February 24, 2025 - School Board Work Session

001- [Board Member] Everybody ready? I now call this meeting of School Board of Independent School District 624 to order. I'll ask the clerk to please call the roll. - [Clerk] Thompson. - [Ms. Thompson] Here. - [Clerk] Arcand. - [Mr. Arcand] Here. - [Clerk] Ellison here. Skaar? - [Mr. Skaar] Here. - Okay. The first item we have is discussion item B-1, update on MDE Afterschool Community Learning Grant programs. Mr. Maurer and Ms. Oswald. - Thank you, Chair Arcand, members of the board. Nicole and I are joined tonight by, or with Nicole Oswald, our assistant director of Out of School Time Programs. We are very excited to be here tonight to share an update on what we've been doing with our Afterschool Community Learning Grant. This is a grant that became available in 2023, which we applied

002for and were awarded last spring, late spring 2024 in May, and began implementation right away in the summer months. So, we have a lot of updates and information to share with you guys, and happy to answer any questions at the end. There we go. So, the Afterschool Community Learning Grant, what is it? The purpose of this grant is to connect schools and community so that they can offer culturally affirming and enriching after school summer learning programs that meet the needs of young people and their families. So, again, this grant, we were awarded in the spring last year and began implementing in the summer. There were three objectives. This is very sensitive tonight. Three objectives as part of, is it better to use the space bar? There we go. Three main grant objectives as part of

003the application process for this. One of them was to increase access to comprehensive and culturally affirming afterschool and summer learning and enrichment opportunities that meet the academic and social and emotional needs of historically underserved young people, promote engagement in learning and connections to school and community, and encourage school attendance and improve academic performance. This was a very extensive grant application process. A lot went into it, and the credit for the success of the grant really does go to Nicole and all the work she did to pull all of our data together and all the programs, making the connections with the buildings that we focused on as part of the grant. So, a lot of, well, all the credit does go to her to making that a successful process for us to be awarded, and we're

004very lucky to have it. As part of that grant, so we were only one of 24 grantees across the state that were awarded this opportunity. And out of, we were one of four school districts that were included in that as well. And this will apply or provide around $1.4 million for us over that three-year span. So, roughly just under $500,000 a year for us to provide those after school and summer learning opportunities for kids as part of the grant. Moving forward here, Nicole's gonna speak to some of the data points and items that we use as part of the grant application. We will then share what, how we implemented some pieces with the grant last summer, and then also share things that we're currently doing right now during the school year, and then some of

005the goals we have for the upcoming summer months as well. So, I'm gonna turn this portion over to Nicole. - [Nicole] Great. Thank you. So, this slide kind of goes through some of our data as a school district, and it was most of the basis for what we presented in our application in order to show that there was the need for these programs and this funding. Some of the larger data points that we used were the percentage of students who qualified for educational benefits by building academic screeners and enrollment numbers in our tuition-based programs. So, things like extended day or vendor-led enrichment camps. So, through these three different data points, we were able to make a pretty solid argument that these funds would increase our access for our underserved populations in our community. So, as

006Tim had mentioned, we were officially awarded this in late May and our first programs were offered at the beginning of July. So, it was a pretty quick turnaround. You can go to the next if you want. - [Board Member] Can I just ask a quick- - [Nicole] Yeah. - [Board Member] Clarified question 'cause some people don't know. When we are looking at the percentage of student population qualifying for educational benefits, can you describe what that is so everybody knows? - Yeah. So, educational benefits is the verbiage and maybe someone else knows a little bit more than I do, but that replaced free and reduced lunch applications. So, with the legislation that went through granting access to all students having free and reduced lunch, we changed the name of that to be able to still accommodate

007other methods in which people can access grants and funding. Yeah, no, thanks. So, then our program started in July. We have two summer learning programs that we're accessing grant funds. So, we applied for this grant in collaboration with our Freedom School model as well. So, the first one is our Camp Summer model, which is a four-week program that runs in July. It's like early July to late July. And it's four weeks, Monday through Thursday. With this grant, they require that students have access to a hundred hours of programming. So, this year, what we did was we added an enrichment section to the afternoon. Typically, it was a half day program, so running from about 7:45 to 12:45, and we increased the number of hours to go until 2:15. So, that end of the day portion

008was an enrichment portion that we offered through the grant and community connections. So, with that, we offered 24 different courses and I'll get more into what we offered in a little bit. We were able to serve 63 students in session one, which was the first two weeks, and 75 in session two. Some of those are duplicates because students can enroll for all four weeks if they'd like to. - [Tim] Yep, and part of the area of the grant that we attributed to, Freedom Schools, to benefit, that was to increase the number of seats, so the number of students were able to serve. So, with Freedom Schools, there is a cap on the number of students we're able to serve in that program. So, we originally applied, when I applied for last year, we applied for

009to serve a hundred kids, and we run this program at Willow Lane in the summertime. As part of the grant application, we're able to increase that by the number of 20 seats. So, we had a hundred, a little over 120 kids served in the program last year. And then Nicole's gonna share some evidence-based practices that we applied. - Yeah. So, part of what we had submitted as well in our grant application was just how we would meet all of these evidence-based practices for student learning, specifically in our targeted services programs. So, programs that occur outside of the general school day. So, the six portions that we had addressed were access to basic needs, class sizes being 12 to 15 students, setting high goals and expectations, opportunities for project and inquiry-based learning, communication of the benefits

010of attendance of these programs, and then also offering additional enrichment options. So, both of the programs between Freedom School and Camp Summer addressing basic needs. We provide breakfast, lunch, and transportation free of charge to families for these summer learning programs. Of course, in addition to welcoming staff to create those environments of solid relationships. Air conditioning and break spaces, really important in the summer if you don't have it. It's, you know, especially with air quality things and different things, it does really help with the learning environments. So, our Camp Summer classes ended up being about 10 to 12 students per one licensed teacher, and we also had some additional parasupport. The Freedom School model is a partnered model between targeted services and then the servant leader interim positions, and that's 20 students per class. So, it's

01120 students with two adults at a one to 10 ratio. Setting high goals and expectations. Our documentation for these programs is in a continual learning plan, which is created with assessment data that is collected by teachers throughout the school year. And then each student gets an individualized goal or several goals that are all aligned with what our district initiatives are in terms of those. Project and inquiry-based learning. So, opportunities to kind of seek out things on your own or do some project-based things through Freedom School. There's the National Day of Social Action. - [Tim] Yep. - [Nicole] Did you wanna say more about that? - [Tim] Yeah, just that as part of the, so all there... We're one of 14 or 15 chapters in the metro that offer our Freedom Schools program, but the program

012across the entire US does all group together for around a national day of social action. And every day, every year, they pick a different theme or topic they would like to address. Last year, our focus was on access to books. So, we actually partnered with the local library. Had the... Can't remember her official title, but I'll just call her the director of the Ramsey County Library here in White Bear Lake, came out and was one of our morning readers. Talked about all the resources that are available to students in the library. And then we also provided them with applications to get their own library card and for those that weren't able to get theirs. So, yeah, all the students filled out an application for a card and they, even if they didn't. We did take

013a field trip to the library as well, so they could see all that was there and they were awarded their card that day when they got there. And then everybody that applied late were able to get them their card at a different time. So, it was really nice to kind of showcase what's available to them for free, at no cost to them right here in our local downtown area. - [Nicole] And then in our Camp Summer model, the morning program is created by licensed teachers and we moved it to be theme-based for summer learning. So, they have the opportunity to potentially create their own business, learn about animal adaptations, and kind of do a project-based learning around that. Daily wonderings. There's a lot of different bugs. Baking, cooking, all sorts of things that teachers have

014come up with that have been really great for kids to wanna keep coming back every day in the summer. So, communication of the benefits of attendance. So, we communicated this in several individual phone conversations. We had flyers. It was all over those pieces. Registration, email to families and newsletters, and just sharing that the more consistently you can attend, the better the outcomes for your student. And then adding additional enrichment opportunities. So, in Freedom School, there's two hours in the afternoon, and Camp Summer, there's an hour and a half that we just added this last year. And then each of the programs has a little bit of a different schedule. So, Tim is gonna run us through Freedom Schools. - [Tim] Yeah, thanks. Yeah, so this is just kind of a snapshot of a day in

015the life of our Summer Freedom Schools program. And really, I mean, the program itself, just like most of our summer learning, is really to get the kids engaged to think about school a little bit differently, right? Get them in our buildings, have a great time, have a great experience outside of what a traditional school day might look like just to gain that positive relationship with their building, their activities, their students, their peers, and the people and the adults working in the building. So, we start every day with breakfast in the morning. Our teachers and staff are encouraged to sit and have breakfast with the kids in the morning as they get there. They get a little recess time before we bring everybody else in for the morning Harambee, which is a morning, daily morning kickoff

016kind of celebration for the day if you've ever been there to visit with us. It's very loud. It's very high energy. But yeah, so we have songs in the morning. Daily affirmation type pieces with the kids. We bring in a morning read aloud guests every day to read a book that either was important to them growing up or something that's important to them now that they wanna share with the scholars. And then give time for those scholars to ask questions about, "Oh, why'd they pick that book?" Or as an example, when the director from the library came in, you know, they get to ask her questions about the library or what else can they do there. And to really kind of give them time to, we really try to focus on asking high level questions,

017not just yes or no questions. But why do you like this book? Like, what about this book speaks to you? Why did you want us to learn about it? Then a good chunk of the morning is grounded in our academic and curriculum time with a break for snack as well as a break to for D.E.A.R. time, which is "Drop everything and read." Over the span of an hour, we have lunch and recess time for the kids and the staff as well. And then as Nicole mentioned earlier, our afternoons two hours in the afternoon, are based in kind of more enrichment-based programming, which could be a variety of different arts and crafts activities, physical games or physical activities, outside sports activities, different games. We have a music and arts portion. You know, we have a lot

018of skilled teachers and individuals that work that bring a lot of special talents into the program and it's really nice to be able to see them share their gifts with the students, as well to create some cool things in the afternoon. A lot of the music and the arts pieces where we do an end of the summer celebration our last day invite parents in. And so, they put together different performances and that type of activities and different things for the parents to participate as well. And then obviously, we always want student voice at the table as well. So, if students have different ideas of things they would like to do in the afternoon, our hope is that we can partner with some of our adult leaders and teachers in the program to provide that opportunity

019for them to explore those interests that they might have in our afternoon time. And then we end the day every day around 3:30. So, it is a five-day week program, basically kind of a full school day as far as time goes and that's kind of what a typical day looks like. And then Nicole will speak to, oh. Oh, sorry. Yeah, just some pictures of different activities. We try to do one field trip a week in the program. Those pictures on the left is when we took a trip out to Big River Farms. We have a partnership with them in nutrition services, and the kids got to go kind of walk some property out in Marina in St. Croix. And we got to speak with one of the farmers that has property there and what vegetables

020she grows, who she partners with to bring her food to when it's ready. It was very, very hot that day, if you remember that day. Kids had fun, but they would tell you that it was also kind of miserable because it was so hot. That picture on the bottom left is our trip to the science museum. So, there is a Freedom Schools chapter at the science museum. And every summer, the science museum blocks a whole day off. So, all the Freedom Schools chapters come together for one day at the science museum, which is, yeah. It's just very, it was a pretty cool thing. So, we are rocking those green shirts there in that picture. And then Ally Meyer, one of our ML teachers who also works with us in the program doing some outdoor learning

021with the kids. A picture of kind of our morning setup in Harambee there with our guest reader up on the screen. And then the bottom is some of our staff that work in our building with us during the school year and then also work with us in the summer. But it's nice, there's a lot of opportunities for them to network and be connected with the broader Minnesota Freedom Schools chapters for different opportunities. So, they were, a couple of 'em were awarded some recognition at an event we had. So, it's nice for them to network with other school districts and organizations that also run that, and just kind of create those opportunities for, you know, peer teaching and learning of what other programs are doing, and get them connected to other areas outside of just here

022in White Bear Lake. And go ahead. - So, then our Camp Summer model is set up a little bit similarly, but with a little bit of a different vibe. The morning is that kind of learning-based opportunity that students are signing up for based on interest. So, whether it's bugs or gardening, astronauts, space, STEM, there's a bunch of different options for them to sign up for. And then licensed teachers put together that curriculum. They present the topics for the day. Students practice their academic skills, math, literacy, social emotional learning. There's a Phy-ed rotation each day for each class. Some project-based learning, our lunchtime, and then the afternoon enrichment activities. So, this summer, we tried to theme our days a little bit to get the kids excited about it 'cause it was a little bit of a

023longer day than they were anticipating signing up for. So, Mondays, the theme was the great outdoors, Tuesdays, science, tech, engineering, and math, or STEM, Wednesdays, career explorers, and Thursdays was health and fun. So, you can go each slide, next goes into these a little bit more with the partnerships that we used on each of the days. So, on Mondays, it was outdoor recreation. The students got to go fishing at the pier right by the VFW, which was really cool. Twin Pandas took some of the kiddos kayaking at Bellaire Beach. So, they went out and just kind of tried that out a little bit. Fishing Library, another local entrepreneur. He was able to bring kind of the fishing practice inside into the gym, so the kids would practice casting, and they would play games and different

024things before they actually went out to fish then in real life with a hook. And then there were a couple of teacher-led activities. There was a fish life cycle and habitat sensory box that the kids really loved. And then we did the Wildlife Protection Agency that helped them kinda explore some of the environmental stewardship and being able to do a scavenger hunt and kind of taking care of their community and picking up trash. So, then Tuesdays was science, tech and engineering. This was mostly led by our teachers through our Mindworks curriculum, which, the two curriculums that we really love are Grossology and All Stars. Grossology is a lot of fun. It's... They can teach you how to make scabs like fake scabs. It's a lot of health-related things that, you know, kids just absolutely eat

025up. So, that was really fun. And then All Stars was just focused on kind of team building and the math components. Wednesdays was career exploration. So, there was a fun bingo where they won career related prizes, so they could kind of explore some different options. We had a local author come in. She was a retired teacher. And so, after she retired she became an author. So, she kind of talked about her journey that way. One of our, a couple of our teachers did some greeting card illustrators and graphic designers to explore some of those pieces. Entrepreneurship, small business, and then a muralist, a community muralist came in and did some activism pieces and helped them kind of take their own way of social action. So, that was very fun. - [Tim] Do you guys, do

026you remember the White Bear Center for the Arts? Did they... I can't remember the name. If you saw the murals on the side of there, the big murals they did, I can't think of the name of the exhibit. Sorry, I forgot the name of it. But yeah, Center of the Arts. We connected with Cadex Herrera. He also did a mural down in the George Floyd. He did the George Floyd mural. Did a couple other ones in St. Paul. So, he did, worked with us for an exhibit over there. And then we were able to reach out to him, and he was gracious enough to come out and work with us last summer. Yeah, it was a really nice experience with the kids. - [Nicole] And then Thursdays was health and fun. So, this is where

027we started kind of some of our collaboration with our school-aged care program, which is also something that I oversee. So, on Thursdays, they explored some of the extended day spaces and did some different things with just kind of the play-based learning. So, dramatic play, arts and crafts, creative building. Gym games, very popular after being kind of in the classroom all day. They like to be active in the afternoon. So, some different lead gym games that they could play. Our nutrition services department did a local produce tasting and health lesson, which was really popular. Whenever food's involved, the kids get real excited. And then a safety demonstration with a canine dog and with the police department. So, that was just kind of some fun things. But where everything was random and didn't fit in, it happened

028on Thursdays. And so, this work has now continued into this school year where we've been offering these community connections and programs in our after school model. So, this is the afternoon schedule that we proposed in the grant program model. And basically, what it does is it increases access to after school, but also alleviating some of the barriers that we were experiencing. So, staffing, and then some of them for families as well, transportation and tuition costs. So, over the last few years, we've had a challenge recruiting staff from 2:15 to 3:30 to provide access to everyone in our community who needs it. This partnership with some of our vendors who run classes from 2:15 to 3:30. And then the kids kind of come in to our school-aged care program where we have high school staff who

029are able to start at 3:30, and then families are able to opt in to transportation home at five o'clock if that's a barrier for them, and it's in partnership with NewTrax, which is a community transportation vendor. And then the program closes at 5:30. So, if parents didn't wanna opt into transportation, they could pick up their kiddo anytime before 5:30. So, through this model. Through this model, over the course of the time, so we started it right after MEA October 21st and it'll run all the way to the end of the school year. It's at Birch, Lakeaires, Vadnais, and Willow. We are and have offered 151 different types of courses. And I'll get into some examples in a little bit of 871 individual sessions. So, each day, there are several sessions that happen that kids can

030choose from. So, it gives them about two to four options each afternoon to explore something which they might be interested. We've been able to offer 50 scholarships for students. We're currently transporting 23 students home and we have are serving 319 total students, which is just shy of our 400 student goals. So, we're feeling really good about that in the first year. But that's kind of some of what we're gonna focus on next year is more access to transportation and then serving some more students. All right. So, these are some of the partnerships that we've been able to work with in the afterschool programs. So, there you can kind of see up there, there's a wide variety of different things that students can access. Foreign language and culture, engineering and STEM, sports and games, cooking and

031gardening, architecture, arts and theater. And the theater, one of the theater programs also includes a partnership with the Children's Performing Arts Center at Vadnais where we started our first blended model of targeted services, academic, and then also the community partner. So, there's a licensed teacher partnering with that community vendor to be able to create what we hope to kind of move forward in the future just because there's... This has been a model that's been able to help students explore different academic skills in different ways. So, like for example, the 101 Dalmatians play at Vadnais, there's 30 students currently participating. 15 of those have continual learning plans that have individual literacy goals aligned to that play. So, they're working on their comprehension, their questioning, those kinds of things in sort of a different format. And then

032that leads us to our program goals for the upcoming summer and next year. So, we hope to increase more of those opportunities like we were talking about, where we're partnering a licensed teacher and a community vendor together to provide classes for students. Reaching our goal of serving 400 students across the four buildings, increasing our number of students accessing transportation. And then for summer, for the upcoming summer, Tim and I hope to work more in collaboration with our enrichment pieces to be able to potentially blend or work more efficiently with the afternoon enrichment between Freedom Schools and Camp Summer. - [Tim] I mean, we're blessed to have a lot of great staff and teachers and people that work in our programs to provide these opportunities, but that afternoon enrichment piece is really nice to be able

033to bring outside people in as well just to provide those additional experiences from different community experts. And again, being able to bring that in to provide just a broader variety for our students to participate is gonna be really exciting. So, we're looking to embed more of that in for this upcoming summer. But we know that was a lot of information. But thank you guys for your time. And if there's any other questions, we are happy to answer them. - [Board Member] Thank you. Do we have any questions? Ms. Ellison? - Thank you so much. This is an incredible amount of work. So, my question is, are there ways for the community to get involved? I mean, I know people might not know that this is happening, so are there places for people to come in

034and be readers? Or, you know, how do people know about how they can participate? - Yeah, I think as far as like, I'll just reference like Freedom Schools for like our read aloud guests, like I'll usually put an all call out to staff and send messages out to the board, and my advisory council, if they have an interest or they know anybody else in the community that might have an interest or a connection that wants to do that, we are more, we try to get as big of a variety as we can of people that come in. So, we've had everybody from, I think we had a few city council members come from here, from the city. I can't remember all of 'em at this time, but a lot of variety of different staff will

035come in from across our, you know. Our entire school district come in and help out too. But we have people from the county come in. A lot of different representation. And other team member had a relationship with a different author that came in and shared their book and answered questions about that stuff too. - Yeah, and after Camp Summer, we would love any opportunity as possible. I'm kind of the one who's coordinating and planning those pieces. So, anyone knows anyone that would like to be involved, absolutely send them my way. - Yeah, and we did our summer school tour to all the buildings and spoke with all the teachers and reminded 'em too, like there's opportunities for them to be involved in our programs this summer in either capacity as a teacher in one of

036these programs or if interested to... We have had teachers reach out to that say, "Yeah, I would love to do a summer camp opportunity," which is always available to any of our staff. - [Ms. Ellison] That's tremendous. I mean, it's hard in the summer, especially if parents are working. It's really is such a great space for students. So, thank you. - Okay. Mr. Skaar. - Thank you. The Freedom School, how is that funded? Is that funded through MDE or through the Federal Department of Education? How is that funded? - Oh, currently, that's funded through A&I dollars achievement integration dollars, as well as blended with target services. - [Mr. Skaar] Okay. - Yep. - [Mr. Skaar] And then- - [Board Member] And now the grant. Sorry. - So, when you got, I'm just curious, when you're

037applying for a grant like this, is there any out-of-pocket costs associated with the application or do we do it internally with our own staff to apply for the grant? - [Tim] Yep. Well, mostly it's just our time. - Okay, great. - [Tim] Yup. - When you look at the 1.4 million over the next three years, what percentage would you say is, do we have to hire new staff or do we use existing staff? What's the lay of the land for how that $1.4 million is spent? - Yeah, so I mean, it's laid out. We hire staff to fill our needs in the program. We could be staffed that we already have part of our program or staff that are currently, they could be a teacher during the year and then work, applying for a summer

038position with us internally. And then for Freedom Schools specifically too, we have a lot of internal staff that are looking for summer work options and we have a small handful of new hires and staff that are coming in from outside the district as well for those programs. I forget the other part of your question for those. Is it where the money goes? - [Mr. Skaar] Yeah. So, it's mostly staff is what you're saying? - Well, staff and then a lot of our, and Nicole can speak to a little more detail with this, but we have a budget sheet that we have to present to them of, you know, where our expenses are gonna go and that'll fall anywhere from staff expenses, vendor experiences, other costs that are associated with the program in terms of any,

039sometimes there's training involved for certain things or just different costs for supplies, transportation like we mentioned before earlier. But all those things are spelled out as part of that application approved by them before they awarded us the grant. - [Mr. Skaar] Just one, couple other questions. One is on the grant objectives, you guys didn't come up with those 'cause they have number three. - [Tim] Yep. That's all from the state- - I imagine their priority order, but number three is to encourage school attendance and improve academic performance. You know, that, to me, should be number one, right? I mean, I think they got their priorities screwed up a little bit. And then the other thing is on your goals, if you could put that back up. The fact... I thought that was, I was delighted

040to see that you had a measurable goal there in terms of reaching the goal of serving 400 students across four buildings. I think that's great. If you, on the other three goals, if you could think about putting some numbers on that, that would be helpful. But I mean, it sounds like it's a lot of work. It's a great, it sounds like it's a great program. So, thank you for providing this update. - [Nicole] Thank you. - Other questions? Ms. Thompson? - No question. Just a comment on, I know how much work that was. I looked through the requirements of the grant while doing my little bit of research on. That was a lot of work. So, thank you. They always are a lot of work. But I just wanted to kind of see what you

041had to do and provide to them in order to get the funding. So, thank you for that. And being one of the few that were selected, that's, you know, hats off to you. I have been a reader. I think the first year, I got to come in and read. A lot of fun. So, if he sends out the email and asks you if you want to go in and read, I highly recommend it. It is a great time and just to be able to be there. And it's high energy, the kids. - [Tim] Yeah, we always warn everybody it's gonna be loud, it's gonna be energetic, and don't be surprised if you're asked to dance a little bit at the end. - [Ms. Thompson] Right. Yeah. We did a little bit of that. And bringing

042in the community partnerships is great 'cause it aligns with our strategic plan and the mission of the district to kind of bring the community into the schools and find ways to partner with 'em, so that they can be involved, which is always a great thing. So, thank you so much. It's great. - Thank you. - And the air conditioning. - Yeah. - Yeah, it is nice. - It is nice. - Very nice. - [Mr. Arcand] Well, thank you. And I just wanna say that the things that caught my eye, the career exploration is huge. We know that we've gotta start doing it earlier and earlier because of having students opportunity to kind of look and think about the different careers that they're gonna have out there. That was wonderful. And then contextual learning. We know

043when kids get to choose what they want to do, it has meaning and they learn it quicker and better 'cause they're learning it for a reason and they know why they're learning it and that just helps. So, those two things that makes that program all worth it. So, thank you for everything you do. - Thank you. - Okay. We're gonna move on then to discussion item B-2 Mariner Middle School. Dr. Gillespie and Dr. Pierre. - [Staff] Coming up. I'll introduce Dr. Christina Pierre, the principal at Mariner Middle School. And I'll let Christina introduce her rockstar team. - [Dr. Pierre] Yes. Hello, Chair Arcand and members of the board. Very happy to be here with our associate principal, Ryan Clark, as well as our instructional coach, Rachel Schmidt. We're just going to give you an update

044on what's been happening at Mariner this year. So, this is our mission statement. We love our diversity. We want our community to feel like a family. We value our students' unique strengths and we commit to the success of every learner. This statement was created by a group of staff, students, and families that came together a couple years ago to talk about who will we be at Mariner Middle School. And just so everyone remembers, this is our inaugural year. This is our first year of existing as Mariner Middle School. And we build on the legacies of three outstanding white Bear Lake schools. So, certainly, there's Mariner High School because we moved into the building that was originally Mariner High School. And we bring with us the legacies of Sunrise Park Junior High and Sunrise Park Middle

045School. So, the staff and students moved out of Sunrise Park into Mariner Middle School, and so we carry all of those legacies forward with us. And a really special numerical fact to share with you all. The first graduating class of Mariner High School happened in 1974. And then 50 years later, we opened Mariner Middle School in 2024. And now, I'm going to hand it over. Ryan's going to start talking about what we've been doing this fall, well, this fall and winter at Mariner. - So, I wanna tell you, life at Mariner Middle School has been busy. We've jampacked a lot of activities into our first year. One of the things we did is we moved in and we set sail. And so, existing staff members said goodbye to old classrooms and moved into new classrooms

046with new furniture. Our students traversed unfamiliar pathways from classroom to classroom without much disruption. And we really did get back down to the business of learning. - Facebook. - [Ryan] Hmm. Oh, we can. Oh, that's fast. All right, here we go. Well, I'll tell you a little bit about an event we held in October. It was the set sail event where we held a community event to show off our new newly opened school building. In this event, we collected memorabilia to showcase and we posted enlarged images from old Mariner yearbooks that Mariner graduates and employees and curious community members got to sort through and find themselves in. We spent some time both showing off the new building and honoring our past. This year, we've also hosted a few legislators in our building, State Representative Brion

047Curran, and US, United States Congressman Betty McCollum stopped by Mariner Middle School. Their visits were jampacked. They got to experience things like a riveting civics lesson in Mr. Wind's US History class. They got to meet students in our allies program and they got to see some of the wonderful learning happening in our ASD cluster program. Here we go. We've really been enjoying our new spaces at Mariner Middle School. And so, one of those spaces is our auditorium, which is a new opportunity for us. We've hosted ensemble music, concerts, and grade level assemblies. Our science teachers have really enjoyed teaching in college laboratory sized classrooms. Our gymnast, or sorry, our physical education staff has enjoyed the challenge of getting kids to move throughout every square inch of our expanded gymnasium space. And our teachers have really

048enjoyed pushing into our flex spaces and new maker space to foster collaborative learning. Hey. If you come to Mariner Middle School, you might hear me saying, "Middle school is fun." We do fun there and it is fun. They've, our students have enjoyed a variety of, engaging in a variety of middle school clubs and enrichment activities. We have held school dances. We've gone on field trips. And middle school kids have just enjoyed being middle school kids. - [Dr. Pierre] All right, so now we're going to shift to talking about our building goals for the year. And Rachel will talk about that. - [Rachel So, I'm going to talk about the way we have sort of streamlined our goal setting process to empower teachers to, and also help make these goals more tangible across the building and

049more that we meet our goals. So, in August, we meant to, we, being teacher leaders, admin, we met to set goals for the year. That's pretty standard stuff. Make (indistinct) later. But we had four goals. First round, goal-directed behavior. So, that's measured on our SEL screener for, and basically a combination of two things. Students reporting whether they can make responsible decisions and also whether they can manage themselves in those decisions. Also, a student engagement goal that was measured by our 5D framework and rubrics and such. Student agency and recognition also on DESSA, we use those measurements for them, really focused on students' reporting whether they feel seen and heard in school. And literacy achievement was our fourth goal, specifically through an equity lens. And this is where it gets exciting. So, we really tried to

050change the architecture of how these goals are working to help make there be a little bit more of an authentic learning process through the goals. So, we leverage our professional learning leads by asking them which of those four goals are, is where their sort of professional interests and skills lie. And then PLLs and me, myself, and admin were then assigned a goal to sort of own as that is the building goal that we are gonna take on. And then that goal then becomes a committee. So, teachers picked a committee and beyond. And that committee led by the professional learning lead, it's their job to help the building meet that goal. And also, the teacher's student learning goal was based on that. So, you would have your own measurable SMART goal around, say, literacy or goal-directed

051behavior. And the cool thing that happens then is that the professional learning leads are then sort of empowered to lead kind of this PLC, doing action research, learning about best practices, giving individualized coaching to their like committee members to actually help 'em meet their goals. And meanwhile, we are sort of empowering those PLLs with those skills as well, which is very exciting. - And just to clarify, PLLs professional learning leads, they are teacher leaders in our building. So, what we're really doing is empowering our teachers to lead other teachers and achieve our goals. - So, I'll talk about two of the goals. The first is our biggest committee, which is very exciting, which is the student engagement goal. They have been doing action research cycles where they will bring sort of engagement concerns or engagement

052thoughts to the table. They will then develop a strategy to work on together. They'll enact that strategy, then come back to the table, discuss it, refine it, et cetera. And the cool thing is that as they do that, the cream rises to the top, right? The engagement strategies that work best start coming up again and again. So, they are developing a student engagement toolbox to sort of codify their work and help it, you know, keep running for years to come, and it had these four components. This is what they're discussing. Instructional strategies, classroom systems, classroom management, and relational capacity, all of which have to do with student engagement. And then the next one, my committee. So fun. So, like I said, goal-directed behavior is two measurements, which is responsible decision-making and self-management. And I don't

053know if you've met middle schoolers, but that does tend to be a growth area for them. And so, the first thing we did was we reviewed research on sort of why that is such a sticky thing in middle school. So, that we could infuse our goal setting with students with best practices, so that teachers are working on better goal setting with students in their classroom. We also did a building-wide, we're gonna do two building-wide interventions in goal setting to help them continue. - [Ryan] Now, I'm gonna tell you about two of our other committees. The first is our student agency and recognition committee. And what I wanna tell you about this committee is that we know the sense of belonging is really important in middle school. It's just a kind of a truth. And so,

054this group has really been rolling up their sleeves and learning more, getting kind of curious and learning more about what makes a middle school student feel a sense of belonging. We've jumped into our DESSA data. If you're unfamiliar with DESSA, it's a questionnaire that measures the student's social emotional skills. After analyzing our data, our committee has engaged in what we call interviews to learn more about the data. Right? And what our students have told us is they feel a really strong sense of connection with the staff and the adults in our building. But some of their peers can be a little less predictable. And so, there's an opportunity for development and growth there. And so, our committee members have piloted small belonging interventions in their classroom spaces, in their content area. And the work is

055ongoing. Our next committee is literacy achievement committee. Teachers on this committee identified students that were behind and developed interventions to increase literacy. Looking forward, their plans are to gather data, reflect, adjust, and redesign and implement the next round of interventions. - [Dr. Pierre] So, that's what's been happening at Mariner. Do you have some questions for us? - [Mr. Arcand] Any questions? Mr. Skaar? - [Mr. Skaar] Thank you. Okay. Thanks for presenting this. It's nice meeting you all. A couple of things. One of the things is when you go to the first slide. At Mariner Middle School, we have all of these things, but I don't see anything about like academic achievement, which is an academics and education, which is our primary goal under the state mandate. So, I would just take that back to say

056we need to huddle around academic excellence, focus on that kind of in our mission statement. 'cause it's important. And I have a keen sense of the obvious. So, I saw that. I thought, "Oh, well that's not there." Maybe we should kind of take a look at that. The other thing is how do you, guys, since you're new, how are you establishing like a baseline to measure yourself in, you know, down the road? Do we already have a baseline? We already have that. - So, our entire staff and student body moved from one building to another. So, like we're a new school in some ways. But in other ways, we do have some longevity to look back on. - So, when we look at data, we're comparing to Sunrise 2020. But that's the same list. So,

057we would look at like our old Sunrise data with our last year data. We don't think we don't have that. - [Mr. Skaar] I see. So, the other thing is on your goals, you know, can we get some kind of meat around them in terms of where we are and where we think, and just the numbers? You know, we project A. We're at A. We plan to be at B. And this is kind of, you kind of have the how part, but not the, you know, the number part of what we're trying to do. - [Dr. Pierre] Yeah, you're absolutely right. We have the numbers. We just didn't put them in the presentation. - [Board Member] They get to choose from a menu of things to talk about these specific ones. We absolutely can get

058you the data. But each one of our buildings has measurable goals with those around different topics. Student engagement, academic, and then also... - Thank you. And then just one other question. Like, for sense of belonging, I know that's really important in middle schools. I switched middle schools when I was young and I think it probably had an impact on me. An adverse impact. No, I don't. I'm just kidding. That manifests itself today anyway. But you know, one of the things is, like, sense of belongings and important, but the broader spirit, spirit things, it's like happiness. I mean, kids that are happy, you know, are gonna have a sense of belonging. They're also gonna do this, that, so, you know, it's just, it's the whole picture. - Yeah. - Just a comment. - Thank you. -

059[Mr. Arcand] Chair Ellison. I mean, sorry. Ms. Ellison - [Ms. Ellison] Passed the gavel by- - [Mr. Arcand] Yeah, yeah, yeah. I got used to that last time. - [Ms. Ellison] Well, I have two Mariner kids living in my house. And so, one is an eighth grader who had to transition from Sunrise and the other one is a sixth grader, so coming to middle school for the first time. And the first couple of weeks, I'm sure that you felt it. It was just like a beehive as everybody was kind of learning everything. But what I found that as they both have settled in, Mariner feels really good to both of them. You know, the older one had to learn this new school, but he talks about Mariner and not Sunrise, right? And then the little

060one, I mean, the fact that... that you can host band concerts at the building is so important because it's not like students having to go elsewhere. So, I think that sense of community is really strong. I mean, just from the two that that live in my house. I also have a question about student belonging 'cause I feel like that is so important for the middle schoolers. Because if they don't feel like they belong, it's gonna be hard for them to do all of the other things. So, my question is, as you continue with these four committees, how are you going to involve students in those outcomes? I mean, I love that you're having these empathy conversations because it's hard to be in middle school. - Yes. - So, how are students gonna be part of

061the solution? - [Ryan] Oh, I think that's the opportunity, right? We've explored with a lot of interventions in class to know and be known our classmates, right? To share a little bit about each other. But I do think that the opportunity there is leveraging students for each other, right? Leveraging their relationships, and leveraging ways for them to be more predictable for each other and foster more of a sense of community with them. How that looks like, you know, that's really what the committee is for, right? It's ongoing work with that group, but we are putting some of our best people on it. - [Ms. Ellison] Wonderful. Thank you. - Thank you, Ms. Ellison. Any other questions? Ms. Thompson? - Just a few comments. This is great. Thank you so much for this. And I'm sure

062it's been interesting this first year of the building. I did go to the open house with my daughter who is a 10th grader. So, she's never had the pleasure of being in that building other than for some functions here and there. And it's interesting because you often hear kids would complain about the circles, right? But she's like, "Oh my gosh, how do you even know where you're going in the building?" So, it's just fun to see the different perspective from kids who haven't been in that building or, you know, she won't be in that building. I think you guys had mentioned the student engagement piece and the students had actually recognized that they need to build a connection amongst themselves, which I think is, middle school kids recognizing that, that's fantastic. So, that's a great

063place to start to kind of work on that piece of belonging. And just to add into, it is important for all of our kids to feel like they belong in all of our buildings throughout their entire experience in our district. Ensuring, I would just add that it's hard to ensure they're happy. We can do our best to ensure that they're happy, but we can't fix all the things that are outside of our control, right? So, ensuring that when they come to our buildings, they do feel like they belong there and they can have that little reprise in our buildings to make it so that they want to come to school, which I see is really what you guys are working at building here, is having them be excited to come to school and to have

064that time there, and that, I mean, if they're already working on it and recognizing they themselves need to figure out how to build relationships among themselves. And that's a big win. So, thank you so much. - Thank you. - [Mr. Arcand] And we all know that I have a special spot for Mariner. I wanna say thank you because a lot of the things that we talk about, we love our diversity. We want our community to feel like a family. We value our students' unique strengths and we commit to success of every learner. I felt like that's a continuation from when we were in high school there. And that was important because you felt like you could conquer anything. You could move on. When you're a family, you want to go to school. You could be

065happy and confident even when things don't go the way we want. Being part of the family was important. So, thank you for that and let's keep it up. And I think that's just gonna help us continue to be successful. Thank you. All right, well, thank you. All right. B three. Our next item is Willow Lane Elementary, Dr. Gillespie and Mr. Menier. - [Dr. Gillespie] I'll introduce Matt Menier. - Menier. Sorry. - [Dr. Gillespie] Principal at Willow Lane Elementary. - [Mr. Menier] Thank you very much. Thank you, Chair Arcand and board members. It's good to see you again. Nice to meet you for the first time, Mr. Skaar. I'm Matt Menier. I'm the principal of Willow Lane. Happy to be presenting to you. I don't know if, do I just click on the next thing? Beautiful.

066So, I'm going to give a little update on what's been going on in our building, speak specifically to one of our building goals. Talk a little bit about some of the both academic and behavioral successes that we have seen over the year. But first and foremost, put our beautiful children at the forefront here. When you come to Willow, you'll find a very caring and committed community that celebrates and welcomes diverse perspectives and certainly has a population that I'm proud to be one of the leaders of. Some of the things that we have done so far this year include allowing students to be recognized with Bear books. And so, every day, on the announcements, I announce a birthday. And as a result of some of our title funds, we're able to build partnerships with our families.

067We allow the kids to pick out a book that we purchase with our title funds. We send home activities to make sure that the parents are working with their students on improving their literacy scores, but we always find that it's a nice opportunity to honor them. Next, I'm really proud of the ways that we have built in outdoor experiences and this opportunity for students to play and explore different spaces. So, each one of our grade levels will do some aspect of camping throughout the year. Most notably, our fifth graders at the end of the year will go to Camp Icaghowan in Wisconsin to spend a couple of nights there to learn more about the environment around them. And each one of our other grade levels will go to a nature park for a day. Most

068recently, our fourth graders were over at Dodge Nature Center and we were doing some science projects. So, we were looking at the thickness of the ice and using an ice auger to determine how cold the water was, right. So, we dropped a thermometer in the water, made some predictions about how cold we thought the water was. We also learned how to build a shelter. As you can see, the girls put together a nice shelter to protect themselves from the wind. We learned how to build a fire. And so, that's a part of us making sure that we understand the world around us, and that's connected to us. One of the other areas that I'm very proud of is our ability to understand that our world is bigger than just ourselves. So, service learning is a

069big component of what we try to bring and bring into our environment. Because we are a student, we are a school that receives a lot of money from compensatory funding, one of the ways that we've been able to allow students to give back is to build connections with our community members. The Rotary Subaru, some other community partners, what happens is those community partners donate money to our school district, Willow specifically. Our students then participate in something called Minnow Tank, which is a play of shark tank. And they are able to then research a topic that they're interested in learning more about and to give money back to. They present to the sharks. I know that I see a Minnow. I see a couple of Minnows in the room today who have had an opportunity to

070listen to our third and fourth graders present on various causes, cancer, dogs, homelessness, what have you. And then the sharks, minnows then decide which group will win. So, this is a very project-based learning. It talks about service, and allows our students to charitably donate to an organization that really resonates with them. And so, one of the pictures there at the bottom is one of the organizations, and that was an organization where students were able to purchase beds for students that do not have beds. And so, they were able to present that check to them. And you can even see some other district staff members there like Carol Bacon that helps to lead one of the groups. And so, while those are very fun, I want to make sure that we're intentional about what our student

071outcomes are both academically and through our social and emotional and learning. And as a result of my leadership at Willow and the opportunity to learn more about what we need to do from a school perspective, when you really boil down what we try to do in terms of initiatives with our staff members, you really need, you can focus on two things. Well, so a few years ago I said, when we really stripped this all down, what do we ultimately want our students to be able to do? So, we got down to we need students to be able to read, period. And then when they come to Willow, they need a feel of love. And you've mentioned multiple times when you were talking to my colleagues from Mariner how it matters to feel like you belong

072in middle school. I will say the same things apply in elementary. They've applied every aspect of our building. So, we're gonna do two things. We're gonna teach 'em how to read and we're gonna make sure that they feel the love. How are we going to do that? We do that, not only through our staff becoming more knowledgeable about how to teach reading through the science of reading. So, most of my staff members have participated in that. The only people that haven't yet are people that are new to our system, and they're starting to start that journey. And then by implementing our tier one instruction and our curriculum through CKLA, which is our board-approved literacy curriculum. How will they feel the love? There's really two areas that we focus on at Willow Lane, our board approved

073curriculum of Second Step, which allows us to explicitly teach kids how to problem solve and how to navigate situations. My colleagues over at Mariner talked about the fact that they're using DESSA to quantify some of those results. And so, how are kids reporting that out? And then secondly, we are in our third year of being a BARR school. BARR, as some of you know, oh, actually, I'll go back just one second. BARR stands for Building Assets, Reducing Risk. I'll talk about that in just a second. So, to speak specifically, well, not really specifically, but more so about some of the ways that we've been highlighted or featured at Willow. Most recently we were featured as a school that was really being intentional about the ways that we're helping our kindergartners to learn. I was presenting

074in front of this board a little less than a year ago about some of our results that we have seen with kindergartners and the way that we're able to decode the way that we are able to understand letter sounds and then obviously how that leads to reading. Minnesota Educator highlighted us and our kindergarten team on that. And most recently, we were also highlighted on MPR where I was able to talk to Elizabeth Shockman and tell her a little bit about our success as a school and the ways that we are moving forward in terms of literacy that are very exciting. We, myself, and along with a couple other colleagues, also presented most recently in the summer at a LEAD conference, which would be one of the... It's a pretty prestigious conference that takes place at

075the U. And so, we were lucky enough to be able to present at that and present some of our academic success. Talking a little bit about the ways that we help the kid, the whole student from a perspective, we really implement two strategies. One being Second Step, which is again our board approved SEL curriculum about how we help students navigate issues when they arise. And then secondly, using BARR. BARR is really a framework for how we talk about students and how we build on their assets, and then begin to create solutions and strategies to help them. I will say that BARR does an excellent job of building those relationships. So, when we started to talk about, "Well, what is that sense of belonging? I will say that relationships at time precede the learning. And so,

076how do our staff be able to understand what the students' needs are? And then consequently, how can students learn a little bit more about themselves and others as we explore this in our morning meetings and what have not. So, we have three goals. One is our academic goal and one is our family engagement goal. The one I'm talking about tonight is our student, the student experience goal. And so, we said by spring of 2025 as measured by DESSA, and I can talk a little bit more about that. Mariner talked a little bit about what the DESSA is, but it's a screener that allows us to determine how students are thriving, and what are some areas that they might need a little bit more instruction. We'll decrease the number of students who need instruction. So, whatever

077those area, there are eight different competencies that we're looking at. And Mariner talked about a couple of them. But how are we taking that DESSA screener that we do, a little bit different in the middle school that students' self-report where they are. In elementary school, the teacher does the analysis of where they think the students are thriving and where are some areas where they need a little bit more instruction. So, DESSA is what we use to screen that. So, we have both quantitative data that we can see from DESSA and then those BARR or Second Step activities allow us to have some qualitative data. How is the student participating in this? Why are they more reserved? How are they navigating some of those conversations that we have? I also wanna talk just very briefly, the

078state of Minnesota has MTSS as a way for us to advise schools on how to utilize these five different components. Our three building goals that I mentioned tie to every one of these. And BARR allows us to do that in a way that is very streamlined, so that we can talk about every single student regardless if they are thriving or whether they are needing a little bit more of instruction. By the end of the year, in fact, typically by about MEA, so mid-October, we will have talked about every single student in our building, whether they are thriving, doing exactly what they need, or they need a little bit of help. And we do that through our big and small block meetings. And that can focus on either some of their academic successes or some of

079the ways that they need some extra help when it comes to doing some of those things that make them a well-functioning student. So, while we don't go into those five different components with our students, we tie everything around these three qualities with our staff and students. Whenever you're at Willow, you will hear us talking to students in one of these three components. Self-control, empathy, and cooperation. If you come to Willow and you ask a kindergartner what it means to be empathetic, they will be able to tell you. If you ask a fifth grader what it looks like, what it means to cooperate with one another, they will tell you what that looks like. Everything that we do is very specific. Very concrete. I do not say to a kindergartner, "It seems like you have a

080wiggly body." I will not say that. Our staff will not say that. They'll say, "It seems like you're having some trouble with self-control. How can we help with that?" Or we'll go to a first grader. Like, when you picked up that student off the playground, you were showing empathy. Do you understand what that means? It's really cool to see a kindergartner or a first grader be able to use some pretty big terms to describe what they are doing or what they are not doing. These connect, these three, this promise connects to the things that we're doing in the classroom. You times are opportunities for us in BARR to build relationships. The Second Step is our ability to work with kids to help problem solve. So, can I click on this? - [Board Member] Yeah. Click

081it. - Okay. So, every day I do a morning announcement, and we highlight students that are demonstrating the Willow Lane promise. Every month, we have a theme. This month happened to be the month of showing perseverance. The Willow Lane promise ties into that, right? Being empathetic. There's aspects of perseverance. Being in cooperation. Being in self-control. This is Noah. He was a kindergarten. This was an announcement from last year. But I think it does a really good job of showing how Noah has persevered from not knowing how to read when he came to school to now knowing how to read. And if we don't have time for the video, that's okay. It is very cute. - [Board Member] Agreed. - Holy cow. All right, so let me tell you why Noah is here. Noah is here

082because he's a student that shows perseverance. That's a big word, isn't it, Noah? - Yeah. - Yeah. It's a big word. And we have to continue to kind of define what that word means. What is perseverance? - It means- - What? Oh, yeah. Go ahead. Never giving up. That's right. And now, listen to what Ms. Moorehead said about Noah. Noah regularly shows perseverance throughout our learning times each day. During our morning literacy time, Noah demonstrates perseverance by using self-control, and, this one's really important, he's using his listening skills to stay on track. If he feels that she, that Ms. Moorehead is going too fast on the activity, he uses his words, he takes a deep breath, and he perseveres through the activity. That's really tough. 'Cause sometimes, when our teachers are teaching, sometimes, like, oh

083my gosh, I'm starting to get tired. And I'm starting to like, ooh. I didn't sleep well last night. But Noah perseveres through that. Noah has been working very hard on the skill and I'm so proud of him. And so, Noah, why do you do that? Why is it important to persevere? - Well, if you give up, you don't get to do it. - Mm-hm. - But if you, like, keep doing it, you might get to get it finished. - Now, one of the things that I saw Noah persevering with just, you know, yesterday was he was reading three-letter words. Do you remember that when you were doing that? And I saw him, like some of the words were kind of tough, right? But he didn't give up and he was able to sound out the

084words. Now, Noah, before you became in kindergarten, were you able to like read the way that you're reading? - No. Is it easy to just learn how to read or is it hard? - It's hard. Does that mean that we should give up and not be able to read? - No. Because now are you starting to read books and words on your own? And doesn't I feel good that you can actually do that? So, I asked Noah. Does Ms. Moorehead persevere? And what did you tell me? Do you remember? - Ms. Moorehead, when she doesn't get what we're saying, she doesn't give up listening. - She doesn't give up listening. So, sometimes, maybe somebody says something and she doesn't quite like hear it or she doesn't quite understand it. Am I right about that? But

085she's just like... Doesn't matter. Noah, what does she do? How does she persevere? What does she do? - Well, we try to do it in a different way so she can know. - Ah, we do things in a different way. Sometimes, we had to do things in a different way. My goodness, look how smart he is. He's just so smart. From his mouth to our ears, we've got to be able to persevere when things get hard. Okay, so what else is going on today? Oh, my. So, that's Noah. The kid clearly understands what perseverance is. He's demonstrating what perseverance is. And Noah is a successful reader as a result of the hard work that we are doing a daily basis to ensure that these letter sounds turn into words, which then turn into paragraphs and

086sentences. So, what do we do in terms of our family outreach then with that? The teachers nominate the student for whatever it is. I take that nomination. I find the student. I bring them in. We do the morning announcements. I send this email out to our families. I talk about, in this case, this was an email about growth mindset. I talk about what the teacher said about the student to the parent. And sometimes, I don't get a response back from the parent. Okay. Sometimes, I get a response back from the parent that says, "When we transferred a few years ago, we didn't know what to expect. A parent always hopes that their child's school is a safe and supportive place for their student to not only learn academically, but also emotionally. I haven't interacted with

087a single soul who doesn't have a spirit of goodwill for the students and their families. Your staff have made a considerable impact on my child's overall wellbeing, from navigating the changing educational landscape during the pandemic to reincorporating community building to parent engagement nights, Willow Lane has hit the mark." There are times again when I think it's really important for our staff to see this, that this collective effort or this collective efficacy really matters, and the smallest little thing can be promoted to our families. And once they see that, it makes it much easier the next time I have to make a phone call that maybe isn't as smooth as an email like this. So, how do we monitor success? I'm just going to briefly talk about how we do, what we're doing when we're talking

088about having our times to be able to talk about a student's progress. At block meetings, we met regularly. So, on a weekly basis, we talk about students again all across the board to monitor their academic and social, social and emotional progress. And then allows us to highlight some of those strengths. We get to learn a little bit more about our students. Our fifth grader, fifth grade girls just won a basketball tournament. And so, we talk about that as much as we talk about how they are progressing. And then how do we help those students that need a little bit more support and instruction. I'm not going to go in too much with DESSA. Mariner already talked a little bit about this. But we do a DESSA screening in the fall, winter, and spring. Fall, winter

089and spring. And so, what we are able to determine from the fall, winter, and spring, and it's a little bit tough to see, but the areas in red are areas that, in the fall as compared to the winter, would be students that have some need for instruction, some additional instruction on one of those eight competencies. In the blue is where typical students should be. And then the green highlighting students' strengths where they're really shining in a particular area. I will say that, nationally, at the end of the school year, you should typically have 16% of your students that have a need for instruction. You should typically have students about 16% that have a strength of some sort as measured by the DESSA. And then the rest kind of fall into that typical range. We had

090a goal, if you go back to our student experience goal, that we wanted to have 5% of our students with the need for instruction at the end of this year. We've gone from 15% to 12%, still below what the national norm would be. And we have grown our students with strengths from 20% to 30%. And so, that allows us to understand that the work that we're doing has value, that it means that students feel valued for who they are, and that we continue to find ways to help those students that need some areas for growth when it comes to needs instruction. And that is my presentation. Any questions? Mr. Skaar? - [Mr. Skaar] Thanks. - [Mr. Menier] You're welcome. - I think one of your keys to success is your focus. I mean, you're very

091focused. You have the numbers. I mean, I think it's, you know, it's great and I think one of the insights that you kind of glossed over was, and I wrote it down because I said it many times, people and kids want to be part of something bigger than themselves, right? So, that leads to, you know, this sense of belonging. I think that was an, I think that's really important that you, and I'm rewording it a little bit, but it also goes back to the sense of belonging and also happiness. And I've done a lot of research on happiness. Because as a parent, you're only as happy as you're least happy kid, right? So, gratitude is a direct correlation to happiness. So, I think if you, you know, you had perseverance there. So, just as a

092suggestion, another virtue is demonstrating gratitude 'cause it's tied to happiness. But other than that, thank you. And I really appreciate your focus on two initiatives and really driving those initiatives because you're getting the results. - Yeah. I appreciate it. And you'll be happy to know that November is our month to celebrate gratitude. That is one of the themes. - [Mr. Skaar] I love you. - Okay. Other questions? Ms. Ellison? - Just wanna say thank you for this work. More kindergarten videos please. - Yeah, they're pretty great. - Well, I mean, it was really good though because I love having the numbers and I love having the data. But to see it articulated clearly by a five or six-year-old, I mean, that's the work right there. So, thank you. - Yeah. And it's interesting. When we

093first developed the Willow Lane promise, which was the beginning of last year, you know, there was somebody that kind of mentioned like, "What does a kid know? What does a first grader know about empathy?" And we had already been teaching them, right? And so, "Oh, Carl, come on over here. So and so wants to know about empathy. Well, empathy is like when you know how somebody else is feeling and then you can kind of read their body language and understand if you should help or if you should not help." I was like, "All right, Carl. See you later. Any other questions? Great. So, there's empathy." And we see our kids working on that on a daily basis and so... So, it really is something where, when you teach them, they'll do it. They know how

094to do it. And then when they miss the mark, then we remind them that's not showing empathy or perseverance or whatever. - Well, and you're giving them credit for the fact that kids can learn this stuff. - Oh, yeah. - They're more than capable. So, I appreciate that. - Yeah. Thank you. - Okay, Ms. Thompson. - Yeah, great stuff. In the kindergarten, I say anytime we can see the kids- - [Mr. Menier] Yeah. - That was wonderful. When you send out the parent letters- - [Mr. Menier] Yeah. - We have a very diverse population of families in our district and some of 'em might not be able to read, which I know we don't know. Wouldn't be able to like discern that. But if they speak a different language in their home, I'm sure, are

095you guys sending the letter home in a format that the family would be able to read what- - [Mr. Menier] Yeah. - The great things their kid is doing in the school? - [Mr. Menier] Yeah, we have the technological tools to be able to do that. Like, through ParentSquare. You know, what's nice for me is when I go into our student information system, I can read what their home language is. And so then, then I'm able to take that message, translate it into their home language, so. - [Ms. Thompson] That's great - While I can't do that necessarily with the video, I can do it with an ability for them to see what the teacher said about them. - [Ms. Thompson] Yeah. That's wonderful. Thank you so much. - [Mr. Arcand] Okay, well thank you.

096And I'm gonna try to persevere here. - Yeah. - [Mr. Arcand] And say thank you, Mr. Menier. Get it correct. And so, and thank you for your empathy and, you know. Let me learn it and remember it. So, thank you for everything you're doing. And I just wanna say, anytime I've had an opportunity to go to Willow, it is a community of love. - [Mr. Menier] Yeah. - And I love everything in there, and just the student leadership and all just the joy and the fun that's going on. So, please keep it up. - Yeah, I appreciate that. And I've been called a lot worse so you... - I'll work on it. - Have a good night. Thank you. - All right, so now we're gonna go to discussion item B-4, student primary vendor proposal.

097Mr. Wald, Mr. Johnson, and Mr. Watson. - Thank you, Chair Arcand, members of the board, Dr. Kazmierczak. I have with me two very wise men in the world of transportation. First, a real legend when it comes to perseverance, Dave Johnson, our director of transportation 'cause you could never do the job if you didn't have perseverance. And Dave, how long have you been with our district? - 22. Almost 23 years. - 23 years. He knows where all the skeletons are hidden in the transportation department for sure. And Tom Watson with Watson Consulting. Tom is a 37-year finance professor at the University of Minnesota, retired from that position, several decades as mayor of North Oaks. - Represent part of White Bear Lakes School District. - That's right. That's right. And owner of Watson Consulting. He provides expertise

098in helping school districts negotiate transportation contracts. So, today, we're gonna walk you through, it's where we're at with our primary vendor proposal. School districts have multiple ways that they can provide transportation to their, to their students. One is district can provide all the services themselves. And so, some school districts can do this. Most school districts choose not to do it because of the cost of running a transportation program can be expensive and the expertise required, The overhead costs, maintaining a fleet, management expertise that's required. Repairs, maintenance, labor, all of those things required to run a transportation department. But some school districts run their own. Some contract out, the second option, contract service provider. And in this case, state statute allows districts to negotiate with contractors and agree to terms or up to 10 years. Those

099contractors must follow all state laws and school district policies related to student transportation. And oftentimes, a contractor brings a level of expertise to a school district that they may not have within the world of transportation. And then finally, the combination of district and contractor provided services, and this is what we have done in White Bear Lake for as long as I recall. And that is a good balance of getting the management, expertise of a contractor, as well as the in-house knowledge of the community so that the families are well served. Regarding having district provided services and a benefit, I think, for our school district is by having our own transportation department that provides some of our services. Our employees, our local employees who have a significant loyalty to the school district, to the families of

100White Bear Lake. They know many of the families. Many of our drivers have been with us for a good long time. And so, we benefit from that loyalty and that internal knowledge of our district and community. We're able to attract local, employees locally as well as retain them. Having the knowledge of a regional and national company can be very helpful. But in terms of them being loyal and committed to the school district, as your only service provider, you tend to lose that a little bit. So, we think we have that better personalized service within our transportation department. Reason we ask Mr. Watson to share with us tonight is that he has guided us through the RRFQ process and he's gonna just describe the process over the next few slides. I'll turn it over. - [Mr.

101Watson] Thank you, sir. One of the pieces that I want to touch on on the slide here and the item at the bottom has got a red item with a line through it called bids. Any of you have been around education long enough know that virtually everything you do is a bid. There's three exceptions. And those three exceptions are buying fuel to heat your buildings, buying fuel to operate your equipment, and contracting out student transportation services. That's it. Everything else is a bid process. So, every now and then, I have to remind schools when they put their legal notice together and they'll call it, we've got the bid out. I'll say, "No, no, no, no, no, don't do that." There's a provision in the law also says if you do this incorrectly, the contract is

102void. So, you know, we don't want to go through this twice. So, the first step is obviously getting that legal notice out there and then putting this RFQ together. Part of what we do or what I do with districts in Minnesota and Iowa and Wisconsin in looking at this first step and putting the RFQ together is to go back and kind of revisit the past couple, three, four years. In other words, if we've had a four-year term in that current experience is to go back and look at that and find out, did that system work? Did the process, did the contractor we hired for particular reasons work? Are there things that have changed in the school district? So, we go into the '25-'26 year. I get an opportunity to describe what you've been through this

103past year in terms of buildings and redesign and the fact that we won't be running ninth and 10th graders up to North school so forth and so on. And it doesn't make any difference if these contractors have been around a long time. So, that gets that piece together. We have to publish your legal notice. It has to be out in the newspapers as you know, like anything else for two weeks. And we do that. What I maintain, having been at this a long time, I maintain a directory of virtually everybody that's ever operated a school bus in Minnesota. And so, rather than wait for them to call me, I will send out your legal notice to those contractors, begging them to let me know if they're interested or not. A lot of 'em are out

104there. I call 'em harvesters. They're out there getting the information 'cause they actually don't want to bid on White Bear. They just want to have some tool to be able to go back to their other districts and leverage that. See what they're doing in White Bear? Well, in this case, because your prices are pretty good, they're probably not doing a lot of that. So, then we gave them basically six weeks to submit proposals and those kinds of things. And on February 11th, we opened all of those. We had 21 what we call type three providers. So, those are folks driving primarily minivans and 10-passenger vans and that sort of thing. And we had five full-time proposals on yellow buses, conventional class C buses that you see every day and it was a pretty good response.

105Getting that many yellows here this year is actually improvement. I did Mounds View view last year and we had three. So, at least we're getting here. A lot of the national firms are not coming into Minnesota right now and I'm not sure why, but I will find that out after. Part of my job in the summertime is to go back and connect with student transportation of America or somebody else to say, "Why didn't you bid on White Bear?" So, we open those. I put together a spreadsheet that summarizes all the data that both comes into the pricing, as well as a lot of the qualifications, and we'll start going through that fairly soon. I gotta find Mr. Walt's calendar and figure out how we get through that and we'll do that. Then the next two

106items really are putting together the proposals and presenting 'em to you. And our target is right now. to have you act on this March 24th, Which means we've gotta be done on what? March 17th. So, you got a week ahead of that. And the law requires us to disclose that we have offered the contracts to a responsible service provider and the lowest cost. That's not the way the law reads. The statute says we're to provide it to the lowest responsible service provider. I always thought lowest responsible service provider probably is a contradiction in terms. Would that be somebody who's not very qualified? You know, somehow finesse us in some way. And then run over to the last. And then we've got managing the contracts. That's why these two gentlemen get to hang around all year

107and do those kinds of things. And about a month and a half, I'll leave and go on to the next. But we'll sit down and take a look. Mostly, the terms on a lot of these contracts, we advertised for a four-year term, which was basically two years committed and a two-year option to extend. But as Tim pointed out, the legislature modified this particular section of law in 2020 that now allows us to actually offer terms up to 10 years. However, don't think that we're gonna get a good deal because they don't want to commit to 10 years anymore than you might think because these are price agreements. And the only way they can lock us into... is to be able to negotiate prices and stick to it. And they don't want to do that. They

108don't have any idea where the economy's going. They have no idea where the government's going in Washington or anything else. And so, we're lucky usually to get two years, and then we'll have prep. We'll structure options, which we may do, but we won't have prices and that sort out years like years four, five, six. Any questions? Well, finish up and then we'll- - [Mr. Walt] Yeah, then we'll finish. Yeah, we'll come back to questions. So, this indicates our two full service providers. Those are the contractors provide all types of buses. So, the big yellow C and D buses, as well as the special ed route or buses and the types three providers, those vans and smaller vehicles. And if you look at the bottom line, you can see the kind of the trend of transportation

109from fiscal year '22 to past year, fiscal year '24. And our transportation expenses continue to rise at a pretty aggressive clip. And so, we've been able to keep mileage down over last few years. But you know, rates continue to be a challenge for school districts. When we look at line 723, that's our special ed. Special needs transportation includes McKinney-Vento or does not include McKinney-Vento. Okay. That indicates 728? 728. Yeah. So, that's where we've seen the significant increase. The good thing about the special ed transportation is we do get reimbursement on it. That's not that we want to see those rates go up. But when we look at our net transportation over those three years, we've actually seen a decrease in what our transportation expenses are after reimbursement. Come on. Okay. So, we're currently evaluating the

110quotes. You'll see what those type C and D buses, what those quotes look like here in just a moment. The 21 type three van providers, those are those vehicles that can transport up to 10 students at a time. They're generally vans, SUVs, smaller vehicles. Those are very complicated contracts because there's so many variables that go into it. So, we haven't tackled that one yet. We've been mostly looking at the big buses, but there'll be a lot of thought that goes into looking at those quotations because one might look good and one category and be a disaster and another. So, spend some time on that one. We have, as Mr. Watson said, we have five full service providers. I hope your eyes are better than mine. When you look on the left hand side, you can

111see the larger box there. We have four providers who presented quotations and so that's where the contractor provides a bus, a driver, and fuel all the things you need to transport students. United Transport is not a company we've worked with in the past. They have a pretty low foot there, but they also will only provide a maximum of 10 routes. And so, they can't bite it all off. But they could be a secondary provider potentially. We don't know much about them. We've got more to learn. Metro Transportation Network, you may have seen those buses around town. They say MTN on them. That's been a little bit more expensive backup transport provider for us. Their quotation moving forward is pretty flat. And so, we know what we're getting there. They've been a pretty quality provider for

112us. They've- - [Mr. Watson] Yeah, they've grown over the past few years. - [Mr. Walt] Yep. First Student has been our primary vendor for many years. Right now, with fuel, they're 451 a route. Their proposal at 532.72, an 18% increase. And so, that's a increase we're a little concerned about and we will work with them more to see if that can be negotiated. Looking in the upper right hand where it says "Contractor provided bus and driver district provides fuel." That's the agreement we have with First Student right now. And so, we're at 416.18 with an increase to 487. That's if we provide the fuel. So, a 17% increase. The final submission was from Dynamic Transportation and they said, "Well, we can't provide a bus, but we'll give you a driver and fuel." And so, there,

113I think six was their maximum that they could do, and they have a rate for that too. And that's probably not a solution that works very well for us. So, that's initially where we're at with our big bus providers, those type C and D buses. And we'll continue to negotiate or we'll begin to negotiate with those providers to see if we can get a little better rate on those. - For your benefit, one of the things you may want to consider as you're looking at these numbers, because as Tim was talking about some fuel. Current diesel prices and your conventional buses, these are the C buses with 70 kids on potentially. We think the cost per day is about $30. So, when you want to compare those, if you look at that table, you know,

114with fuel. Presume without fuel, it's $30. If it's a price with without fuel, that's a $30 cost to the district. - Yep. Yep. So... Then finally, so we... Presenting the preliminary quotation in the process tonight. So, you know the work that we're doing, we'll be coming back to you after we flesh this out. We'll have that work done by March 14th and then present to the school board on March 24th with a recommendation we'll ask for the board to approve on March 24th. That's what we have for you tonight. Any questions? - [Board Member] Any questions? Mr. Skaar? - Thank you. Oh, one thing you were talking about what requires a bid? What doesn't require a bid, professional services don't require a bid? - Professional services don't require (mumbles) - Some professional services don't require

115a bid. - [Mr. Watson] Most cases, that's true, but there's another little stickler in the law that talks about contracts that exceed $175,000 a year. - [Mr. Skaar] Yep. I'm familiar with that. There's one that make that point. Are we looking at like best practices? Is that part of our requirement that they have to demonstrate some type of best practices or do we have any efficiency benchmarks that we're asking 'em to provide? Anything like that? - The answer to that question is two parts. One, yes, we do that. But number two, there's also a section of subdivision law. Notice that when Tim was talking about subdivision one, subdivision three, there's a subdivision two that's a best practices provision for construction. We can't use that in busing. So, we have to take a look at, you

116know, their best practices relative to interviewing other bus company. I mean, other school districts they worked with, et cetera. So, we will be doing that. That's what we're gonna do over the next 10 days. - All fleets are, you know, are looked at by the state. - State patrol. - Yeah, think state patrol. And so, we can look at the records too to see, do they have buses that are frequently down that would be a concern to us? So, those that's one, you know, a metric we can look at. - And so, do we view transportation as a core service of a district? Is that a core? Because obviously, education is a core service. Is transportation a core service of our district? - I don't know that I'd say it's a core service. I think

117it's an important service that we provide. - So, that would be, have we ever looked at, you know, just kind of turnkey, outsource all of all of the transportation? How much do we spend in transportation, this contract plus our internal costs to have that handy? - [Mr. Walt] Yeah, our total expense for FY '24 was $9,324,000 in transportation costs. Our reimbursement from the state was $6,500,000. So, we're at about two point, just over 2.8 million in general fund transportation expense. - So, about 1/3 of it we is internal. 2/3 is outsourced. - [Mr. Walt] Yeah. - Okay. Gotcha. And then how, how do we measure, like, how much... How is transportation... What's our utilization? I mean, from time to time, I see buses that have a lot of kids. Other times, I see they don't

118have a lot of kids. I mean, how, as a percentage of students in the district, how many are using our transportation? Do you know that? - Yeah. How many kids are we transporting? - We transfer about 6,000 a day out. You know, providing 6,000 trips a day for students back and forth, and... - [Mr. Skaar] About 3/4. - Yeah. The issue being as far as utilization goes, you know, we try to fulfill the needs generally, you know, the to and from. That's the basic need. But then in addition to that, we go throughout the day providing additional services that might include shuttle services for teams or activities. So, sometimes, you'll see vehicles that have less than fully loaded vehicles. We do incorporate the type three vehicles quite a bit in that, well, we have a

119lot of McKinney-Vento students, - Homeless. - And homeless students. And we also have a group of care and treatment students that, you know, we're required to transport just to get them through their challenges. And so, you know, we're kind of the outsource over there that tries to help everybody as much as we can. And so far, the transportation has done a good job doing that for the most part. One thing I don't know... You know, Wayne obviously knows me and and board members. I'm sorry. I don't know how many of you know me. My point being, and I've told Wayne and Tim, if you don't know me, I'm doing a good job. - [Board Member] Right. That is true. - Most people on the district know him as Safety Dave. - One of the question,

120another, maybe the final question and maybe a comment, but why did we feel we needed an outside consultant to help us with this? Is that typical? It seems like you guys have the expertise that you could do this yourself without adding a third party to, you know, go through the bidding process? What was the thought process with that? - Yeah, I appreciate the question. So, transportation bid or RFQ process processes is pretty complicated. And to have someone like Tom Watson who is familiar with what's going on across the state and very specifically around the metro, knows the providers, knows the trajectory there on. And so, he's pretty good at being able to warn us, we might wanna stay away from this one. This one, I've seen in these different districts. Here's what we're getting. Here's

121what I'm seeing from them. So, that level of expertise is not uncommon for school districts, and most metro school districts work with consultants on transportation. - [Mr. Skaar] That's helpful. - Yeah. - [Mr. Skaar] And then one last, just a comment, you know, you can be low cost and responsible at the same time are not mutually exclusive. I just caught that one comment. Having been a low cost, responsible, better and fast, I understand that. - [Mr. Watson] That's what's in our statute. Just those very words. - [Mr. Skaar] Yes. Thank you. - [Mr. Arcand] Other questions? I just have one question. I'm sorry. I'm gonna ask it. So, do our White Bear buses, they operate within the White Bear area. And then outside White Bear, that's what we contract. Is that correct? How does it

122work? - [Mr. Walt] So, do you wanna answer that? - Okay, so your question being, we operate primarily within district boundary. - [Mr. Arcand] Okay. - Okay. We do operate outside the boundary for homeless McKinney-Vento students and things like that. For the most part, the big buses, those are within boundary and you'll see more. - [Mr. Arcand] I'm asking you the question. We have a district bus or we have a contracted bus. How do we know where they go? How do we know what their routes are? - Oh, okay. Basically, we look at the routes and look at our services that, you know, the primary routes that maybe we want district drivers to be doing in particular versus different areas where like MTN, I'll just say that, there are... They provide nine of our buses

123and basically they cover the south side area. Okay, we split between district buses and First Student to cover central White Bear, Hugo, Vadnais Heights area for the most part. So, we try to keep the buses kind of organized in groups so they do get to know the area and that makes it more efficient. Because if we keep surprising everyone when they go through, you know, it's not efficient. I get phone calls. You get phone calls, You know, it goes in that level. So, we try to keep it for efficiency. - The other thing, I think you're doing all the routing too. - Yeah, we do the routing. - Contractors are not doing that. They're handed a script so to speak. - [Mr. Arcand] Okay. That was my question. Thank you. Any other question? - Other

124comment that I would make just to bring you up to date on this thing. When Tim was talking about the expenditure table that we had in the document, one of those line items is the target in the governor's budget just so you had an idea. He's talking about reducing by 5% that reimbursement level on special ed busing. So, Tim and I are talking about how we're gonna, see if we can skin some of these contractors and get that 5% out of them. - Well, we're also evaluating where's the best investment for us to bring more transportation- - In-house. So, that we reduce our expenses where we can. So, that's part of this evaluation is, how can we reduce our expenses and stop the growth. - [Mr. Arcand] Okay. And Ms. Thompson, you had one quick

125question? - [Ms. Thompson] No, I have an additional one just on that last comment about the governor wanting to reduce it. So, we have a day of advocacy at the capitol as school board members. It's coming up. It's like March 10th or the 14th. I'm sorry, I don't remember. So, that's a great day for us to all go and advocate for that not to happen. Special education is already underfunded and taking that away is just, I mean, we can't do that. That doesn't help districts that are already suffering with cost of things. And just a comment on like what you guys do in the district and your transportation. We had a meeting a couple years ago when we kind of redid the districts- - The boundaries. - Yes. The boundaries. And just seeing how many

126routes it is. It's amazing. So, thank you for all the things that you guys do to make our kids get to school every day. It is quite something to see and= - We have a really good team. - That's great. - All right. - Thank you. We look forward to seeing you on March 24th. Okay. We're now at the point of our meeting at the adjournment. Can I get a motion for adjournment? - Chair Arcand, I move to adjourn. - Okay, Ms. Ellison. Do I have a second? Second by Mr. Skaar. This will be a voice vote. All in favor say aye. - Aye. - Opposed? Same time. Okay. We are now adjourned.