001(gavel thumping) - [Attendee] Got it. - [Scott] I now call this meeting of the School Board of Independent School District 624 to order. Will the clerk please call the roll? - [Kathleen] Ellison? - [Jessica] Here. - [Kathleen] Skaar? - [Daniel] Here. - [Kathleen] Arcand? - [Scott] Here. - [Kathleen] Beloyed? - [Deborah] Here. - [Kathleen] Daniels here. - All right. First discussion item, B1, fall activities. Dr. Gillespie. - [Dr. Gillespie] Chair Arcand, members of the board, I'd like to introduce Brian Peloquin, our high school activities director who's gonna present an update on our fall activities and athletics. Go, Brian. Welcome. - Thank you. I'm sorry, I'm making sure that my screens are lining up. I got a hot tip from Marissa before we started. (attendee laughing) Chair Arcand, members of the board, thank you for allowing
002me to come and speak briefly to you this evening about some of the great things that we've got going on in the activities and athletics office at the high school this fall. Very excited for the things that we have been accomplishing so far this year and the things that are yet to come here in the winter and into the spring. As you may or may not know, we are looking for a strong student experience and we take a great pride outta my office in making sure that our students are connecting to the school outside of the school day. And the theme from our high school for the first 60 days as it was last year is, do I belong here? And this holds very true for the things that we do out of our office
003with regards to what the students are doing to connect to the building besides just being in a classroom during the day. And so going on the pillars of relationships, ownerness, awareness, and respect, those are the things that we are looking at as well when we are creating programs and leading our program, is how can we continue to get more and more kids to feel connected to the building and feel like they belong at the high school. So how does that work? I think our biggest task is making a big school feel small. We've heard about that over the years as we've been creating and designing, Russ Reetz and the assistant principals do a lot about that with the school and we can do a lot about that within the activities and athletics office as well.
004A couple of bullet points of things that we have done this fall and we'll continue to do is every year our freshmen start on the first day without the rest of the school there to get a feel for what high school is like. This year, for the first time, we held an Activities Fair for those ninth graders down in our field house. And the last stop that they had on their school day was an ability to go around and get a feel for all of the things that we have to offer out of our office that they can connect to outside the school day. We followed that up in October, understanding that A, not everybody was there that first day, and also the ninth graders might be drinking from a fire hose on the first
005day of high school. So we follow up with the second activities fair. Both events were extremely well attended. Lots of good questions. The advisors, the coaches, the student leaders themselves that were present in those groups as well as the kids that were attending, expressed an excitement for the information that was provided and an understanding of everything that we have to offer outside the school day. We have plans each year. In the spring, our eighth graders from both middle schools attend our school as kind of an introductory and they go from station to station. And in working with Russ Reetz, we are ensuring that in the spring this year and moving forward, taking another step is doing something very similar from an activities fair standpoint. We've talked about them as a station. I've always had a
006station with our eighth graders where I could get in front of our eighth graders, but we're actually gonna take it one step further and get our students, our advisors, in front of those kids as well. We have a school-wide goal of 85% of our student body being able to identify a sport, an activity, a club that they are interested in, something that they can do to connect outside of the school day. And I'm very pleased to say that as of this fall, we already had 1100 of our students that were registered and involved in one of those things. So we are off to an exciting start that is a high number for us. And so it's very exciting to have those numbers already in our fall. Homecoming is obviously very much a highlight of our
007fall. Our goal, especially the last few years, is to make homecoming be a White Bear Lake Schools and community thing and not a high school thing. And so we've definitely added on things. We've included our elementaries and our middle schools in the activities that are going on starting that Sunday night before where we had our Bounce House and our Carnival, saw a couple of you there, which is very exciting. We attempted with community ed to have a Bear Bike Ride, and unfortunately just didn't have the capacity and the enrollment to participate in that. We had great events. All of our sports teams that fall participated that week at home. So it worked out really well for us to have all of our teams participating at home. Had a fantastic Pepfest. If you've never come to
008the high school for a Pepfest, I invite you to do so. It's a pretty powerful event for our kids. We continued with the parade tradition through downtown White Bear Lake, had the varsity football game that night, and then we hosted our first dance, homecoming dance in our union, which was absolutely beautiful and well attended. We sold over 1400 tickets to that event. So almost half of our school was there and attended, which is a high number for us in my nine years here, which is absolutely incredible. I'd like to highlight our fall athletics. In volleyball, we had 52 participants this year, which is on queue. Every year I've been here, we have had to unfortunately reduce our numbers because we have so many kids trying out, which is an outstanding thing. Our varsity team had
009a 17 and 12 record, which is back-to-back seasons over 500. We ended up losing, you'll see a theme here in the fall. We ended up losing to the Section Champs, Roseville. And two big highlights for us from our team individually, Kailey Gieske, a senior, had her 2000th dig. She has been starting on our varsity team since she was an eighth grader, so she will be a big loss this year. And then our coach, Mackenzie Leverty, was the section coach of the year for volleyball. In Girls Soccer, we had 60 participants. We had another outstanding season, made it to the Section Championship where we lost to eventual state champion, Stillwater, two to one. I will say that although we lost in the game, it was the closest game they had all the way through playoffs and
010into the championship. But we have a young team and we have a lot to look forward to next year. In Boys Soccer, we had record numbers in boys soccer over, we ended up at just under a hundred boys tryout for the team. We had 75 participants. The big event for the year for them was a large Mental Health Awareness event that actually garnered attention both in the newscast and in working in partnership with the local businesses who came out to assist us, which was an outstanding event. We have our Adapted Soccer Team, had 17 participants there, which was a large number for that team and outstanding. And a few weeks ago, we hosted the State Adapted Soccer Tournament, which is always a fun event to go to. Unfortunately, we did not represent ourselves in the
011tournament, but it was always fun and able to have them help us out in that tournament. Girls Swim and Dive, we had 31 student athletes participating. We had one state bound athlete, Charlotte McIntyre, qualified for state. It was our first state entrant in Girls Swim and Dive in several years. And again, we had another Coach of the Year in Tia Quirk, who works in our district office, so that's very exciting, was the section 4AA Coach of the Year. Girls Tennis, another huge, you're gonna continue to hear huge participations, is a theme which is outstanding. We had great success in our section tournament where our fourth place, our singles, number one singles who is a freshman is that pictured here, the daughter of Sean Gretzmacher, who is an art teacher in the building, placed fourth as
012a freshman, which was pretty outstanding in our top doubles pairs, ended up playing each other for third and fourth place. So lots of individual success in girls tennis. Boys Cross Country, we had 36 participants, we had one state qualifier. Max Popp finished 27th out of 160, was right there in the top 10, and unfortunately in the last a hundred meters, just pushed too hard and ended up losing it unfortunately. I do want to publicly congratulate and share our head coach, Dan Kovacic, after many years as our head coach did retire at the end of the season, looking forward to spending more time with his own kids as they get into the high school and are participating in sports. So, big kudos to him. He's dedicated a lot of time, energy, to our boys cross country
013team for many years. Our girls cross country team had 40 participants and the entire team qualified as you see in the picture for the state meet and finished 12 outta 18 teams in the state meet. So very successful year for our girls cross country team. Our football team had 175 participants, down a few from last year, but still high among the east metro schools. The big event obviously was our homecoming football game where we had over 4,200 people in attendance was the most attended football game we've hosted here in my time, which is outstanding. Danceline, we currently have 45 participants. Again, we had 54 tryout, we had to reduce our numbers. And same in cheer, and our cheer team again for many years in a row, won the Great Lakes Regional Tournament and qualified for
014nationals. So they will be heading down there in the fall. That's the last of my fall athletics. I guess the thing that I wanna highlight overall at the end of it is, and actually, Chair Arcand and I were talking about this on his way in here tonight, we are seeing all over the metro a decrease in participation in our high school sports across the board, across gender, across sports, across regions in the metro. And we have continued to stay strong. And I think that says a lot about our community, about our coaches, about our programs that in a time when many other schools are losing participation rates, ours are either maintaining or growing. And I think that says a lot about the programs and the kids in the community that we have. And I think
015it's important for us to recognize that. Ticketing Passes and Media, if you look at our local passes, I would say probably one of our biggest achievements in trying to connect our kids to school is we had 2,230 students download our passes and attend at least one sporting event this fall in a school of 2,600 kids when we're trying to get 85% of our kids to be actively engaged in our school, to have that many students already have their sports pass. And if you don't recall, again, one thing I wanna be thankful for is a few years ago in an attempt to break down barriers and to get more students involved in coming to attend and support our students, collectively, we decided with your support as well to offer free admission to all of our high
016school students, to all of our home events. And we are seeing a roaring success with that. Numbers are up everywhere and the data is right there with the number of students who have taken advantage of that, so thank you. We also have sold 80, not sold, but we've also had 80 senior citizen passes that have come up. We've sold 300 adult passes. And we are running through Hudl streams where we've streamed 56 games and have over 5,000 views. And then lastly, from a broadcasting standpoint, we have partnered with Ricci Media Group to do live streaming and production and play-by-play for many of our events. And then our local TV station wants to give them a shoutout. They have broadcasted 17 events, and show those both in a live stream and to the local cable in
017our community. Social media has become a huge thing. We have an Instagram account where we have lots of followers and are growing continuously in trying to promote our activities and our programs and our kids. And I will tell you, it's kind of exploded this fall. One of the strongest characteristics of our assistant ed, Taylor, who unfortunately couldn't be here, is she has a strong passion for graphic design and for technology and social media. And so she has taken that over. And some of the numbers on the right are impressive numbers. Our Instagram accounts, our posts have had 1.3 million views. If you can see on the left side of that, we actually have what's called a professional dashboard, because we're getting so many views, we're considered a professional dashboard in social media, which is quite
018impressive. We've gained over 500 or 400 followers in the last few months. And so we are definitely trending in the right direction. We are proud of the fact that we've highlighted all of our teams and music programs in the fall, including cheer and danceline, and we will continue to do so here in the winter and in the spring. So promoting our kids, getting our programs out there, getting our successes out there, it's the way of the future, and we are definitely leading it. Fine arts, would like to end with some fine arts slides. You look at our music, we have several participants in our music and this will be available, so there's a video to talk about the concert series in our three parts of that make up, our fine arts, our band, our orchestra,
019and our choir. For those of you that maybe attended the fall musical, which again was a roaring success as always, if you look at the numbers there, 38 casts, 37 in the pit orchestra, 40 crew, and 50 plus parent volunteers. It's a huge undertaking. It just wrapped up. They're actually striking right now and taking down all the sets and getting ready for our winter one act. But we've got a lot going on in our fine arts world as well. And so just to give you a cue in on what's upcoming in our fine arts world, obviously the fall musical just ended, and in the future, we definitely have concerts coming up in December for all three of our music selections, our orchestra concert, our choir concert. We are hosting subsections for our one act play,
020which made it to state last year and we fully expect that to happen again this year. And then we've got the SEC Music Festival, which I will be inviting you all to as a fantastic showing both the honor concert and when we perform the following day. That is it. Sorry, it was a lot in a quick nutshell, but we've got very exciting things going, and it's exciting to be a part of this community and a part of all of the activities that we've got going on. So I will open it up for any questions you might have about White Bear Lake activities. - I just have one quick question. One of the things we don't see here, and we give a lot of numbers, we realize that these are student athletes and they work so
021hard. So anytime, we usually have a lot of all conference or all section even state academic awards. - [Brian] Yep. - I think it's important that we continue to show that, 'cause you just, they put so much time in, that it's unbelievable, if you've ever coached, you find out how high their GPA is. You don't think about that, but they're all, most of them are top scholars. - Yeah, we didn't put in this presentation because it happened after we needed it, but we had five students sign their letters of intent a week or two ago to go onto the D1 or D2 NCAA level, and their average GPA as, and I said it in the presentation was 3.85, like just crazy, the academics of our kids. So I appreciate that 100%. We'll make sure to
022highlight that in the future. Other questions? - [Jessica] Just a comment. - [Scott] Yes. - Just a comment that my son has run under Coach K for the last couple of years and I just wanted to echo your thanks for 23 years, I think he's been coaching White Bear, and it's pretty impressive. And my daughter swam under Tia as well. And so just those two experiences alone and then seeing all the other, you know, athletics and activities, it really is a welcoming place for kids. My daughter had never swam competitively before, and she just got to jump right in. That pun was not intended, but that worked. - [Brian] Well said, though. - Thank you. So, just a huge thank you. It takes up so much time for these folks to coach our kids. So
023thank you, Brian and everybody who was part of your team. - [Brian] Thank you. - [Scott] Mr. Skaar. - I was gonna, thanks, Brian. - [Brian] Yep. - I was gonna ask a question about, off the top of your head, do you know the correlation between kids that are in activities and academic success, is a strong correlation? - Very strong. Very strong both nationally and locally. - [Daniel] Is that anecdotal or is there like some, you have some- - [Brian] I do not have data off the top of my head, but there has been significant research around- - Okay, thank you. - [Brian] Yep. - Is 85% participation, is that good? And how did you get that number and what is our participation? - We send out a survey every year to our students. Russ
024Reetz sent it out last year, and one of the questions it speaks specifically to, is there something you are involved in outside of school? And so we base it off of the results of that survey. And so our goal is 85% of our student body to be involved in something. - Do you know what it is off the, do you know what our percentage is? - Last year, I believe we didn't quite get to 85. Help me with that. - [Dr. Gillespie] I would have to get you the exact result, but I believe it was either upper sixties or low seventies. 85 is, well, between 80 and 85 is our stretch goal that we do for ourself at first. And then once we reach that goal, we'll look at the next 15%. But we could
025get it for you for sure. - So rather than do a survey, can't you just take a nose count of the people that are, the students that are in activities? - It is a couple of things. It is hard to track individual students one-off, because we've got so many kids that are involved in multiple things that they get counted repeatedly. And also we don't necessarily, we don't do registration or keep track of those kids that are involved in our student-based interest clubs that aren't necessarily registering for a sport or an activity because they aren't involved in that. But they have something that they're passionate about that they're getting involved in outside of school. And so for those things, we don't currently have a registration for that, because there isn't a fee or anything to be
026a part of those. And so those numbers would be harder to gather. - I see. So the other one is, do these activities help our enrollment retention, is there any kind of, is there any evidence on that, that these activities, there's strong correlation between being included in activities and they stay in the high school, they don't go someplace else? - I can't speak to overall enrollment. I know that once our kids get here, they stay here that are involved in our activities. Absolutely. - So that would be a question. What's our retention rate when students are in ninth grade, what's our retention rate that we carry 'em through to senior and graduate? Do we know that? - [Attendee] Yeah, I don't know that number off hand. Yeah, it wouldn't be terribly hard to figure out,
027but- - I think that would be an important number to know to see, you know, is it 90%? Is it 70%? If it's not, you know, if it's not 90% or above, why is that? You know what I mean? To try and figure that out. Anyways, thank you. - No problem. - Again, I can't speak to the overall enrollment, but I do know that once you start high school, regardless of where you do from an athletic standpoint, that if you transfer to a different high school for any reason, you have to fill out a transfer portal, there's a transfer portal and we absolutely have more coming in than going out without question. So I know from an activity standpoint, once we get them here, they stay here. So, thank you. - [Scott] I was gonna
028say that their daily attendance helps, because they have to come if they wanna practice. - There's an accountability for attendance and academics. So from kind of to speak back to your being successful academically, students that participate in our activities are held to a required standard in order to remain academically eligible. So for that alone, they absolutely are, same with attendance, you can't be missing from school and participate in activities, so. - [Attendee] All right. Thank you. - Yep. - [Scott] Ms. Daniels. - Yeah, thanks a lot. This was a great report. - Thank you. - I just was gonna comment on the senior pass. I mean there's 80 this year, you said. - [Brian] Yeah. - So you're not counting all the people like me that have held one for five years. - [Brian] No,
029because they're good forever. - That our cabin. - [Brian] Yeah, 80 new ones this year. - There's thousands I'm sure out there that are floating around. - [Brian] Absolutely. Thank you for clarifying that. - Yes. No, I mean it's so great to have it because, you know, you can just go in. It's so much fun. So anyway- - [Brian] Another great opportunity. - Yeah. Not- - New. New ones this year since the start of the fall, Kathleen. Thank you. (laughs) Yeah. - [Kathleen] I've been old and been around for long. (Brian laughs) - Yep. Anything? - Well, you know, thank you very much for coming. I know that you're wrapping up the fall and revving up this winter and you've got a lot of things going, so I appreciate all that. Have a good winter
030season. - [Brian] Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you all. - [Kathleen] Good job. Thank you. - Okay, we're gonna go to B2, North Star Elementary Update. Welcome. - [Dr. Gillespie] Chair Arcand, members of the board, I'd like to introduce Dan Schmidt, principal of North Star Elementary, who will provide us an update on North Star. Hi, Dan. - Thank you. I appreciate this opportunity. Board Chair Arcand, school board member, even Superintendent Kazmierczak, and cabinet members, thank you for this chance to share a little bit about North Star. I'm the principal at North Star, Dan Schmidt. I've been fortunate enough to be there since the opening of the school four years ago. We're just gonna cover four different areas today, and that would be the overview of North Star, just what the culture and climate is at
031our school, the instructional framework as it's come together, and then some goals that you've been hearing from other schools also. What's nice about North Star is that we are truly a neighborhood school. I remember the design of the school and how it's just plopped right in a farm field and that we have a neighborhood with walkers and bikers that come to the school, separate area for parent drop off, and another separate area for buses. It's worked out just great. As I said, we're in our fourth year. As a school, we have just under 500 kids, 26% of the kids are students of color and we have 24% of students that have an IEP. And we have several different support services program that I'm very proud of at our school. We have a Tier Two Program.
032We have One Setting Three ASD Program and DCD program. And we have Two Setting 3+ plus ASD/DCD programs. Now the three plus is unique because what we're striving for is we're trying to hold onto those kids to stay in their neighborhood school for as long as possible. And I am so proud of all these different levels of support that we provide in addition to other roles that these kids feel like they're part of our community. And our whole staff really embraces any child that comes through the door. It's pretty exciting. The other part that's been exciting is that we've had an increase in students that receive multilingual services. So now we're up to 11% at our school. So it's definitely a school that we can celebrate in so many different ways and are excited about
033our potential for the future. So one of the things with the design of the school, if you recall, is that we want it to be a really highly collaborative environment. That's the way it's designed with the different studios. We have six different studios and each studio has five theme-based classrooms. They're all cookie cutter. We got three breakout rooms, and then we also have a flex space in the middle, mud room, the bathrooms, and so forth. And what's nice is one of the three different breakout spaces has been dedicated for a sensory room and we'll get to that a little bit later, but what I'm really proud of is that the teachers when they go into this space, they knew that they wouldn't be camping out into one classroom, that they have their own work environment
034in a separate room right in that studio, and they have a chance to informally collaborate spontaneously throughout the day as well as on our formal discussion. So that's pretty exciting to see. The other thing I'm really impressed with is that our specialists that we have there, they're very willing to try to figure out their specialty area and how to adapt that to the kids that receive support services and our higher program needs. So for example, instead of kids just getting adaptive phy ed, we have music specialists and art specialists that make sure that they find time within their schedule to help those students in the program to really experience music and also art in a one-on-one fashion. And so I'm very proud of that for the way that works. Also, the other support service staff,
035they go around the building on carts, and so they bring their instruction into the studio, they find a breakout space, they get set up within 60 seconds, and then they can either pull out kids and support them right there in that studio or they can go and they can push in the model and they can work with the kids right in their classroom setting, which is kind of cool. And then also the multiage concept has always been really fun to embrace. Now we made the wise decision not to do multiage in kindergarten. And so some schools probably are successful with that, but it's like herding cats. They all come on in and they have their own studio, and then fifth grade, because that's a special grade, they go on to middle school. We felt that
036that was also a unique opportunity for them to have their own studio. But grades one and two are multiaged together, and three and four are multiaged together. And what's really cool about that is the kid will come into that first grade studio, they get assigned that home-based teacher, they get to learn about that teacher and how much they care about them. They also get to learn about the team of teachers in that studio and they're there for two years. And so they really feel like it's kind of a home concept away from home. It's their educational home. And that's one of the themes that the school's designed behind. And then we have all the extras that a lot of other schools offer, excuse me, that are real exciting for the kids just to expand their
037opportunities there. So the area of our culture and climate is really focused on conscious discipline, our STAR commitments, the curriculum that we have in place. And like I mentioned before, the sensory spaces. Now in conscious discipline, I'm very lucky to have staff members there at North Star that have been well versed in conscious discipline and they've done professional development. One is Amy (indistinct) and the other is Trevor Putnam. And they really align the philosophy of conscious discipline in the four different areas of feeling safe, valued, connected, and engaged. And then also to really help us as adults understand the power we have when we interact with kids that may be starting to get dysregulated and the words we say have a tremendous impact on whether that agitates them more or can it help it deescalate
038them. And it's been exciting to see how the staff embraces that knowledge and tries to recondition our own brains on what we have done maybe as parents or have instinctively done and how we have to shy away from that and try a different and new approach. So it's been exciting to be a part of that. And also to help the students be a little bit more assertive, not in a disrespectful way, but to advocate for themselves because that's all about what they need to do as they further their selves through the educational field and then beyond school. And then we also embrace that brain smart start, which is just a way to warm up the brain so you don't just get right into a certain agenda item, you kind of warm it up, have some
039fun with it, just kind of calm yourself down a little bit, and then the brain relaxes a little bit more and then you can move forward with the academics. Now being a STAR means that you're being safe, truthful, assertive, and responsible. It's really a nice focal point that the leadership team embraced at the first year that we opened up, and we kind of celebrate that throughout the school. You'll see stars here in different ways that we kind of promote those four different attributes of being a North Star. Now in the curriculum piece and the sensory spaces piece, this was really a work in progress. We really embraced the district's curriculum of Second Step. To be honest, our first couple of years, we were teaching that Second Step curriculum, but it wasn't really cohesive and super
040tight. And so part of the goal setting process was for us to really tighten that up quite a bit. And we're really proud of where we're at now with that Second Step curriculum as a tier one intervention. And then we also are trying to teach kids how to regulate themselves in different ways. And so one of the ways to do that, is through the zones regulation is just recognizing where their emotion is at certain point, and for them to advocate for themselves and say, I'm in the red right now. Oh, and now I'm starting to feel like I'm in the green. And so it's another way for kids to communicate, which is with more with the primary colors in that. And then the sensory space for all students is embedded in each studio, excuse me,
041each studio. And as they go through the sensory space, it's a way for them to go through four different stations, and we'll talk about that here in a moment. So there's four different areas of that sensory space. There is this movement areas to kind of get their wiggles out, and then they start calming themselves and then they start stretching and then they're breathing exercises in different ways. They have timers that they set and they flip over, and they try not to be in there for more than 10 minutes. And what's nice is because you can see into these spaces so well, teachers don't have to leave their instructional area, they can just look off in a distance in the studio and they can see if the child is still engaged in those stations. And then
042once they're done, the kids will go right back into the learning environment again, and it tends to work out pretty well, and there's no judgment with the kids being in the sensory space. And we have staff that train them at the start of the year, and then after that, they just use it at will, which is really kind of a nice thing to have. So within our instructional framework really focused on the social, emotional, and academic needs, we really strive for the inquiry based learning, just try to get the kids to think beyond just the obvious. And then what we really promote is just being a risk taker. And they see it within myself as a principal, they see it within my staff, within their teachers, and how we take risks and we learn from
043those risks. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn't. And then we want to promote that with kids, 'cause as you know, kids go in there and they just wanna be perfect, sometimes they just are so, they put so much pressure on themselves, and we wanna make sure that we utilize the right words so that we celebrate the effort that they put in, what did they learn from that, and then how would they move forward. And it's really tough for some kids 'cause of how much they want to just do things just a certain particular way. If you look at the two different pictures here, I wanna make sure that I share this. The top picture is a professional development session with the staff and we are so excited because we are partnering with North Homes,
044which is a therapeutic agency outside of our school district. But they have a staff member now that is housed in our school. And we haven't had that before. We would have different therapists come in. And having that individual in place, and then partnering that with conscious discipline, they were able to do a wonderful PD session for us to kick off the year. And then that's one of the studio collaborative workspaces that the teachers have and they use, and that just is more of a formal dialogue regarding data and where they're at in their progress monitoring, but also that their desks are all around that center island there. So you can see it's more of an intimate setting in that way. We're focusing on the data piece. The picture in this slide really indicates the comprehensive
045dialogue that's in place when we have our touch points twice a year in which we focus on literacy and math and then also SEL. This one happens to be on literacy, and it involves not only the studio teachers, but it also involves the different interventionists. It also involves a school psychologist, a social worker across CAT, some special ed roles that are in place, and then our instructional coaches leading the discussion. And we kind of have to do it in a pretty fast paced manner. And so they're very organized at the very beginning. And then they look at the individual students. So what's cut off on this picture is that there's a big whiteboard on the side and there's post-it notes with all the individual kids' name and they talk about where they get their tier
046two and where they get their tier three support from in that particular subject area. So this is kind of an example of where the data and the progress kind of brings us. If you look at the slide that's of the individual student, this is a student that was not a part of the White Bear system, came from a completely different educational environment. And what the goal was with the nonsense word piece is that we were hoping that by the end of the year that they get to 28 for that grade level, excuse me, that grade level. They came into this school year just above five. And then they're starting to dip through that. And as we started to put the interventions in place, the tier two and tier three interventions is what this student started
047with. You can see that it was starting to work and it was starting to click within that student. And now at the last one, it's already met the benchmark, but we know that it can dip again, because you can watch how those dot points there, they can jump up and down. So, you know, children are unique, they're an individual, and you just never know what they come to school with every day. And then that slide off on the other side is about our first cohort group that was at North Star in grades three all the way through grade five, which was real exciting to see in reading. So you can see that they were at a percentage level in grade three at 38% meeting standards. And then each year through our different intervention processes, we
048had improvement and they were at 70%. And so each group, each cohort group that comes through has a different starting point, and we just try different ways to try to meet their needs also from a social and emotional piece, 'cause their head has to be in the game obviously when they come into school and work at it. So that's kind of exciting to see that with our first cohort group. And then here's just some individual goals that we have coming up, which just tells us that so far we're online, on track, it doesn't mean that it's gonna hold steady like that, but we're hoping that would be the case. With our kindergarten first graders in literacy, our goal is 70% at the mid-year point, while they're already at 67% low risk. So that's a good
049sign. But we also know that there's a lot of rigor that happens in the middle of the school year and those expectations get even higher. And so we're gonna watch that carefully and see if we can hit that 80% mark, which is the end of the year goal. And then in the next one, it's the second grade through fifth grade, you can see we're also close to that 70% mark already for the mid-year point, we still have work to do, because we gotta hit 80% towards the end of the year, but we'll continue to watch it and put all these facets together and hopefully it'll all come out together just wonderfully at the very end. We're also looking at math. One of the areas of math, which is super interesting to me is that the
050district is doing a wonderful job of piloting two different curricular areas, the i-Ready and the Envision. Right now, we're in the i-Ready pilot stage. I am so fortunate that at my building, we could have had a pilot in every single home-based classroom at my school. They all wanted to try what these two different pilots, but we had to kind of downsize it to 10 classroom teachers, one intervention teacher, one cross categorical special ed teacher. And what they really are working on is just making sure that the kids are feeling healthy discourse when they are trying to learn the math curriculum itself. And so they try to figure out like, they don't just learn one method and how to get from A to B in solving that problem. There might be a couple of different methods
051and they're gonna struggle as they try to figure that out, and work within the peers. And then you see that the teachers just do an amazing job facilitating. And we had i-Ready representatives that came to North Star as well as some other buildings. And when they came in and saw the lessons in action, they came back and just were so complimentary of what the teachers have done in following the curriculum as intended, but also the discussion and the type of questioning that was being asked of the kid. So that was pretty exciting. As we're getting towards the last couple of sides, the student experience school is really important to us. 80% of the kids we want in grades three, four, and five, to really feel like they're valued, safe, connected, and engaged. Now you might
052think, well, that's kind of low, don't we want a hundred percent? Well, one of the things that we're focusing on is a very particular question within a survey that we're providing. And that is, have you ever felt left out or excluded by your classmates? Have you ever felt left out or excluded by your classmates? And we feel that with that type of question, if that's ever happened to a kid, they probably would say yes to that. And if we can hit that 80% mark, because as they age into third, fourth, and fifth grade, they understand the social dynamics so much more than in kindergarten through second grade. And because of that, we want them to really feel that value that they have as they're moving forward into that later elementary, and then eventually going into
053middle school. So we're excited about that student goal. Now there's two little short stories here. The gaga ball pit in the background there, there's a group of kids the last spring, they were coming back from a walking field trip to the local park down there by city hall. And they unfortunately saw a turtle trying to cross 61 that didn't quite make it. And the teachers handled it unbelievably well. So the next day, I'm out there at recess, and one of the kids come up to me and says, Mr. Schmidt, can we have a memorial for a turtle? And I said, okay, let me hear more about that, 'cause you just never know where they're coming from. And they showed me what they had done and I said, sure, let's go for it. So it was
054really cool. They were in front of the gaga ball pit. All the kids had taken time on their own to write a little memorial for the turtle. They called it Terry, the Turtle. And they said wonderful things about the turtle. And then at the very end after all of that acknowledgement was done, one of the kids just paused and said, you know what, it's not fair that those turtles can't cross 61 safely. Hey, we need justice for Terry. And so they started chanting justice for Terry, justice for Terry. (audience laughing) And I'm just thinking, what is going on here? And it was really kind of cute and I videotaped it and everything. And then if you see the trees in the background there, the taller mature trees close by to where they're at, there's a
055whole row of them. And these kids were having some interesting ways of using our playground equipment. And so I had to talk with them a few times and they came up to me and said, Mr. Schmidt, can we just go into the woods there a little bit? And instead of saying no right away, 'cause that was the rule, I said, all right, let's just talk about it the next day and let's see what kind of rules we can come up with. And it started in the spring and what's it evolved now is that not only did they have a chance to go into the trees and mess around in the trees in a healthy positive way, but they also started to create a trading post. And with that trading post, they could find things that
056are dead in nature and they could trade it with one another. They started creating two different groups. So they have now like two little communities that are in the, the trading post is the middle, and the two communities on the side. And then what they did is they then had an idea to develop currency and so they called it currency rubies, and it has to be like dead bark. And so then all of a sudden said, I wanna be the banker. So not only they create a role and they have this little box that I got from Home Depot and they put all their rubies in there, which is the currency. And then this is really cool, a group of girls then said we wanna start our own business and we want put that near
057the trading post. So they started their own business, which is a craftsman business in there. And then now just recently we've started to add another group, which is like another incorporated city if you want to call it that, off to the side. And right now, I think to myself every once in a while, I could have said no to you going into the woods and look at what had been missed. And so part of what we do at North Star, and I believe what we do in this district is we look for those opportunities for kids to celebrate who they are, and what strengths they have. And not only just focus on the importance of the academics, but also have memories for them to build on. So with that being said, we have our attendance
058goal that we have in place, which is really exciting trying to get the community together and just building off of those things that the kids are experiencing at school, and we share those with the parents, which is super exciting. And so we're building on that attendance now with our families. And then at this point, it feels like we have all the resources aligned to help families get through whatever barriers they have with attendance. So now I believe, I think that's the end of my slides, and yes, it is. And so I'll open it up to any questions. Thanks for listening. Appreciate it. - I just wanna make a comment. I love your sensory room and I love how your students identify where they are. Am I red, am I green? Because I know I've read
059a couple of studies that talk, when students can identify where they are, it keeps them in their frontal lobe, it prevents them from going their fight and flight and ending up in their amygdala and then of course they can't focus. So this is just giving them a life skill to keep them able to focus. So I thank you for that, and I kind of maybe need that room in my house too. I have to talk to my wife, but that's what I, I think that's a great idea for them. - Yeah, I appreciate you recognizing that, because the kids, you don't get into a verbal debate then, you just have this common language that you use and it makes sense and it's quick into the point. Thank you. - [Scott] Others? Sorry. Ms. Beloyed. -
060[Deborah] Okay, I love that story about the woods. - Oh. - That is just incredible. But I think it really demonstrates, I think there's kind of a knee-jerk reaction to always kind of say no when the kids are asking those kinds of things. So I appreciate the fact that you were willing to step outta that box a little bit and at least explore it a little bit before everything, you know, could potentially go haywire. But I think that's a great thing. I was wondering for the cluster groups in your percentage, that 24% count, those cluster group IEPs are included in that 24%. - Yep. It also includes kids that just have an IEP for speech only too. And so we were just starting to look at the breakdown of where that would be and and
061how it falls in line. - [Deborah] Okay. - Yeah. - Would you, do you, for the conscious discipline, I was wondering what, if you could maybe give some examples of what some of those deescalation techniques are? - Yeah, part of, I am not an expert on this, right? So really it comes down to the verbiage that you're using with the kids, which was indicated in one of the slides. And when you sit there and you're listening to the child and you're getting at their level, it's a lot of common sense stuff. And you share a lot about what you hear them saying. And then what I've learned, and it's a very surface level still, is that you keep repeating things on a very succinct level, you know, you don't get into a lengthy dialogue. And
062you just give 'em a, you have two choices basically. You can do this or you can do that, and you just keep repeating it, not ad nauseam, but you sit there, give it some space, they're still escalated in their brain, and then you go back to it's this or it's that. And then eventually what happens, as long as you keep your voice calm and you're sitting and giving them the dignity that they're looking for, then it eventually starts to deescalate. Like we've had one situation, there's a few situations obviously, but one that will occur every once in a while, is that you can tell the child is really escalated, and they need about 30 minutes or so just to really deescalate. And they're not unsafe, it's just that their brain and their body's not ready
063to have a conversation yet, and we have to really hold ourselves back. - Yeah, I think that's the part of SEL that's incredibly important for all of these kids as they especially go into middle school, which anecdotally I hear from my own kids and from everybody else's kids is that hardest period of time for a lot of these kids. And I think understanding your emotions and understanding the verbiage that you need to use with others and with the teachers know how to connect with you on that level just makes it easier for the kid to come down to a level where they can reengage. But keeping 'em at that level, they don't engage at all. They can't, brains are too busy. So that was it. - [Dan] I appreciate that. - Thank you. And you
064reminded me the other angle is the parent connection because as we do these different strategies with kids, then we start having those conversations at a deeper level with the parents too and they appreciate some of the ideas that we're trying and then we also embrace them to the ideas that they're trying at home that can be mimicked at school too. Thanks for sharing that. - [Deborah] Yeah, I think the open dialogue is incredibly important with the parents for that, because speaking the same language at home and at school can be very, very important for some of those kids. - [Scott] Others? Mr. Skaar. - [Daniel] Thank you, Dan. - You're welcome. - I just wanna let you know I was out for a walk last week and ran into somebody that had a couple of
065kids running around and I asked them where they went and they said North Star, and they said they couldn't love it any more, so, and that's the second time this has happened in the last three months, so. And I don't think they're related to you at all. - [Dan] No, I don't think I paid him money either. (laughs) - And I don't think he paid him, I don't think he paid him either. - [Dan] Yeah. - So, hey, if you, so in the sensory break, what's the trigger point for that? It's probably different, but how are people, how are teachers and staff trained to say, hey, you need to have a sensory break? - Yeah, so they're in the, when they're in one of the classrooms, right? And they're supposed to be engaged in learning,
066what happens is that the kid looks distracted or looks like they're starting to create a distraction for peers around them. And then there's the typical reminder that's respectful and soft-spoken within the classroom environment. And then there might be another reminder that happens a few minutes later and the child's just having a tough time getting engaged. And because all the kids have been trained in on those sensory rooms at the start of the year and they can see it in proximity from wherever that learning space is in the studio, the teacher will say, you know what, do you really need a, I think you might need a sensory break, or do you need a sensory break right now? And the child will say, yeah, I should go have a break. And sometimes they do it just
067to get outta work, but then that's why we have the timers there, because they only can be there for five minutes or to 10 minutes at the most. In that way, the teacher can also see, are they horsing around in the sensory room or are they really taking advantage of it? - [Daniel] Right. Okay, good. Thank you. - [Dan] Thank you. - On slide 31, I was trying to read this, the left hand, one, it's that example that you had. So to me when I'm looking at this, this is the number of nonsense words grew, I'm looking, that can't be correct because it, right? - [Dan] No these project- - [Daniel] How do I read that chart? - So explain me. What I'm seeing happen is I look at the bottom line and that was
068at the start of the school year that the child came in and looked at these nonsense words which have no meaning to 'em. They just are kind of looking at just what the sounds are like, and if they can do what they're supposed to do. And it was that low, it was at five per minute. And so then you start teaching the strategies to the child on a more small group basis and closer to a one-on-one or like a three-on-one type of a setting. And then the child for some reason didn't have the experience in the past of really developing those reading skills, and then the child started to catch on. But it was interesting to us how we would jump so much between one progress monitoring point to the other. But as long as
069you see that trend line moving upward, we know we're in the right direction. - [Daniel] Right. - [Dan] Does that help answer your question? - Yes, I was having, now I understand it. Thank you. - Yeah, thanks for asking that, 'cause it can be a little bit confusing. I had to get my interpretation down too on that. (laughs) - [Daniel] Good. So on slide 35 on the student experience goal- - Yes. - [Daniel] Of 80%. Does every student get the same questions? - So grades three through five, the answer is yes for our school. So right now what's exciting is that we were able to create our own survey at North Star and then now we're in a process of having a survey that's gonna be more district-wide also, but we're in this kind of
070this bridge period now, we're still utilizing our survey, and that's why we can hone in so much on that one question. - So with students of that age, how do you know that this survey would be statistically valid versus, you know, looking at some type of external behavior or some other external attribute that would say, hey, they're not being left out? - Yeah, that's a good question 'cause one of the things that we talked about is how we had to be very similar in the way that the survey is being managed and facilitated in every single home-based of grades three, four, and five, in each of those studios. So the teachers kind of approach the survey in the same manner and then we have to be really careful not to give too many hints if
071kids ask questions about it. So in that way, we're trying to protect the integrity of it. But if I'm understanding your point, you have a valid point in which kids come into the school with so many different background experiences where they're at mentally. They might interpret that question one way or the other, but it really just comes down to, you know, really do they feel excluded by a classmate, and is someone not treating them nicely, basically. - [Daniel] Right. - And that's really what we want to come down to, 'cause usually you don't always hear about the bullying that's happening that's so obvious. It's the underlying stuff. And if the parents don't call you or email or message us about what their child's saying at home, we can't ever help them 'cause it might be
072disguised in a certain way. - [Daniel] Sure. - Does that help answer your question a little bit? - Yeah, I think so. I mean, it's tough because in all of the surveys I've done, even with employee or customer satisfaction, you know, it's subject to interpretation. So, but you know, you probably had a child psychologist look at the questions, so that's probably what you have to do. I think I saw the car that hit that turtle on 61. It was a silver Nissan Altima. - [Attendee] Did you get the license plate? - [Dan] Oh my god. - No, I didn't get the plate number. - That is unexpected news right there. (laughs) - [Daniel] No, I'm just kidding. - Okay, good. - Hey, and these kids that are in the woods, I'd like to know the
073kid that's gonna come up with crypto bark. - [Dan] Oh, wouldn't that be something? Yeah. - Yeah. - No, thanks for appreciating that story too. And all of you for your time tonight, oh, thanks. - [Scott] Are you done? - [Daniel] Yes. Thank you. - [Scott] Okay, Ms. Daniels. - Thank you. - [Daniel] Thanks. - Couple things. The picture at the beginning, the picture at the end, phenomenal. The first one of the sky and then the rainbow at the end. And then I just wanted to comment that I have been lucky enough to attend a couple conscious discipline workshops. One with special ed advisory, parent advisory by our own Trevor Putnam, who also was at the other one who presented with the teachers that I attended. And I think one of the most valuable things
074is that as an adult you learn how to keep yourself calm and what language to use so that you're not escalating the student because you're upset and you're getting nervous or you're getting wound up, because the student is not regulated. So that for me, even though I've, you know, I have a lot of experience in special education, it was a very unique kind of training that I appreciate so much from your school psychologist and the other people that were at the training. - [Dan] Thank you. That means a lot to them. I appreciate that. - Thank you. - [Scott] Yes, Ms. Beloyed. - I just, one last thing. Thank you for providing a cohort. (Dan laughs) Every time I look at these, I always wanna see a cohort and I think it's incredible to see
075over time that same group. Obviously it may not be exactly the same kids, but they're still majority of the same kids. And you can actually see over time what's happening as opposed to just a snapshot, so thank you for that. - [Dan] And we learned so much from each cohort too, which is really exciting. Thanks. - [Scott] All right. Well, thank you very much. We appreciate your time. - Thank you. - [Scott] All right, we are going to discussion item B3, Transition Education Center Update. Dr. Gillespie. - [Dr. Gillespie] Good evening, members of the school board, Chair Arcand, tonight I'd like to introduce Sara Derby, assistant director of Student Support Services, as well as the principal of the Transition Education Center. - Good evening, school board members, district leaders, student leaders. I am Dan's a
076hard act to follow, I don't have any currency or any woods to talk about. But I am here to talk about the, highlight some of the great things happening at the Transition Education Center. I wanted to start by talking a little bit about what Transition Services are, and those are services that help our students with disability prepare for life after high school. And we focus on three key areas, which are post-secondary education and training, employment, and independent living. These services support students to make progress toward their future goals while we consider what we call the SNIP. We're really looking at their strengths or needs or interests and their preferences. When we think about the places that they wanna live, the jobs that they wanna have, and the things that, the education that they wanna pursue
077after they graduate, we like to think about their strengths or needs or interests and their preferences. And we work really closely with their families as well as their county case managers, Vocational Rehabilitation Services, and other community agencies that the families are connected to, to help them transition successfully to adult life. The Transition Education students represent some of the district's most complex learners. The majority of our students have developmental disabilities and our serviced under the disability categories of developmental disabilities, mild to moderate developmental cognitive disability, severe to profound, and autism spectrum disorder. This year we also serve our students who are deaf/blind, visually impaired, severely multiply impaired, have physical impairments, specific learning disabilities, traumatic brain injury, emotional or behavioral disorders, and other health disabilities. And many of our students have multiple co-occurring disabilities, which require individualized
078instruction. They benefit from highly structured small group environments that prioritizes skill development across their home, work, and community settings. Our program focuses on independent living skills, employment readiness skills, community engagement, self-advocacy, and functional academics. And the four programs that make up the Transition Education Center are the Transition Plus program, which are students that are typically beyond their senior year of high school. We have the Project SEARCH program, which is located down at Gillette Children's Specialty Healthcare in St. Paul. We have a classroom there. Our students go to school all day, every day down at Gillette Hospital. And those students are beyond their senior year and are in their last year of transition programming. That might be their first year after 12th grade, their second year, their third year. But whatever year that is, it's their
079final year of transition programming. And it has an emphasis on employment. Then we have the Transition and Post-Secondary Preparation Program known as TAPP. And those students are in grades nine through 12+. And those students are working on their social-emotional needs. Those students are pursuing their graduation requirements in a smaller, more structured setting, but they come from our high schools or after high school. And typically the larger settings in their mental health prevents them from being successful or attending in those larger settings. And then we have the Accountability with Academics and Restorative Education program known as AWARE. And this is for students in sixth grade through 12th grade that are both general education or special education students. And we provide academic and restorative supports to students most typically serving a suspension. This slide just represents our
080mission statement, the T, the E, and the C. We work together as a staff to help remember our mission statement, which is transitioning to community, encouraging independence, and celebrating aspirations. We have three goals this year, building goals. Our first is to improve reading, and we are using FastBridge for the first time. And in our fall screener, it indicated that 20% of our students were in the some risk range. So we decided to really look at the some risk range 'cause we thought it was a key opportunity for growth. And our FastBridge data outlines for our students the skills that they have already mastered as well as the skills that they're developing. So our staff have looked at the students in that 20% range and looked at the developing skills and they're purposely working to incorporate
081reading strategies that would target those skills, which is a goal to improve their reading, but also to improve the reading of all of our students. Our next goal is on increasing the number of our TAPP students that receive passing grades both semesters. Again, our TAPP program is our students in nine through 12+ that have more of those social-emotional or mental health needs. And last school year, 80% of our students in our building, all of our programs receive passing grades in all of their classes. But most students that didn't receive a passing grade were those students participating in the TAPP program. So our teachers meet monthly and review grade data. They identify barriers and develop strategies that would help students improve. We've also started a new Homework Help opportunity that is offered twice weekly during our
082Bear Time to provide additional academic support aimed at increasing passing rates for our students. But we really think about the barriers. Are they not passing because they're not getting to school? We have a lot of housing insecurity, we have students that have children themselves. We really think about the different barriers for those students. And we do offer some different educational options. There's five-day a week programs, there's four-day, we have a one day a week program. There's different options for different students, and whatever we can do to get them that diploma so that's not another barrier for them after they are out of school. Our last goal is a student experience goal, and we really wanted to look at the number of students who really knew their IEP goals and at least one of their accommodations.
083We felt like self-awareness was really important beyond graduation in the school setting. And if students understand their strengths, areas for growth, and the supports available to them, they can better advocate for themselves in the school, work, or community settings. And it really helps their students become active participants in their learning and prepares them for greater confidence. So one of the things that our Project SEARCH students do, they have to talk about when they switch jobs, they have three different jobs, but when they go into a new job after 10 weeks, they have to talk to that next employer per se at Gillette Hospital. Maybe they're moving from the HR department to the supply chain department. They have to talk about like what accommodations work best for them, what their learning styles are. And we want
084our students to be able to express that, and advocate that as well as knowing their strengths and their areas of need. Like if reading is hard for me, I would really like a visual support or something like that. We want them to be able to articulate it versus us just always articulating it for them. So some of the supports that we have in place to help meet these goals, we have instructional supports. We have an instructional coach in our building this year, one day a week. And she does some targeted observations and feedback with the staff. And we also have a number of different collaborative meetings where the team is looking at data so we can make data-informed decisions about our students. We do a lot of progress monitoring, our staff monitor their academic skills,
085their social-emotional skills, as well as IEP goals, and how they're doing on those. And then we're responsive to students' individual needs. We do have a co-located mental health provider in our building to help with the mental health needs. And then we've started that homework help time for those students who are absent or look like they're at risk of not passing a class. These are just some of the highlights from our student climate survey. We developed that a few years ago with our strategic planning team and we were really excited that the majority of our students feel safe at school. They have friends at school, they felt like they could be their selves at school. They felt respected by staff, and that staff wanted them to be successful. We also have a lot of work-based learning
086that happens at the Transition Education Center. We currently have seven students at paid work sites. All of them are in the district. We have paid sites at (indistinct), North Star, Oneka, and TEC. We have dishwashing and custodial positions that are happening. We have 22 other students who are working currently in our non-paid sites listed there doing a variety of different tasks. And all of our students at the Transition Education Center have an opportunity to have a work experience first semester, second semester, or both semesters, depending upon where they're at in their, how many years they've been with us. And this is just some pictures of our students at work doing lots of different things, down there on the corner, checking expiration dates. And they do a lot of fronting and facing of shelves at our
087community businesses. We also have the Bear Boards and More, which is a student-operated business at the Transition Education Center. And it specializes currently in customized cutting boards and tumblers. We are looking to add some new things this year. We're gonna be adding customized coasters, and we're looking at adding customized like glass dishware pans for people. So this initiative started because there are some of our students with mental health needs that have a difficult time leaving the building to get job experience because of their anxiety. And so we wanted to bring work into the building so they could continue to work on work skills and build their resume skills. And these students learn about running a school business and they talk about supply and demand, profit margins. They do the design, the production, the customer service,
088those types of skills. And if you are looking for a holiday gift, you can find it on our website. Project SEARCH, which I talked about, is down at Gillette Hospital. And we currently have six interns down there and they're working in environmental services, supply chain at Gillette Hospital, which is the main campus. But we also have students working at the supply chain at the warehouse, which is really cool, because they have to take Metro Transit to that. So it's another skill that they get to learn. We have students working in the health information management department, patient engagement, and human resources. So each student is individually in their own department and they work there for 10 weeks, and then they work in a different department for 10 weeks, and a different department for 10 weeks. It
089doesn't mean these are the only departments. We have multiple departments in the hospital that they work in. And I just wanted to highlight that this is our eighth year of Project SEARCH. We've had five of our interns accept permanent employment with Gillette. We've had another three students receive summer employment at Gillette. And 80% of all of our interns that have gone through our Project SEARCH program have gained competitive and integrated employment after completing Project SEARCH. So it's really a great program. And this is a highlight from our Family Engagement Night. We had a really great turnout. We've actually had really great turnouts for all of our Family Engagement Nights, but this night we had a meal together and we turned Slinkies into pumpkins. So students were spray painting and using hair dryers, and my staff
090were here. They were trying to put pumpkins together. And then just lastly, we're really excited about moving into Sunrise Park. If you haven't been down there, it's really beautiful. But one of our goals is, is that we're really looking to not replicate Project SEARCH here, but we really wanna think about having our students working in various departments in this building to really build up their work stamina and independence. So we would really like to think about sending out a questionnaire to the different departments at the district center so they can start identifying meaningful task or project that the students could assist with. And we would like some of our students, especially who are in their last year of transition programming to be working the majority of the day, which might be in this building. And
091I don't know if anything of these will really happen, but some of the things that we've thought about again, are working at the senior center. They could help set up events, set up or take down, there's a lot of different offices in the building. We could do shredding or sorting or scanning or delivery. Early childhood, they could be sanitizing and preparing crafts. They could be reading. Meals on Wheels, we could be packing and assembling, loading, unloading. With The Closet, we could be sorting or laundering, we could be folding, we could be creating marketing materials. We would love with facilities to be doing some of the lawn mowing or the snow removal, and the cleaning. Nutrition Services has always been a great partner for us, so I'm sure there'll be opportunities for dishwashing, maybe doing coffee
092delivery in the building. And then the Education Foundation, again, I know we get a lot of materials and stuff from them, so we thought maybe copying, sorting of materials. And we're hoping that they have a lot of other great ideas because really, we want people to have high expectations. If it's a really routine task that our students can learn how to do and get good at, then we can take that task off of people so they can do other activities. Questions? - [Scott] Any questions? Mr. Skaar. - [Daniel] Oh, thank you. And thank you for doing this as well. - You're welcome. Thank you. - And running this program. Have you ever heard of Composure or Midwest Diversified Industries? Do you ever work with them? - [Sara] I haven't, no. - Maybe they're more senior
093level people. But Composure works with finding employment opportunities for people with disabilities. And Midwest Diversified Industries also does that. And they're both in St. Paul. - I wonder if they work with vocation rehabilitation at all. So vocational rehabilitation services who we work with, we have a counselor in our building. Any student who's on an IEP has that service available to them for the rest of their life. So all of our students get connected to the vocational rehabilitation counselor and they can help them find jobs, they can go to their jobs with them and help them with the benefits. They can help pay for job coaching once they've graduated on job sites. So sometimes those people contract with different people, so they might work with some of those places. - [Daniel] Okay. - I've never heard
094of them. - Good. That's probably the connection. Do you, like, for your success rate, is it really related? I think that self-awareness piece is really important, but also independent living, community involvement. I mean, is there one or two things that you really look for as, yes, we were successful with this program? - [Sara] Well, we have a wide range of disabilities in our building. - Right. - But community safety and awareness is just really important, just being safe in the community, being able to, you know, walk, cross the street safely, and you know, things like that. But also I think just, you know, being able to work in the community is really important. Independent living, we teach cooking classes, we teach basic cooking classes with kitchen safety. And we have a lot of adapted tools
095and knives for our students to be as independent as possible. And then we also have higher classes where our students, we teach a Bon Appetit class where they're learning to cook foods from all around the world and also learning about different parts of the country. And they go to different markets in the area. So we have a wide range of students. So it just kind of depends on the student. But I guess for me, it would be just each person's level of independence and kind of, you know, pushing it to the next level. - [Daniel] Do you have opportunities for people to volunteer with this program? Okay. - Yeah, we have a number of also unpaid work sites, which we consider like volunteer, but people coming into our building, we would, yes, we have the
096volunteer process in the district and families could come in and volunteer. - And then, do you, I don't know if this makes sense or not, but like community ambassadors or something to help promote the program to get people placed and help with the program. I mean, is there any, do you see a need for that? - We have a work coordinator, she's kind of our ambassador. So we have a full-time work coordinator, and she goes out to our community and does the knocking on the communities and kind of talks about our program and we have training agreements and things that we sign with those businesses to make sure that we're kind of all on the same page of what that expectation is for our students when they're there. Some of them, as they become more
097independent, we drop them off at a work site and we monitor them from time to time and then we come back and pick them up. We don't necessarily have a job coach with them all day. It just depends on the student's level of independence. - [Daniel] Alright, thank you. - [Scott] And just for clarification, the work coordinator is required by law? - Yes. - [Scott] So it's not like we just chose, we are doing that because we're following the statute? - [Sara] We do. - Okay, Ms. Ellison. - [Sara] We're an accredited program. I'm going through that right now. (laughs) - Thank you so much. Couple of things I wanna note. I really appreciated that in your student climate survey, the question with the highest percentage of yes answers was staff want me to be
098successful. And I think that's really telling. I have a brother who's on the autism spectrum and he was in school in the late nineties and early two thousands. And I think about how much this would've benefited him and my parents to have these sorts of opportunities. It's just tremendous. And my question is, and this might be for Ms. Ouren as well, I love that you're helping your students take ownership of their IEP and their accommodations. Is that something that you envision or maybe it already is trickling down into high school, middle school? 'Cause I can guarantee you that my kid has no idea what his IEP goals are, as much as we've talked about it. And I think this would be a really important thing for the empowerment of all of our students with disabilities.
099- Well, and I'll jump in and Lisa can too, but, you know, we have our students present at their IEP meetings. They do their own presentation, our staff work with them, and they present their goals and their needs. And yet only 3% of our students knew their goal. - [Jessica] Yeah. - And a lot of them have been doing this for multiple years. - [Jessica] Yeah. - So even though we've worked with them for a long time, like it, they were able to tell us on the survey, like, they have a reading class, so we're working on reading or they're at math. So they knew what they were working on, but they didn't really know what their goals were. So now we're more purposely pulling them out during our progress monitoring time and during our
100advisory class, having them look at their IEP, find things on their IEP, and being able, you know, they don't need to know, you know, I'm gonna improve my reading, you know, but what we're working on. So even though we've done a lot with it, we found that students don't truly really know their goals. And I used to have the high school and that they do some of those same things where those students at the IEP meetings would be able to talk about some of those goals. But I think if you asked a lot of them, they wouldn't have known their goals. - [Jessica] Yeah. - So I think it becomes more and more important as they're exiting into that adult life. So again, that they can say like, reading is not a strength of mine.
101So if I could have a task list or a visual list, that would be really helpful to me. And that's what we're trying to get at. - [Jessica] Yeah. - I'll also say in the middle school around eighth grade, they start to do their transition conversations. And so sometimes the students get more into exploring like what their job is gonna be or what thing, where they wanna live and those types of things. So they kind of latch onto those transition goals a little bit more. But we do encourage all our students to attend their IEP meetings once they hit the secondary. - [Sara] Yes. - Whether or not they come is up to them and the parent. - Yeah. No, and I enjoy those IEP meetings because it is really kind of a reminder. But
102I think the focus on ensuring that the students know, especially their accommodations will help them as they move into the workforce, so I- - [Sara] We were pleasantly surprised that 40% knew at least one accommodation that they could articulate. - Yeah. - I think with the IEP goals, we don't always write 'em student friendly when we say that they're gonna increase their executive functioning, that isn't something that they're gonna repeat. So that's part of what we've been working on, is like we want them to know that I'm working on my organization skills or something like that. It doesn't have to be the same language. - [Jessica] It's good translating for parents. - Yes. - [Jessica] Thank you. - [Scott] Ms. Daniels. - I just wanna say all four of the programs are so unique and
103they're so needed. And I know two of them are transition, and TAPP of course is something that you started, this team started and it's such a benefit for those students who are in our high schools that need a unique setting that's so great. And I have had the opportunity to be down at Project SEARCH at Gillette, and that's just phenomenal. And seeing the kids interact with the staff and how wonderful that is. And some of the students who end up working there were patients there for many years and that's to them, they've been there before, they know the hospital, and now here, they are working. So that's a pretty unique opportunity. And then I also was able to attend the Parent Night, the Family Engagement Night, and that was so much fun. And I just
104wanna say, your staff is so wonderful. They know the kids, they know the families, they know the unique needs and the way they interact with the kids or the young adults and the families, is just really something to see. And so thank you for having those evenings and inviting, you know, other community members. Thank you. - Anything else? I'm just gonna say that I really have a strong bias when it comes to this program. My oldest son, who has some cognitive issues is turning 40 this next year. And he went through the Transition Plus program, and I remember them taking him to the Y, or taking him to the park, or taking him to a restaurant, and people being able look at that and go, what are they doing? Understanding that my son couldn't go
105into Subway and order, he was just flustered. He didn't know how to get changed. He couldn't call his friends and go to the park and do something. He didn't really know how to go to the Y. I thought he was gonna have to live with me the rest of his life. And for the last 18 years, he's lived on his own. He's kept a job, he figures out his transportation, he cooks his food, and occasionally he comes over and tells me what to do. So I just say that my son wouldn't be there today without participating in your Transition Plus program and everything they taught him and gave him. So I am so thankful that we provide these students this opportunity to become citizens of our community and how to get along. So before I
106start crying, I'm just gonna say thank you. - Oh, thank you for saying that. Again, so much of it is the confidence that they build. When they find a passion or a job that they're good at, and they feel like they have a purpose, then they can just soar. - [Scott] Anything else? Well, thank you. - Thank you. - All right. Well, before we go to adjournment, I just wanna take the opportunity to just say for all the board members and all the members of the staffing here and everybody attending, I wanna wish you all a happy and safe and fun Thanksgiving. And this is a time for us to really recognize all the great things we have and how fortunate I think we are to live in the White Bear Lake area and to
107be able to participate with this school district and all the things we get to do. I'm just thankful for it. So I hope you all have a great Thanksgiving with your families. And with that, can I get a motion to adjourn? - [Attendee] Mr. Chair, I move to adjourn. - Okay. Do I get a second? - [Deborah] Second. - Second by Ms. Beloyed. All in favor, say aye. - [All] Aye. - Opposed, same sign. We are now adjourned. (gavel thumping) Happy Thanksgiving.