April 28, 2025 - School Board Work Session

001(gavel bangs) - I now call this meeting of the School Board of Independent School District 624 to order. Will the Clerk please call the roll? - Skaar? - Here. - Thompson. - Here. - Arcand. - Here. - Beloyed. - Here. - Daniels here. Ellison. - Here. - All right, we're gonna start with our discussion item B1, Otter Lake Elementary Update, Dr. Gillespie and Ms. Nelson. - [Dr. Gillespie] Good evening, Chair Arcand, members of the board, I'd like to introduce Ang Nelson, Principal of Otter Lake, who will give us an update on her school this year. - All right. Good evening, everyone. I promised the few people that came ahead of time that I would- - You should get out of pause. - Hello? Oh, run it back. Good evening, everyone. I promised the few people

002who came early that I would pick up the pace so we didn't have to use the storm shelter. So we'll clip right along here, but- - [Arcand] Which by the way is just the hallway. - Oh, good, noted, noted. - It's very close. - Noted. - [Board Member] But we'd like to avoid using it. - Right. Well, I'm super excited to talk about Otter Lake Elementary tonight. So a few things I'm gonna talk about is our priorities, just a little bit of background about Otter Lake, our academic goals, student experience, briefly, lots about our family engagement and then kind of what's next for the rest of this school year. All the pictures you'll see are pictures of Otter Lake students. I won't go into detail about who they are and how much I love them,

003but they are all Otter Lake students if you were to come to the school. All right, so just a little bit about Otter Lake. So this is my second year at Otter Lake Elementary. It's a neighborhood school across the street from Tamarack Nature Center. We have around 490 students, I would say, we have five cluster programs, so a center-based school. So students from across the district gets buses to Otter for highest-level programming for several special education programs. We have an amazing staff who've been at Otter for a very long time and it creates an amazing feeling of family, I would say, for both family, students, and staff there. You might see in the bottom right-hand corner, there's a little special picture I put in there, Officer Betty who came during our read-a-thon to read to

004some of our students. There is another special guest that's photoed in here that you'll see later on in the presentation. But the main event is down there in the bottom left, and that is the staff of Otter Lake Elementary. So here are the Otter Lake priorities for this current school year. You can see that the mission is over there on the left. I'm not gonna read it all to you, and then on here we also have our objectives of Otter Lake Elementary. And then our main focus area is we will ensure the academic success of each student. And the way that we do that is really by focusing on those four main areas. So student achievement, which we're gonna talk about tonight, student experience, which we'll highlight, family engagement, and then equity is really embedded

005into all of those. We do have a specific equity goal. I'll talk a little bit about that when we talk about student achievement. And then wrapped in all of that is really our staff wellbeing to make sure that they love coming to Otter Lake Elementary every day, that they feel connected and that they have fun together. All right, so our academic goal this year, and first I actually just wanna highlight, I'm sure you've had other elementary schools have a FastBridge as part of their goal. But I wanted to make sure that we knew what FastBridge was before we kind of dive into it. So FastBridge is a research-based universal screener and progress monitoring tool. So it really looks at specific skills, which is different than an MCA exam, which looks at putting all those skills

006together into one test score. So I just kind of wanted to highlight that piece. And when we talk about low risk, we're considering the student is considered on track and not needing intervention and meeting grade level standards if they're low risk. So our goal this year is that 80% of students will demonstrate being low risk measured by FastBridge, and that 95% of students with IEP literacy objectives will have met their goal. There's around 150 students at Otter Lake that are on an IEP. And so that is, if you do the math, I think it's about 30% of our school population. With that said, they don't all have literacy goals. So if they don't have a literacy goal, they'll be included in this data. If they do have a literacy goal, they're separated out. So for

007the purpose of this presentation, I don't have the specific special ed data because really we're in the thick of IEP season right now. So I pretty much have a meeting every single day after school where we're reviewing IEP goals, setting new goals for next year. We really are not gonna be able to say with certainty that we've met that goal until the end of the year. With that said, if a student is not meeting their IEP goal, that's gonna already be looked at. So I feel really confident saying we're gonna meet that goal. But I just wanted to let you know that there's not a special slide for that student population. So for kindergarten here you can see that it compares from fall to winter and they're at 84%. Now we're coming upon our spring

008assessment season, we're not there yet. We are hopeful, confident, excited that we'll maintain the same data and that these students will remain low risk. Obviously as the testing season goes on, students are expected to learn and do more. And so, for example, you know, students in each grade level may be expected to know or do 20, 40 more words than they would in the winter. I don't have those exact metrics, but it's not the same exact test. So even the students who are low-risk currently will be expected to do more as they go along, which obviously we want them all to learn and grow. First grade is sitting at 72% at low risk. I'll kind of clip through this and then talk about how we got here. Second grade is at 71% in low risk.

009We're very excited about these results by the way. Teachers have worked very, very hard this year, both in literacy and math. Third grade students are at 70%, fourth grade is at 82%. I just wanna highlight really fast, if you remember our MCA scores from last year, they were heartbreaking, specifically for this cohort. Very, very low. There was probably a 50 point growth between, and given you don't really want to compare MCA and FastBridge. It's not the same test, but the growth between third to fourth grade has been astronomical for these students. So I really just wanna highlight that, that is a huge jump. And so, we're excited to see, you know, we're in the midst of MCA season right now, what the results will be in August, and then fifth grade is at 69%. So

010some of the things that we've really focused on this year is making sure that we have really tiered support for academic, knowing that tier one is 100% which means every single student, whether they're receiving special ed services or not, are receiving all of the tier one instruction. No one's getting pulled away from that. And then from there, really making sure that we're strategic around our intervention model. So I know I was here when Lori presented on Onica, so she kind of went through the WIN structure in detail. So we have the same WIN structure as as do all elementaries where we have the 30 minutes for literacy, 30 minutes for math. We do progress monitoring for students. That's how students are grouped. Students do switch teachers for their group based on the skill that they're

011working on. And then every six weeks it looks to see, do they switch groups again? Students call it like graduating. Like, "Do I need to be in a group still?" Like, they're very motivated to not be in a WIN group or do they need to see an intervention teacher or do they enter into our child study process where it's not working, they've done rounds and rounds and rounds of intervention, could something else be happening for the student? And so, we've been really intentional with that as well as paying attention to what the other students are doing during that time. So when teachers have their small groups and some students are leaving for specialized services, all the other students are intentionally working on things that are meaningful to them. Part of that is with our family

012volunteer program. So I'll talk about that in a little bit. But they are in reading groups, they are in reading groups with each other, with family volunteers, through enrichment, or sometimes just like needing to stay steady where they're very close to maybe needing to join a WIN group, so they might need to do a little more practice and then they can join. So just really being intentional around that time. We've had a lot of professional development focused on differentiation and just scaffolding, best practice, high-impact strategies, modeling it for staff, and then having them brainstorm how it's gonna be integrated into their instructional practices and seeing really high results from that already. Our teams are highly collaborative with one another. They really want to work together. They're not competitive with one another. Like, "Oh, they have

013higher scores than me." They're like, "What are you doing to get those higher scores? 'Cause I wanna get my kids there too." So they're highly collaborative. And then, like I said, our parent volunteers this year, I really, I know that they have made a huge difference with our literacy and math scores and I'm excited to talk about that as well. All right, so for student experience, we do have a student experience goal where, and it was that 100% of students felt valued, cared for, and supported at school. When we did our initial survey at the beginning of the year, and we did it K-5 for the littles, they did it one-on-one with a teacher with emojis and the older kids did it on a Google Form. Each student then had to identify a trusted grownup

014in the building. And then we compared that with our DESSA data, our social emotional screener, anyone who didn't have a grownup that they identified, you know, we would talk to them about that, what's going on? But we already, in the fall, was at 99.6% of students identified feeling that way. And so I don't wanna spend, I'm not gonna go into detail other than highlighting, here are some very cool things that we're doing at Otter Lake to help students feel that way. And there is a special guest on the bottom middle that you can see, Dr. Gillespie has come to read to students at Otter Lake as well. And then we'll give that survey again to students again in the spring just to make sure that we've maintained that. So then more in our family experience.

015So when we met in August with our leadership team at our Data Instructional Leadership Day, they really wanted to extend themselves because we knew our student experience goal from last year, we sat at right around 98%, and they were like, well, just because we're almost there doesn't mean we're not going to keep trying to make our students feel loved and cared for and supported. But what about our families? And so they wanted to add a family experience goal, which is 60% of Otter Lake families identifying, feeling meaningfully connected to the Otter Lake Elementary School community. This cute little photo is from one of our community dinner nights where we have a Student Ambassadors program, which most fourth and fifth grade students are a part of. This is one volunteer experience where they can host welcoming

016families as they come in. They love doing it, they feel very responsible and they are very responsible. So we we're able to survey 119 families during conferences in the fall and 81%-ish looking at fours and fives ranking fairly high stating that they felt connected to the Otter Lake School community. So some of the things that we've done to kind of kick it off and then that we've done throughout the year, and then we're looking to resurvey at our carnival, which 100% of families attend, I can say that with confidence, is last year I pulled together a Family Advisory Council that is separate from the PTA, as the PTA is amazing, and they raise just a boatload of money for Otter and we're able to do a lot of amazing things. But that is their primary

017goal is support teachers through funding. And it is a separate nonprofit group. I was looking to have families be more involved in decision making and just what do you think about the different curriculums we're using? Do you feel like you're represented in this school? And a way that I wanted to try to have them give that feedback was by using, it's in the upper left-hand corner is our family engagement tool that was created. And so families volunteer to be part of this Family Advisory Committee and they identified what they would like to see the staff work on for family experience goals. These are just four of them, there's actually more. A lot of it had to do with communication styles with families, with just recognizing bias and having staff go through ongoing training. Having some

018personalized plans with their kiddos and having it feel community based and that everyone was welcomed. So that's really helped guide our work throughout the year in addition to having it be academic focus for our professional development is also having pieces of this towards our professional development so we can also help reach these goals. So when we go back to the Family Advisory Council here in the spring and we can say, "Does this look/feel different to you?" Here's what we've done to see what they say and what they'd like to see us work on for next year. Another thing that we did was in the bottom left is we were really meaningful around our conferences. And when we kicked off in the fall with our welcome back conferences was including this little definition box, if you

019will. A lot of times, you know, we said, "Oh yeah," we always ask like, "What do you want us to know about your students?" And people don't always know what to say. So being really specific, like, what academically are you excited about? Are you nervous about? What social emotionally are you excited about or nervous about? But then defining, what do we mean by that? Because we in school world might say emotions and they might say, "They have huge reactions, they don't wanna go to school. It's hard to get their shoes on." We can help parents with that. We can give them ideas for that. And families don't always know that that's something we can partner with them on. So really being proactive during conferences to engaging in those kinds of conversations. A few other things

020that we've done this year is we've hosted several community dinner and conversations that were wildly successful, like 600 people wildly successful, providing free dinner. And then we have conversation cards on the tables where families talk about what's important about their student at Otter Lake, what's their vision for their student at Otter Lake, and having them like, "Okay, everybody stand, go find a new partner that you haven't talked to," with the goal really being to connect with people that you have not talked to before. The first time we did this, that was scary even for grownups to do. And we highlighted that we asked students to do this on a daily basis and they were more encouraged to do so. Depending upon how many people are left at the end of the night, we like to

021close out with some type of circle to kind of share reflections from the evening, what are your hopes and dreams for the future? That's where we got a lot of our ideas for what we did this year. For example, having a student group that's focused on culture that anyone can be a part of, it is a lot of our BIPOC students, but anyone is allowed to be part of it. That really came from our family saying, "I think we need to do something like this at the elementary level." And we said, "Oh, okay." So it's meeting the needs of our families. They're asking for it, and so really going back to them saying, "Is this what you had wanted?" And then, "Yeah, that is exactly what we wanted." So just that ongoing consistent communication two-way.

022And then our volunteer program is probably the biggest highlight, which is as part of the Welcome Back conference, really asking everyone if they would be willing to give anything to Otter Lake throughout the year, whether that be volunteering, or knowledge, or I mean anything, there was a whole list of things. In the end, we had over 200 people that have volunteered throughout the year. It's about five to 15 that come in per day, it's really a great system that's worked out in the office. We have a few that even have now a permanent badge because they come in so frequently and the kids so look forward to the time with 'em. So they help with literature groups, math games, student ambassadors. When we had our huge read-a-thon event, it was ran and facilitated throughout the

023day by parent volunteers. We really wouldn't have been able to do it without them. One of the goals was we can ask families to come in and do some tasks, like, ripping worksheets out of workbooks but, or we could ask them to come in and help us work towards our goals of getting kids to read at grade level, and families 100% stepped up to the plate. Grandmas and grandpas, neighbors, like, people that don't even have people in the building, of course, they all go through a background check and we have them sign off in like a ethics, here's what we abide to. If someone wasn't abiding by those things, I would have to talk to them. I've never had to talk to anybody. It's amazing. And then those are some quotes from some of our

024volunteers and we have our big volunteer thank you breakfast this week actually. So, really excited. We've had 75 people volunteer yes, and we have some fun things in store for them. So what's next is on June 3rd, our fourth and fifth graders all participate in a day of service where there is several different service opportunities through the food shelf, Ramsey County Sheriff, there's so many, I honestly don't even know all of them. They make sandwiches, they make blankets, they spray painted the parking lot, Tim, we got approval on this, so don't, like, freak out. (laughs) But it's all about to help control traffic. They clean up the gardens around Otter Lake Elementary. It's a really meaningful day. And for partners to come in and do that with us and the kids love it. We're getting

025a new playground, which was a huge thing that we worked on at the beginning of the year. So between the Family Advisory Council, the PTA, every student got a say and every staff got a say in something to do with the playground, whether it's the pieces that are involved in it, the colors, the students got to pick the colors and it was a deal. And they're so excited. It's getting installed in June. And just to highlight that this is a fully-inclusive playground. Currently at Otter we have an accessible playground, which means that students who are, a lot of students that are part of our cluster programming can access parts of the playground. This playground, whether they have physical challenges or we have a lot of autism programming, these new pieces of playground equipment are designed

026for sensory needs. And so, we're really excited and so, so, so grateful to the district as this is fully funded by White Bear Lake Schools. So we're so excited to have this built and have a huge celebration, which we hope everyone comes to. And then of course, which I've already talked to you guys about is the Spanish Dual Immersion kindergarten program next year, which just recently got fully staffed and we're very excited about that. Lastly, every day I do video morning announcements and it ends with this little Otter Lake Chant where I say my part. And then on the morning announcements, I say the student part too, unless the student's with me, they say the student part. But it's actually adorable because as you walk through the building, the kids like actually say it. I

027always thought, like, "Oh, they're probably just sitting there listening to me." But they actually say it and then we end, "Go Bears!" And if I don't do that exactly, students will say, "Was something wrong this morning? You said it a little differently, there's something wrong?" "No, nothing was wrong." But they like their routine. So do I, I guess, 'cause I say it the same every day by accident. But, so that is the end, I will take questions. - Thank you, Ms. Nelson. Do we have any questions? - Why are you guys looking at me? - I don't, sorry. Do you have a question? - Well, yes, I could ask- - Okay, sir. - I took some notes. You mentioned that you had 150 students on IEP, what's the trigger point to get 'em off of

028a IEP? Is it a test or how do you determine that? - Well, there's so many different, that is a really complex question, so I'll try to answer it in a very simplified way. - [Skaar] You're gonna need to answer it in a simple way for me. - They would have to meet all of their goals and objectives to the point where the team could not come up with any more goals and objectives. They would say, "You know what? We can't even think of another thing you could work on. You're at grade level, you're independently doing it by yourself with no supports needed." I'm looking at Lisa. I mean, it would really be at that level. When I see that is, you know, we have quite a few students in speech language at Otter. Students

029do come off of speech language only IEPs. So they have these goals and objectives, they work super, super hard, they can't say their R's. They finally master it, they do it independently, they don't need those services anymore, therefore they don't need that IEP anymore. Most students, though, you know, if they are diagnosed with a disability and need an IEP, a disability is a disability, that's not something that goes away. - Right, I see. On your website, I went to each school's website. Is there a location on the website that shows, you know, the investments that were made in your school as a result of the bond referendum and the LTFM? - Ooh, that's a really good question. Probably not since you're asking that question, (laughs) but I will make a note of that. - I

030think it's more for the finance team to do. - Sure, sure. That's a really good point, though, when people go to the website to highlight, especially when this playground gets built, I mean, like, that's a really big deal. - Well, and also show the amount. - I can mention quickly that the Building Our Future page of the website does have by building projects that were on there as well. So it's in a way yes, it's absolutely there from a district perspective, but I suppose we hadn't linked it from the school right to their page. But it is there and available by building, a page for each. - Yeah. - Okay. And that's on today's website, okay, just couldn't find it. I think it'd be helpful to put it in each school where we made the

031investments so the parents that go to that website could see the investments that we made in that particular school. I think that'd be helpful. Obviously you don't have to do it for North Stars, you know, because that's a new school, but I think it'd be helpful. Thank you. - Any other questions? Yes, Ms. Beloyed. - I know we, I know we adopted a new dyslexia identification program protocols at some point in the last year, correct? - [Speaker] It was a... - The identification and ways to work with those kids. - So we've screened for dyslexia for multiple years. It was highlighted in the READ Act in terms of solidifying it for across the state, but we were already meeting those criteria. And that's one of the reasons that we progress monitor three times a year

032through FastBridge. - Okay, so is every child screened or are they just identified as potential and then... - Every child is screened, and also for some reason their IEP might dictate that they don't take FastBridge testing, but that's a very small percentage of students. - At what age do we start doing that? The screening. - Kindergarten, when they're entering kindergarten, exiting early childhood if they're with us. - Okay. - And then just to add to that, through the progress monitoring and all of the data meetings that grade level teams do, if something starts to flag, like, "That's not right, this isn't adding up," conversations with families are consistent and start early. So we send home paper copies when a student starts and ends intervention, but they also receive communication from their classroom teacher and/or the

033intervention teacher they're working with. And people are willing to have hard conversations if that's what needs to happen in terms of like, "This doesn't seem right." Or, you know, like, if they're worried about something so that there is no surprises for families 'cause that can be a hard thing for families to hear like, "Oh, my student's not reading at grade level and something might be wrong." So having those conversations early and often are super, super important. - Have we found, or have you found within Otter specifically, or Alison, this could be to you in a general way, a correlation between the results with FastBridge, I know we've only only been using it for a little while at some places, but between that and MCA's? Or do we find that there's a gap there? - [Nelson]

034We talk about it a lot actually. - [Speaker] You wanna talk about it for Otter? - Sure, yeah. - Okay. - [Nelson] So yeah, I can talk about for Otter, there is a little bit of a gap that we do see sometimes. And so, we often, we talk about why our MCE scores tend to be lower than Fast Bridge. One of the reasons is FastBridge is a screener that it's looking for very, it's screened skills and that's how I mentioned MCA is really the whole package. So a student has to be able to take all those skills to answer these questions. You know, MCA is a test that's given on two days. If a student is off those two days, that could be it, 'cause sometimes we have students where we say, "Oh my gosh,

035on Fast, they were totally at grade level, yet they were not proficient on MCA." We struggle with that and we do a deep dive on why, what their scores are, to really look at, is it appropriate for them to have intervention moving forward? And sometimes it's not, to be honest. So then it's the conversation, what was happening on the day they took that MCA that possibly influenced that? I think the other thing for Otter that we really started working on at the end of this year that will be our focus for next year is how we're engaging with our new literacy curriculum in different strategies. So, for example, on the MCA exam, you're able to use tools to highlight, circle, do things like that. We hadn't been doing that in our new literacy curriculum at

036Otter partially because some of the books you're not really supposed to write in, right? So brainstorming, like, "Hmm, it's really important for students to have that skill." So now we're gonna figure out how we're gonna do that, and practicing that with students. So we did that leading up to the MCA test and it was really having a high impact right off the bat and just what we were seeing and on the progress monitoring. So we know now that high-impact strategy will carry us into the next year and I'm certain will help us kind of bridge that gap. But there is a little bit of a gap, yep. - So we think of a balanced assessment system for our district. And so FastBridge, really, as Ang said is progress monitoring universal screener that we're required to

037do by the READ Act but we also were doing it prior to that, screens for dyslexia helps us with those skills, as you think about that build for reading comprehension. Then the MCAs really test students aligned to our academic standards. And so that is the test that we talk about. You know, it's an accountability test, comes out in August, and what we have in the middle of trying to help us are our common assessments that we give for students that are aligned to the curriculum. And so, for CKLA, our new literacy curriculum that we're in the second year for, we're looking at those assessments and how can we better use that data to also help us and see, "Okay, with FastBridge, with CKLA, what correlation are we seeing in terms of MCAs?" And so, we're

038all working together and that really is common work across districts in the state to make sure that we have a robust way of seeing how kids are doing and learning to read in school. - Okay, thank you. - Other questions? Yes, Ms. Thompson. - Well, my first question was gonna be how many students have IEPs? 'Cause you put it in your goal, so I figured that you had a higher rate of IEP. So you already answered that one. And then I just think it's important to point out that our current fifth graders, our kids who were in kindergarten the year COVID hit, so they basically lost that first year at the end and then they didn't go back to school until second grade. So when I saw, like, at first you would see those numbers

039and go, "Oh my gosh, what's going on there?" But then you can kind of piece it together and you know what happened to those students. So hopeful to see what the numbers are gonna be the next time we get the numbers for that. And then pretend you're a student, Ms. Nelson, why do we do it? - [Nelson] Oh, the whole chant? - Just the last question. - [Nelson] Oh, because I deserve the best. - (laughs) Good job. Thank you. - You forgot, go Bears. - Go Bears! - Any other questions? I just have one quick question. I'm excited to hear how many kindergartners are enrolled in the Spanish immersion approximately? - So we have two full sections. I think it's 49 at Otter and I think it's really pretty close at Matoska. Yeah. - All

040right. - So we're on track right now at Otter to have five sections of kindergarten with potentially a third one if we can, or a sixth if we can fill another immersion class. So, it's a lot of kindergartners and we're so excited. - It's gonna be exciting next year. Okay, thank you very much. - [Nelson] Yep, thank you. - We're gonna move on to discussion item B2, Vadnais Heights Elementary, Dr. Gillespie and Ms. Svir. - [Dr. Gillespie] Chair Arcand, members of the board, I'd like to introduce Sara Svir, Principal of Vadnais Heights Elementary. Hi, Svir. - Hi. Good evening, everybody. Thanks so much for having me. I'm Sara Svir, and I've been in this district, this is year 17. I don't know how that's happened, but three of my own children went through White Bear

041Lake Schools and graduated and off doing great things, and the years just kept on tripping by. So it's hard to believe. Being at Vadnais every day is a great adventure. And I wanna start this off tonight with our mission statement. Vadnais Heights Elementary is the cornerstone of our community. Together, we, and notice that it's VHES, V, value each person as we provide a high quality education, H, help our community as we prepare students academically and socially. E, enrich lives as we inspire students, and S, safe spaces are created that celebrate diversity and foster lifelong learning. A little bit about our school. We sit right about 400 students kindergarten through fifth grade. We are a little unique in that we set up three K-5 neighborhoods. So there's kindergarten through fifth grade in each the Grizzlies, the

042Polars, and the Kodiaks. It creates a great sense of community and I'll speak more to that in just a bit here. We have near 43% of our population qualifies for free and reduced lunch, which makes us a Title I school. 49% students of color, near 18% of our school receives multilingual services, 19.3% in special education. And Vadnais hosts a cluster program in EBD for emotional and behavior disabilities. We also have a tier two program for students on the autism spectrum or developmentally cognitively delayed. And finally, I said 100% amazing and I'm referencing our students, our families, and our staff. We also had three goals for this year, one on literacy and our equity goal, both of those are focused on proficiency. In K-1, it's the early reading assessment in Fast. In two through five, it's

043the aReading assessment in Fast. And our equity goal is specific to students in three through five looking at their reading proficiency. It's such a large percent of our population with approximately 20 different languages spoken in our school that it's key that we focus on the needs of these kids and how we can best support them, and I'm so excited to say that the new curriculum and the program that goes along to support ML aligns with what they get in the classroom, so they have the opportunity to have the content pre-taught before their classroom teacher teaches the information and that sets them up for success. We also have a student experience goal where we're serving the students and we look at this information, and then we try to figure out how we can make our school

044better. What do we need to bring forward to better meet their needs to make each day better if it's helping them get to school, getting them or their families to The Closet, and our school is one who, I go to The Closet a lot, the thrift store right here within our campus. It's to the point that I get phone calls, emails, I've met them there because all of a sudden they wake up and the kids don't have shoes. So I spend a fair amount of time, they know me by first name at the ALC, and, "She's here again, give her the key." And I love to do it because it's what our families need. We also, with the addition of the new social worker full-time, Bear Care is a huge hit. And Carrie Zirbel is

045her name, she does a great job to help our families get the immunizations, to get medical care and treatment which they otherwise might not be able to afford. So looking a little bit closer at our literacy goal based on proficiency, here you can see kindergarten and first grade in the early reading assessment from fall to winter. And I of course wish it were all green, meaning low risk. But I am very excited about the growth that our kids are showing. These students have only experienced the new curriculum CKLA, and I especially am proud of the information at first grade, it's our second year using working with CKLA and the curriculum spirals. So what they learned in kindergarten comes back again in first grade and to be in the classrooms. And here the kids share, remember,

046celebrate what they know about key concepts, whether it's history or whatever it might be. It's exciting and it's good for kids and it invigorates them to work harder, read and learn. Here's our results for students two through five. I used a different format than what Ang just showed, but you can see in blue it's the kiddos who would come up as advanced. Green is low risk, yellow is some risk, and red is high risk. My whole school wishes the data were consistent throughout. Yet I also recognize some of these kids coming into CKLA as, let's say for example, a fourth grader because it does spiral, it assumes that they have some of this knowledge already in their skill bank and we need to build that. So watching our kindergartners in first grade go through the

047system and through using CKLA, I'm really excited to see future results. But the staff, all of us are doing our very best to get these kids going and keep them on track in their learning. A big part of the student experience and family experience are the community engagement and partnerships that we have. Being the only public school in Vadnais Heights, we partner very closely with the city of Vadnais. Last week we had the city manager out for Earth Day. If you've been in Vadnais, you see that they're working really hard in our backyard, our Bear's Backyard, we call it. We have seven acres back there and they're building a roadway back because it is a water source for much of the north metro area. And if there were any troubles, no one in this room

048living in the area would have water. And the kids were very curious how this impacts the water flow. The city manager came out and shared and it's just a great partnership to work with them. Safe sidewalks to school. The Vadnais Heights Days, there've been many opportunities to partner and it's fun. The Vadnais Heights Fire Department is over quite frequently. They especially, they spend a week with us over Fire Prevention Week in October. The Lions are very good to us. We do some community partnerships with food and toy drives. This year they were very generous in providing all of our classrooms updated globes and maps and document cameras so kids could see them projected up on the wall. Kline Nissan is a new partnership and sustainable automotive. They reached out and we partnered with them last

049week. Every student in first and third grade went home with a sapling, with parent permission of course, because trees are the Earth's ventilators and kids heard all about it and were very excited to go home with their sapling. Kids Hope is a program that's available across the United States. We've partnered with them for 12 years and what it looks like at Vadnais Heights, it's retired professional senior citizens coming in. And we work very hard to determine kids who need that little extra something special. It might be a gifted student who needs more challenge. I can think of a kiddo right now. He's brilliant and he's got a retired engineer doing some really cool stuff with him, and he looks forward to every Tuesday. Other kids might just need that special person to give 'em that

050one-on-one attention. So whatever kids need, they can get it through Kids Hope. The University of Minnesota, they actually host a college course on site at Vadnais. It's a Reading Buddies class, that's what we call it. They call it whatever they call it. But the undergraduate students, it's a class about teaching literacy and then we determine the classes with the highest needs and they push in to support and either read to the children or the kids read to them. So a class of 25 going into our classes of approximately the same size, it works out great. In addition, we've been a partner with them for 15 years. We have year-long graduate student teaching placement. It's grown, I've pushed and encouraged, and to tell you, next year, we're looking at 16 sections at Vadnais, I have eight

051year-long student teachers coming to be at our school. We have a reputation for teaching them well, helping them find jobs, and our students benefit, our teachers benefit. It's a great, great partnership. Children's Performing Arts was another partnership that we just began this year for the first time two weeks ago, our fourth and fifth grade students, 33 of them performed "101 Dalmatians" at the Hanifl Performing Arts Center. And it was just a blast. So a great thing for us to do. Right within the building, we hosted our first Community, Connections and Conversations. That was in the second week of school. And I have to be honest, there were parents very skeptical to come. One dad actually said, "I feel like this is a timeshare sales. When do I have to buy something?" And as I visited

052with families around the room, many of them were skeptical that we wanted something from them. So in my welcome that evening, I made sure to say, "We're here for you, dinner is free. We wanna know how we can best meet the needs for your kids, for your family, make our school the best place it can be." And it was great. And they said, "Will you please do this again?" So I hope we have that opportunity to do it in the future. The other thing that we do in our neighborhoods, the K-5 neighborhoods, the teachers of the Grizzlies, the Polars, and the Kodiaks each take on the responsibility to host one evening event. So the Grizzlies do the Bear Bash. We do that on the Friday night of Halloween weekend. And yes, there are costumes, but

053it's beyond the school day, and safe costumes too. And it's a great opportunity for families to meet other families of the kids, the friends their kids are playing with so they can set up play dates, make connections, and visit. We don't have an agenda that night other than we want people to visit with their child's teacher and make connections. We do a parade of costumes, we have free food, and it's a blast. We usually get over 800 people, and on our playground, if I don't get in too much trouble with the police stopping traffic, life is good. In the winter Snow Much Fun. And this year, the Polar neighborhood mixed it up, it started out with a family game night and the building was full, every room had families playing games with their kids and

054staff. And then we ended the evening with our kindergarten, first and second grade concert. And it was more than a concert. They actually invited parents up, one parent up to come dance with the kids. And the videos are unbelievable. Just crazy times. Spring Extravaganza is coming up May 8th, that's a community service learning project. And this year the Kodiaks are doing Kindness with Chalk. So going out into the community and spreading positive messages through chalk on the sidewalks. And you might see it all over the place. And hopefully, we won't have a rainy day like today. And then that evening we will also have a concert by our third, fourth, and fifth grade students. Our PTO, although small, it's very hard to get parents involved, works very hard to fundraise for us. They support all

055of our classrooms financially, they support all of our field trips. Each grade level takes one trip a year, and we're very strategic in setting it up so each grade level has a unique and different experience, but we wanna keep kids in the classroom and focused on learning and make sure they hit all the required content. And so they really look forward to those events. School-wide Climate and Culture, every day we have Bear Time and BEARS at our school is brave, empathetic, aware, responsible, and safe. And we tie that to our social emotional learning time that we have in our morning meeting each day. And it's set up by our building. So this week, for example, the message is all about, sorry is just a word. And we're teaching kids why apologizing is important and how

056to do it. So it's giving lessons for primary age kids that are specific to their learning level, and three, four, and five students, they look a little bit different, but the whole school is talking about when you say you're sorry, what it should look, sound, and feel like. And it really makes an impact on our building. Every Friday, our fifth graders do the news over the system. So it's shown into the classrooms. If you're not familiar, Veterans Day is a big event at Vadnais Heights Elementary. We have celebrated it as long as I've been there. And it's all about teaching kids why this holiday is important. And then students have the opportunity to invite in moms and dads, grandparents, aunts and uncles, or close family friends who are veterans. And we honor them. And it

057usually brings about a few tears, but through a message and learning for kids as well as music, it's really cool. Community service projects, I've mentioned a few of those. And finally, I'll share March Book Madness. When everyone else in the world is probably filling out a bracket for basketball, we are working on a book bracket. Our staff are reading books within the school. Kids are voting each week which book they like better. And the big bracket on the wall is whittled down to one main winner, and it's a big deal. And to get kids so excited about books, it's just cool. So as we finish the year strong, we have five or six weeks to go, there's still plenty to do. We will have spring assessments, both academic and social emotional, which will start the

058middle of May. School-wide Run Club brought to our school by the staff, about 50% of our student population will participate, so we'll have about 200 kids out running starting Wednesday. At the end of it, we have a color run and that's our whole school. So during the school day, every single student will participate. And we do that with great intention that it's during the day, once upon a time we did it in the evening and too many of our kiddos couldn't get back to school. This way, every kid is part of this great fun. We'll have a talent show, field day, all of these things, right on our own field at school. We'll have a survey once again for both students and parents this spring, what's going well and what can we do better? Tomorrow,

059we're never done, we gotta keep the momentum going. So Educators Thriving is doing a presentation for all of my staff after school tomorrow, and it's focused on the core values. This time of year, it gets hard. You need to keep pushing, you need to keep working, you need to keep your energy up, and it gets tough. And tomorrow they're gonna get a boost from Educators Thriving. The Spring Extravaganza will be exciting and we'll have the student concert and community service project for the kids and families and staff. A final thought, Vadnais Heights Elementary is a proud neighborhood school with strong community connections, a commitment to students and learning, and a belief in the power of partnering with parents to support every child's success. What questions might you have? - [Arcand] Do we have any questions?

060- I have a question. - Okay, Ms. Daniels first, and then you. - Oh, go ahead, go ahead. - Thank you, sounds so remarkable, all the connections and all the community partnerships you have and how enthusiastically you represent them all. It's really great. I just have one question, maybe you don't have the answer, is there much turnover in terms of families coming or going in your school, in your building, moving in, moving out? Or is that not something you usually see in that kind of a neighborhood school? I know in some schools it's different for different reasons. - I don't think our, I don't have a number. Our turnover rate isn't that great. We of course have some, but it's not significant. - [Daniels] Okay, thank you. - [Arcand] Mr. Skaar. - Thank you. I

061was the night custodian at that school district back in 1981, believe it or not. - You're kidding. - I cleaned the boilers out. I had to throw the clothes out that I used to clean the boilers. So I'm wondering, did they get a new boiler and burner set? Is it still oil or is it natural gas now? - [Sara] Beats me. I don't know. (people laughing) Tim? - [Tim] It's likely the same one. - [Sara] Okay, as long as it works, I'm good, I'm not sure. - Fair enough. What's the capacity at that school district for students? - Well, that's a good question too. When I came, there were 550 students in that building, but the class sizes were incredibly large. We also didn't have preschool, the multilingual population wasn't near as large needing the

062space, the special ed programs, we didn't offer as many as we have now. And so it was, the building looked much different with 550 students. I'd say 420, 430 is a good number right now. We're feeling pretty full with 18 classroom sections, but we're very creative in how we use this space. - Thank you. - Sure. - [Arcand] Any other questions? Ms. Beloyed. - The boundary change that we had, how did that affect the numbers within your school? Is it just more the last couple of years where you've seen the increase or you've been pretty full for a while? - It truly wasn't significant. There were a few families on the north end and some of those chose to continue at Otter. Some of them were already choosing to attend Vadnais because as families commuted

063to work, they dropped their kids off on the way. So the impact was insignificant. - Could you, as a Title I school, you're having to deal with a lot of different types of situations with students and parents and teachers having to teach all of those different groups. Can you maybe talk a little bit about the importance of why it's important to focus on the whole child as opposed to just teaching them to read, teaching them to do math, and if we're only doing those things, what happens to those students? - So when I start conversations with families, I often start with, "I want your child to love school." And to love school, that means they have friends, they're learning, they're growing, they feel good inside, and they can take home the worksheet or whatever they

064might have done in the classroom with pride. And so, it's looking at each individual situation and talking to mom and dad, or grandma and grandpa, or whomever I might be visiting with and trying to get to the root of what's going on. As a bar school building assets, reducing risks, the structure that we have in place for MTSS or the multi-tiered systems of support, I love it. That was in here and I forgot to talk about that, but every week we have a meeting. So in the first and third weeks we have our grade level teams. And the second and fourth weeks we have our neighborhood meetings or as bar calls it, big block. And it allows us to focus on data as well as that information from the teachers who work with that kiddo,

065including the specialists, what they do well, where they succeed, are they a good friend? Maybe they have great rhythm, whatever it is that we can find we can build on, we're using all of our resources to just focus in on that child and make it specific and individualized. So I think it's just about looking at each kid. When you look at all of the data, I also say this, you know, if you're going and looking for our school report card, you might not be overwhelmed and go, "Wow, that's a school that I necessarily would choose compared to others." But I always encourage families to look at your individual child, see where they started and where they're growing, because they're making great gains. And if they're not, we're gonna work with them and come up with

066a plan to ensure that they do. - [Beloyed] Thank you. - Any other questions? Well, thank you very much. Good luck. Have a great end of your year here. - [Sara] It's gonna be busy. Come on by. - Yes, it is. And now, Mr. Skaar, it's good to know when we need that boiler cleaned, we'll give you a call. - Thank you. (Arcand laughs) - [Sara] Thank you. - I won't be able to fit it in anymore. - All right, we want to go on to B3, one of the subjects that's near and dear to my heart, so Career Pathways, Ms. Babish and Ms. Olson. - [Dr. Gillespie] Chair Arcand and members of the board, I'll introduce Katy Olson, our Career Pathways Coordinator, and Russ Reetz, our High School Principal. - All right, thanks for

067having us. I am the Career Pathways Coordinator, as Dr. Gillespie mentioned, and along with my principal here, we're here to talk about the Career Pathways program that not every school district has, and I always like to mention that, that we're really lucky here at White Bear Lake to have the support to have this programming, which I will talk to you about and what we've been up to this school year. We've had extra impact with the new high school building. So thank you for shifting gears with us from the elementary level up to secondary now. We can age up a little bit. So Career Pathways really has a structure kind of nationwide of how we look at what is a Career Pathways program, what does it entail? Oftentimes, career and technical education is thrown into some

068of this work, but really we look at it as a bridge. So there's programming and experiences and academic classes that we can offer our students to help them be much more confident for life after high school. That is really the goal. And we are proud to share that all of these elements you see on the screen in front of you are things that we offer at the secondary level in our ALC, in our main high school building. And so these are all the pieces really that are gonna set students up for a more confident choice after high school. Something you see on the screen in front of you, and I'm sure Dr. Arcand's familiar with this, but just came out in the fall of 2024s and updated what's called Career Clusters. This is from the

069Association for Career and Technical Education, a national organization that basically updated what was about 10 to 15 years old data about what do jobs look like across the country and how do we clump them together? Why am I mentioning this and is it important? This change, and you can read a little description on the screen, is how school districts function, industry functions, our workforce systems, how do we all interact together, and what are we training and educating our youth and our adult learners about and for? What does that look like? Funding will stream in in these same kind of sectors. And so you'll see workforce saying, "Hey, we need more folks in this area." And then secondary folks saying, "Okay, well, we wanna get you those workers. We wanna get youth excited about this." So

070we all work together. To bring it back, if you heard of in Minnesota, we have a career wheel, lots of folks have that in their classrooms. You see it again in the workforce centers, that is now gonna be updated probably, I think they thought by like 2027, it'd take a while to align with these new Career Clusters. So a lot of what work we do in the school district is going to funnel down from what you see here in these National Career Clusters. So also important, we stay in touch with our Perkins leaders, Federal Perkins funding is really important to the Career Pathways program, but we also stay in touch with real time talent a lot on what's our labor industry like and our workforce needs. So labor and industry can change really fast. Our

071secondary school districts not always as fast, and so this 10-year outlook is really important and impactful for us. So this would be looking at the old career wheel. 12 of the 16 clusters that are in existence in that career wheel are expected to decline in employment, in Ramsey County specifically, in the next 10 years. But four clusters are going to show growth. You can see those on your screen. So that's a trigger for us in the school system to say, "Okay, what are we teaching in our schools? What do we need to ramp up? Where do we maybe need to pivot?" And we start thinking about the next school year. And you might see course proposals and things like that coming across your desks to reflect and follow along with these areas of need we're

072gonna have right in our county. Of course, we'd like to educate our youth and get them excited about careers and then keep them here locally. So a lot of this kind of outside conversation of things happening outside the school district are really important to, I like to emphasize what we do in the school district and what we're offering our students. We want it to be relevant, we want it to be updated. So something exciting that's happening partnership wise, it's really important to stay in touch with our industry. I sit on the Washington County Partnership. This is a brand new group and we service students in Washington County, which is why we also participate in activities and initiatives that they're doing. And it's all of the secondary schools have a representative on this committee. We have

073all of our executive directors and CEOs from the Chambers of Commerce for every city in Washington County. And the county officials, county commissioners come and we sit and talk about how are we bridging youth to industry, work experiences? Where are the gaps? Where do we need support? And what conversations do we need to be having? As far as we know, we're the only work group for Washington County that exists in the entire state having these conversations. So we're kind of excited to lead the way and obviously we're excited as our school district to be in that group. I also partner regularly with the White Bear Area Chamber of Commerce and the Vadnais Heights Economic Development Council. Those industry partnerships are critical so they know what we're doing in our schools, they know what our needs

074are, and then that's how we can offer opportunities to students as well to give students those real-world experiences, get the industry and employers into the classroom and working firsthand with students. Also important in this work is the Minnesota Concurrent Enrollment Partnerships. So concurrent enrollment is something that even in current technical education you can offer students 'cause they might have to go to college, they might have to get a degree still. They might go right into workforce, they might not. So being able to offer those students hands-on college credit classes in the high school is a great incentive, can really light the fire in students and say, "Hey, I already completed a college class." We all know this, the world's best workforce. We want our students to complete some college. They have a greater persistence rate

075than if they graduate and go to college. So we are excited to continue engagement in that partnership as well, and then work on thinking, well forward-thinking with work-based learning, that is a national movement that we don't wanna miss the train on. And so we are talking to industry partners and we have some teacher champions that are excited to navigate with our new trimester system and our new high school building, how can we offer work experiences for students built kind of into the school day? They get college credit, they sit with a teacher, they talk about what they're doing in the workplace. So we're excited to see where that leads us as well. All right, so what is some of what our students have been doing this year? Something that you might remember from the bridge

076that I showed you, industry credentials can be really impactful for students to earn when they're in high school and help them get a job after high school or while they're in high school in a field of interest to them. So these are some of the numbers we have from what our students have been doing this school year. OSHA 10, if you're familiar with that, that's typically kind of construction, trade and industry, workplace safety. We have students in a construction class that go through that, and some of our students at the ALC. Certified Nursing Assistant, we'll talk about that again in a couple slides here, but we had six. The maximum class size is 21. So there's small classes anyway, and that's state mandated. But 16 students got their Certified Nursing Assistant certification and they can

077work in the workplace. And we have a whole nother semester of students completing that right now. Ford ACE, this is actually one of our stellar programs we have, and I'll talk about that at the end as well. They had a little data snafu on their end where I questioned what they sent me for an update this year and they said, "You know what, we gotta look into this." So Ford ACE is sponsored by Ford Automotive. It is a high school secondary curriculum where students are actually completing Ford training to be a technician. So it looks fabulous on their resume if they do wanna work at a Ford dealership, maybe they're going into an automotive program and they're gonna even go in and sweep the floors, right? And you just start, you get your foot in

078the door, it really looks great on their resume. And there's also a simultaneous two-year program at Hennepin Technical College that's the next level up. First Aid and CPR, all of our 10th grade health students take First Aid and CPR in their 10th grade health class. They all meet in the curriculum and are eligible to take the certification exam. Not all of them do. There's a nominal fee of $5, but we did have 92 students already this year get their first aid and CPR certification. And then we'll talk more about this as well ServSafe. So that's for the service industry, if you will. And this is tied into our school grounds coffee shop we have on site and then our culinary classes. We have a lot of students going through that as well so they could

079understand workplace safety, sanitation, and food safety. We had a really big endeavor we took on this last school year in December and we started the planning January of last year. And you may have heard about it, we did get a little spotlight, I think it was Channel 5 News, which was exciting. But we partnered with Royal Credit Union to offer Test Drive. So I have some of my description over here in my notes. Our entire junior class went through this simulation. It is a hands-on simulation where students visited a variety of stations to make key life decisions and manage a monthly budget. So, to back up, about the week before they went through this event in their social studies class, they all got to sit down and say, "What do I want? What do I

080think my dream career is? What do I wanna do?" Okay, let's back it up. "Do I need to go to college to do that job or not? And if I do, what kind of degree do I need? Two year, four year, eight year for, you know, medical, things like that." And then, "Okay, now I know what kind of degree I need. Do I need to go to, let me pick a college." And then they pick their college of choice and figure it out what their four year tuition rate would be or an annual tuition rate if they broke it down. So they went into this simulation having made that decision, "Here's what I think I wanna do and now here's my college plan and budget based off that." Students were required to go through the

081simulation, living off their career's monthly salary while paying for things like student loans, insurance, housing and groceries, as well as accounting for additional expenses like entertainment, pets, life surprises. We had our SROs going around the simulation, handing out random speeding tickets and things like that. So that was a fun extra. And at the end we did, so we had about 200 volunteers that came in from the community. And I know some of you were there, so you got to see it firsthand. We did a student survey at the end and then we also did a volunteer survey. So I'd like to share a few quotes with you. Students were asked, "Did you learn anything new? And if so, what did you learn?" One of the students said, "I learned that saving money is important." Another

082student said, "I learned how much work goes into budgeting." And our last student I'll highlight said, "I learned a lot about how much things cost and it made me more aware of my lifestyle and how I live." Our volunteers shared, "The students were extremely engaged. I was really impressed." Another volunteer said, "I was near the end of the stations. It was great to hear the students review their prior decisions and think about how a different choice could have helped them out." And our final volunteer said, "It was fun to interact with the students and to watch them navigate this activity. There were some definite light bulb moments as they worked to balance their budgets. Many of them developed a deeper appreciation for what their families and guardians have to deal with each month." And this

083was a great activity because it was all free of charge from Royal Credit Union. They really just wanted to foster financial literacy, that's part of their mission as an organization. And we're lucky to be one of the handful of schools that they've chosen to partner with on this activity. The last time I was here as well, we talked about a brand new grant. We had just been awarded Grow Your Own from the Department of Education. We have taken it upon ourselves to call our program in the district, the Future Bear Educators. And this has been a really fun program to watch blossom. And it just started this spring semester. We took our fall semester to take one of our champion teachers and she stepped in as a program coordinator to really build out what is

084this gonna look like. She's concurrent enrollment, met those requirements, we're offering our classes through Minneapolis College. And really this program was to foster students getting excited about teaching and especially to diversify the workplace. In the end with hoping that our students were going to go off and do their training to become a teacher and then come back to us. And so we did have some goals for our first class. We just offered one class this first semester, Intro to Urban Education, again with Minneapolis College. We have 18 students enrolled, which was more than our goal. I think our goal was 15. And then in partnership our students get to go out and they do a field experience. And so, it was a perfect setup when we worked with Mr. Mauer over there and some other

085folks, they had a need with their extended day program. They had a wait list and they said, "We need to hire high school students. We've been trying, what's going on?" And we said, "We might have 18 here for you. Let's partner." And so we have, some students have requirements that, you know, that limit them to being able to travel or do this experience after work in which we've set up other opportunities for them. But 14 of the students are in eight different elementary school extended day programs. And within Mariner Middle School's AVID Tutor program, and I think we eliminated the wait list. - Very close. - I mean when you, I'll chime in real quick. So we're super appreciative of what we said about we're doing in the future. Sorry, my voice tends to carry.

086But I mean, if you average 10 to 13 elementary kids per the 14 kids, I mean that's the impact this program has on us on our wait list and supporting our families that need that care. So we're super appreciative, we're really excited and very thankful. - Yeah, and we'll talk about our sections for this I think in another slide. But it took off and we've got more sections of this and students excited for the next school year. Students who have completed this first class then move on to the second and third and fourth tier classes next school year. There'll be five total in the program all through Minneapolis College. And important to note, our goal for year one was to match the student demographics in our classes with our district-wide demographics, which was at 30%

087students who identify as a student of color. We have 78% of our students enrolled that identify as a student of color. We also have two school-based enterprises, as we call them in our building, which is really exciting. A coffee shop that is, as the kids call it, super rizz, I think. (people laughing) But not, I mean, right? Coffee's the thing these days. And so this School Grounds is an actual class out of our culinary program. But we have a real coffee shop, if you haven't seen it, I'm guessing you all have, that's open during the school day in our building. And students are learning how to work in the service industry, how to manage their peers, how to work with supervisors, they're going through this ServSafe training. They're also learning about roasting coffee and flavor

088profiles. And so a lot of these students are interested maybe in having a small business someday. So you can see some of the highlights here that are on the screen. It's been a really great opportunity. We can also support a lot of our students that are part of our special education programming. And then our nutrition services actually was able to create a position and hire a student manager, that is the one position that's paid through this class and programming, the rest of the students carved out an hour of their school day to do it for credit, but we got to hire a student manager as well. So that person then will be responsible I think next year for doing more of the supervision of their fellow classmates, and that school store, so. That's been really

089fun to watch. And feel free to stop by if you wanna get a latte or something. We have another school-based enterprise called the Roar Store that is more of your school spirit store, school swag that is run through our business program. And that was kind of a pilot this year of how did it work, how did it go? We learned a lot, and our business departments decided they're going to separate out. We're gonna start, still start our DECA program, which is a student-based organization where they get to learn all about business, they can go to competitions and things like that, do some extra work in the business world if that's their area of interest. But then there's a market, or merchandising, excuse me, merchandising class as well where they're gonna learn the store management inventory,

090product, design, things like that. So we are gonna be doing a ribbon-cutting coming up here in May with the Chamber of Commerce. We haven't done, we did that for our coffee shop. We haven't been able to do that for our school store. But we have a couple big name alumni that we're looking to highlight. And one of those is, if you've heard of the brand, Legendary, it's a golf apparel line. Brock, the owner who started it, he's a White Bear alumni and he's really excited to partner. And we got a banner that highlights so we can show students, Brock, I think he was class of 2008. He's the owner of Legendary. Like, this could be you. We have alumni banners in a lot of our Career Pathway spaces so students can see what their predecessors

091are doing now. All right, enrollment. So it was really fun to see as we moved to trimesters, tons of work for the teachers. I got to tag along for a ride and kind of talk with them about new ideas and innovation and then see what struck the students, what did they wanna register for based out of what the teachers put out there. So some of the highlights for our new classes this coming school year, we are still in the works of piecing together what we would call a Visual Communications Career Pathway program. I know Mr. Reetz over here has got all kinds of ideas about what he wants to do with it. But two of our initial classes that are, one's through business and then one through kind of art and our communication department are

092both sports related. And so those took off booming with like four sections or eight sections each or something. So that's gonna be really fun to see how they partner together. That's kind of that same pathway. We are gonna start a drones class. Students will get their drones pilot license through this class. We, surprisingly or not, have a number of students who are interested in getting their private pilots license and are pursuing that. So this was kind of one way to help engage those students. But also, this is, you may or may not know a really up and coming area and industry, you can use drones in probably every industry. And so, to have that pilot's license is I think the average income starting out is like 80,000. So we were really excited to take advantage

093of that. And our teacher went and got her drones pilot license 'cause that's what she has to have. And so, it's been really fun to watch it play out. Computer hardware technology. In our school building, we have a tech hub, if you've seen that, it's in our learning commons that the vision behind that was always to have our students, if you're familiar with Summer Tech Depot, they get to work on Chromebooks, take 'em apart, you know, do all the things, tinker with 'em on a more official basis rather than just at home. Our vision was always to bring that into the school day. And how can students be doing that for their peers and for staff for that matter. So a computer hardware technology class is gonna more formalize that technology, working on computer hardware

094curriculum and experience for students. And we actually have two partners, industry partners, that are really excited to work with us and have come to us and said, "We wanna hire your students. We'll work with your schedule, get 'em a little bit of training, and then we'll bring them on." And so that's one of those maybe work-based learning opportunities we're hoping to see come to fruition. We will be offering first aid and CPR as a standalone college or concurrent enrollment class with Anoka-Ramsey. That took off with like seven or eight sections, or four sections or something too, which was crazy. But that's important because First Aid CPR, that class offers the BLS certification, which is required to get into nursing programs, any emergency medical services programs, which are all really important and popular right now. So

095now students don't have to go to college or take an extra class to do that after they've graduated high school to get into a nursing program. They can say check, we already did that in high school. Certified Nursing Assistant has over doubled, no, I guess, I don't know what you call that, tripled? Not exactly tripled, but in its sections for next year also, that's also a concurrent enrollment class. We partner with Century College on that. And then Intro to Healthcare Career is another concurrent enrollment class with Century really took off. So that was exciting. Also unique, and I emailed out a lot of my school district partners and said, "Hey, who's offering math through the trades? We're looking for curriculum." And they all said, "We're not and we really wish we were. Tell us what

096you do, what you pick, we wanna know about it." So that was amazing that our math department said, "We wanna dabble in this. We see there's a need, a different way for students to learn math and to use it." And so, and students wanted to take it, right? That was the next thing. So that's gonna be really exciting to roll out, kind of watch to see how we make strides there. Digital photography is a class we've offered for a while, but we had twice the enrollment in that class coming up next year. And then a slight increase for our Intro to Construction Trades and Small Engines. All right, I'm getting close to wrapping up, I promise. We talked about this at our Systems Accountability Committee meeting last week. I was presented with the data you

097see in front of you back in March at a conference that I went to where the organization Advance CTE did some national polling last fall to see where our constituencies across the country, how they felt about career and technical education. And I wanted to be able to share that with you. We tied it back last week then to some of our feedback from our folks here in the district. And really, if you'll see nationally that folks at middle school and high school level were presented with different areas of the high school experience, and were asked to rank where they felt these areas fell in importance for their students' experience. And they either ranked a one, two, or three, the areas you see on the screen, and obviously in order, right? The most picked one, two,

098or three for the top one and so forth. So as a school district, it's exciting to see that we are doing all of these things as it relates to career preparation, career and technical education, just exposure for students to be able to make a more confident choice. It was also exciting to see that that's important nationwide to what's happening within the walls of our schools these days. As we compare it, this isn't an exact comparison because what we did last week was we did a poll and it was just ranking it, it wasn't grouped like one, two, or three, I don't know what each individual picked, but I wanted to compare it to what our folks at the meeting last week responded on where they felt that each area was of importance to them. So

099a little bit different than what you see nationally, but, again, it doesn't exactly align with how they did the ranking of one, two, or three. So some of this might be surprising, some of it might not, but we're doing all of it. The last thing that I'll wrap up with, we're really excited and proud of our automotive instructor, Mr. Doescher, and all of the programming and work that's happening in our Automotive Career Pathway. I don't think it's come out as a public statement yet, but our Minnesota State Center or Transportation Center of Excellence selected our automotive career pathway as Exemplary Secondary Program of the Year in the entire state of Minnesota. So this was for a program that showcases secondary level transportation, oh, that serves as an exemplary model of institutional support, instructional leadership, and

100program wide excellence. And this is a big thank you to everyone in the school district from top to bottom to teachers to the students to make this a success. That's it, yeah. Thank you, any questions? - Any questions for them? Oh, Ms. Daniels. - How do we partner with the career and tech school 916 offers? Do we partner with them and do we have, do kids go there because we don't have, you know, or we go back and forth? I know they have an automotive. We have an automotive, but they have cosmetology. We don't, I mean, I know we have like 90 students in that program, or 95 I think is the last count. - Yes, yes. Great question. So 916 Career & Tech Center services 16 different schools. They are a fabulous resource because

101they primarily exist because our schools can't have everything. And so we do have some overlap in what we offer and what they offer. At that point, students we hope would choose our programming, but may choose to go to 916. 916 offers diesel. We don't offer diesel. They offer auto dismantling, taking the cars apart. That's not part of our curriculum. So there's some nuances there, but overall, we're very supportive of students going there, especially when it's not something we offer in our building. We don't have the infrastructure to have. So cosmetology is a great example. We're lucky, our students are lucky that they have the opportunity to go there and work in that clinic or salon there. And dental careers is amazing opportunity because those are things that we couldn't offer. So we really feel that's

102an extension of our Career Pathways program. - Great, we bus our kids. - Yes. - [Daniels] They select that they have a way to get there. - Yep, I think we have two different time blocks or waves that our students can go in. - Thank you. - Yeah. - [Arcand] Other questions? Mr. Skaar? - Thank you for presenting. What are our numbers that participate in this program? Are they increasing, decreasing, flat? Can you comment on that? - Yeah, I can. So our easiest metric to measure is course enrollment, which isn't all of what Pathways offers, but as far as course enrollment, we've doubled for next year actually, we had about 2,700 students in Career Pathway classes this year, we're at 5,400 for next year. So I think Trimesters has been huge in supporting the opportunity

103for students to have more choice and take more things that really strike them along with our teachers having great innovative ideas that are moving and shaking and taking advantage of the wonderful facilities we have in the building now too. And then I do track the outside of programming and events and speakers and things like that that we put on. And I track those numbers. I think those numbers certainly have grown because now we have the opportunity for our 9th and 10th graders to participate. Where before it maybe was, here's the one event at the high school for South Campus for 10th and 11th grade students. Now, how can we do something but maybe a little more beginner for the 9th and 10th graders? And then that engagement wasn't always there. But now with the older

104students, 9th and 10th graders are much more apt, more comfortable, they'll just pop in for this, that, or the other thing, so. - So now I have suggestions. - Wonderful. - That you can think about. One of them is, and I used to be a speaker in the St. Paul Public Schools to try to get kids interested in accounting. Tough, tough sell. Tough sell. But we are in such a shortage of CPAs right now that they're doing all kinds of gymnastics to try to get people licensed to do that work. So anything you can do to boost up the numbers in that area would be key. Your IT program, you know, there's IT and then there's OT, operation technology, which operates our infrastructure. There's a lot of cybersecurity risk related to that. How can we

105get kids to, and students to get interested in cybersecurity at a early age because that's the best time to do it. They're curious and they probably would make the best applicants for, you know, that in the future. So that's one, you know, even getting somebody to talk about cybersecurity would be, I think helpful. And then, related to construction, driver safety credentials, that would be one. I mean, like safe defensive driving, that's usually a requirement for a lot of trade. You know, construction trades and things like that where you have to drive a truck back and forth from a work site. That's another one. And then on the, just two more on the retail side, do you do like customer service role playing on when you're communicating with a customer, you know, how you approach the

106customer, those types of things. Do we do that? - [Olson] Do you know what? - Well, we don't necessarily do role playing, but our students are serving the community. So if you come to an event, the store's often open. So they are in a real commerce type situation where they're providing customer service to those patrons as they enter that. - So there's a training, you do a training for how to interact with customers, customer service, what's the expectations for good customer service? The other one was with, I'm familiar with the PSEO, but I was curious, I know it applies with community colleges, but what about with trade schools? Because you can, if somebody in their junior senior year could take like the classroom tests or the classroom classes and test out of that and then

107they can do the hands-on after they graduate, is that something that is done across the state or is anybody doing something like that? - So separate, like taking, separating the two? So I'm not sure I fully understand. - Well, there's two aspects to the trade, there's the classroom aspect and then there's the hands-on aspect. So I'm wondering if you could, if they can break that apart so that the classroom aspect they can do here, get credit for it, and then after they graduate, they do the hands-on piece. I don't know if you could split it, I'm just curious. - Yeah, so I don't think you could, but I don't think you have to. That is part of what we are trying to embed with concurrent enrollment classes in our school is that, and especially in

108tech ed, that's oftentimes where like Century College, that's their niche of coming in with a concurrent enrollment class that is the college class, and it's both the theoretical and then the hands-on, 'cause I think you have to do both at the same time. I think that's important. And a lot of our teachers, the value of a high school teacher teaching it instead of the college professors, they can also teach the technical reading piece of it of here's the theory, here's how you read the textbook. It's a little different, but maybe you also kind of get it a little better and then how you apply it. - [Skaar] Okay, I got it. It's helpful, thanks. - Yeah, okay. - I just have one. - Okay. - Wait, just, I'm sorry. No, no, I didn't see you.

109- Ms. Ellison. - Okay, thank you. So I have a comment and a question. I was at the Systems Accountability meeting last week and shared that my daughter is involved in the Intro to Urban Education. I had no idea this was even a thing. And she came home and she said, "I'm doing this thing because a teacher recommended me." And she had not had any sort of focus to what she wanted to do after high school until this program. And there's such a teacher shortage right now all over the country. And I love the fact that White Bear, it has the trades, has construction, has automotive, but is also focused on education as an important career pathway for our students. So it's been tremendously helpful for her and I really look forward to the growth

110in that as well. So my question is, I love the idea of math for the trades. And so that you said came out of the math department, it makes me wonder like what are the other departments, like, are there other, writing for the trades? Because in every position you ever have, you're gonna have to do some writing of some kind. Are there classes that are percolating that are similar to this? - Well, we're meeting with language arts teachers tomorrow and they're working on some innovative course offerings. One of them is technical writing and technical reading for the trades. So we could see this expand across other departments. But yeah, everyone is sort of looking at what they could provide, you know, with a certain pathway where students can come in and out of a pathway

111and have an experience within their department. So we hope it grows. - And I think to touch on Mr. Skaar's comment as well about customer service. So part of what we'd seen, I have a paper visual if you want a copy afterwards, is our Career Pathways Course Guide. It's a visual for families to understand what classes really are in automotive, and this is gonna be my example. And then what classes are affiliated, meaning part of kind of the general education core curriculum, what of that might tell me as a student, "Oh, I'm interested in those things. I should look at the automotive field" or "I'm good at those things, I should look at the automotive field." Our teachers picked those affiliated courses. So our career and technical education or pathway teachers are not all CTE,

112picked affiliated courses. Mr. Doescher on the screen in front of you picked public speaking as an affiliated course. He said these students have no idea how important it is because of all the customer facing they're doing, the confidence and the professionalism they need to have when they're reporting back to their clients, what happened? They need to document things. People are complaining, how do you handle that? So that was part of our tie in to make that connection. It's exciting to hear about language arts and if I dare to be so bold to make a plug, so for example, Math for the Trades is currently an elective. There is a push by the Department of Education to make classes like that part of the core requirements and count towards a math requirement. So wink, wink. -

113I really like the idea of putting out a path or putting out the classes in front of students so they can see where they connect. Because I think a lot of students, they look at, I mean I can only speak for the ones that live in my house. They look at the course catalog and they're like, a lot of this, right? And so, I love that you're setting it up so they can see their skills and then also see the path. So I think that's wonderful. And one more question I thought of, I forget what the name of the event is, Ms. Olson, but it's the one where you have community members come in and talk to sophomores. - [Olson] The mock interviews. - Yes, is that happening again this year? - [Olson] Yeah, that,

114well, that just happened in January. - Oh, okay. - [Olson] Yes, it happens every January though. - I missed it. It's such a great event. Highly recommend that everybody participate. Thank you. - Kathleen? - Oh, yes. I was first, I thought you had something. Yes, I did have a comment and it was only to say that I'm so proud of the facilities we have to teach these classes, and because we didn't have those before, we have our new high school. I mean, I look at the automotive and the CNA and the coffee shop and the Bear Wear Gear Shop and all the things that we have now that are so, the facilities do matter. And so to have those available in addition to the classes and the curriculum is so important. And I think, again,

115thank you to the community for passing the referendum and then for everyone making it happen in this room. So I just have to say, it's astounding, if you haven't seen some of the facilities, to view them and see that it makes a big difference for the students using them in particularly these kinds of classes, so. - [Skaar] I just had one last if nobody else is going. - Hang on, Ms. Thompson? - Well, I am a huge fan of Career Pathways as many may know because this helped me graduate high school and it provided me with a job all the way up until I went to school to become a social worker. And it even supported me through college while I was earning my new degree. And I just, Mr. Doescher is fantastic. I used

116to go in and sit in some of his meetings he would have with the automotive at the old high school where it was a very small space he was cramped into. And now, just his space is fantastic and he just, I mean, he just lights up when he talks about it. So that's wonderful to hear his hard work has paid off 'cause he definitely works very hard on that. Just to highlight a little bit of the cybersecurity need, I had brought this up back in '21 when Jenny Moore was here and I had had a conversation, I have a cousin who works in cybersecurity and just MSBA had highlighted that you're a huge need for cybersecurity staff. And my cousin who works in the industry for Abbott had said there's nobody who qualifies for the

117jobs they put out. So they just have to hire them and then they have to train them. And she said even if we could just train them in how to work Excel, Word, and PowerPoint, it would be a huge bonus because they have to teach 'em everything, which is kind of scary to think that they can't use some of those basic programs. And then for my own self, when I went to school and we had, it was called on job training back then, and I took math for the daily living, which let me tell you, that class, that was a helpful class, taught me how to balance my checkbook, taught me what interest was, like, you learned a lot of things that you were like, "I had no idea about that stuff." But the path

118I had was administration. So I was the athletic director secretary for my senior year of high school. And then they actually hired me on after I graduated for a year and I was just an administrative assistant in the office, and then they lost funding and they couldn't keep me. But some other things to just think about, I mean our district wouldn't be where it is without a lot of our administrative staff that we have. So it is a good pathway to maybe be easy and it would help some kids learn how to use Excel, PowerPoint, Word, Google in like a career platform and environment which they're going to need to use. And so it just always makes me think of that. And I know at the time they said one of the biggest barriers to

119bringing in a cybersecurity programming is to getting the staff that can properly teach that class because the degrees and the certifications that they need to have was something that they had always looked into but just didn't have the capabilities to do that. So they did, they do partner, I believe, and we probably still do with Century, has a program regarding that. It would be great to find a way to bring it into our schools as we're growing. And technology is definitely an area that's growing. Being someone who works in human services now, I was happy to see that was the number one for growth coming up here. But just, yeah, so thankful that we have this in our buildings and it's just wonderful. So thank you. - Thank you for sharing. We do cybersecurity is

120the revolving conversation we have of how and when is the right time to implement something, what's the right partnership. So that is 100% on our radar, at least so you know that, it's finding the right, the right time and the right place, and the right partnership I think to make that happen. So that's definitely on our radar. And then also is the students having that gap in knowledge of Microsoft products versus what we use in school. And there are certificates out there that we've talked about embedding into various classes. And so that would give students that opportunity to learn that as well. So that is also on our radar. - Thank you. - All right, Mr. Skaar, you have one more comment or question? - Oh, this wasn't related, it is related back to cybersecurity,

121but I have a different question. Minnesota has like a cyber, the State of Minnesota has a Cyber Monitoring Center in St. Paul that would probably make a decent partner I would think. - [Olson] Thank you. Okay, thank you. - I looked, this is related to Ms. Daniel's question about the investments made and I'm looking at the slide that shows the investments in each school and there's two bullets per school. So there's probably a total of 25 bullets to justify a $400 million project. I don't think that's adequate. I think there should be more transparency with that. - [Arcand] So is this a question directly for the- - Administration. - [Arcand] Okay, so this is, that's something for them. - I think it's germane to the topic. Not with your question, the question had to do

122with upgrading our facilities, which is a good thing, right? In the high school across the other schools. So it would be nice to see that, where did we put the money? - Can I just offer some clarity? - You may. - So that is, that information is all in the documents that have been presented to the board over the various school board meetings, so they're all on the website. So anytime that we get an update about the bond referendum, they'll come in and they'll say, "This is what we've done so far, this is what we've spent, this is the projects that we're doing." And so that information is all out there in the board documents, and is also, like, if you look in some of these other sections of the process of the Building Our

123Future, that information is all there. So the information that, 'cause I mean, I've been here and Deb's been here since the very beginning of the bond referendum and it is all public information on all of our presentations. So you can find those certainly on the website. - It's not, well, it's not easily accessible, it's insufficient in my opinion, it needs to be more transparent. It should be on each school's website to see exactly what you did by school- - [Arcand] I'd like to bring it back to- - Well, and plus we haven't had, we have not had a review of the project since August of last year. It's time to have a review of it. - [Arcand] But right now we're on Career Pathways, so I want to bring it back to that. Yes, go

124ahead. - I love the visual that you had for, here's the different areas that kind of cluster together and if you're interested in A through Z, this might be the pathway you choose or if you're interested in, this would be the first year that I haven't received a registration booklet so I didn't look at it. So I'm assuming it's not in, well, I call it a booklet because we used to get the booklets, but now it's all online. I would think that would be something that could be really helpful for students to look at. I mean parents too. But for students to look at especially 9th, 10th graders as they're choosing the classes that they're gonna be taking 10th grade and on basically, just to see sort of as they're working through with the counselors,

125when they take their assessment to see what areas their aptitude is in. And then they can say, well, these are the different kinds of classes that may be available for me for these things, just to tie it all together for students. Some students already know from the day they were born what they're going to do. And then there's the vast majority of the others who have no clue but would like to look at, okay, "So they say I'm good at this. Let's see what that falls into." So I think maybe that kind of visual or that kind of information would be super helpful as the kids are looking through and the parents are looking through what am I gonna register for next year? So just throwing that out there. - Well, you're totally right. So

126something we have in development are called career trees. If you've seen them at Century College or the 916 Career & Tech Center, they are a tree of a pathway. And our industry partners and our teachers came together to talk about what are we teaching in the high school and then what does that look like after, what are the options? And it's tiered by entry-level, technical careers, and then professional careers. And so that we are, we have two of those already printed for our health and wellness pathway and our automotive pathway. And then the others are in production and working together with our partners to get those printed as well because I totally agree that that's really valuable. And then there's curriculum with it and the teachers can tie that into their classes as they see

127fit. So yes. - I think that'd be great. Super helpful. - Thank you. And I just wanna say thank you for all the time you're putting in Career Pathways. The old career wheel was 18 years ago because I sat on the committee, and so, and I actually went around and taught it. It needed to be updated. And I like the new national one because it's taking it from the pathway to more of the cluster area because in high school a lot of our kids don't go that far down, but they're at the cluster area and then it still opens some opportunities for them. They still have the opportunity to go down to the pathway, but the new clusters are gonna allow them to have a wider scope and that, because we also know we don't

128change as fast as industries so that it lets them be ready. I also want to give credit to our certified nursing assistants to earn their certificate, 'cause what we don't maybe know is the state mandates, they have to have so many hours in the classroom or they can't sit for the exam. So it's not like they can come once a week, they have to be there, and that's the state requirement. So they're putting the time in for that. And the last thing is your Test Drive, as you're talking about it, there's so many standards from our new personal finance course that if you can pair that up because some of those, everything you talked about hits one of those standards. So keep what you're doing, it's exciting. And I want, I'm excited to see what

129we do next for our students. So thank you. - Yeah, thank you. - All right, thank you very much. - [Reetz] Thank you. - We are now at our adjournment. Can I get a motion to adjourn? - Mr. Chair, I move that we adjourn. - Ms. Ellison, do we have a second? - Second. - Seconded by Ms. Thompson. All in favor say aye. - [All] Aye. - Opposed (indistinct). (gavel bangs) We are now adjourned. Thank you.