001- [Scott] Good evening. I'd like to call now call this meeting of the White Bear Lakes, the School Board of Independent School District 624 to order. Will the clerk please call the roll. - [Kathleen] Skaar? - Here. - Streiff Oji? - Here. - Arcand? - Here. - Beloyed? - Here. - Daniels? - Here. - Ellison? - Here. - [Scott] All right, our first order of business is discussion item B1, overview of back to school events, Dr. K. - Thank you, chair and members of the board. So in September, our first meeting, we'll have a more detailed opening school report. But this is just a preview of where we're at as we enter the school year. We've had a busy summer, and it's fun to get to this point of the year. So we've got a
002lot of information on our website, on the back to school page. It's been streamlined so it's easy to navigate. Parents will be able to find a lot of information there specific to their school. School specific communications to families and school specific back to school events have been shared with families. So make sure you're checking emails and communicating with your schools. There's a lot going on, so try to keep on top of that. We're still enrolling students even up until the into the first week of school, we still have students coming in, so we're excited about that. We can help families navigate that process quite easily. We're generally pretty well positioned as we enter the school year with hiring. There's always positions in an organization our size. So if anyone out there is interested in working
003for the school district, just keep on checking the school website. We're ready to roll, and we're ready for the students to come next week. And we started off this morning with our convocation event. So we'll talk a little bit more about that in a little bit here. Construction update. You had a construction update last board meeting. So Central Middle School and Mariner Middle School, phase two. Those are wrapping up here in the next week or so as we enter the school year. And then Sunrise Park, I've been stretching it out to by spring break. It's supposed to be mid-year, but you know how things go. By spring break that things should wrap up and then that'll be it for all of the major construction projects. So that's exciting to be at that point. Let's see.
004Okay, we have a few events I want to mention. So on September 4th. So our senior center has settled into the new space here at Sunrise Park. We've been here about two or three weeks and it's great to have them in the building. We hear the ukuleles quite frequently. It's pretty cool. (audience laughing) The wood carvers are here and making pretty cool art. But anyway, we're going to be having a grand reopening of the Senior Center from 10AM to noon on September 4th. So feel free to join us for that event. Homecoming Week, September 21 to 27. Always a highlight of the school year. So we'll be kicking off Homecoming Week with a bounce house carnival on Sunday, September 21st from 4 to 7PM at the high school in the Bald Eagle parking lot. Very
005fun-filled event. Bring your family, enjoy the excitement. Last year it was very well attended. We had a lot of kids there. A lot of excitement built for that week. On Friday, September 26th, we'll have our homecoming parade at 4:30 in Downtown White Bear Lake, followed by the football game against Forest Lake at 7:00. So yeah, mark your calendars. We'd love to see as many people out at that as possible. - [Scott] Dr. Kazmierczak, is at the 25th or the 26th for the parade? - [Wayne] 26th. - [Scott] Okay, because the slide says the 25th up there. - [Wayne] Oh, oops. Okay, 26th. - [Scott] Okay, thank you, I'll make sure. - All right. And then to close out the week, the homecoming dance is on September 27th, Saturday, September 27th at the High School Union.
006We also have the community open house at Central Middle School from 4:30 to 6:30 that week. And that also coincides with the talent show, correct? On that evening. So you could hit both, you could hit the Central Middle School open house and then also head over to the high school for the talent show, again. So you can check out the new gymnasium there at Central, the expanded cafeteria, new learning commons, and then renovations made to former district center to turn that back into a school. So that's part of Central Middle School now. All right, so few pictures from this morning. Sincere thank you to our student groups who came and performed. And Carla Triggs, our teacher of the year, did an amazing job. She had a great message, and you know, it was very festive
007and lots of people were there, which is they're supposed to be there, but it was great to see them. And again, a lot of excitement, lots of conversations, lots of getting back in touch as people come back to begin the school year. So it was a great way to kick off the week. All right, that's it. - All right, well, thank you. We're excited to start the school year. All right, we're going to go on to discussion item B2, Dr. Gillespie and Educators of Thriving representatives. - Chair Arcand and members of the board, thank you for having us tonight. I have Hallie Fox who's here with us from Educators Thriving and Hallie will lead the presentation and then we're both here should you have questions at the end. Welcome Hallie. - Thank you for your
008time and for inviting us this evening. So I'm Hallie Fox, Head of Research at Educators Thriving. I am joined by my teammates Katie and Laura back here. We have been partnering with White Bear Lake for the past few years and wanted to share a little bit about the work that we do as an organization and also the work in White Bear specifically. So we as an organization exist because we believe that educators can and should experience workplace well-being in order to reach their full potential and that they work in a system that actually makes this possible. So we are all former educators. I'm a former special education teacher and administrator myself and recognize the immense value of feeling supported in my work in order to make outcomes possible for my students. So we work towards
009that mission in two main ways. The first is by offering direct research-based personal development strategies to educators to support their individual well-being with opportunities to really identify evidence-based strategies that support their well-being as an individual educator. And then the second is by sustaining educator well-being through system wide measurement and continuous improvement. And we have been working in White Bear on both levels, so we'll tell you a little bit more about that. We do this because we believe that educators can and should be well, but more importantly, it's because there are significant outcomes when we focus on supporting, those working with kids. When educators have higher well-being, we see not only higher student well-being, lower student distress, but also higher student achievement. So supporting educators allows them to support their students and receive really the best
010possible outcomes in terms of their well-being and their academic achievement. We offer professional development for educators offering a range of session topics. You can see a sample of these session topics here. Some are focused on individual strategies to help manage the inevitable workload of the job. Some are also related in building team culture and working through conflict, for example, and really understanding the ways in which we work alongside one another. As I mentioned, we also measure educator well-being across a system. As an industry, we spend a lot of time talking about educator burnout and the reasons why educators leave the profession of which there are often many. But we orient towards understanding what actually contributes to keeping professionals, to keeping them well in this particular workplace. So to answer that question, we partnered with educators
011across the country to really understand what drives their intentions to stay what allows them to experience well-being as an educator. And through that research process, we identified that there are a number of key predictive factors that contribute to longevity in the profession. Most significantly is responsive leadership and supportive culture. The survey that we now provide to educators includes a number of items that begin with something like, "My administrator." And that is because administrators do set the tone and create the conditions in which both staff and students alike are able to do their best work. We also know that educators need key foundational supports and working conditions for them to be able to do their jobs, whether that is fair compensation, resources in their classrooms, appropriate staffing. And finally, there are a number of key mindsets
012and dispositions that we know contribute to not only well-being, but also retention and sustainability over the course of one's career. So when we survey educators in terms of their experiences, we're both looking at how are folks doing in terms of their individual strategies, but also how are we doing at a school site and district-wide level. What we have found in our research and has been confirmed in numerous other studies is that when we think about culture and retention, principals are actually a really key indicator. Principals ability to create positive working conditions for staff and collaborative supportive learning environments plays a critical role in attracting and specifically retaining staff. As a nation, we spend a lot of money and have put a lot towards intentions, initiatives to support retention, but none specifically towards improving leadership and
013school climate. White Bear, I will say, is an outlier in terms of really thinking about the ways in which we support leaders to support their staff and their students, because we know principals' leadership is the strongest dimension of school climate that matters to teacher turnover and ultimately to student outcomes. We've been giving the survey in White Bear for the past three years. It's an opportunity to assess at baseline how people are experiencing their work. We've used that data to identify priorities both at the school site and the district-wide level in order to respond with appropriate leadership, support professional development or site-level changes, gather feedback along the way, and reassess to see what improvements or needs to be addressed. Our work in White Bear has been a partnership between our organization, the district, and the teachers'
014union, the White Bear Lake Area Educators. We have been really fortunate to have a really collaborative partnership across all three organizations with each having a specific role in supporting these initiatives. We began our work here nearly three years ago through a pilot project with the American Federation of Teachers. Through that initial program, we provided professional development directly to educators during the summer and saw really incredible gains in terms of their personal well-being and lack of burnout and intentions to stay in the profession. Through that success, we brought the work to the district to launch the first educator well-being survey district-wide. The following school year we partnered specifically with the middle schools, given there were a lot of new initiatives at the elementary level. We readministered the survey that spring and last school year we offered
015support to all schools across the district. It has been very principal-driven and so principals have opted into the levels of support that they feel their staff needs and over the past year plus we've supported every school site with at least three professional development sessions and multiple touch points with principals to understand their school data and make changes accordingly. We've also been doing some work with the district cabinet for them to think about the ways in which they are leading their teams. We administered the survey this past spring and are launching our third year of partnership during workshop week this week with a number of PDs across the district. Based on the data, we identified a number of priorities at district and school site levels. You can see here some of the priorities that we observed
016from educators and some of the actions that district leaders took in response. So for example, there is numerous concerns two years ago around the movement towards a unified high school and navigating that challenge in terms of merging two distinct staff cultures. There were needs across the district to tighten communication structures and really think about ways to collect teacher and staff input along the way before making key decisions and building more shared decision making structures to align district and school site priorities. We have continued to hear concerns from educators around student behavior, particularly as there have been significant shifts in policy at the statewide level and really understanding the needs of both educators, families, and leaders. We also recognize that amidst all of this, elementary educators specifically have had pretty intense workloads with redact implementation and
017finding ways to appropriately balance their workplace demands with well-being. The union has led their own initiatives to encourage strong and open communication between building and site reps to problem solve together and proactively. And there's been that similar work at the school site and cabinet level. The union offered support through a personal and professional development app to educators and provides events for creating a sense of community and creating a stronger sense of connection across the district. This past year we surveyed educators across the district and saw increasingly high participation rates. We strive for 80% of all staff to partake in the survey that is inclusive of all roles, not just classroom teachers, and the scale that we use is a 1 correlates to strongly disagree, to 6, strongly agree, and what you can see Here is
018an overview of how educators responded across the district. So what we observed in terms of responsive leadership and supportive culture was an improvement over time. Educators reporting stronger connections at their school site and support from their school site administrators. We continue to see concerns around foundational supports, things like compensation, staffing, adequate resources and high levels of individual educator dispositions. We encouragingly see very high growth orientations from educators across the district, really strong motivations to develop professionally and moderate levels of depletion. Having three years of data allows us to see shifts over time and what we've been really encouraged by is a steady improvement in all domains, specifically in responsive leadership and supportive culture. I have been incredibly fortunate to work alongside principals in this district and see them taking the well-being of their staff very
019seriously in making adjustments in the ways that they support and communicate. We've also seen a significant decline in depletion since we first administered this survey. A few things that stood out to us this year in terms of bright spots district-wide, as I mentioned, we saw significant gains over time. Majority of educators reporting that they're highly motivated to learn new things at work, which is up over 13% since 2023. We saw increases in administrators encouraging staff to set boundaries associated with work and increases in educators' adaptability and able to respond to the inevitable challenges that they experience over the course of the school day. In terms of areas for exploration, district-wide, these were items that were markedly lower than others. But in each of them you'll notice we still saw significant gains since we first administered
020this survey three years ago. Finally, in terms of foundational supports and structural priorities, as I mentioned, this is an area that educators continue to feel that there are opportunities for increased support, particularly in the realm of staffing, compensation, and professional development. For this coming school year, we have a number of focus areas. We are leading PDs at 10 sites this week and hosting today our first ever PD for classified staff. I had about 60 paraeducators participate in the PD at the high school this afternoon. We'll be continuing to offer in-person PD opportunities during the school year, one-on-one sessions with principals over time to understand their data, make shifts and receive support along the way, and a three-part professional development series for them. We will continue to offer direct to educator opt-in PDs and look forward
021to our ongoing work with everyone across the district. - Great. Thank you. - [Scott] Mr. Skaar. - [Daniel] So with this survey we've been doing this, we started in 2022, is that right? So what problem are we trying to solve through this initiative? - Addressing educator well-being and burnout and increasing opportunities for retention, and of course, for student outcomes. - It's also part of our continuous improvement model for our principals. And so the specific questions around responsive leadership and culture are given to principals as part of their priority personnel data, in a sense of getting feedback from how's their staff feeling about how they address problems, how they're communicating, how they're creating a culture that really centers the educators that work in our system and how we are addressing the challenges of our job that
022we have. - So just, so this is to address teacher burnout and turnover. It's principally designed around that. Is that true? - And to provide support to school site principals who receive data about their school site leadership. And in most places, principals do not necessarily receive feedback from staff on the ways in which they are creating a productive workplace environment. - How did you determine whether we had a problem here in White Bear Lake to address? Did you do any survey work? How did you determine what our issues were? - Sure. So the first opportunity we had to partner with White Bear Lake educators was in the summer of 2022. And what the union president and others were hearing were increasing stress and overwhelm among educators district-wide, that educators were experiencing a lot of disillusionment
023with their job, feeling like they weren't necessarily able to commit to the profession for the long haul, wanting to find opportunities to address their needs and ability to manage the job, and not just think about surviving, but actually regaining that sense of connection and purpose. And so we partnered with the teachers' union. We saw that educators who opted in to that professional development were reporting significantly higher levels of burnout and higher depletion than those who had not opted out. We actually did a comparison group between educators in the program and those who did not participate in the program and saw pretty significant differences in those who chose to participate. Those who chose to participate were much more likely to say that they were considering leaving the profession and were much more likely to report higher
024burnout and after participating in the program, reported higher intentions to stay, higher job satisfaction and lower degrees of burnout. - Do you know what our teacher turnover rate was in 2022 and what it is today? - No. We would have to get that information for you. But we do know from the survey that we have a high level of teachers indicating that they want to stay with us, which you would better be able to talk about the national average, but we would have to get to you in terms of the specific data. - Wouldn't that be an important metric to determine whether this is successful or not? Is seeing what our turnover rate is. And if it improves, it means that this program is working. - This isn't a program specifically. Obviously the professional development
025is part of it. The other piece is how do we create that continuous improvement so our school culture will continue to look at that. We do want to be competitive and have people who want to not only stay with us but attract others. But that wasn't the main reason that we leaned into this. It was how do we make sure that our educators are feeling most equipped to lean into this role and this job amongst White Bear Lake. And then really leaning in around, it wasn't specifically identifying, okay, this retention rate. We are seeing positives around that, but there was a broader. We were addressing broader issues around that. - So wouldn't it be important to know what our turnover rate was for teachers in 2022 and what it is today? - We do know
026that. I just don't know it off the top of my head. - Okay, all right, I see. So what I did a little bit of research on this through some surveys that were done last year. I think "The Wall Street Journal" published one. One of them had a lot to do with classroom disruptions, classroom discipline, expectations, mismatch between what teachers expect or what parents expect of teachers and what teachers expect of parents. How does that factor into, and these were major drivers for burnout. I don't see those in this at all. - Yeah, so actually the core items on our survey related with equipped educator mindsets and dispositions are strongly associated with resilience and ability to sustain the profession. So we know when educators themselves are feeling like they can handle difficult situations, they can
027accept a difficult conversation. They have the inner resources to handle conflict, to help re-regulate and reset a classroom. When they are able to do that, students are as well. There's a lot of evidence when we think about co-regulation in classrooms when teachers have the skills that they personally need to handle the disruptions, support and connect with parents, even if it might be a difficult conversation, that directly impacts the way that students experience learning in classroom environments as well. So there's a very strong link between the ways in which educators are able to manage themselves and their well-being and the ways that they create positive pro-social classrooms as well. - So how do you recon, I guess one thing is how do you reconcile policies that are set by the state or at the district level
028that don't require progressive discipline in the classroom which can contribute to this? How do you reconcile, is there a change in policies that you recommend or do you work around the existing policies and state mandates to say, "This is what we are dealt with, this is how to handle it," regardless of the policies? - I'm not sure I entirely understand your question. Are you speaking specifically about non-exclusionary discipline? - [Daniel] Yes. - So what we've heard from educators in year one of that implementation was that it was challenging to roll out because expectations were not clear necessarily from administrators and from teachers and what people were experiencing was stressful because it was new. And so some of the work that we've done in our surveys and focus groups is really understanding where are educators and
029administrators aligned, where do we need to better communicate what our processes are, how can we bring families into this conversation? So we recognize that policy change is an inevitable stressor in public education. And one way that we support that is really understanding how we can better align and communicate along the way, figure out what's working and what's not. And so what we have seen and heard from educators this year is really a desire to align in their school sites to make sure that the processes that are in place, people are really clear on that. There's more communication between families and parents and administrators when discipline occurrences happen. So we know that student behavior is a significant contributor to teacher stress. And what we have seen and heard is that continuing to communicate, create aligned processes
030at the school site level is one way that really supports educators and students alike. - Just one last comment, and then just kind of a suggestion. It would seem to me that it would be important to know what this overall satisfaction level is of everyone in the district, you know, teachers, and by classification. And that's a fairly easy survey to do. And it would be something that would be to see if this is effective to benchmark what you're doing with satisfaction survey, which would be could be three questions. You could use the Gallup satisfaction 12 questions. There's a lot of different ways to do that. - Yes, we do actually ask overall job satisfaction net promoter. So the intention that you recommend to your school or district. And we've seen significant improvements in job satisfaction
031and that promoter scores over time. We do see some differences by role in terms of classified versus certificated staff, for example. So we have all of that data available if you were interested in seeing more, but it's been really encouraging to see how strongly correlated educator well-being and job satisfaction are. - And it's gone up since 2022, I'm assuming. - [Hallie] Yes. - Okay. All right. The other thing I was just as a comment is I know that we do these. We have these, are they DIRS? Is that what they're called? Disciplinary reports? - [Hallie] That's the statewide, yep. DIRS, the Disciplinary Incident Reporting System, what we report to the state. - Is there a way to correlate that with this survey to see if that's trending down or up? That may have a direct
032correlation with teacher satisfaction and overall district-wide staff satisfaction. - Yeah, we can get that. We do look at that by site, and we haven't looked directly together, but we could talk about it for sure. - Thank you, thanks. - [Hallie] Yep, thank you. - [Scott] I thank you, Ms. Ellison. - Yeah, thank you. I've got two questions, but first I want to say thank you for your work. I feel like there's very few professions in the world that ask people to make such significant specific decisions for 30 different people at the same time. And it's really complex. And so I appreciate you looking into this for our teachers. So my questions are these. I appreciate all the studies that you've included. Do you do any work on a national level? And how would you say
033that, what the progress you've seen or the changes that you've seen in White Bear, how does that compare on a national level? - Great question. We are about to release our 2025 annual well-being report. So we'll make sure that that is shared. So we work with partners across the country. To date, we have surveyed over 20,000 educators in a variety of roles and school contexts. So we work in predominantly public K-12, but also charter and independent school environments, serving a really wide variety of roles. And I would say White Bear to date is outpacing the national average in terms of educator well-being. And that has improved over time. So we work in a few other districts locally here in Minnesota, but span the country in terms of region and context. We have a number of
034partners in California, Ohio, Texas, Florida, New Jersey. So a really wide spread of educator experiences asking these same questions. And we have seen that White Bear has not only made improvements, but is also starting to outpace educator experiences across the nation. - I appreciate that. Thank you. And then my other question is in looking at the priorities, the structural priorities, so where we need to improve. So what are the next step? And this might be more for Dr. Gillespie. So what are our next steps to address these? - So in particular, professional development is one that stands out for us. It doesn't mean we're always talking Matt, Tim, Dr. Kazmierczak, and I, around what staffing do we need in the buildings, the compensation, but when you look at professional development, we were disheartened to see
035the low satisfaction. And so each one of our schools also receive a school report and they're all sharing that data with their staff this week. And what we need is partnership around what we're trying to do, these collective goals that we all have. And I think, I believe that we've agreed on that. So then where are we missing the mark in terms of offering people professional development that feels meaningful to them? As you know, we've had a huge push at the elementary level for letters. My guess is that that has consumed a majority of our time for multiple years. It would be fair for people to say, "Okay, now we want to be able to apply this." And it's just, it is a huge heavy lift that our staff did. But each one of our
036principals has data, but it is low at each one of those areas. There wasn't we first try to look are there areas that are highlights that we could kind of dive in and see where that is. And everyone is leaning into it. The other piece, I believe is also getting better at how we communicate. We have different leadership structures that are partnerships between teachers, administration that really make decisions around professional development. And so how we make sure people understand they do have a voice in that, even for district-led professional development. But that will be, that is, we've talked a lot about it already this summer and each one of our schools are leaning into that as well. - Yeah, I appreciate that because letters has been a pretty heavy lift over the last couple of
037years. And then coming out of Covid, what do our teachers need and what do our students need? It's different, but I appreciate it. And you know, just another real brief comment. Today at convocation, I ran into my son's third grade teacher, and when he was in third grade was the year Covid hit and he was having a lot of trouble before he was throwing chairs in the classroom. I mean, that was a rough year for that kid and that teacher. And I saw her today, and she is so happy to still be in this district. And I said, "I'm so glad that it wasn't my kid." But I think that the trajectory that I've seen for him and for all of the teachers who supported him during those difficult times, I'm really glad that we're
038taking a moment to ensure that our teachers feel that support because it really does impact our kids. So thank you. - All right, Ms. Streiff Oji. - So I had a question on the structural priorities, but you answered that. I appreciate, I just want to say this, because I work with districts across the metro, lots of districts and charters, and I see the morale, but to see it being addressed in our district, not only at the teacher level, but at this site leadership level and district cabinet level as well. I know it does trickle down, and I know that when teachers are feeling taken care of and supported in their role, it does impact a lot of things in a school, academic data as well as discipline data. So the partnership between the union, the
039district, and the willingness of everyone at each level to partner and tackle this is very helpful. And the data that's shared to show those bright spots and where we do need to focus are our areas. So I just want to say thank you. It is a need across the country and it's a challenging job. I challenge anyone to get in there, kindergarten classroom. Thank you. - [Scott] Ms. Daniels. - I'm aligned with what Chris just said, but I'd like to thank the district for working to support our staff and particularly I think in a culture that nationwide doesn't always support public educators. And I think anything we can do to support the classroom teacher and other staff that work with students and give them the support that they deserve and need to become their best
040self and to retain their talent here in our district and just in education in general is of utmost importance because we won't be able to sustain our district or any public education district without the support of initiatives like this. So I just want to say thank you so much for your work and I hope it continues. And I really am excited to see the improved results and that we're going to work on the issues that are still issues that we need to improve on. So thank you very much everyone who's been involved. - [Scott] Ms. Beloyed. - You said, forgive me for missing what you said, but you said White Bear Lake was an outlier on something in particular. What was that? - In terms of offering direct support to principals and supporting the their
041leadership in creating positive cultures for staff and students alike, there's a lot of research that we spend a lot of money on teacher retention and school climate and we forget a key player and that is the person who's leading the school and supporting them to do their jobs well is something that I think White Bear Lake does exceptionally. The principals in this district really believe deeply in their staff and their students and also need a thought partner every now and again to make sure they can sustain the work too. - Thank you. I just want to say it's exciting because we're all working together on this and pulling, all pulling or rowing in the same direction, let's say. So we're thankful for all the work everybody's doing. Thank you. - [Hallie] Thank you. - We're
042going to move on now to discussion item B3, academic data overview. This is going to be Dr. Gillespie, is it, Ms. Fabeck? - Yep. Chair Arcand, members of the board, thank you again for having us here. I'd like to introduce Disa Fabeck. She's one of the newer members of our team. You're maybe on a couple weeks now. - Yeah. - Who's our district assessment coordinator and also educational technology coordinator. I think I got the title right. And Disa comes to us from Columbia Heights, so. - I do. - All right. - Good evening. It's a pleasure to meet you and a pleasure to be here. So, as Dr. Gillespie said, we're going to go through some academic data. I apologize, I'll talk a little louder. Got my summer cold today. Just a reminder, you'll see
043this quite a few times. The data is currently embargoed by MDE, the Minnesota Department of Education. So we're just going to talk about general trends with statewide data and then more specific trends with our local data today. Please note too that the Science MCA test was changed this past year and so they are not releasing data until October, and we can expect the same trend next year with the MCA Reading test. So we will not have data until a little bit further in the school year next year. So White Bear Lake area schools, as you are aware, is really a tiered system of identification and looking at our data, we don't look at things in silo. And so tonight we're not going to just talk about state data, but some more data as well. So
044really looking tonight at MCA, annual, and a little bit teaser of this year's data, and then some FastBridge data as well. And we'll talk about the metrics for those and why we're using both and why we can look at them in tandem together. And I also included some research in there as well so we could know that we're basing this on what's best for students and what the research says is best. You will see on your screen, here's our MCA Reading data trends for the past several years. The orange line is of course White Bear Lake area schools. It's the average of all of our grades. And then the gray line is the Minnesota state average of all the grades that take MCA Reading. And again, as a teaser, we can't tell you exactly where
045we are this year, where the state is. But we can give you an overall understanding that the state has really maintained where it was, around where it was from the past two to three years. But White Bear Lake area schools has improved. So we're going against that statewide trend in MCA Reading literacy proficiency. And we're even improving from last year. So moving off of our statewide data, we wanted to dive into FastBridge. So FastBridge is a different assessment tool. It's a local screener that we give three times a year. It's one of the approved screeners for dyslexia that MDE has approved with the Reed Act. And just note that the FastBridge Early Reading Composite is a very different assessment than an MCA. But it's also very important. We don't have early education, K1 and 2
046reading at the state level data. So when we look at this, what we're looking at is the students who are on track to meet the benchmark. That is how FastBridge words this. So we do this three times a year, fall, winter, and spring. Up here we have fall in the light orange and spring in the dark orange. And we have 2022-23, 23-24, and then last year, 24-25. So you can see that pretty big jump from fall to spring of last year specifically. And this is all of our kindergartners. This is done one on one. It is not a computer adaptive test. And so the students get four different sub-tests and they are different. So the benchmark changes in complexity and more challenging for the reading of the student from fall to spring. So we also
047parceled this out by first grade. Again, it says "Early Reading Composite FastBridge," which was the same title on the previous slide. But it is a different assessment for our first graders. And again, they're screened three times a year with this signal of, are they on track to meet grade level benchmarks by the spring? So 58% of our students coming in last year for first grade were on track in the fall. And then by the spring, 63% of them were on track. So we saw that growth. Excuse me. And so for this slide, we're doing a little bit more of a zoomed out like we did with our MCA Reading assessment results. So this is all grades two through eight. aReading is a similar in format to an MCA test. It's adaptive. The students see several
048grades above and several grade level questions below. The computer then thinks it can assess where that student is falling within their reading capabilities. And there's a couple of different measures within the aReading suite. So not the same test for second and eighth graders, but the same layout and format. So we're going to shift now to math, MCA Math. A similar teaser of a trend line here. So White Bear Lake area schools with all of our grades 3 through 8 and 11 on average increase from our previous year and continue to go against the statewide trend line of maintaining, slightly improving from the previous year. So in partnership with earlyReading for kindergarten, we have earlyMath. So again, this is done one on one. It's very grade level appropriate for a kindergarten student. We give this three
049times a year. The benchmark increases. Just to give you some context with this, and we have three years of data for this for our kindergartners. So not the same group of students, but always measuring our students in kindergarten. And last year we saw an improvement of 72% in the fall and then 77% in the spring. Thank you. Then we go back to first grade with the math as well. So seeing that fall to spring difference over the past three years. And then again combining grades three through eight with our aMath, that adaptive math test from FastBridge. So looking at the students who are at low or no real calculated risk to not meeting grade level benchmark standards, which is kind of a funny way to say proficient in the terms of FastBridge. So of course,
050we look at our learners as a more holistic, multi-tiered approach. So we wanted to include our ACT score trends as well. So we're thinking about pathways. I know we have a very robust career and college readiness pathway at our high school that of course stems throughout all of our programs and sites. So looking here at the composite score, and this is really composed of four areas for the ACT, English, math, reading and science. And this is really a universal test taken throughout the nation. We give it to all 11th graders or 12th graders if it best suits their needs at that point in time, once for free during the school day. So we're really encapsulating and encompassing all of our 11th graders. Now, this is data for the graduating class. So this is not necessarily
051our last year's data, but the students who graduated last year, how they did on the ACT overall. So you can see that the dark orange is how White Bear Lake Area School high school students are doing, and then as compared to the state and national averages. And then we know that students who are enrolled in advanced coursework, AP has a lot of data behind them through the College Board. It's a pretty robust data warehouse there. But the students who are more likely to take an AP class, are more likely to feel successful in that course, gain college credit, gain some confidence. And so we included our AP numbers as well. So you can see the program has really grown. Not only are more students taking AP courses, but they're taking the test, which is really
052encouraging as well. So the top number is how many tests have been taken over the past couple of years. And the bottom number is student enrollment. So you can see we have some students taking multiple AP tests. And then when we look at what this equates to for college, so specifically looking at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, students who get a 3 or higher on their AP test will typically get college credit depending on the subject area. But we had 80% of our students last year achieve college credit in one or more AP tests, which is a huge accomplishment. And we can see that over time with our high school students as well. But definitely a celebration we're excited about. And I always like to say, "Well, what does this mean?" I used to
053teach high school science, right? So what does this mean for me? You know, tell me how I can benefit from this. Well, our students last year alone, not combined with any other components, earned over $1.35 million to the University of Minnesota. And so some of them are going in with over $3,000 of tuition already. And that's just even if they've taken it as a 10th grader. We even had some 9th grade students take AP. So they're building up their free college credit through this process. - What questions might you have for Disa or myself? - Thank you. This is really good to see broken down like this. So I have a question about up here and a question about down here. So as we're looking at all of these numbers, what is your assessment of
054how we're trending at 30,000 feet? Because we're seeing some differences. And that kindergarten number is amazing. The jump, meeting the benchmark. But then in math, it's dipping a little bit. So what does it look like holistically? - It's a good question. I think that's something we're still parceling out, especially just being invited to be part of this team. But there are some kind of similar to our previous presentation, some real bright spots, like you mentioned kindergarten. And then there's some areas that we really need to digest further. There are some new state standards, as I know many of you are aware. And so realigning our practices and our CT time, CIT time, and really making sure our goals are in alignment, but from a larger context, I can't say trends in FastBridge for the state,
055but we can with MCAs. So that's really encouraging that regardless of how the state is doing, White Bear Lake is still improving on our practices so that students can get a better equipped score for themselves. - Well, and I appreciate having these multiple tests included because MCA is one day, you know? And it's, if a kid didn't have breakfast that morning or if somebody is sick, then that affects their test scores. But having FastBridge and AP here is really good too. So then Dr. Gillespie, questions for you then. What does this mean on a granular level? So we, over this summer, last year, I presented, I think about three times around when the FastBridge came out. And so over the summer, we had three full days solely with our principals to dive into, what does
056the data show us? Of all the data that we have, where are we seeing hotspots in each school? Meaning we're seeing grade level teams that are really achieving higher than what we're showing you with these district averages. At the same time, are there schools or specific grade levels that we're seeing the opposite? We're seeing some real struggles, and then diving in and saying, okay, what are we seeing in those teams that have success, which we do have trends coming out, teams that align to our guaranteed and viable curriculum, which we've done a significant amount of work around ELA, our English curriculum, and we're in the process around math. And so we have elementary piloting two math curricula this year. And that is, so we know curriculum is part of it. Then we also look at,
057how are we analyzing data? How are we looking at teachers, educators, principals collecting data on how our students learning what they're teaching. And so what are our collaborative structures around that? And then we collaborate a lot across the buildings to say, "Where are we excited about this growth? Where are we still not seeing it? If it's flat, is there something that we need to do specifically to target and support the educators in class?" Is it, sometimes there's a lot of subs, you know, that year, for whatever reason. There could be some kind of Band-Aid fix, per se, or we know exactly why and we really want to get to the root cause. So it's complex. We do a lot, and then, so we did those three days with our principals, and then we had two
058full days with district leadership teams, meaning each school has a leadership team with teacher educators, staff across their building that dive in and also say, "Okay, what is our data Showing us?" And then we set building wide goals. And you'll see when we come back again and present around the Comprehensive Achievement Civic Readiness Report. We've done a really significant alignment kind of overhaul around our goals. So every school will have FastBridge goals. You'll see how those align so that we can track those. And it's really been an ongoing focus of ours and will continue to be, because we know this is why we're here, to make sure our kids not only are happy and proud when they graduate, but that they have the skills they need to be successful. - And I appreciate that you
059said it's complex because it's incredibly complex. So thank you both. - Okay, Ms. Beloyed. - So within the hot spots that you're seeing with the change in the math standards, so the first grade, I mean every single one of those has gone down. Are we seeing what those actual hotspots are? Are they relative or are they related to the change in standards? What are we seeing as an overall, anything? - It's a little hard to say because it is so complex and there's multitudes. So yes, our curriculum, there's new standards and we have to make sure our curriculum is aligned to the that. So I do think that's part of it. The other piece is it's been, and Jen, I don't know if we know off the top of our head, Jen is unable to
060be here tonight. But it's been a long time. I don't want to misquote, but I think it's 10 plus years since we've had a new curriculum in math. And so that's one of the areas. The other area is diving in. And we've really focused on instructional strategies because part of it isn't all solely curriculum. It's what instructional strategies. And all of our educators have had professional development around some really high-level leverage strategies. So for example, math talks and how students talk themselves through thinking through math problems. And so we are able to pull out individual teams and say, "This team has had growth." Like, I mean we can absolutely give you, but the range of what we're seeing in each grade level school, it's a wide range for us to get the average the district
061average that we're showing you. And so then we're able to build on that. But sometimes it's whether they're following the curriculum. Right now math is a little more complex because we have been so focused on literacy that we're in this mid-shift of doing that same high-level focus, deep focus with math, and we'll do that for multiple years. So it's really, I know it sounds like, I'm not trying to have it sound wishy washy, but it's hard to pinpoint one thing. But it's surrounding around instruction, curriculum, and then how are we really using the data to support us and making our educators make a ton of decisions and collaborating together, because the more our teams collaborate together, the more this job not only feels more manageable for everyone, but those are the teams that have the
062greatest impact in terms of achievement results. - [Deborah] Do our teachers have access to the MCA? So after they're taken, teachers can go back and see what the questions are, see? - Not always the questions. There's a few that are released each year so they can get a general idea, but they also are able to see like by standard or by broader context, like how their students did overall. But they can see the preliminary results pretty quickly. - [Deborah] But they can't see the actual questions? - No. Unless they're released by MDE, no. - So that we get strand data that's aligned to the standards because really that's the main purpose, which I know you know, around the MCAs, is to measure how our students are doing in relation to the standards and benchmarks. And
063so we get benchmark reports that district wide that can show us, okay, are there some areas that, I'm trying to think of one off the top of my head. - Informational text. - Thank, informational text. Is there something that across the board our students didn't meet standards in that one area and then were able to look at curriculum review. Often those wide reports don't, they don't show the hotspot areas the way you might think sometimes as you're looking at the data. So it is diving in with multiple areas of assessments and then continuing to work through it. - I mean, I've been diving in on the numbers for, you know what, I don't know how long now. But I'm always interested in how the tests are set up, and there used to be the phrase,
064"teaching to the test," and I never truly really understood what that meant, but to me we have these standards, but we don't know what, a question can be asked in five different ways and one student understands first way, one student understands option 2 and 3, and one student doesn't understand any of them or one student understands all of them. And it's all based on the actual question. We have all the numbers and I think the FastBridge probably tells us more than what the MCAs would do in any state. It's just an overall concern to me, because so many people are harping and hitting on this right now, and it's so complex. And we said that time and time again. But you can go back 20 years and you can see all of the test scores
065in the 70s, and then all of a sudden they go down. And then they go back up, and then they go down. Well, it's the same teachers in some of these time frames. It's the same cohort of students going through, so, there's got to be a better way to do this and to actually get kids prepared for life outside of high school, whether that be college, whether that be getting a job, whether that be doing all of those things. So I guess I don't really have a question there. It's just more of a statement looking at these things for so long that it's just frustrating to me to not be able to get to the bottom of most of it. And it's got to be frustrating. for the teachers because they all want to make
066sure that their students are doing as well as they possibly can. Doesn't mean every student will. Doesn't mean every student won't. - Yeah, I think that's, it can be frustrating, especially if we take different tests in isolation. And so that's why, when Disa is presenting this is we use triangulation of data. We also look at attendance, behavior. It's the whole experience. But then looking at some of the data I've presented, how many of our students need remedial classes when they're entering college? What's our graduation percentage? Where are students getting entered? It's just so complex. And so how do we tell a good story knowing that really, the overall public, they want their kids to have the skills to be able to thrive outside of school, and we all share that goal. So it can be
067frustrating if you're seeing data saying, "I don't think we're achieving that mark yet." And what we know is we are achieving the mark in places that we're really excited about, and it's not consistent enough, and it's not, I will tell you, I'm so proud of our teams, how hard they work, how hard our educators are leaning in. It's not for lack of desire. So then it is about us coming together and saying, "What could be the root cause." And that's when you hear me saying, "There's a multitude," which you've also addressed. But it is knowing, having the public know we take this very seriously. We're proud of the work where we see positives and we're also frustrated and not okay with the areas that we're not achieving the mark yet. And there's a ton of
068work going on every single day. - [Deborah] I appreciate that. Thank you. - [Scott] I think, Ms. Streiff Oji - My question is around consistency and equity across the district for those that are not on track or those students that are not on track to meet benchmarks or scoring at grade level. Is there a plan, system-wide, for how they address those at every school, and how do we ensure that every school gets the same? What do I want to say? If a student at one school is scoring, gets a certain score, and a student at another school gets the same score, are we ensuring those students are getting the same types of interventions and support based, and I asked that question because sometimes one school will have more and maybe not enough staffing to meet
069the needs. So at this school they have more kids. So I'm just wondering how that is addressed and is there consistency across the board on how schools are addressing those that aren't meeting benchmarks? - Yes, that's one of our focus areas. So I'm going to back up a little bit and then we'll get to that part of it. So we operate, and Disa mentioned this, in a multi-tiered systems, MTSS you might hear which is education jargon, but essentially it means we have three different levels that we look at around the support for students. And tier one, is that what you would think of universal instruction, what's going on in all of our schools. When we talk about guaranteed and viable curriculum, how are we guaranteeing our students in kindergarten, whether they're at Oneka, Otter, Willow
070Lane, Lakeaires, they're all having the same experience. That's the work we're doing when you talk about CKLA, you'll hear from letters, all of that is that tier one. Then we have those two other layers, Tier two and tier three. Some of those interventions are provided in the classroom and so we have interventions at the school that partner with educators. How do we make sure our educators have the tools they need? Depending on it might be that your third grade class this year, you have a lot, way more than you're used to of students that are falling in that tier two. Then we have tier three, which is more specialized, individualized. And so we have been part of, we received a grant multiple years from around MTSS in Minnesota. And so really looking at how do
071we systematize that across our whole system, while at the same time addressing that we do have schools with different needs. We have four Title 1 elementary schools that also receive additional funding, and that is aligned around those support structures. At the same time, how do we make sure we're allocating the staffing based on student need, which is that that's what we do every year based on student achievement data in each one of our elementary schools in particular. And then our middle schools and secondary, it's exciting that we'll get to focus on that more with this grant, but also with the Reed Act as we roll that out. Secondary can be a little bit more complex in how to do that. And so leaning into that with our principals and support teams. Additionally, you've heard us
072talk about BARR, Building Assets, Reducing Risks, another structure that falls in those multi-tiered systems of support, but has us look at attendance data, student experience, building on students' strengths. And we have three of our elementary schools are BARR schools, both of our middle schools and our high school. And so that also couples with that support. I think I answered your question. - You did answer. And thank you for sharing that. I really appreciate that. And also for committing to taking a team through the MiMTSS training voluntarily. I appreciate that. - [Scott] Okay, in a second, Ms. Daniels. - I just have a question about the same early math composite, FastBridge, grade one. So one of your comments was that the FastBridge increases in complexity with each of the tests. So even though it looks, I
073mean, I'm looking at that, I'm going, okay, 73 to 66. So that means that more, fewer kids are, more kids are at risk. Fewer kids are not, not at risk. But that doesn't mean they're not making progress, because if the test is getting more complex, those kids can still be growing, but they're maybe just on the, they're just not quite out of that. I mean, that doesn't mean they're not making any progress or they're going down. They could be making progress, right? Am I thinking about this correctly? - Yes, that is spot on, absolutely. - [Kathleen] Okay. - Absolutely. - It's a little worrisome if you just look at the straight numbers. But if you think about those tests being increasingly more difficult, those four times they're taking it, they're taking a harder test in
074the spring than they are in the fall. - Going back to Ms. Beloyed's earlier question, you can, our educators can see the student-specific scores for FastBridge, and we have software that makes that easier to pull and that's work that we're doing. So those, they can look and say, "Okay, Kathleen was doing well and then all of a sudden it went backwards when I really thought that, so how do I dive in and really look at that?" So they're able to do that. Every time we take it, it's ready for us. - [Deborah] That's also reassuring. Thank you. - [Scott] Okay, Mr. Skaar. - Well, thank you for sharing that information. I have a suggestion though. I think we should weather adjust the fall and spring numbers to see if it would make a difference. -
075Yep. - Okay, that was a joke. So just so overall, if we netted this down, reading is improving. Math, we're still having some difficult, some challenges around. Would that be a fair assessment? - [Alison] Yeah, I think that's fair. - Overall? So based on the math, based on the reading numbers, it's like continue to do what we're doing and invest more in what's working. On the math side, what's working, what's not working on that side of it? - So one, we know as I talk about those three different areas, curriculum we need to look at. And so elementary has been in a curriculum review around the new standards, and they'll be piloting two new curricula because we need to choose a new curriculum by the end of this year. And so we have teachers. Teachers
076are very excited about having new materials. And we had teachers opt in. In every single one of our elementary schools, they're piloting two different programs. We have a curriculum review committee that has educators on it, administrators, and really they'll make a decision for us to decide that. So then elementary, it'll be leaning in just like we did. Right now we're doing instructional strategies. So they're getting, Wednesday, all of our elementary school schools will get math instructional strategies as part of our professional development alongside then those who are choosing the curriculum. Middle school is doing the same exact thing there. Still, I think they'll be piloting, if I'm remembering correctly, it is this year, but I believe they're about a semester behind. So December we'll have some middle school with new curriculum decided at the end
077of this year. And then high school, I think is a little bit delayed, but they also are starting curriculum review. The other piece is to help with those instructional strategies along the way because those are the same regardless of what curriculum we choose. And then it's looking and saying, "What first grade teams did we see that really had success?" What were they doing in that classroom? And then we go out as a whole team and work with the first grade team. We did this around literacy. They're great. Like, okay, how do we build on this together? What strategies can we give you? What might you be seeing? Is there something we need to do with intervention? So it's really a multi-pronged approach as we lean into it. I don't know that there's, we'll still decide
078on what type of large professional development needs to be given around math like we did around letters for literacy. It's a little bit more specific, but the team will help recommend that. And then next year, you'll see, we'll just keep leaning in because we're getting very close to deep implementation for our literacy curriculum, which is what we want to see when that becomes standard practice and then having our educators feel really good. We're excited about the results we're seeing. And we'll replicate that process with math. - So what's your confidence level that the math is going to improve over the next two years, based on your revised approach and initiatives around math? - I'm always confident. (audience laughing) I believe in us. We wouldn't be doing this if we weren't confident around that. And so
079we'll just keep leaning into it until we achieve it. - [Scott] So the adoption of the math curriculum we'd be implementing next fall? - [Alison] Yep. - [Scott] A year from now we'd have selected, - [Alison] For K-8. - And we'd be implementing, correct? Okay. - And then high school, I believe, is a year behind, but I'd have to double-check that. - So do we see any potential of, with our efforts on the math, on math, cannibalizing the successes that we've had on the reading side, or are those two mutually exclusive, independent initiatives that don't gobble up resources from one or the other? - Resources, I don't see. Time and bandwidth, which is why we've been so strategic around, let's make sure we're really leaning into this. Letters is two full years. We have the
080majority of overwhelming majority of our educators. Now we're moving on to secondary. And so it really is, how do we stage it? Well, at the same time, we have urgency. Our kids before us, we want them to do better on the math. And so no, we won't let ourselves take back steps. It doesn't mean that there might not be a blip along the way where you're looking at a grade level and saying, "What happened here? Let's come back to the table." But that's why those continuous improvement structures are so important for us. But resources we've been very strategic to make sure we can maintain using the funds that we've had. We do a lot of thinking about how do we build something in if we need to use outside PD, how do we build our
081capacity? So that's not our long-term model, train the trainer kind of thing. - Just one last comment. You know, we talk about being a world-class education experience for our students and parents, and when we're looking at our numbers versus state averages, it might be helpful to have, well, what is the top 10% or 90th percentile? Where are their scores at? You know, as we strive to be world class, where are they at versus where we're at? It's just a suggestion. Thank you. - Any other questions? Thank you for the time they're presenting and all the time you're putting in. We appreciate it. - [Alison] Thank you. - We're going to move on to C1 labor negotiations. This portion of the meeting may be closed to consider strategy for labor negotiations, including negotiating strategies or developments
082or discussion in review of labor negotiation proposals, conducted pursuant to Minnesota Statute 179A.01 to 179A.25. What will happen is I'm going to about to ask for a motion to go into closed session. We'll do closed session, and then we'll come out and we'll do our adjournment. So just want to let you know. So at this time, can I get a motion to move into closed session? - So moved. - Ellison, is there a second? - [Christina] Second. - Second by Streiff Oji. Okay. All in favor say, "Aye." - [Board Members] Aye. - All opposed, same sign. All right. We are now in closed session. (gavel striking)