ten pages of reading through here so it's it's it really references an awful lot but it's just a good policy to have and to know about thank you hearing none all in favor of the revised policy 414 please signify by saying aye all right any poetry revised policy 510 point to school or district sponsored events thank you please you resolve the school board of Independent School District 271 approves revised policy 510 point to school or district sponsored events thank you policy 510 point 2 is in place to ensure that there's no use of alcohol by attendees at school and district sponsored events such as student banquets or celebrations outside of school again the board policy committee has reviewed and vetted this and as has legal counsel and administration recommends approval hearing none all
043in favor of revised policy 510 point to please please please signify by saying aye next we revised policy 6 12.1 development of parent and family engagement policies for title 1 programs maturity resolved that the school board of Independent School District 271 approves revised policy 612 point 1 development development of parent and family engagement policies for title 1 programs policy 612 point one has encouraged is written to encourage and facilitate involvement by parents of students in the district in our title 1 program plan it is a mandatory policy we closely followed Minnesota School Board Association language been vetted by the policy committee and by legal counsel and administration recommends approval thank you any questions or comments hearing none on favor revised policy 612 point 1 please signify by saying aye all right any post okay that
044brings us to the school calendar 20 19 20 who would like to read it I'm sure please be resolved the school board of Independence school independent school to 71 approves the calendar for the 2019 2020 school year thank you madam chair superintendent members of the board the calendar before you proposed calendar was created by the by the district calendar committee for reminder the calendar committee consists of representatives from the bargaining units in the district as well as parent representation administrative representation and representative from the Office of educational equity the calendar for this year you'll see reflects the elementary assessment days that we started this year going forward into next year maybe the biggest change would be to make up for the elementary teacher time missed during workshop week instead of doing for early release days
045like we're doing this year the proposal is to have one day of event service to make up for that day and that would be on Friday November 1st it's this calendar has been shared with cabinet with various administrative and teacher groups in the district for feedback and administration recommends approval thank you any questions or comments about the calendar calendar committee it wasn't me but I just wanted to express my word of thanks to all that were on that committee it's it's there's a lot of work for those that don't know Eric ran over the people that were in there the names but there's a lot of work there's a lot of energy there's a lot of effort that goes into just putting together a calendar you wouldn't think that it would take so much time
046and energy but it does and I really appreciate the hard work that goes into putting this thing together did you yeah and to think to the one of the more difficult ones that we've had over the years is to try and get as many full weeks or at least for school day weeks and not having them chopped up so much as with various holidays and so forth like that the unfortunate part about this is there any students that get to go in there and share what they want to have I guess they don't I guess they don't matter I won't characterize it that way director Sorum and would take what I think is a recommendation under advisement for future calendar planning and the fact that we we do have built in some weather day severe
047weather it is in in the calendar like we're going to be experiencing yeah the calendar meets all the requirements that the Department of Education and the legislature puts forward I know director Korman had an email question today that we're working on some more concrete answers in terms of cushion so we'll get back to you with more information on that and I just wanted to say I don't know who chooses I don't know that if all the bargaining units select their person or mr. Mel B house but or a great group this year and they they worked really hard on on getting that and I'm taking it back to their groups and and getting feedback and bringing it back to the committee so I thought they were a great group of people Thank You director sty
048Goff it's a it's a group effort trying to figure out who's gonna serve on the committee and it is a very good committee I'm sure two things first of all no hard feelings we're all good and the second is this I don't see any what's called early release days for finals is that still going to be happening in - yes for the high schools it will yeah I just wanted to say that since we do have students here and even if we didn't the students opinion does matter yes yeah a couple questions so I was wondering with the early release days getting rid of those and said opting for a full day teacher professional development day how did that become what was that the way we have to do it currently is is like we're
049doing it this year and it's pegged off if I can use that term I guess the high school calendar and the trimesters and the final schedule with the early release to make transportation work and there was a lot of healthy I think and and good discussion about is that having back-to-back early release days the optimal way to do it at this point we'll continue to work on fine-tuning how we could do that differently but we couldn't in our timeframe come up with that answer so the decision was to do a single day instead of the the early release days I do think that we will revisit the early release days for future calendar and and just so everybody knows where we're I'm putting myself on the line here but we are gonna pull the calendar
050committee back together we were supposed to meet this week which we're gonna have to reschedule but to come up with the following year calendar so we can get to calendars done in one in once clear okay well why I ask is because the reason was came to being was last year when that the idea of having the early or the early assessment days was something that we all thought was a great idea two teachers wanted administration one of the school board wanted it but there were several of the school board members that didn't like the idea of limiting to instructional days to have that early release so the compromise plan I'll compliment some times before letter word in this district but the compromise was that the teachers gave up a week during that workshop week
051and we gave up the first day of school and then we made that that time up through them through their early releases so no one that there was problems that school board members weren't okay with the elimination of two instructional days I'm wondering why this is the first time this is coming to the board what was this with them told way back in the process before all these people put all this work into the calendar it's the same amount of the days it's its hit taking one day out of workshop week the teacher shop week to do early assessments and the first day of school for elementary for early assessments so it's the same time time as we had on last year's calendar so the high school students are or secondary is 160 days and
052then them in that Elementary's 167 days that's me the school year and that's everyone less yep so so it's not gonna be 2 less than can I get I don't know the exact I don't have my days right here in front of me but I do know if I'm explaining this right that it's the exact same structure of calendar that the amount of data that you approved last year okay well that's good that's good to know because I was kind of concerned that we were getting rid of another day and that's something that as as you know I'm against the whole idea of getting rid of instructional days I want our kids in school I remembered all those conversations well you're it's less thank you okay so that then I don't need the rest of
053my questions we can move on just some feedback we um oh all the high schoolers love early release days for those finals days I think that it works really well because those two hour periods were really long but it really really seems to be working really well for us thank you for that feedback up it's consistent with other feedback I've gotten so appreciate that just what have we gotten any feedback from anyone else about the release for elementary parents or students or teachers just anecdotal and the feedback has been positive we've we've we've shown that we can we can handle and and execute early release days so that's that's a good thing okay thank you hearing none all in favor of the 2019 2020 school calendar please signify by saying aye any opposed next we
054have our legislative priorities for 2019 yes well ensure we resolved that the school board of Independent School District 271 approves legislative priorities for the 2019 legislative session that support full funding for special education services increase the formula to align with inflation rate reduce the number of assessments and replace high school MCA exams with a nationally recognized college entrance exam ECT increased funding for English Learner programs provide early childhood funding allow local control and renewal of referendum for no new money and increase funding for school-based mental health services thank you thank you I can start and then our other two board members can add any additional information but the legislative committee you know in working together with the administration we finally decided on this platform legislative platform to bring to you for for approval pretty much
055speaks for itself if you took a look at the documents this is the recommendation that we have as priorities for this year for our legislative platform however you need to remember that what we do every year is we bring it to the board for approval but it's subject to any type of changes as needed as we know you know as religious this legislative session takes place you know things happen quickly things change new information we get and so we can always adjust some things and if it is necessary we'll probably bring it back to you for any additions or any other changes anyone else have a comment just quickly I appreciate the work the legislative committee has done as always I'm I'm happy to see that there's an inflationary index asked that's it's it's long
056overdue I I appreciate them and support all of the holiday asks on here so I appreciate them the work that the committee has done yeah these are these ask sir they're pretty you guys probably seen them for the last couple years that someone we've been trying to get for as long as I've been on the board and looks like we might make some headway this year with our current governor he's probably supportive of all these so hopefully we can actually make some traction on this and like dick said the one that I'm would really like to see passes the put in the formula to inflation so that we don't keep falling behind like we've been for the past couple decades I have been following developments within the legislature and have found that they are focusing
057right now on fully funding the special ed services it's moving in a direction that we want it to go I don't know how far it will go but that would help quite a great amount in our general fund preservation and not having to cross subsidize the special education needs with the regular needs so I think some of these priorities are definitely possible this year and I think if we follow what's happening in the news and also area metro area Association of metro school districts provides weekly updates and is showing that some of these have some traction as well so I encourage my board members to keep up-to-date on read it weekly see what's happening and and I plan to go down to the legislature and when it warms up just to take in some of
058the discussion that's going on so appreciate you're reading this and we're trying to work it's better our district and what do we need I just want to ask director Beebe a question to clarify that's okay so when you say that they're working on fully funding special ed but it's the federal government that has not given their 40 percent so are you saying they're looking at also filling in the federal government's gap or they're just looking at the state's portion to actually fund it because there is a big difference so I just want to make sure when you say to be fully funded I'm assuming they're not willing to give all the federal money no they're looking at the state of it and what the state is responsible for okay I think we need to you
059know write our senators when I brought this up at a meeting with our newly elected representative Dean Phillips he was totally unaware that some of these things were actually federal issues and specifically the mental health part that we're looking at for funding for that but but he is unaware of the role of funding for education from the federal government so I think it would do those watching and listening to to write your letters and let them know that our districts need the funding that was promised they promised 40% and they have sent 14% and so we continually fall behind that's one reason why our districts are having financial challenges even if they're well managed and there was a great presentation at the association of Metro school districts on this if someone wants to link I
060be happy to direct them to that they can just email me I just want to say that I hope that people have better luck with their letters to the to the federal government in this funding then I have my had been advocating for it since my son was three years old I came to the conclusion that I would not see it in my lifetime so hopefully there will be some change there yes madam chair another thing to please remember it's that those priorities are very similar to what other school districts have and their legislative platforms as well and same with other organizations like Minnesota School Board Association and Association MSD Association metropolitan school districts so you'll see that many of those are very similar just in different order the other thing is if you have
061I think I saw that today in the news I happen to see something on Facebook today from Minnesota School Board Association is really I believe and we have talked about that during our last meeting we went to approve all the resolutions that the three of us wanted delegate assembly delegate assembly thank you when we went to the delegate assembly and we talked about or Minister School Association talked about taking this the issue with special education funding taking it to the Attorney General I read today that they have finally met with attorney general and hoping you know requesting that he helps with bringing this issue at the at the federal level so maybe there is hope we hope yeah I was just gonna go back to the special ed portion our hope is that our state
062will join the number of other states that are suing the federal government to get those funds so exactly maybe we can get that direction with our Attorney General would uh sue the federal government and get some of those special funds that we've been promised for the last my entire life nothing else that at least um brings attention to it by all the states and shows people the gap and yes and how irresponsible they've been in funding it for the West I don't know it was passed when I was in high school so however long that was middle school may be [Laughter] in favor of our legislative priorities 2019 please signify by saying aye no thank you bring just a board member reports I'll make my quick I know it's cold and getting colder out there
063just a quick quick note to say thank you to I had the opportunity to go to the parent-teacher conferences over at Kennedy and as always that's a that's an it's an interesting day it it's I think it's like 11:00 to 7:00 during the day and I just like to say thank you to all the teachers all the staff for making that happen I know they come early they give up their mealtimes there isn't a clock that says if you're in the middle of a conversation I have to get up and go eat and they'll finish that conversation with the parents grandparent of them and it certainly is worth noting that they do that it's it's probably not the best format for that and then they're open to suggestions but excuse me it's a word of
064thanks needs to go to all the staff who make that happen it was a it's always an interesting day and it's nice to to hear from cheerful staff just a quick reminder to all our drivers especially when it's cold people seem to be in a hurry you don't want to get out of your car when you see that stop arm go out on our buses you should consider the stop arm the same as a red light if you think that you're too far over in six lanes over just just think of it as a red light that's that's a good way to think of it just if you see a red light just stop we don't need to we don't need to have any accidents we don't need to have any any mishaps we don't
065we want to make sure that all of our students all of our staff and parents are safe when those buses are out running and that stop arm goes out and let's just stop take a moment take an extra breath also I'd like to shine a little light little awesome share some kudos to director Corman Nellie was facilitating conversation for our MSBA Allstate conference that was on Wednesday the 16th and know you'll help me if I get this wrong that kind of the conversation that you facilitated was called bridging the classroom in the boardroom is that right that's right that was a Wednesday that preceded the Thursday Friday MSBA Allstate conference so I just want to shine some light in Elly's corner for for facilitating conversation there was some feedback later on Thursday and from what
066I understand it was well attended and and people really liked the message that you shared so thank you for doing that yeah it was in relation to global learning education and how important it is to bring this into our classrooms and to be aware of what it really means you know beyond what it means to be globally competent but putting those thoughts into action and you know what what our commitment is with our students in our society but bringing this in and in putting it into real action you know what are we doing for our communities so that was that was a very fun dream for me to do you have anything else you want to get no reports over there whatever I guess I can go and go if we just do this side
067and wrap around whatever okay so Policy Committee met as we know and we have a new member we have a bet bebe who's replacing dick Bergstrom dick will be miss he was really good at asking questions and keeping on top of things a bet seems to be really good at the attention to detail which is something that is important so and I think we did seven policies and that should put us at our our goal for twenty policies for the year so we have hit that or surpassed that Deb isn't here to give me an official count I'm pretty sure either at 20 or over 20 and we're still gonna be meeting again this year so we'll have even more and then also at the MSP a Leadership Conference I just wanted to talk a
068little about the two breakout sessions that I went to one of them was a LGBTQ 101 which was put on by out front in Minnesota which was a which is really great organization there's a lot of advocacy and education about LGBTQ people within our community and it was the session was pretty much just to give general information and definitions to terms like you know a assume sender or sign gender its assigned sex at birth and gender identity and expression and some terms that a lot of us don't really have common use of and our knowledge of and especially within the school district so it was good for to educate board members and superintendents that's these common terms and trying to give a just little desire for policies to try to make policies more gender neutral
069which using instead of using a he-she pronouns using they pronouns which is something that we've started doing in this district which is a good thing trying to eliminate those a gender specific pronoun so that was a pretty good session I also went to a session that was called school nutrition programs and their value and was put on by the Minnesota school nutrition Association and I know can Hennepin School District and the Lewiston ultra school district and the superintendent of the Lewis in Allston school district he started off by saying that in 2012 his school board came to the MSBA assembly and then where they have all the vendors they had some delicious Street tacos and from some contractor and then so they all came to him saying why aren't we serving this to our students
070we want these delicious treat ACOs I thought it's kind of funny because those same street tacos were there this year and several of his board members have those and asked our so question and so what that conversation start in his district was should we go to contract this food service or should we try to save our our current nutritional program and he was more in favor of keeping the currents nutrition program because he wanted to protect his his employees as employees that work in the the kitchens are typically parents and people that live in the community he didn't want risk outsourcing to a contractor and put in those jobs and in jeopardy so what they end up doing is having a really long in-depth investigation or just looking at their their nutrition program and they
071looked at other school districts to see what they were doing and what I thought was really good as they brought in a consultant to kind of give them some fresh perspective to look at some outside eyes looking at their school district to see what they're doing well and where they can make some improvements and what they found out was it wasn't really just what they're serving but how they were serving it and so they make some changes to their food service lines and did some better marketing and then did some menu updates and their results were that their food service program that was losing money started making money and then much more customer satisfaction and their participation rates went up so I shared all this information with the superintendent and the chair and the vice
072chair because I think that you know it's still one of the biggest complaints I get from from students and parents are our quality of our food and I think that we should and we can do better so I'm hopeful that we can make some changes to our food service and that will conclude my report I said a couple things really short I had a chance to attend the Westwood PTA and you know besides the usual business that the PTA does they also had this activity that I thought was really interesting they broke into groups and they all worked on information that they would like to see included in like a newsletter about the school of the PTA where to put out a newsletter so they worked in groups and then shared that so I don't
073know if they are eventually putting them into a newsletter but anyway that's what they were working on so I'm hoping I'll see a newsletter from that project and then I just wanted to mention that when we were on with the MSBA for people that don't know is Minnesota school board associations Leadership Conference and we have the MSBs divided the state into districts there and we all went to our district meeting and I just wanted to mention that I think Bloomington was the only School District in that room that had all of their board members present and the other schools noted that and said wow Bloomington has everybody here so and I think somebody mentioned that we also had everybody there last year so I just wanted to say thank you to my colleagues for being
074there and understanding that professional development and always continuing learning is a great thing for school board also so thank you proud of you guys one more thing so after we have approved the legislative priorities for this year the plan was to bring it to to share with Bloomington advocacy council tomorrow but I'm guessing that's not canceled so we will be doing this in the following days just we'll just share it with a group so that we can take some feedback from the group as well in case there's anything that we need to add later on or change also I think you have received the date for the forum with the legislators that was scheduled for January I mean February 19 I believe yes yes February 19 we will have the opportunity to have all legislators
075here with us again this year one more remark about MSP conference so another session they have that I didn't go to but I've gone to before was student school board representatives and and know how it works in district and they have actual students on school boards I kind of share their experiences and it's kind of where the next of this all started I went to that and we need to do that here and so maybe next year you'll still be here maybe we can actually present and you can share your experience this could be a fun idea excuse Dave from school Oh No or at least an hour [Laughter] anyone else I was able to go to both days of the MSP egg hunt convention and I found the the keynote speaker David horse augur
076had some really good points he was talking about the trust issue and how it affects the different boards and how they function how it works within your school of building trust one of the things I took back out of that was he talked about being grateful creating a climate of being thankful and grateful for the people around you and what they do because successful companies which is who we often speaks to found that they were successful when people felt appreciated and needed and acknowledged and so I just want to say shout out to everyone here in this room and then all of those that come day by day faithfully to every school building every school facility and hope they're working and do it heartily and serve our kids in our community and so I just
077say thank you my heart because I know it's hard work and you chose to serve in this way so thanks amen anyone else to this different time thank you parents and guardians of Corinth grade students are invited to attend an open house at the middle school your child will be tending next year each of middle schools will have an information informational Open House on Monday February 4th beginning at 6:30 p.m. your student is welcome to join you we look forward to you and your child joining us on February 4th second topic is at today our district and the Bloomington Career College Academy hosted the Bloomington noonday Rotary Club for a luncheon Cheryl Martin did an excellent job as a keynote speaker for the event she spoke about our district vision pathways to career in college
078and how our district is bringing that vision to life for each of our students she did an excellent job that concludes my report thank you thank you is there anything else to come before the board this evening they're anonymous meetings adjourned [Music] [Applause] [Music] you [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you