001e e e all right we're live so I'm going to call to order the March 25th 2025 Independent School District 194 meeting of the school board uh please rise with me to recite the pledge of allegiance to of the United States of America the repu for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liy and justice for all all right we're going to start off with a roll call of the board starting on my right uh amber Cameron Brett Nicholson Paul Carbone Matt Swanson Michael Balman Kim Baker Carly Anderson Brian Thompson School Board all right uh moving down the agenda any additions or modifications to the agenda requested by the board members I have one request uh director Baker um is I wondering if we can move um item 7A the recommended action to
002um a report under the um under six uh just because that's something that um we haven't discussed yet as a board I'm not quite sure exactly where it came from um we haven't had anything from our executive cabinet related to data or Data Systems um and I just would like some more information on that before we actually put that to a vote all right so is the you're making a motion to remove it from 7A and put it down to a report put it in reports um through so it' be like 6E um just because I don't at this time I'm not even ready to vote on it because I'm not sure what it's even related to so remove it from 7A remove the vote on it and remove it to a discussion in 6E
003all right uh there being a motion is there a second I'll second seconded by director Anderson any discussion on the motion director Thompson yeah I'm not opposed for it to move into the reports but based on what you hear uh what and what we discuss if it warrants uh a recommended action uh do we still have the ability to do that I'm not sure how it warrants a recommended action when we haven't discussed it as a board I'm not sure why it's on the agenda um we haven't had a report from anybody at the district office related to um data analytics system um and I guess I'm not quite sure why why the board is even discussing it at this point unless it's an action that's recommended by the district itself um in fact like
004I thinking the topics that we've discussed as a board that I've been waiting to come on the agenda would be policy 535 uh that was the last thing I have on my notes on something that had um warranted a further discussion that hasn't been brought up yet director Thompson I believe this is probably this came out of the academic reports that came out over the past three four weeks we talked about tying data together but be glad to learn more about it during the report section oh yeah I I mean I agree with that I just think that the board as a whole didn't come up with any type of a recommendation out of those um reports that we were going to move forward with any type of a resolution director Cameron um I support
005mov in it as well um to early in the agenda I think um for me the recommended action is similar to a policy review I think we need to have time for our community also to um be able to give feedback on ways to improve it um before it would ever go to a vote to the board just one more comment on it too um just reading through it knowing that we haven't discussed it as a board and I haven't received any proposals from um the executive cabinet or the superintendent or Administration um to me it seems like the board's overstepping their grounds on this uh into the administration we are policy and and governance and this is deciding like how we're doing data I have extreme concerns about some of the things that are
006listed there specifically class level data and having access to that um which would be very easy to pick out individual students I think particularly kids with disabilities so um I I just am not sure where this this recommended um or this resolution came from and um like I said I want to be very careful as a board that we stay within our our lane of governance why don't I provide you a little clarification you know as director Thompson mentioned we had several U meetings of the board of directors where assessment data was provided to us uh this does stem from multiple conversations I've had um with Dr McDonald and superintendent Bowman about us as a board being able to assess the performance of our schools you know giving our one number one function of school
007board is to improve the acad outcomes of our students um and based on the assessment data we've been provided so far I don't know that we're able to set realistic goals um for those improvements everything is lagging or if we're looking at MCA data you know we've been informed that it's more of an indication of how the system as a whole is doing uh the goal for out of this resolution which a resolution is nothing more uh than an elongated motion with more specificity is to provide F the direction of what we would want from The District in order to uh better do our jobs as a board and assessing the performance of our Administration and of our schools yeah I completely understand that but um as you said the conversations were between you uh
008the superintendent and uh assistant superintendent McDonald those conversations weren't with the entire board where we came up with as a board that this would be our resolution that we would bring forth so yeah and and I'm not opposed to including a SE of the reports for discussion but then leaving it on for a vote CU um I mean I don't know what specific Provisions in the resolution uh you would disagree with or would not want to approve there are several so we can get to that when we go through the discussion director Anderson um yeah I I do think we're um sitting in a situation where we have had a lot of conversation about how data could help us better analyze how students are performing how the district is performing but I do agree that
009this has not been brought before our board to discuss and um my main concern is is how this um basically the impact of this on our technology team what we already have in place and how we could potentially better utilize um the services that we do have like edge of climber and fastbridge to give us information that perhaps we already have um because I would understand this to be to have significant financial implications and I just think we we have a very long list of priorities in the district and I I think we need to as a board discuss where this falls in the list of priorities not only that but our process like usually things come to the board for discussion director Cameron um can I just make a recommendation that based on the
010motion and based on this it seems like we do need a conversation about this um but I think right now we're just trying to get the agenda approved so I wonder if we can hold conversation about the actual resolution um but I think it's been noted that and it this certainly shows that we need um robust conversation about this director Nicholson that's fine I'll I'll hold my comments and for discussion director Carbone um yeah I could use this for discussion too but on the February 25th meeting when we talk just pull it closer to you on the February 25th meeting uh when the director of tech gave a presentation and we were talking about uh initiatives and analytics and then on February 18th during that meeting with the data dashboard we had dialogue about analytics
011and and some of the metrics that were being shown uh and and the resolution itself if you if you look at the resolution in essence what it says that by June 1st that uh there needs to be cost options presented to the whole board and that the board on that day or whenever that meeting is I should say uh would review and approve those cost options in the approach to this so this is this resolution is not a done deal if you will uh this resolution is to move an initiative forward which is important any further discussion all right there being no further discussion uh the motion that has been made by director Baker and seconded by director Anderson is to remove item 7A from the agenda completely um and add a discussion as item
0126E to the agenda um to solely discuss um a resolution for a data analytics system and not to have a vote on that issue um let's do a roll call vote car um point of clarification Yes means what and no means what in this yes would mean removing it from the recommended actions and no vote on moving forward with the analytics with the resolution um and then moving it to 6E as a discussion Point only uh no Matt Swanson no Kim Baker yes Brett Nicholson no Amber Cameron yes Brian Thompson no Carly Anderson yes all right the vote is three yes four no so the motion fails any other motions to amend the agenda or revise anything on the agenda there being none I would move to um approve the agenda as drafted is there
013a second I second all right seconded by um director Thompson all those in favor of approval the agenda as drafted say I I I allthough oppose so say no no just so I got that were there two NOS on the left hand side here three three three all right uh the agenda is approved uh move on to the good news all right thank you Mr chair some some good news uh for Lakeville area schools Lakeville Deca students succeeded at State 128 students from the Lakeville North and Lakeville South High School Deca teams competed at the 2025 Minnesota Deca State Career Development conference in Minneapolis Minnesota on March 2 through the 4th several students from both teams made the great accomplishment of competing in finals with 13 students earning top rankings and qualifying for the international
014Career Development conference the 13 qualifying Lakeville North and South Deca students will compete alongside more than 22,000 top students from around the world at the 2025 International Career Development conference April 26th through the 29th in wonderful Orlando Florida so good luck to all those competing and congratulations for those who have moved on Lakeville area students awarded at Visual Arts exhibition 10 pieces of student artw work from Lakeville North and Lakeville South High Schools were recently represented at the South Suburban Conference Visual Arts exhibit six Lakeville area high school students took home awards for their art take a look at the amazing talent that we have here in Lakeville area schools at isd194.org newws to see those and congratulations to those Award winners Lakeville students shine at the Minnesota Scholastic art Awards seven students from Lakeville
015South High School and 16 students from Lakeville North have earned various awards at the 2025 Minnesota Scholastic Arts Awards art was awarded based on originality skill and the expression of a voice or Vision that stands out from classroom assignments and social media trends gold key Awards will go on to competition at the national level and again you could go to isd194.org newws and see some of that work Lakeville South Encore hits a milestone in Acappella and if you've never heard that group sing I highly recommend you take a uh the time to do it when the opportunity presents on March 15th Lakeville South High School Encore represented Minnesota at Varsity vocals International Championship of high school AC capella great lak semifinals in mil out of the 70 teams from Illinois Minnesota and Wisconsin Encore was
016selected as one of the top 10 teams to advance to the Great Lakes semi-finals it's an amazing accomplishment to be the second Minnesota team ever to reach this level of ichsa status while they didn't advance to the final round in New York City the singers left everything on the stage and made an unforgettable impact the journey they've taken together this season has been nothing short of incredible and you can read more about that as well at isd194.org uh news at your leisure uh I want to make a couple of announcements uh here along with the good news first of all advisory Council application process that opens April 7th through the 25th so coming right up uh and I'd like to highlight an opportunity for Lakeville area schools famili students and staff uh to get more
017involved and provide input and feedback for the district our schools and our programs our district has nine advisory councils available for participation including a finance advisory Council special education advisory counil teaching and learning advisory Council and more the application process for Lakeville area schools advisory Council positions for 2526 will be open again from May 7th to April 25th if you or anyone are interested in applying visit our website at isd194.org to learn more and we thank you for your interest and encourage you to apply and then finally um exciting updates for school district newsletters uh I'm excited to announce a new communication initiative from Lakeville Area Schools starting in April we're going to launch 194 Pride a monthly e newsletter specifically designed for our broader Lakeville area Community 194 Pride will be distributed to email
018boxes the first Friday of each month unless otherwise noted this new community focused e newsletter will feature School Board updates District announcements celebration of student and staff achievements Community connections and much much more we encourage all community members to sign up to receive the 194 pride and stay informed about the great work happening across your school district and to sign up to receive C1 194 pride is your email inbox visit one isd194.org one94 Pride as you exit the board meeting you can also scan the QR code at the door or grab a handout with signup details and we look forward to keeping you connected with all things happening in our district so the next thing I want to do is uh share uh excite an exciting thing and introduce a guest our Oak Hills Elementary
019ignite teacher Heather McKinley Miss Heather McKinley fourth grade ignite teacher and Corey Burch fifth grade ignite student the ignite program housed at Oak Hills Elementary offers third through fifth graders in the district an accelerated Core Curriculum with an emphasis on inquiry based learning and today they'll be sharing an exciting aspect of the program student passion projects and I can't wait to hear what you have to say and thank you so much for coming and are you comfortable up there standing okay all right the floor is yours ma'am good evening board members and Lakeville cabinet thank you for having us to highlight Um ignite's passion projects my name is Heather as he said and I've been the ignite fourth grade teacher for over 11 years now I have have here presenting with me my former student
020Kora passion projects allow students to explore topics that they truly care and wonder about making learning more engaging and meaningful and letting them explore their Curiosities along the way they may choose to do something new like cooking or baking coating woodworking or improving a skill like free throws or artistic techniques they may also deeply research a topic like prosthetic limbs over the years um animal shelters natural disasters or historic plagues their causes and their effects the possibilities are endless all projects must include a research component and guiding questions along with a presentation to the entire class academically these projects encourage research critical thinking and creativity socially they provide opportunities for collaboration and communication off often leading to an interview with an expert within our own Community Civic engagement can be fostered by interviewing these Community
021experts or choosing Pro projects that address Community needs or raise awareness um of important issues that a student cares deeply about personally students develop perseverance problem solving skills and confidence as they take ownership of their learning discover where the learning path may lead and present their final passion project to their appears on the next slide you will see kora's hard work on one of her very first Passion projects on the human eye I would now like to introduce my former student Kora Birch my name is kaora and I am currently in fifth grade ignite this is my second year in ignite and I absolutely love it ignite is so much more challenging than the previous grades I've been in before and I've learned so much my favorite part about ignite is the passion projects is
022so fun to create a presentation about something students are curious about and want to learn more about and it's so interesting to see each other's our um fellow students Curiosities and watch them present too I'm most proud of how much I learned and how much detail I put into this project this was one of my very first Passion projects I made in my very first year in Mite and it was so fun to learn about a topic of my choice that interests me we are doing a career project in fifth grade right now and being an optometrist is one of the three jobs I would like to be in I grew up one of the biggest one of the biggest challenges I faced was finding an expert it took my family a while to brainstorm
023ideas but eventually we figured something out I went to McDonald ey care for one of my relatives eye appointments and I learned a lot I took notes and we saw all the machines they used and eventually I got to use those same machines later because I went there for an eye appointment um and I learned that I needed glasses later during this project I discovered that the human eye has a blind spot where where the optic nerve enters the eye this spot is where nerves and blood vessels that supply the eye enter and exit and not covered by light sensitive cells however the brain can fill in the missing information so that we are unaware of the blind spot cows also have a blind spot and I was able to dissect a cow eye and
024learn um similarities to the human eye um this year I also learned that color blindness occurs more in boys than girls because the genes respon for color blindness are located on the X chromosome males only have one X chromosome whereas females have two X chromosomes if one is defective on the female there's still another working one if two are defective this leads to color blindness in girls if one is defective in a male this causes color blindness for them thank [Applause] you thank you thank you very much and cor I have to do a presentation in a minute and maybe I should have you do it yeah I think people would enjoy it more anyway thank you so much and thank you for all your your hard work as a student and as a teacher
025uh bless you and thank you sir that concludes my uh good news well that was amazing cor uh I learned something or multiple things actually about the eyes that was really interesting and great job so thank you for that we are going to move on to public comment uh we're going to open up the floor to allow the public public to address the board with comments and concerns uh to participate in public comment individuals must have registered in advance using the form provided on our website uh you have to sign up by noon on the Monday before the scheduled P public comment section uh there will be no board response during the session public comments framed as complaints and or concerns about students and or staff are not appropriate in a public forum due to
026data privacy laws those comments should be addressed to the administration outside of a public meeting likewise complaints about school board members should be privately directed to the board chair and or the superintendent uh no formal action will be taken on a topic presented during public comment as necessary the administration will follow up with the appropriate personnel on any concerns that need to be individually addressed also if necessary the board will follow up during uh board Communications at the next regularly scheduled board meeting uh individual remarks are limited to 3 minutes and the board will provide a signal which is this um when you have 30 seconds remaining of your time uh please try to keep audience noise to a minimum to allow everyone the opportunity to speak uninterrupted uh we have three individuals who've signed
027up today so we go on with number one Robin Richards I don't think I'm gonna need this welcome back Miss Richards thank you thank you for having me good evening my name is Robin Richards and I come before you with deep concern for this board it's a sinc desire that I have for this board to see you lead well and as evidenced by the start of this meeting you're struggling you're struggling with confusion and dysfunction and I want to talk about that tonight governance is a responsibility it's not about control Power or performance it's about learning it's about preparation and service and right now this board is struggling to fulfill that responsibility Educators students families and community members we're all watching and what we're witnessing is dysfunction it's wasted time and it's decisions that are
028eroding public trust let's talk about time it's our most valuable and non-renewable resource and it's being squandered not only in pulling Administration into the poster business but also in way in the way the meetings are being run they're excessively long and often chaotic when motions are mishandled or discussions spiral off it doesn't appear thoughtful it appears unprepared and that undermines confidence you made the decision to eliminate work sessions and convert all meetings into voting sessions that hasn't led to transparency it's led to confusion which is evidenced even this evening in the proposed resolution for the data analytics system being moved on the agenda work sessions are transparent they're recorded they're open to the public and they provide space for Learning and collaborative problem solving they are where good governance happens and you need them bring
029them back I also question your use of the resources available to you like the Minnesota school board Association there's essential training guidance even a library of resources on tools designed to help you succeed they should be utilized rather than using things like on the-fly chat GPT referencing during votes that's not responsible governance it's disrespectful the lack of accountability continues to erode trust take the poster controversy from the beginning you were advised by the superintendent community members and even within your own discussions to stay in your lane and let the Educators do their work you were told this was not the board's role yet the board moved forward you didn't deal with the policy so now at the last meeting when a member says I don't know how we ended up in the poster business shame
030on you you should know that was your discussion it's something that you created not something that you inherited you did inherit litigation in fact I was on this board in 2022 when the process began and I was explicitly advised not to engage with individuals involved and yet I saw pictures of several of you last week interacting warmly with them after the meeting that's not appropriate nor is it acceptable there's learning that needs to happen and that's the heart of this message learn what inclusion truly means when a board member asks how do we make a poster so no one feels left out you miss the point the inclusion poster series was created to not to Center the majority it was designed to uplift those who have been historically marginalized thank you thank you can't make
031[Applause] stop Justin everybody good evening I don't know how I'm going to follow core up that was awesome all right um good evening my name is Justin um I am a parent in the Avan Le neighborhood off of 185th and Cedar uh I am within the bubble of the redirection proposal for Maguire uh Middle School and I'm here tonight just to express some concerns about the recent zoning changes that I saw so with the new zoning my child will be attending McGuire Middle School while I understand that these are necessary given growth this specific shift means that my child will be going to middle school with very few if any of his existing classmates and he'll be forced to start over building new friendships and adjusting entirely to a new social environment and this will
032be challenging for my child and many others as we're going through zoning change but it's especially difficult to see how this proposed change's future proofing exists when I notice that my child will be separated from those familiar faces again and what I mean by that is in just three years of Middle School my child along with other his age in our neighborhood will face another transition when they move on to high school so Maguire is zon for Lakeville South High School as you know and when he attends Lakeville South when he ends ends up going to high school he will be going to Lakeville North and in the span of just four years he and many other children will have to split from their friend groups not only once but twice so these repeated separations
033are not just an inconvenience they can cause emotional strain an academic performance and challenge the sense of belonging that these children may have to school so if their year class like the group of them that year changes repeatedly they might not feel vested within that year class and so I'm just here tonight to urge the board to please carefully consider these Elementary to Middle School transitions but then also please look forward to going from middle school to high school to ensure that these children um are able to have a contiguous class that goes back and forth between there helping them stay vested and have a successful education in Lake bu schools um as I have a couple seconds left I just want to say thank you to the entirety of the Cherry View staff they
034are absolutely amazing people the teachers the administrative staff and every everybody and anywhere in between and a shout out to the teachers so thank you very much thank [Applause] you Jessica Conley hello I'm Jessica Connelly I'm also here to speak about the proposed changes for the Middle School uh I live in Glacier Creek I have three children a second grader a kindergarten and a three-year-old my two oldest children currently attend Cherry View Elementary when we moved into our house we were told they would attend Cherry View however when we registered our oldest for kindergarten she was then moved to Lake View because Cherry View was full this was going to be a temporary solution until High View opened however we thought okay this is not ideal but once High View opens she will be one
035of every student in the school who was new to our surprise when the uh when the boundaries were changed last year she was then going back to cherryview however when she did she was one of only three second graders to be moved to Cherry View and one of only 18 kids to be moved from Lake View to Cherry View she had a very tough transition and didn't feel like this was her school as she had lost all of her friends now to see that it is possible that the kids in this neighborhood will be ripped from their classmates again to be sent to the Middle School furthest away from our house is frustrating moving them at the start of Middle School to where they will only a school where they will only know a few
036of their classmates is going to be very disruptive at this pivotal point in their lives of um and it will AC it will hinder their academic performance after they settle in and get to know their classmates they will then again have their lives uprooted and be moved to a high school where they'll have to rekindle those friendships that they made in elementary to have these kids constantly be moved from North schools to South schools and back again is something I do not believe any parent would wish and choose for their child in the last meeting it was said that it was a priority to not move the established neighborhoods it would be more of a process to do so to me this sounds like you are saying it's too much work to take the needs
037of these children in the new neighborhoods under consideration with the model that was presented presented last week there was no thought or consideration in making it all that was done was singling out the new neighborhoods and sending these kids to Maguire which is again the furthest away from our houses this would be extremely disruptive and inefficient in terms of Transportation please stop punishing the kids in our neighborhoods because of poor planning thank you thank you all right moving down to the consent agenda are there any items that the board would like to remove from the consent agenda if there are none I would make a motion to approve the consent agenda agenda items is there a second second seconded by director Carbone being a first and a second uh all those in favor of approving
038the items on the consent agenda being 4 a through 4E say I I I I are those opposed say no no there's one no the consent agenda is approved I'm moving down to reports uh Mr superintendent I believe this is you Mr chair members of the board ladies and gentlemen uh this evening I'm coming forward uh in a report to provide information about uh a potential Levy for uh the upcoming uh November election uh I think we we have to do an election as a as a uh School District uh for uh a board seat uh so we are already committed to an election process so the next uh step in the conversation I think with regard to Lakeville Area Schools is how are we going to uh move forward and try to um fulfill
039our mission uh as we progress through time uh and and attempt to do the many things that are required of us uh along our strategic plan um what we are faced with uh from this from the this particular sequence is uh the opportunity to renew an existing Levy that started back in 2015 and just to review some of the more technical details around levying what schools can do uh in terms of Levy typically an operating Levy which provides General funds is sustaining funding for districts on our day-to-day operations and school boards have the authority granted by the state of Minnesota through legislation to renew one time uh with just a v board vote on oper op ating levies so those are some characteristics about an operating Levy that I think are key and essential for
040everybody to know and understand capital projects levies are restricted funds and they're in for instructional technology other physical items and building improvements related to The Learning environment and some limited staff positions can be funded through a capital projects Levy and then there's bond referendums which are restricted funds and for building or improving existing buildings so those are the three types and then on the left there I just kind of outlined property taxes are a combination of state and local taxes uh local tax authorities are the county the city or town and School District so those are the three uh taxing authorities that that operate and apply to Lakeville area schools and the community of Lakeville area uh the school district is the only one that has to ask voters for any tax increases director Thompson
041last year we had a board vote for an operating Levy is that correct that that's the one that we voted on or was that two years ago two years ago okay we had a $1.5 million operating Levy and then the board elected to leverage the authority to renew that vote correct okay thank you okay uh and there is no specified funding for technology anywhere in the state of Minnesota for K12 or prek-12 education there's not a there's not a funding source so just want to make sure everybody understands those Dynamics and and and those technical terms so in 2015 uh Lakeville Area School District residents kindly uh approved an operating Levy and a capital project Levy and what we did specifically with that uh was reduce class size and core High School subjects which essentially
042translates into we funded teachers to uh uh reduce our class sizes restore Elementary art programming that was eliminated from the school system back around 20072 2008 from budget cuts that occurred back then and then restoring fifth grade band opportunities for our kids um in in uh in our school system so so um on the capital project Levy we provided access to digital tools for learning uh and I think a whole a whole lot more than that but uh supporting our College and Career Readiness stem programming as well and then improving student Safety Systems uh that there was a little discussion I don't recall if it was here at the board meeting or in another venue where uh there were questions asked about access control and when that came to our school district and that's when
043it came to our school district prior to that we had no access control systems uh in our school system so I just want to make that note so we're recommending uh that we renew the levy and I'll talk a little bit more about that renew the 2015 operating and capital Levy uh in order to essentially sustain the operations at the current level um one of the key things to note about it uh if we are able to renew for 10 more years uh there's no increased tax impact for renewing either of these two levies it's with net tax capacity and pupil unit growth um when you have even though that the operating Levy had an inflationary Factor uh attributed to it because we've grown and the number of pupil units we have and the new
044homes that we have in the system um we we are we will realize essentially no tax increase across the system system so it is as true a renewal as possible um with regard to the option for the school board to vote on renewal I covered that um one of the things that uh I I did learn talking to our financial adviser uh there is process-wise if if the board were to choose not to renew and go to the voters there's essentially a it creates a gap uh on inflation because you essentially reset on inflation and um that's $3 .60 over 10 years roughly a $500,000 impact director Baker um so just one point of clarification here so when we're vot voting to renew the levy it's based on um the guidelines that we're put in
045place currently or passed when that Levy was originally passed it's just to sustain exactly where we are it's to keep um I guess I have the I was going to say uh can you change the chart but it looks like it's not going backwards um one I think there's one that says how the funding will be used or yep so this is this is what we're trying to do I think um can you go back one more no okay or maybe bottom line is go go forward one this is what we would be sustaining uh it's that exists in the system right now and after this presentation we're going to do a overview of Information Technology uh which is the largest portion of the capital project Levy to talk about what this has allowed us
046to do as a school system and um help board members and and the public that may be interested well I'm sure they're interested uh would want to understand uh the value proposition with regard to uh the levy that passed in 2015 and what we're just simply asking to sustain in the system going forward um director Anderson sorry to interrupt you oh that's fine can we go back to what you said earlier about and you can continue or thought a you I'm sorry go ahead um when you said increase of $500,000 so are you saying if we put it out to the public that increases tax I didn't I'm sorry if I said increase I didn't mean increase what I was trying to explain is that the the inflationary Factor reset with a a non-board vote
047and you take it to the voters uh creates an awkward gap between the end of life of the first and the new life of the second that essentially is a loss of $500,000 that's good director Thompson and so the operating Levy is the one that we could that the board has the authority to vote just the operating Capital project Levy does not does not and the operating Levy is $1.7 million for the next 10 years I think again two years ago the board approved a $1.5 million operating Levy uh leveraging the one-time voting uh Authority uh and then the capital project Levy of $4 million will be on the ballot in November it must yes if if the board chooses to move forward with uh and I'm not asking for a vote this evening I'm
048just trying to inform everybody and um and advocate for sustainment without a tax increase to our community typically when people hear levies it's okay you're going to ask me to pay more money I'm I'm want to be very clear that that's not the intent here and um the the program and plan here is sustainment um for the next 10 years can I ask a follow-up question yes um just for clarification um because maybe I got ahead of myself um for the tech presentation that we have tonight is there anything on the tech presentation related to the data data analytics system is that included in that no okay thank you um so again to to this is actually the chart I was looking for to be most specific about what it is that the operating Levy
049funds on the uh left-and side and what the capital projects Levy funds uh on the right hand side so those are the those are the things that again we want to sustain in the system uh we we believe there's a strong value proposition for that um if we were not we would would if we chose not to go for a renewal or we uh were unsuccessful in a renewal um we would have to figure out $5.7 million or some po you know if one passes and the other doesn't which has happened uh since I've been away um 14.2 full-time employees are paid for using our operating Levy so um I don't know how to make this thing go oh let's try that okay go backwards there we go um I should have to do push-ups
050for being incompetent on on the technology um the operating Levy funding is uh Elementary art fifth grade band and current High School classes um so those are FTE in order to provide that instruction and that mentorship to our kids in in those particular areas um and then 5 only 5.5 full-time employees are paid through the capital projects Levy if remember remember earlier I said there is some authorization for that but that's all um associated with the the items uh that you see there on the right um to to support a timeline just to to get a general idea my goal would be to accelerate this uh I I if uh if we can uh April and when we come back in April after a spring break we uh we will have a scientific survey and
051just to be clear about that um we're intentional about saying the word scientific because um you want to make sure that the process that you go through has statistical significance and statistical efficacy as you go through the process so there not everybody gets called but a sampling based on again uh statistical analysis gives you the um the validity of the answers that you get in reply and we're you know want to check a lot of things this is not something the community is unfamiliar with um but we will be doing that and then my goal would be as quickly as possible even though we put May on there but I I would shoot for quicker to come back to the board and share with the community what those results are and um make an assessment
052about whether that's the time to vote to to vote to move forward with any of this um but right now may would be our our uh guide Post in terms of time to review survey and determine a renewal plan July 15th would be our latest opportunity for the school board to vote so if we chose not to do that um that's the dwell time on the situation uh we can certainly do it earlier than that August 12th would be the latest opportunity for the school board to adopt a resolution to place on a uh referendum questions on the November ballot and then election day uh in November of 2025 is November 4th terer Thompson yeah so can we go back to the operating I just want to make sure I understand the timing of this
053uh so it's 1.7 million uh and that is to fund the programs of fifth grade art fifth grade band Elementary art fifth grade band and current High School class sizes uh which you know I'm just going to be candid about that as we as we grow that that number becomes more elusive to us and we have Elementary guidelines for class sizes but we have uh over the years that I've been in this school system we have not um uh been able to or chosen not to uh attempt to do that in secondary it's a little more difficult in secondary because the the programming is different the way that that uh things occur but it I don't I wouldn't say it's an impossibility um but for sure if you set class siiz guidelines you are uh
054investing in and making uh a ID statement about um what your Staffing levels are going to be uh and of course that's financially on on the district to be able to figure figure out how to fund that so that's the other challenge director Anderson did you I didn't get to yeah I didn't get to answer my question but thank you that um with July 15th being the drop dead date to make that decision on the operating Levy to decide either we're going to vote for it or bring it to the the public in November uh that doesn't mean that the board can make can can choose to vote on it earlier and so the question that I have is that I feel like I believe in ailish is the time frame where we are determining
055Staffing levels for the following school year uh no uh director Tompson we are we move that to February okay so we're already eyeball deep in that got it got and so if the board elects not to do the operating Levy vote uh and it goes into November does that mean that we would have to adjust the Staffing going into this fall or is this enough to carry through that would be we would have to make some decisions around that yes it would be um it would be condition setting based on what your funding is um we're going to come to you here very shortly also in April with the FY 26 forecast um and one of our planning assumptions is that we are successful on a renewal um but if are not successful on a
056renewal all those other things have to kick into gear So when you say kick into gear are you if the board elects not to vote on it past uh between now and July 15th does that mean that we have to roll back those resources that you planned on deploying in September or are they good for the full 25 26 they're good through the school year but I think you have to start setting conditions and making decisions uh to adjust your budget because you if you if you wait till the next budget you're in bigger trouble great okay sir director Nicholson just for clarity like when we talk about reduced class size in high school already I mean I've heard Rumblings already about 40 kids in a class and some of them and you know some
057of the classes are getting maybe a little bit hard to manage as is so I are we in a good spot continuing with where we're at or do we need to we're in a I would not classify it as a good spot it's a it's a we're on the edge there losing this would be pretty pretty challenging for us obviously we would have to reallocate resources doesn't mean that class size currently at high school would would suffer for lack of a better word but somewhere else is going to have to because the the limiting factor in all financial matters in school districts is you have to take from one to fund the other because there is not enough resourcing allocated from the state or any other source director Anderson okay so I always love the
058Morris Leatherman data but I am wondering um if it's necessary in this situation just because I'm thinking can we possibly move this up for the district yeah I'd like to persuade you that it it is necessary um because one of the typically surveys it's always good to talk to your your community I think and that's a method to talk to your community while it's not everybody it's a a significant um sampling to give you some good information if nothing else as you shape your planning and your messaging um you want to be focused on how you're doing that as opposed to kind of random or all over the map um because it ultimately it's an election and you want to you want to make sure you're answering the questions and the concerns that your your
059community tells you they have I I do and and surveying does that for you yes I mean I appreciate in the past couple years it's been helpful for us making sure that when we're going out for Levy that it makes sense going out for Levy for something that Comm the community supports and I also recognize that the last two years the community has told us per this survey that they would support levies that then failed in The Ballot Box um which we can never fully predict and there are all sorts of things going on but I'm just trying be mindful of the timeline and money but I appreciate your input and yeah yes thank you director Cameron um thank you this is more of a a common observation um so I was involved with unite
060194 which was the community group supporting the levies the last two go arounds I think something for the board to consider not necessarily for tonight but just as we move forward in this timeline is that the last two um uh Levy bonds that were on the ballot there were two questions one one in each year um that they were asked succeeded the other failed so we have a recent track record of when there's two questions on the ballot half pass half fail um I think that's something to note I also think that um going into this uh November this Board needs to be completely aligned with one another I'm cognizant of feedback that we've received I think we have some issues to deal with and having unanimous support um if if we're going to go
061after these as important if we don't have that unanimous support I have serious concerns about our ability to pass this pass either of these renewals um and um I think the other thing that I'll say is um as we're looking at student performance academic performance you know we're ofering comparing ourselves to districts like the wi zettas the OS minitonas of the world Etc and if you look over the last 20 years we have passed 50% of our lbes compared to their 100% And and I think that is telling in what we are able to offer our students what academic supports we have what courses we have the rigor that we're able to provide when you don't have the money you can't do as much and that's just how everything is in life so that's something
062to consider director Anderson I do want to add too that I think um if we can get our stuff together and at least abide by this timeline that you're recommending um we want to get this decision to people who have to communicate this out as early as possible so unite 194 group is an example but also obviously the district Communications and just making sure that I think the last couple years it's been hard with early voting happening starting in September and then let's say Communications don't start until August or September that's not ideal for getting the community on board so that's why I'm just kind of trying to push for as early as we can um make this decision the better for for the planning I would support that let's vote tonight that concludes my
063presentation pending any further questions sir got nothing thank you thanks uh moving on to the tech presentation Miss brovold I'm back good evening chair Swanson members of the school board and superintendent Bowman my name is Tracy brovold and I'm the director of technology and data services um I have a new person here with me today um this is Patrick Ratliff and he is our fabulous technology infrastructure and operations manager Patrick has been with our district for over 26 years he has literally built the foundation of the infrastructure we have from the ground up and so I'm happy to have him as a colleague and a partner in all of this work that we've completed that we are excited to share with you today uh we are very proud to be here today to provide an
064overview of e educational technology in Lakeville area schools we are so proud in fact we have about 40 slides so we will try to go really quickly as quickly as we can we've tried to anticipate some of the questions that might have along the way in today's world technology is no longer just a tool it is essential to the operation of every facet of our organization from teaching and learning to Administration communication Support Services technology permeates every aspect of our district today we will be talking to you about how technology has evolved throughout the years in our district we will talk about our 5-year plan that we start started in 2020 we're going to highlight the accomplishments that we've made along the way and we're going to discuss our next 5-year plan as we prepare
065our students for their future I typed the 2030 educational technology plan on there and I thought 2030 doesn't that seem crazy this is my great niece luel isn't she cute she's very cute she was was born on October 15th and I had the opportunity to visit her in Houston just a few weeks ago we had a great time together but then I had to go home and as I walked through the airport I started to notice just how much the world has changed over the years as we walk through security people scan their faces instead of handing over passports or driver's licenses I passed stores with no employees you grabbed what you want and you checked yourself out there was a robotic vacuum that was uh gliding down the terminal floor and I almost ran
066into it but it moved I did not have to move and there was no custodial staff that was supporting it at the gate there was a traveler who was talking in Span in English and his phone translated in Spanish to the person that he was talking to all in real time there was a little girl who was sitting there on her iPad and she said Siri how far is Minnesota and it told her um I ordered food from a restaurant with a QR code and I never talked to a waiter or waitress I got my food from a little robot that came up and delivered my food I never talked to another person and when I landed back in Minnesota I drove home actually my self-driving car drove me home that was cool um and
067then that's when it hit me um Louie will never know a world without technology she is never going to experience life without AI social media Amazon in instant deliveries she's never going to experience a world without Smart devices FaceTime and self-driving cars and I couldn't help but Wonder with the entire world open to her what is she going to do what path will she take who is she going to be in life what will job what job will she have 25 years from now is it a job that we haven't even thought of yet and most importantly I wondered if school was going to prepare her with the skills that she would need to be successful in her life and in her career in a world that we can't truly predict right now one thing
068is certain technology will be embedded in her world even more than it is embedded in ours but what will truly make her successful critical thinking collaboration problem solving the ability to learn and adapt human connection we know that she will need to be digitally literate according to the world economic forum's future of jobs 2025 report technological skills have advanced at an extraordinary Pace as we look at the fastest growing jobs for 2030 the demand for techsavvy Professionals in areas like machine learning cyber security and data science will only continue to grow it's imperative that we embed skills into education that will help our students be prepared for their future so how do Lakeville area schools prepare our students for their future it starts by equipping them with the tools and skills they need for Success
069at first glance this might seem like it's all pretty straightforward you walk into one of our classrooms do you notice the teacher there that was who was here just a little bit ago um you walk into one of our classrooms and this is what you see you see a teacher using a a computer you see a projector shining on a whiteboard and students fully engaged with their iPads seems simple right here's the thing it's not as easy as it looks you might think all we need to do is hand out some devices hang up a projector Patrick turns on the Wi-Fi and boom it works seamlessly not quite there's a lot going on behind the scenes to make all this happen and that's what we'd like to talk to you about today how far we've
070come in a short amount of time I just want to clarify that anything that we say here in the next few slides is not about criticizing the efforts of anybody who came before me or criticizing our our organization everyone did the best that they could with the resources and systems they had at the time the technology department had a skeleton crew when I walked in the door they had eight people at the district level and um siloed uh support out in our buildings but they didn't have the capacity to do this work what you're going to see today is the result of countless hours of planning coordination and effort across multiple departments but it is this groundwork that enables us to prepare our students not just for today but for the jobs that they're going
071to have in the future prior to 2020 our district operated with a fragmented and siloed approach to technology different schools had varying levels of equipment in some schools a grade level might have had a one toone model but they weren't standardized or supported in a real organized fashion next door to the teacher who had a onetoone uh device initiative may not have had any devices to use at all or they might have been using a shared cart uh we had Chromebooks and iPads some had outdated operating systems there was no process to put apps on the devices which resulted in inconsistencies across across those classrooms teachers use different devices to project ranging from uh outdated projectors smartboards clever touchboards there was no consistency I walked into one uh School building when I started and uh
072that top picture there shows a projector that is hanging from the ceiling with a uh extension cord um that was the standard in some of our classrooms some rooms still had the old overhead projector remember with the transparencies that you write on some of our classrooms still had those um we had over 800 printers across the district um the lack of standardization also extended into some of our systems uh for example if you wanted an email account for a new um employee you had to track down one person and that one person wouldn't ask any questions as to does this person really work here they would just ask what's their name let me create an email account different credential were used to log into different systems and so we would often see Post-it notes on
073people's computers with their different credentials on here um easily accessible by anybody right so as a result we had a decentralized system that lacked the scalability and efficiency that we needed to support our staff and students again everyone did the best with the resources that they had um at hand but the process was far from streamlined when I arrived in uh Lakeville in March of 2020 I knew that we had our work cut out for us but I knew I had the right partner in crime to help me do that in April of 2020 we launched an aggressive and robust five-year educational technology plan we wanted to address the gaps and bring our district into the future this plan laid the groundwork for us to transition from that siloed fragmented approach to a centralized and
074standard technology model a mature organization today must have a structured and sustainable technology foundation and that's exactly what we set out to build change is never easy but it is necessary and uh the progress that we made would not have been possible without the unwavering support of our Administration our superintendent our school board and as we talked about with the levy our community and I cannot say enough about our team they have tackled challenges head on and reimagine what is actually possible and they gave an unbelievable amount of effort in a very short period of time in 2020 we set out with a bold and necessary Vision that you see here this statement to us wasn't just words on paper it was a commitment to fundamentally change the way technology serves our students staff and
075Community every decision that we've made in the past 5 years has been rooted in this decision or in this Vision sorry over the past four years our technology team has made significant strides in enhancing both the infrastructure and support systems that power our district here you will see the key initiatives that are part of that 20120 plan we have accomplished every single initiative that is on this plan there is one that we're still working on but all of these we have accomplished we have upgraded our infrastructure we replaced outdated Wi-Fi n networks ensuring and we also have ensured that some of our buildings are upgraded to cat six cabling that's the one that we haven't quite finished yet we're still working on that one we have some work going on this summer and next summer
076uh additionally we have modernized our communication system by upgrading our voice over IP phone system we removed over 800 printers across the district and we implemented a centralized copy print model which comes complete with secure print which enhances both security and efficiency on the device and Equipment management front we have rolled out a districtwide one: one for staff and students ensuring that every student and staff has access to the technology they need when they need it we standardized the technology in all classrooms across the district we've upgraded our computer labs across the district and created a standardized replacement cycle for long-term sustainability for all of our equipment we also have implemented a Enterprise level purchasing across all technology so everyone who purchases any type of tech needs to come through our office so that we
077can make sure that it is all aligned to our EOS ecosystem to maximize compatibility and efficiency in cyber security and data privacy we've developed and enforced comprehensive cyber security standards and a response plan to protect against emerging threats we've also ensured that all staff are equipped go ahead okay all staff are equipped with the knowledge to handle security risks uh through our ongoing cyber security training we also have implemented a vigorous uh process to vet and approve all apps and websites that we use for safety technological compatibility and alignment with teaching and learning goals and finally on the uh the last box we've focused on centralized it support we've hired a high functioning agile it team and we've implemented centralized uh help desk across the district so that any types of issues can be addressed
078quickly and efficiently so two questions here um so when I look at this one of the things that um that I've thought about a lot and just kind of worked personally within this District about is assist of technology and the support that we have within the district for that a lot of people think that that's just special education but students on 504 plans could access assisted technology as well um in the past this person has been like a 0 five within the district which if you think about 05 for the entire district with the amount of technology that we have increasing that accessibility for students right now I just don't think it's enough um to help students like figure out what technology is going to help them access the curriculum or classrooms and be successful
079um is there something within this plan that addresses that need so we still have that employee in the district and then we have also added as part of our it team um somebody who actually um is behind the scenes and helps work with um that staff member to set up um uh set up all of the instructional resources so that she doesn't have to do that so we've worked to free up some of her time to allow for that that that was my second question cuz when I was looking at your plan um for the Technology support like the people that you have in there um it said the general Technology support specialist That's 80% special ed and 20% gened is that the person you're referring to yes it's moved more to about 5050 okay
080all right and then um my second question and I sorry if I'm jumping ahead a little bit here um during the budget cuts that uh we experienced as a district one of the things that came up a lot was um the media Specialists and how they provided some INB building tech support and then also like help students like access just the extreme amount of information that comes not just in book format within our media centers but um how to use technology to support their learning um is that something that would be like increasing within the k through eight level as part of your plan so it is not at this time we are going to talk about this a little bit more as the SL yeah that's okay um with our five-year technology plan it
081provided a a very strong road map for us but the reality of implementing change at this scale meant that we encountered some unexpected but essential challenges um our we had a a great we have had a great Tech Team who who are able to tackle those challenges for us these initiatives that you'll see on this slide were not initially part of the original plan but they did become Mission critical for us to complete along the way automated access management ensuring that our staff and our students have the right tools at the right time without delays or manual work Safety and Security we partnered with uh uh facilities to make sure that we were integrating technology-driven Security Solutions making sure that we have a safe environment for everyone as far as cyber security we manage every
082ticket every fishing report and every Potential Threat that comes into our district while we're protecting the district from any evolving cyber security threats uh we have taken some steps to audit our data Implement a data warehouse and create visualizations to analyze data and our technology team expanded over the course of these last uh 5 years as we added on our Information Services team and digital learning transitioned under discit we are going to go deeper in on most of these in our 40 slides director Nicholson can you just expand on what is included in the data warehouse and your data analytics capabilities what do you have I have a slide so is that okay to wait sure okay thank you over the past 5 years we've made tremendous strides in building a high functioning agile it
083t uh it team that is better aligned with our the needs of our district from our site it staff to our district IT staff as I said before we we operated with a skeleton crew of eight people for district-wide support and then Technology support at the buildings was very siloed but today we have a centralized it model that provides robust support for both the district and uh at each of our sites it's important to note that education technology is distinct from business technology while both require strong technological expertise education technology demands an understanding of how technology can be integrated into a classroom setting uh additionally there's a focus on student data privacy and safety and so that's another layer that we have to pay attention to it is really about making technology accessible and intuitive
084for our teachers and students while supporting the broader goals of student achievement it requires not just technical skills but a deep commitment to serving in education and I have to say that I'm incredibly grateful for our it team to continue to choose us every day um it's often uh the case where they can go out to uh the private sector and earn more money but they choose us every day and I'm incredibly appreciative of that here you will see our organizational chart our team falls under teaching and learning which is led by Dr Emily McDonald um I will not go through each one of these staff members but in the the upper lighter blue color I do want to U specifically thank Patrick Ratliff and Joselyn main they are our two leads in our department
085and we would not be here without their hard work and dedication to everything we do not only do we have excellent support at the district level but we also have outstanding support at each of our school sites our digital media Specialists and we have two here with us today thank you for your support um our media clerks and our techs play a vital role in ensuring that technology integration and Library Services run smoothly when we started centralizing it support it did take us few iterations to get this right previously Elementary tech support relied on digital learning Specialists who handled both technology integration and basic uh break fix or troubleshooting device repairs as our it team grew the number of devices and services we offered expanded we recognized the need for dedicated tech support at our
086sites so we hired level one technicians and these people were really focused on just technology we noticed that this created a critical Gap in library support as when the uh uh digital media specialist was out of the library there was nobody there to help our students and so this year we have moved to a model with dedicated media clerks at each elementary site instead of level one tchs this has significantly improved our library operations and basic Tech troubleshooting our new media clerks are outstanding we are so appre ative of them in our buildings um as as you may know and in uh director Baker brought up that we took a significant hit in the 2324 budget cuts when our k through eight digital media specialist positions were cut to halftime now they each serve two
087buildings additionally our digital learning coordinator position was cut during those budget cuts as well you see a graphic here of a DMS who is juggling multiple priorities their jobs are hard they're really hard and they have two sites in which to do it the depth of experience and expertise and instructional support that the dmss brings to us is critical to ensuring that our students and staff have the resources that they need to fully engage with digital tools and learning opportunities they are licensed teachers who also are experts in children's literature media center curation digital apps devices Tech integration all of those things that you see them balancing there they help our teachers uh find technological efficiencies they help coach our teachers to integrate uh digital tools within their instruction their commitment and expertise are invaluable
088to what we have and we do continue to evaluate ways to better support their essential work across our district director Nicholson quick question so I I've had a chance to speak with three of your dmss they're they have a lot on their plate um I kind of talk through quite a bit about their day um at this point I I got a bunch more questions for you but I know it's coming up later when we get to the one to one stuff do you think 50% right now do you think having them split sites is enough I honestly could say it's not optimal was a tough cut when we had to make that cut in I can answer that the answer is no thank you um The Challenge I I know I I'm just want
089to make sure that everybody understands that um um Tracy's been very clear with me on what the challenge is um the ideal scenario I I I did a lot of work with this in St Paul and obviously I pretty have a great Affinity to this because I invested a lot in trying to get us to where we were um and I'd like to see this particular problem resolved the challenge obvious it's a financial challenge right um I can tell you that Dr Snider who was superintendent before I was put a lot of effort into trying to set the condition to do this but this the 2015 Capital Levy created the condition to allow the hire of Tracy and the reorganization to get through all of this stuff right so that that and and then you
090get budget cuts a year ago or whatever that that you know a choice was made um when I was in St Paul we were able to get to one to three in our elementaries um and in our secondaries we were one to one now they weren't DMS uh specialized uh CU we couldn't get to that level cuz that is amazing to be able to do that but I would love an opportunity to be able to restore that the challenge becomes you know financially and where it is in the priority because as I said before the limiting factor in any school system is your funding resources and then prioritizing that against the other things that you have to do and um yeah seeing as you brought it up I'll just ask you real quick here does
091the levy that we do have potentially on the table seeing as it is a 10year levy right will it restore back to that level then well will we be able to go back to we have to talk to that in terms of the other direction I'm getting here with the resolution and where that is in the priority so I mean all these things have to be aligned sure and juxtaposed and then priorities established so I can't answer your question directly right now would we like to be able to do it would we try to find a way to do it we are always doing that okay okay when we first implemented a ticketing system to support our centralized it it was a challenging transition people were accustomed to talking directly to people or reaching out
092via email phone calls they wanted immediate attention and everybody uh it was they needed immediate attention however as we expanded and we had equipment and support needs it became clear that we needed a centralized system to help track responses monitor issues and document any types of device repairs initially the phrase put in a ticket was a inside joke with our group um and but people do we still say it today right um our team definitely struggled with the change uh asking someone to submit a ticket felt very impersonal and it took time for them to build The Habit to redirect people from a phone call to a ticket now if there's an immediate issue we don't stand in front of you and say put in a ticket we want to help you right then and
093there um but you can see um from that first year we have grown significantly you can see the number of tickets total tickets has um increased we are helping staff and we are helping families as well uh this year we have over 13,000 tickets and we're not even done with the school year yet um so when we started we had just eight disc team members in incident IQ which is our help desk system and now we've expanded to 63 different agents across different departments facilities also added on incident IQ for facilities and so now we're a true One-Stop shop where people go to ask for uh any organizational support along with putting in a ticket everybody once a ticket is closed you are asked your satisfaction with how we did and we are happy to
094announce that we have rated 4.8 stars for each of the two questions that we ask um our staff there is an open-ended question that we also ask and the biggest feedback we get is the time it takes us to finish a ticket and of course everybody feels like their um issue is the most urgent and we should prioritize that but when you're working on 15,000 tickets in a year you have to be able to juggle that in prioritize so we always do try to be Speedy quick with our um with our tickets so Patrick's finally going to get a chance to talk all right so I want to take a few minutes and talk about our high quality infrastructure that we built throughout the district oh yeah sorry so in 2004 we were able to
095pass a levy that allowed us to build a fiber optic Network districtwide um this was a very exciting moment it meant better interconnect ity for our wide area network more resiliency more uptime and that also meant that I didn't have to load my backpack with cans of deiser to climb onto a roof in the middle of a snowstorm in order to make sure that we had connectivity from our wireless connections we upgraded our network with the uh uh 2018 bond that we passed we were able to upgrade all of our Wi-Fi access points districtwide around 900 access points we have those in all classrooms as well as most office areas gyms we were able to standardize all of our Network switching across the board so we had anywhere from 8 to 10 different models of
096network switches these are the devices that laptops printers phones all plug into uh all of our APS we were able to knock that down to about four different models districtwide which meant that we have uh an additional resiliency we were able to do a sparing strategy and save the district money currently our Wi-Fi system is Wi-Fi 5 capable Wi-Fi 5 six 7 these are all all standards in the network industry so our system is Wi-Fi 5 capable we are testing Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 7 in our office uh right now the hardware that we have on the wireless access side does not support those standards and we have a limited number of clients iPads laptops that support those standards we do know that in the next revision of those client devices getting updated they will
097support those standards so that's why we've started testing now across our Wi-Fi network we have we offer multiple uh networks uh one of those in particular is the 194 secure network this is the network that all district devices are attached to and we use a certificate based model for security so what that means is that we install an individual certificate unique to every single device that the district operates it adds to our robust security model we also provide a guest Network uh we have two modes for that guest Network Mode number one is from 7:00 a.m. to 400 p.m. uh that mode a guest that comes in has to register via a portal they get author authorization credentials via email and they're able to sign into the network after 4M we make a change to
098that and it automatically switches over it allows for parents and other folks coming into the district whether it be for academics whether it be for a concert or an academic event to hop into the network accept our uh acceptable use policy and just sign into the network and continue doing what they're doing in 2004 we were able to uh uh replace our aging copper analog phone system uh we moved to a Voiceover IP system voice on the network um that helped us reduce uh some phone costs it also helped us consolidate um our our different systems now we were able to uh replace that a couple of years ago we're now on the third generation of this one of the one of the decisions we made when we moved to this third generation is we
099were able to collapse a lot of our controllers that we had site based down to our two uh operational Network systems inside of Lakeville North and Lakeville South we also made the conscious decision to separate our Voiceover IP connection from our regular internet connection and the decision that was made was so that should we ever lose our internet capabil we would have two redundant paths for phones in case of an emergency director Baker um just a question have you considered like updating this system to Google Voice because I know a lot of teachers use that anyway as they they have a second line where they have Google Voice is that something that the district is considering uh we do have phones in every classrooms in most offices all right on our server and sand storage
100area network side we have a virtualized server environment and if you're not familiar with what a virtualized server environment is we have five systems five physical servers and those five physical servers run something called a hypervisor the hypervisor then run can run separate physical or separate virtual servers so what we can take with those F those five uh physical boxes running this hypervisor is actually have 50 or more servers running on this it's helped reduce our cooling needs in our data center and our energy needs in our data center on that we have moved from over 200 physical servers throughout the district to 30 physical servers and every year we see that number go down as we add more and more pieces to our virtual environment these physical servers are things like security camera servers
101uh HVAC uh components pieces like that we have a storage area network and I've seen our storage needs reduce uh through the past probably 10 years uh when we first built this out we actually had a rather large footprint in data but since we moved more and more things to the cloud such as Infinite Campus moving to the infinite campus cloud or Google Apps for Education uh we have seen that a lot of that data has transitioned to the cloud and so our actual needs within our own data centers has decreased drastically that also means that our backup of the equipment on site is faster because we don't have as much data need and we have a rotating backup method we also have a secure we have multiple secured appliances that sit off Network that
102only a few machines in the district can get to in order to make sure those backups remain uh safe okay as I said we standardized our mobile classrooms across the district we wanted to ensure that our teachers and students had Equitable access to instructional tools no matter what classroom uh they are in every classroom is equipped with a projector that displays onto the Whiteboard which provides a fle flexible space for interactive lessons teachers can seamlessly connect their computer or iPad to the projector through the Apple TV students can also connect their iPads to the projector to share their work it Fosters collaboration and Interactive Learning teachers use apple classroom to monitor student screens in real time to push content directly to student devices and to sometimes lock students into specific apps to help them maintain
103focus on what they are supposed to be working on in our newly constructed Elementary classrooms we also have something called audio enhancement and that is for accessibility and engagement the teacher wears a microphone to ensure that the students hear clearly no matter where they are sitting in the classroom this is very important especially in the younger years when students are learning how to to pronounce words and um develop sounds no matter where they're sitting in the classroom they can hear the teacher clearly this also is uh support for students who are who are hard of hearing it allows for direct plug-in capabilities directly into the system just one question um when I think about a classroom I'm thinking about just the typical classrooms Within building but our Alternative Learning spaces like for instance in a
104special EDG classroom or other service providers such as speech pathologists would they have access to this type of equipment as well so we do it depends on what size the classroom is if it's a little bit smaller and we can't put a projector in there because it's too small then we'll put uh TVs in some spaces where we want um our students to uh be able to interact with the um with the the screen we will put an interactive option there as well so we tried to talk to the teachers to find out what they need in those specialized classrooms director Anderson what about our early childhood um Center is that I know you it says on their only newly constructed Elementary classrooms I'm just thinking about language development early on is there yeah we
105do not have audio enhancement in those we've only been able to put it in new construction areas so it couldn't be added to an old building it could be added but we would need the funding to be able to do that automated access management was one of the biggest um unexpected uh implementations um from my perspective this has been a game Cher for efficiency and security automated access management is it automates user access for staff and students to ensure that they get immediate and and um accurate permissions to the various systems that we have across the district this is part of our single sign on Portal you know you have to go to Omni ID before you can sign into to your um your email so before 2022 you could see that uh in this
106case I'm showing four different systems that we put staff uh information into so staff data these four systems were run by four different people in different departments you will see that we have e finance plus run by HR in the business office the student information system Infinite Campus run by the student information team and then active directory and Google admin they were run by different people staff information that we put in here came via a spreadsheet and so these four people had access to this spreadsheet from HR and so when a new staff member came they put their name and information about them in a spreadsheet these four people had to look at that spreadsheet and manually then create accounts for people as you can imagine there were some mistakes that happened and since these
107systems didn't talk to each other and the people didn't really talk to each other we had a lot of mistakes with our data and before we could move forward with implementation of automated access management we had to audit and clean up these systems and this took us nine months to clean up the data that was in these systems we had data that was um from 10 15 years ago um Moren carrian is the staff member who led this project and she is just amazing we actually hired her to do the help centralized help desk and she had that set up in a couple months and she said what's next I said okay well let's you know let's put Omni ID into place um so we had this woman one time Moren shut down the accounts
108in 20122 she asked me is it okay if we shut them down and I said yep go ahead shut down we'll get phone calls if people are using accounts we got a call from a woman who said I am using this account for Banking and my credit cards and to communicate with my family and all of these things and we said your name doesn't look familiar where are you from and she said well I'm a former student and we said from when and she said from 2014 she graduated so you can see that we had data in our systems and accounts open from uh previous people that we we never shut down so that's why it took us N9 months to to really clean clean this up here's where we are now you can see
109that data is being pushed from e finance plus um into Infinite Campus Infinite Campus is um the the um source of Truth for all of our data from Infinite Campus you can see that data is being pushed to our major systems like Omni ID incident IQ Google active directory which sets up security badges for people and then on the right hand side you can see that Infinite Campus also pushes to our online resources those are the resources for um students and staff to be able to get into it's their textbooks in the different pieces that they need for instruction um we no longer see the Post-it notes sitting here because people have one um set of uh credentials to be able to log into our systems so um somebody have a question no okay um
110so while we are talking about data I would like to move on to talk about data analytics to help you learn a little bit more about where we were and our process moving forward uh according to the Minnesota Department of Education and the Minnesota mtss data Guide book they recommend three key integrated Data Systems to support effective educational decision making on the right hand side you can see that our district utilizes three key data systems to support this process we use a student information system which is Infinite Campus this system serves as our foundation for managing Student Records which includes attendance Behavior grades enrollment it ensures that all of our student related information is centralized and accessible for educators and administrators our data warehouse is edimer edimer integrates data that flows from Infinite Campus and
111allows us to track students performance across multiple areas such such as academics behavior intervention Effectiveness this system is a centralized repository of information and it's used to help Educators make informed decisions at the classroom level the third tool that we have is a data visualization tool and this is Tableau Tableau takes raw data and turns it into interactive easy to interpret dashboards now Tableau doesn't do that by itself there has to be a person that programs it and tells it how to take that data and transform it into visualizing the trends so you might be asking what's the difference between Edge climber and Tableau and why does the Department of Education recommend that you have both Edge climber primarily focuses on individual student data in classroom level progress rather than the big picture of District
112analytics Ed climber is not designed for custom dashboard so if we want to integrate data from our HR program or from e finance to look at Finance data Edge climber does not do this Tableau was implemented so that we can visualize the big picture across the district and eventually move to integrate other sources of data like financial and Staffing and operational data to be able to visualize that so we do have three robust systems but it is important to note that just because you have the systems it doesn't automatically generate visualizations so the information on the left hand side of the screen is what I'd like you to take a look at next we had to come up with a process to make sure that we have clean data in these systems which is the
113most important part of data visualizations so you go back to what I just talked about with us taking 9 months to clean up our staff data we have to make sure that we have clean Data before we move forward and we developed visualizations in 2022 um when I took over the information systems team we reviewed our data analytics needs and what software we had we didn't have Tableau at the time but we had already started to use Edge climber teachers were using it at the classroom level but we recognized that it didn't allow us to see what we really wanted to see and so as we move forward implementing Tableau though we recognize that we needed to follow a process to make sure that we had clean data in the system garbage in garbage out
114right we need to make sure that what we have going in is clean so we put this system or this process together so step one was determining our systems step two is auditing our data to see what it is we need step three is identifying any data input issues so how are people inputting that data across the district is it standardized across the District step four is to develop consistent data entry processes if we didn't already have those in place once we have the data cleaned up we could then determine what our key questions are what what's the question that we want data to answer and then number six was creating and invalidating those visualizations so I would like it to take you through an example of this and in the past our sites operated
115a in a little bit of Silo as far as data was concerned and that's led to discrepancies in if and how data was put into Infinite Campus and it was difficult to get clear uh a clear districtwide picture we have a a a a reporting tool that we have to use and it's called dur it's the discipline incident reporting system for the state of Minnesota it's a system where schools annually have to submit data on student disciplinary incidents including suspensions and other disciplinary actions so when I took over the team I thought well this is going to be easy we are going to take the data and we'll push it from campus into the dur system they allow you to do that we'll push it and then our administrators will just validate that data once
116it's inur they can log into dur they validate what we have in Infinite Campus make sure it's accurate and tell us okay we approve everything push it forward it wasn't that easy as we were trying to get the dur data accurate we learned that only some of our schools were putting Behavior data into campus some were using other systems to keep track of their behavior data those that were putting data into Infinite Campus had site specific behavior codes that didn't align with the behavior codes that were in dur they also have to put in um the schools have to add consequences and those have particular codes and those didn't align so what we did was we started there we started talking to our staff we met with our student support team and our administrators we
117had the staff understand why because the why behind doing something is so important so we wanted to them to understand why we needed accurate data and we needed everybody to put it into Infinite Campus once we once we determined the why then we created standardized data uh I'm sorry uh Behavior codes and cons consequence codes that aligned with the dur system then we had to create a process to input that data and determine who was responsible for inputting that data and then we had to provide training to the people who were inputting that data to make sure everybody did it consistently then we were able to audit the data at the end of the year make sure it was accurate push the data to uh the dur system and then upload the data and then
118we were able to create a visualization that shows us Behavior across the district it wasn't as easy as just pushing a button and creating a visualization there's a lot of work that goes into creating those visualizations and so that's how our team is moving forward in creating those now we do have a a a challenge the challenge is limited resources to create our visualizations one is around time making sure that we have the time to go thoughtfully through this process that I've just shared with you and the second is having a person who is dedicated to creating those visualizations and um Douglas is Nino is actually our person who is responsible for creating visualizations and you've seen him in different different capacities here that wasn't about creating visualizations he does other work for us too
119and so somebody having a time commitment to build those V visualizations is a big deal director Thompson I appreciate the overview uh this is super helpful for me just to learn more about our data analytics um and and I 100% agree with you that I think uh the education technology and I wrote this down because I think you made a right a fantastic comment is how the tech can be integrated in the classroom uh and so uh I I don't think uh that that I'm looking for as much information on the education technology cuz I think with iPads and what you guys are doing sounds to be that we're on the right track where where I think I get the hang up is more of the business technology which is more of how the tech
120can support how the organization operates and and it sounds to me like we're heading that direction uh in regards to the infinite campus I think I've got a couple questions because I think if it's supposed to be your your your cloud/ your input source source of truth of data uh and that feeds into Edge climber which gets the which gives Educators the individual level to uh uh to to help with with with their their lesson plans or uh or how they move forward uh does fastbridge data go into Infinite Campus as well okay and then it does and so that so all the data but Finance record Financial components do they go into Infinite Campus I mean is Infinite Campus your core hub for Staffing finances behavioral behavioral academic grades and everything is that my
121understanding so financial data and HR data is not currently in Infinite Campus we do have a data warehouse in Infinite Campus where we would be able to upload that information and then we can create visualizations through Tableau by using that warehouse got it so so Tableau is hooked into Infinite Campus it and then you can pull all the data out that's correct got it and and so but but we currently don't have financial and HR in Infinite Campus but at the at the moment it's just all academics related correct that is on our timeline those are visualizations that we would like to begin to pull um we've started with the academic visualizations and looking at our enrollment and those sorts of things and so I think about three four weeks ago we had an academic
122report out and I I felt that I heard or I believe I heard that a lot of it was manual intervention and nothing was connected but what I'm hearing now is that everything is in Infinite Campus everything is already there we just have to have a resource to to extract the data and create the uh proper visualization at the district level at the site level at the classroom level so that we can see academics Pro uh academics either move in a favorable or unfavorable direction is that an accurate statement that's correct so um some of those visualizations have been a manual process because we weren't there yet in Tableau to be able to see those and so we have a wonderful employee um Cheryl who does a great job creating those um visualizations for us
123but she's working with Douglas to create those in Tableau um uh kind of uh just redo what she's doing um following her process um in part of our process too is making sure that that data is clean as we're creating those visualizations that makes sense so so then if all the data is in Infinite Campus as it shoots into educ Climer we don't really need educ Climer really if the data is already in Infinite Campus is that true we do because educ clim let me rephrase that we don't need we don't need the reports out of we don't need the data out of educ climber because it's already in Infinite Campus I'm sure the tools are is is necessary for the class for the for the for the teachers to be able to make sense
124of the data correct infinite cus houses the data but we need a tool to be able to make sense of it so Ed climber is a tool that allows the teachers to see uh the data in a way that is Meaningful for them to make instructional decisions okay drer Baker so just to clarify like edge of climber is not just like a database that houses all this data it also does a lot of different things so we can pull up edge of climber when we're having a a meeting about a particular student we take notes on that meeting it houses like all of our information about interventions how those interventions have went does that feed does that feed back up into Infinite Campus um it does not we would have to manually add it but
125like you wouldn't really need it to cuz it's a different type of system like it doesn't it's not just something that that brings up numbers it's a different type of system and how we how we look at data and you also have to realize that like when you put something in Infinite Campus you also have to control who has access to that because you don't just want someone who's like a high school teacher pulling up Elementary records and looking at students that they're not even serving anymore like you have to be mindful of the of the furpa Dead you know mandates that we have around those types of things too so I just want to be mindful that educ climber does have charts and graphs and things that we pull up all the time when
126we're having those discussions about students it's just a different type of system than Infinite Campus and if you get rid of that then we can't have those robust discussions about student progress director Nicholson we're not talking about getting rid of anything are we no okay so well I'm I just I I never heard we said we're getting rid of any of these things so um so from what from what you guys said before about the the dashboard that we had and the dashboard that we finally looked at I was let's just say underwhelmed um all of those were static charts none of them were clickable I couldn't drill into anything I couldn't drill into any grade level and see how the dispersion of information was or anything like that so when you say dashboard and
127I think of Tableau and its capabilities I've been on T Tableau a number of times I've scoured their website uh you know I've used it on separate client sites and stuff like that so I mean I know its capabilities I I'm I'm con I'm sort of I keep tripping up on this this point here though like we have it all of the data now has is pretty much in infinite infinite cap campus um edge of climber seems like the link for the teachers and the Educators so they can see it in a different way and get their visualization in a different way if you will um why I guess why was the dashboard static like I'm I'm still stuck at that like the dashboard that we were able to access I couldn't drill into anything
128I it it was just the basically was the pictures of the slides that we already went through the two weeks before right uh so what we're working with on Tableau they do have a um public dashboard that we can allow um people to drill down just like you're talking about what we have to watch out for is what director Baker was saying is making sure how far people can click down um what level do school board members need to click down to the classroom level to the school level um to maning all that stuff I would think that that would be a logical thing that we need to know like how the schools are performing is one school doing better than the other where can we leverage best practice how do we go about doing
129that kind of stuff like I mean how do we even direct and you know everybody everybody keeps pointing at policy governance you have to stay in your lane type of thing but it's like we can't direct and say hey we're obviously doing really well over here not so well over here how can we leverage that what can we do to give you the resources to do it we don't have like you guys don't give us that data to actually see it so I'm I'm struggling on that front I I'm maybe I'm missing something but I I would love to know how we can do better on that director Cameron um a couple things um one is an I know you don't have to address this but my understanding of reading this resolution is that it
130would be wrapping this and starting over with a new system it's a whole new bid process and maybe I'm misunderstanding so seems like we already have a data analytic system and that's what the propos the resolution is proposing is that we buy a data analytics system so um I talked to an administrator today and I said as far as I understand it what's in this resolution is that at the at the school level we're able to quickly identify through real time students who are underperforming in whatever topic area an intervention is quickly implemented and he said yeah absolutely I'm like okay that's been my experience learning from colleagues and friends in the district and I said well there's a resolution to develop that and he said to develop what I said that and so I
131think there's a misunder or I think we don't know enough to to make a resolution at this moment I hear what you're saying um I hear what director Nicholson is saying um I think the board not a couple people and I'm not I'm just mentioning this needs to have a conversation about what are the metrics that we want to learn about and know about I mean there are thousands probably of data points that we could assess but that isn't the necessarily the purview of what we should do I think we need to focus on what our priority areas that our District administration the superintendent is bringing to us saying we can't do better here because of this limited resource or this limited opportunity we have not had that discussion um and so I appreciate learning
132this I think on a day-to-day basis I am seeing intervention the resolution mentions you know intervention needs this is happening already and so what what do we want to accomplish in addition to this that will help make good decisions and I don't think every data point needs to be drilled down for every Community member that I mean that's not how schools have limited resources let's focus on what has the best outcomes for kids not on um on let's let's focus there rather than creating tons of visualizations and dashboards that probably no one will really use I I do want to address your your comments just because the same thing that director Nicholson mentioned I mean we asked for assessment data you know we said hey look we want to set goals for the district and
133student Improvement we were told the MCAS aren't really reliable when we're looking at student achievement um it's really like okay can we get down to the classroom data right um and we we kept being told well just wait you'll see the data dashboard you'll see the data dashboard we got access to the data dashboard and it was literally two PDF slide decks um with with no ability to dig deeper on that um and it's been again it's been a conversation that's been had um with a superintendent an assistant superintendent um you know that our goal is to be able to assess the performance of The District um and that's largely going to be based on student achievement and if we want to look at you know what is the most reliable indicator of achievement or
134Improvement and and this was a conversation we had um with Miss Georgie and Ela Kain um really it's how are they doing on the the information we're teaching them right how are they doing on the curriculum we're teaching them so we can assess that curriculum and then if the curriculum that we're teaching them if they're doing well on that but then are not performing well on the state standardized tests then maybe it's a curriculum issue in alignment with the state standardized tests um yeah so again but I don't think we have access to that data or we haven't been provided any access to that data um but to your point if we already have those tools you know then the resolution is accomplished I guess it was you know from all my questions and what
135we've been provided so far it just didn't seem like we had those tools and that the data was being tracked I mean for instance another thing we were talking about absenteeism I think was in your last presentation we asked well um how does that connect to the performance of the students I mean is there an indicator of hey if you're absent this many days or more in a term you know you're great it reflects poorly um and so it didn't seem like that information was available and again I mean those would be points where we can evaluate how are we allocating our resources um what interventions are working versus are not working um and then better assess how we're spending our money in the district so so I guess that goes back to the question
136is this system the system that we have capable of doing that or we just not at the point um that we have the ability to produce those reports and make those assessments it is keepable can I answer that I'm sorry I don't think that's the question um that's that's my question that's your question but I don't know if that's the question we should have as a board because honestly like let's play this out here what are you going to do with that information if for example you found out that school a was performing better than School B what are you going to do as a board member about that I would want the administrators to address that I would want my superintendent to have conversations with the building administrators because that's not our purview right
137that is not our pervie we can talk about our curriculum all day long but how it's implemented at the board level that's why we hired him and we have two jobs as board members two main jobs the number one is District policy we set the policy the administration implements it number two our second purview is the management of the superintendent we hire the superintendent we evaluate the superintendent we set goals with the superintendent that's the main the board's main purview so I'm looking at it going I understand why you want to know more about that but what are you going to do with that information it would still go back to Administration to have the discussion to talk with the team about you know what are some things that you're doing about coaching teachers what
138are some things that we're doing within the classroom to support our teachers and making sure that our our um curriculum is implemented correctly and as far as our data systems like I don't want everybody to have access to that information and if we have it down to the to the classroom level and I know what students are in that classroom like I don't want people knowing if my kids performing better than another kid or not the classroom teacher yeah I want them to have that information and I also want my superintendent to be the one to implement that that plan so just so you're clear I mean 123 b09 says that our duties as a school board is to superintend and manage the schools I mean I agree well I'm telling you what the statute
139says so I agree that we have a super endent right but if we're and this is the point we want the superintendent and the school administrators to have that information so they can do that right but how do we assess the performance of the superintendent which is our job if we don't have that data right you set goals for him and again that I've said this how do you set goals if you don't have the data we have the data we have the data that we need at the level that we need it he has a different level of data because he needs that data to be able to make decisions about man management and making sure that our people are evaluated correctly as a board member I should not be evaluating Educators at all
140nor what's going on in the classroom and I also want to say like I'm sorry if I'm a little frustrated because as an educator I get so so frustrated with people trying to make decisions about education that don't know anything about education that's what my advocacy is all about and I I mean I'm not there's there's no Slam against here I'm not trying to be disrespectful or rude but I also want to say are you listening to understand how our Educational Systems work or are you just listening to respond to me can can we just can we just let I I want to be mindful of how long they've already been standing up here and and not having boor conversation make them stand up longer we have we'll discuss later so can we let them
141back their presentation okay I'm going to let Patrick talk again all right so I'm going to discuss our cyber security journey to so far uh I am going to put it disclaimer out there uh I'm not going to talk about any of the vendors we use any of the tools or tactics that we use I'm more than willing to have an offline conversation about that or if it needs to be a closed session all right so manage detection response uh so MDR an MDR system is a thirdparty vendor that we push data points to in this case we push thousand thousands millions of data points from firewalls from uh endpoints from servers from all kinds of different sensors within our Network that they analyze this has been fantastic for us because before we had to
142do all that work and we did best case uh but at 2: a.m. nobody's looking at that data now we have a system that monitors that data 24/7 if there is a high priority situation they will contact they will start a call down our call tree and they will get a hold of us and we will wake anybody that we need to wake depending on what the situation is we also have an endpoint detection system so EDR is a client or an agent that is deployed to endpoints uh iOS devices iPads uh laptops any other type of device that we have within the network it monitors those devices for malware for anything that changes for for things that uh it can alert us to now those alerts not only go to us they also go
143to our MDR system so we're getting double alerted in case somebody didn't see it come in this this forms the foundation and the base of our cyber security Journey we have other aspects to this but one thing we know is we KN needed a strong foundation with this system and now we start by going in and and drilling down into some of the various areas and we're tightening the screws all the time it's not a matter of if it's a matter of when and our job is to push that wi back as far as we can it's to make our systems as secure as possible so that we don't look like the opportunity somebody else can be the opportunity now we also use a different system uh a different vendor different from our these two
144MDR and EDR systems to do pen testing and social engineering attacks on our district now a pen test is a penetration test they are actually trying to hack our systems from the outside they're looking for holes if they find anything they notify us immediately uh to date with these tests that we've had done we uh we've been very solid it's been it's been really good right uh they also perform social engineering attacks uh if you're not familiar with social engineering tack it can be anywhere from fishing email smishing Vishing so those are voice calls or SMS text messages uh they can also be phone calls and what it is is an outside entity trying to get data from an end user or trick them into giving up that data you may see that the uh
145state of Minnesota seems to be under a significant SMS attack in a lot of situations uh you might see the the please pay your toll a text coming to your phone that's very common right now and uh U yeah my my own son called me he says Dad do I need to pay this I'm like please don't uh we also have uh incident response and continuity of operations sure um Patrick always scares me when he says it's not if it's when that's really scary because we know that these incidents happen in school systems they are targeting schools now we know that Minneapolis public schools and Rochester Public Schools have had these types of in in instances and so I am very thankful that um Patrick and his team have proactive measures in place um they're
146very proactive but we also know that if an incident should hit us we need to have a respon plan in place and so we do have an incident response plan with our team we have also this year started to do tabletop exercises so that we actually put our people in a situation that they could be in at any given time and so we practice that as a team also this year we have added continuity of operations planning with each of our departments and so we um are going to our departments and we're asking questions like Bill what happens if the bus business system gets hacked and you can't pay people what are you going to do he doesn't know what he's going to do in that case I told him bring a checkbook and start
147writing checks um so we are working with our across the the district with our different departments to figure out how they would respond if we were in a worst case scenario and we had no internet with no systems how do we go back to pen and paper we've also implemented uh end user training uh so in any system and users are one of the weakest points and we know that getting information timely information to them on how attacks occur what the attack could look like and just having them go through various scenarios help improve our security every day we've got a slide on that in in I think two slides so just some uh interesting metrics so any day on the network we've got between 14 to 20,000 devices these are iPads these are printers
148phones you name it uh so these are things that we're Contin continually monitoring on the inside on the outside we're getting attacked at TH at a rate of thousands per hour um we monitor our firewall metrics we monitor other systems and we can just see it's continual and we've seen a continual uptick in attacks coming towards schools uh over the past two years we are one of the last great bastions that that uh they're turning their eyes toward uh uh Fortune 500 is is much harder to attack now uh now they're now they're looking at at K12 we're a wealth of data so we patch our systems uh apply security patches and software patches weekly if not daily it used to be that we could test these patches we could uh have a window we
149would roll these out and be non-disruptive at the rate that patches are coming at us we have to deploy some of those now as soon as they come out and our staff members are learning uh that sometimes this can be disruptive uh but we can't risk our our endpoint security so we try to keep that in mind um but it it is a learning experience for all involved our EDR and MDR systems uh give us about 36 new risks weekly that we have to deal with our team deals with uh we we have seen our endpoint vulnerabilities now the these metrics are from about two years ago uh when we started pulling these metrics we had about 700,000 vulnerabilities District districtwide on end points now when I pulled this information we were down 224,000 uh
150today we broached under 200,000 for the first time now what you will know with these with these metrics is that a new a new vulnerability comes out it'll Rise by 880,000 the next day we we apply the patch and it goes down by 80,000 so it's a continual fight daily our MDR stats this is just one 24hour period but it looks like this every day we our MDR vendor takes in 80 million data points in a 24-hour period of those 1.8 million are analyzed with AI and different analytics they narrow that down and they issue alerts and deploy those to their their teams which then deploy them to ours we typically end up with about eight alerts per day that we have to do something with we have to say Okay this is a risk
151we can live with or this is a risk we need to deploy a patch for our teams are always monitoring uh websites uh education material uh we utilize the federal government and CIS of the cyber security and infrastructure Security Agency uh we follow best practices and we're always updating uh getting updates from our security vendors as Patrick said our end users are oftentimes our um biggest concern and so we have implemented a managed awareness training um that you all should be seeing sessions coming across your email um you'll see that um we have a strong culture we would like to move that to an excellent culture that would mean we'd be in the green um but we have a culture score of 77 I'd like to show you on the left hand side of the
152screen our sessions we have about a 53% completion on sessions that's the videos there are about 3 minute videos that come to you that you watch um it's it's really quick you click finish and it um adds to these stats right now it's highly recommended that staff complete these we would like to move to a place where they are um required for people to complete I will have you note that the we can download you see a list of incomplete users and we know who's doing their sessions and who's not um the other one I'd like to to call your attention to is the fishing simulation there was just a fishing simulation or a fake email that trying was trying to draw people in to click on it that just went out the other day
153um we our um score on here is 10% of users are clicking on that um that is an average the last time we sent one out we had 177% of people clicking on it this time we only had three so people are learning and I think board [Laughter] members don't click that easy pass I think what's um great about this is that when people are looking at the sessions they're not only learning for their professional life but they're also learning for their home life and their personal life as um what fishing scams are and how they can uh draw you in okay so um I started my job on March 9th of 2020 I was very excited by the chance to shape the district's Direction and drive integration of technology to empower our organization we
154did not have a a onetoone device in initiative and in fact that's one of the tasks that I was hired for I was hired to plan and Implement a thoughtful onetoone device initiative I thought that I had at least a year to plan the roll out get buyin from Administration provide professional development to our staff get families in the community excited about the possibilities of a uh every student having a personalized uh experience with their technology and I thought maybe we had three years before we had full implementation and so we're going to take you back to a time that I think most of us have blocked out of our mind uh but the covid-19 uh pandemic so I am going to say again that I started my job here in Lakeville on March 9th
155of 2020 on March 13th everything changed we learned that Minnesota schools were going to shut down on March 18th for two weeks they thought at first right we knew we had to act fast I was looking for a new job no I wasn't uh our team of eight we collected cleaned updated and reconfigured every viable device we can find we added a take-home filter because we wanted our students to be safe when they had the devices at home we purchased and distributed Hotspots for students who lacked internet access we knew we didn't have enough devices across the system for every student so we relied on students using personal devices in some cases uh you might remember we had families lining up in their cars to pick out the pick up the devices that we were
156Distributing in Ziploc bags for them all in our protective gear when schools shut down our teachers had to navigate an entirely new way of teaching remotely they weren't just focused on instruction though the problem we had is that they were troubleshooting technology they were troubleshooting different platforms device types and operating systems all at the same time some teachers honestly they didn't even know their schooly or seesaw login because that wasn't part of their day their their typical day they didn't have access to devices in school after being in remote learning for a month we realized that it didn't work for our students to use this these types of devices um their own device or the mixture of devices we had at the district level we saw that teachers were too busy trying to troubleshoot Tech
157then focus on what they're best at instruction so we knew we had to make a shift in the summer of 2020 June 23rd with Schoolboard approval we moved forward with a onetoone iPad Initiative for all of our students this decision set us on A New Path it allowed us to be able to align the tools students needed to succeed and we would begin the initiative at the start of the school year we didn't have three years like I thought we'd have we didn't even have three months we were starting pretty quickly starting the 2021 school year we started in a hybrid model we faced the challenge of providing our teachers training with these new devices in an already chaotic time there simply wasn't enough time to sit down and offer the training that we needed
158but our digital media Specialist Team stepped up in a huge way they worked tirelessly they were creating videos and supporting staff remotely the best they could they helped the teachers to learn how to leverage those devices in their instruction despite the hurdles we had the team helped ensure that everyone was able to integrate technology to the best of their ability that year we moved in and out of hybrid and distance learning and then to in-person learning later on in March and April again our teachers did the best they could to deliver instruction in these different modes in 2122 school year we were back to full in-person learning we faced ongoing challenges though if you'll recall when people were out sick they had to be gone for 14 days if they had covid so we had
159teachers that had substitutes in their classrooms for 14 days students that missed 14 days of school um we had classrooms that actually had to move to Virtual because there were too many students that were sick in their classrooms so uh we tried to focus on giving people the the tools and the training that they needed um but it was really difficult to focus on any type of structured learning finally in 2223 we moved to resume uh normal operations we were back in in person and the focus really shifted towards Wellness of our staff and students it was a pretty traumatic few years our teachers were focused on reestablishing routines for our students social interactions making sure that the students understood their their behavior expectations and they they honestly were exhausted from using Tech at the
160pace that they were using Tech so we had to work through the exhaustion the tech exhaustion by 2324 we came back to a little bit more of a feeling of normaly in instruction but then what happened was we had budget reductions and our dmss moved to halftime and we lost our digital learning coordinator as I said most districts spend years for a onetoone device roll out they have time to plan to train and to thoughtfully integrate technology but that's not how this roll out happened so this last school year gave us an opportunity to actually re-evaluate the iPad roll out we took the time to engage with with administrators teachers staff and families to assess whether we were truly meet meeting the needs of our district through this rollout and looking back at that initial
161roll out it stemmed from challenges of remote learning at the time we didn't have a choice as to how we were going to implement this device but now we knew we had the opportunity to reflect and make adjustments that better align with our students needs the feedback that we received from our our um our our interested parties clearly indicated that in today's educational landscape iPads play a vital role in how we do school and in preparing our students for the global Workforce you can see all of the um pieces that feedback had had told us that was why it was a in in a a vital role for us um they're not just devices but they are essential tools for instruction collaboration all of our assessments are done on the iPads and they help us
162to allow students to connect with content in different ways and with each other in meaning ful ways I can stand up here and talk to you all day about the role of our iPads and the role they play in our schools but i' really like you to hear from our teachers and our students and so we are going to take a minute to hear [Music] that our Lakeville area school's 1:1 iPad initiative was launched in the fall of 2020 our goals are to enhance student learning and ensure Equitable access to digital resources the program has evolved significantly with increasing efforts to integrate digital tools into instruction in meaningful and purposeful ways the program is part of a broader technology ecosystem with the goal to create a dynamic learning environment teachers have been leveraging tools like
163apple classroom to support student learning manage devices and provide real-time feedback iPads have helped to enhance the learning that was already happening in Lakeville schools and allowed students to be creative in the process at its best technology brings us together the way that I try and do that in my classroom is iPads are a tool for collaboration iPads are a tool for us to make connections to learning and make connection to each other access to iPads has helped me expand the world for the students as I consider what they need to know but also can find resources activities videos of real life circumstances uh that can bring the world right to them the fundamentals of teaching of like collaboration critical thinking investigative learning inquiry don't change depending on the tools that you have but tools
164can augment those BAS so having an iPad is like really useful and resourceful and it helps us learn a lot we've always wanted to use drawing in our Graphics classes and we've never really had the padlets or anything else that we've been able to use but now with the iPads there are some programs that we can use where we can now start integrating drawing into those classes the biggest lesson they have to learn is that it's our tool at school and it's not a toy once we learn that we do a research project and research is really hard for kindergarteners cuz we're not um strong readers yet our digital media specialist found a PebbleGo website that she has linked them all into and it's got kid-friendly research books on them so the kids can read
165and listen to the books gather research and we use our iPads to help with that and it has changed how we write our stories now the biggest thing that iPads provide for us as teachers is just flexibility it's the ability to adapt to student needs kind of in the moment more as an example if if a student is maybe not understanding the wording of a question if that question is you know confusing to them then I can I can edit that question on their iPad right away you know with new tools that we have we can change reading levels we can really adapt assignments to meet students where they're [Music] at our digital media Specialists have provided crucial support by modeling lessons and working with staff one-on-one this Hands-On guidance has helped teachers incorporate iPads
166more effectively into their practices I think access to the iPads is been a net positive effect for students and staff first and foremost because it helps them to prepare for a digital world they are going to need those skills it also increases in other areas um increases engagement and motivation in all of our areas of instruction it gives opportunities for um interactive and personalized learning it helps students to gain digital resources and real time research students are motivated when they have the power of their own choice and how they create a project the projects that we are able to create through our iPads the sky the limit they can choose um your traditional Google Slides project they can create and edit videos and I Feel Like It prepares them for the real world because they're
167using tools that future employers are going to ask them to do there is a lot of different things that you can do with your own mindset of creations made a logo and [Music] products our student iPads are Educational Tools and their use is intentionally integrated to help students use them in a balanced safe and responsible way we only allow vetted in approved apps on the devices our technology team has implemented robust filtering monitoring and digital citizenship training to help our students navigate the online World responsibly they can create products that show their learning they can be curious about something and get answers literally in second and learn tools for being a good digital citizen they're kind of discovering things for themselves and learning skills like digital literacy and so that enriches my teaching because I'm
168giving them the skills that makes them kind of more in the driver seat of their own learning anytime kids are in the driver seat of their own learning that's meaningful and iPads and Technology can put them in the driver seat in a way that maybe you can't if you don't have access to those tools looking ahead we aim to continue preparing our students for a future where technology is an integral part of their personal and professional [Music] lives that was pretty awesome right so neat to see that in action um I do want to um send a thank you to our wonderful Communications Department led by Grace Olen um they've created a video that really tells a story about how integral the iPads are in our district so as we continue to refine our approach
169to implementation of iPads and digital tools we knew that we needed a systems approach to technology integration a systems approach allows us to ensure that technology is not just an add-on but an integral and a sustainable piece of the educ ational experience for our students it moves our schools from Simply using technology to leveraging technology for Meaningful transformation so we are implementing we have implemented steps this year to ensure that we're integrating technology intentionally and systemwide while it was necessary for us during covid to allow our elementary students to bring their iPads home every day through reflection and feedback we have transitioned to a gradual release model now our elementary students keep their devices at school with the option for the teacher to send them home only when there's a clear purposeful learning opportunity for
170them this approach ensures that the devices remain valuable instructional materials rather than just an extension of screen time uh as you are aware the district one of our district priorities is is around tier one instruction and the the next four um points on on this slide are going to be around that tier one instruction and our district priority so the second one the mtss Fidelity check we are enhancing our tier one instruction by using digital Tools in integrating digital tools as part of our mtss multi-tiered systems of support framework so digital integration will be part of the look fors when you walk into a classroom you should see digital digital tools being used in a meaningful imp purposeful way additionally we are working on a new teacher evaluation system while this is still in the
171planning phases um the conversations I've been part of those conversations and I am uh sure that we will see expectations of how students will purposefully use digital tools for learning on this new evaluation the next over is professional development and as far as our commitment to continuous Improvement we want to move to a model where the use of technology is integrated into all professional development rather than being a siloed um piece we want to have it integrated so that people know it's part of how we do school not something separate it shouldn't be like now we're going to use our iPad for free time um it should be a a valuable piece of that instruction and our building specific PD comes from our dmss they do one-on-one coaching with our teachers they also provide building
172specific or site specific professional development and they go into classrooms and Coe with our teachers um to make them feel more comfortable as they integrate technology and finally standards review process digital integration is now embedded into the standards review process so when our committee IES come together to review standards we are ensuring that the approach is aligned um for digital instruction for goals and student needs an example of this is at the elementary level there is a digital media specialist on all of our standard uh standard review committees they come in and they can support teachers with that work and give them some ideas of how to integrate technology and at the secondary level our DMS team just met with the social study standards Review Committee uh to support their work last week so as
173we as a as a district we are excited for the systems approach so that technology isn't something on the side or siloed but it's integrated um I would like to give you an example of um the work that our dmss are doing on this slide you'll see a draft of the work of our DMS team our elementary DMS team we also have a secondary road map for IP had integration but they're doing this to create a systems approach to help our teachers integrate technology here you'll see that they've laid out the skills that students should know and be able to do at each grade level um with this a teacher can see that if I'm a third grade teacher I will know that my students in second grade already learned how to use keynote and
174so I don't have to retach that or I can teach it at a a very quick level because they've already done that in second grade so it gives the teachers a little bit more of a road map as to how they can best integrate um technology uh this work is in draft form you see draft across because it has not been rolled out districtwide I just wanted to give you an example of how we're doing this work to be able to standardize what we roll out across the district and it's a meaningful and purposeful plan rather than being something separated another thing that I'd like you to be aware of is that um we are very mindful of supporting our student well-being in a digital age I don't know if any of you are familiar
175with a book from Jonathan height and it's called the anxious generation this book actually explores the sharp rise in youth anxiety depression and mental health struggles and height links these Trends to the widespread adoption of smartphones and social media and in the book he emphasizes the need for schools to promote digital literacy a healthy balance with technology use and that's what we're doing we are in tune with what height is saying and um I I know we've I've been standing up here a long time so in light of that I just want to point out that what I've been talking about meaningful and purposeful Tech use is here the the other one I'd like to point out is collaborating with families on digital Health uh and wellness we do that through allowing uh families to
176have access to J parent J MF parent and that is a tool that parents could use when the iPads are home to be able to lock down um students in uh so that they can control what the student is doing on their iPads we also have uh the security filter on all of the iPads so that students aren't um getting into sites that they shouldn't be that is aligned with the children's internet protection act AI as we continue exploring Ai and education we are actually taking a gradual thoughtful slow and safe approach to the adoption our goal is to support students and staff in understanding AI but we want them to do it responsibly so we are starting out dipping our toes our uh dmss and teaching and learning uh have some presentations to teach
177our teachers about Ai and how could how they can use AI for their productivity also new curriculum that we adopt has AI embedded in it an example is a textbook that they have a student could highlight of a phrase or something they don't understand and the AI will pull it up so that they can see what is meant by that passage AI will also create quizzes and some test questions for them so that they can practice um flashcards it will create that based on what they highlight in the textbook um we recognize that one of the concern concerns around AI is its potential for misuse um so we want to make sure that we are helping te uh students learn how to use AI ethically and then also data privacy and safety is always a
178concern for us and some of the AI uh systems do not allow students who are under 18 to use them or in the instance of chat GPT it is under 14 and so we're very mindful of that and really want to take this slow so that um we are doing it in a thoughtful way uh since the DMS team were you GNA ask a question sorry um just a brief is that okay thank sorry um uh just a brief question about AI um so at the University of Minnesota they're looking at this too obviously and that's where I work and one of the concerns in addition what you mentioned was that by people uh by um like faculty and staff putting information into AI um you're losing your proprietary um your IP basically is that
179something that the district's looking at if a teacher uses AI with their own curriculum or it is um that's a concern um for a copyright reasons and um putting people's names in there students names we don't want our staff putting identifying names because then we're giving that data to AI so that's why we're taking a gradual um step to this because we want to make sure we've covered all of our bases as we roll it out since the DMS team is under my purview I would be remiss um they'd be throwing darts at me back there if I didn't talk about the second part of their job and the second part of their job is leading our school libraries our school libraries are more than places to just check out books they are hubs of
180learning exploration and discovery that support curriculum and Independent Learning our dmss are at the heart of these libraries and they play a critical role in fostering literacy supporting research and just helping students to generate a love of reading there is nothing better than walking into one of our libraries and seeing exactly what you see in this picture here kids just enjoying reading um and um sharing with with each other uh research consistently shows a strong correlation between Library usage book checkouts and improved reading habits the more visible and engaged a DMs is in the library the more excitement and opportunities they create for students to connect with books and this year so far I am happy to report that our students have checked out over 120,000 books so far I think that is just incredible
181and we still have two and a half months left of the school year so next I would like to take you through how we receive funding for technology across the district we have local funding and federal funding available to us first we're going to take a look at our local local funding sources as superintendent Bowman said there is no direct State funding for technology and so we rely on funding that we receive from the district and from our community Through levies and bond referendums each year you can see at the top we receive over $1 million in our operating budget this budget helps us pay for operating equipment and software such as our firewall wall renewals Infinite Campus Omni ID securely the take-home filter our ticketing system that type of support as superintendent Bowman shared
182we are very thankful for the support of our community for an approving an important Levy in 2015 this Levy provides us with over $3 million in funding and that helps us maintain everything that I just talked to you about in this presentation it helps us maintain our classroom technology our onetoone devices for staff and students it helps us to have a replacement cycle for computer labs and support cyber security we also have our community to thank for a referendum in 2019 which was an operating Levy and we also had a a a bond referendum the operating Levy supports us with four IT staff I'm thankful for that one because I was hired with this one and then we have our Bond referendum for $6 million this is a one-time dollar amount and that is being
183used um to upgrade our systems to meet uh cyber security upgrade our cabling and any disaster recovery requirements on our federal on our did I go the right way yes on our uh federal and state funding sources sorry um federally we take part in the eate program which is through the fccc this funding makes telecommunications and Information Services more affordable to schools we are given money based on a discounted rate which is based off of your free and reduced price lunch so we are given 50% of what we request in category one we get 50% of paying for our internet and in category two we receive 50% of $167 per student over five years um with that money we are going to be um installing our cat 6 uh wiring that Patrick was talking about
184in some of our other buildings we also have Minnesota teele telecommunications Equity Aid this is to help us pay for internet after the e- rate pays for 50% Minnesota Telecom Equity aid helps us pay a portion of that as well and then we have Minnesota State Library Aid which could pay for U library books it could pay for electronic resources digital tools audiovisual equipment and salaries of school library media Specialists and with that funding we pay for two of our digital media Specialists as part of the governor's new budget that I just saw come out he actually is looking he's recommending to reduce the Minnesota telecommunications Equity Aid and the State Library Aid so we will be paying close attention to um his budget as it moves forward so looking ahead to oh sorry one
185more this is just showing all the technology by numbers all the technology that we have across the district 15,000 iPads um over 700 PCS that we have I think what was um fascinating was we have seven uh 20 miles of fiber optic cable across our district we have 900 access points in our district 5,000 net Network drops these are all the things that our technology team is able to support across the district so as we look ahead to our new educational technology plan which is our next 5-year plan we see a future where technology is fully integrated into the learning experience you can see our vision there and our goal is to make sure that we equip students with the ab ability to navigate and shape a digital landscape where fostering ethical and responsible technical
186uh technology use and to bring this Vision to light we have um identif ified five different priorities and on this next slide I know there's a lot of things on here but I wanted you to see that we have um uh key areas that we are looking forward to moving forward with and have completed by 2030 on global Workforce Readiness this is where we'll be working with teaching and learning to integrate uh technology with the standards in number two we are looking at cyber security and data privacy an important piece to know on here is that we look at a zero trust security model so we don't want to trust anybody we want to make sure that we have the right pieces in place to Monitor and adjust as needed um the fourth bullet down
187is implementing an email security platform anytime someone gets a fishing email they send it right now to an email cyber security one at ISD 194 and people manually look at those emails to see if they are a threat or not and so in this plan we will be implementing an email security platform so people don't have to do that manually anymore number three box three is our Equitable access to technology standardizing technology districtwide this is maintaining what we're currently doing this is making sure that we have a rotation in place for all of our technology equipment and box four is around a unified identity and access management system we are actually going to be moving away from Omni ID to something called class link which is a more robust identity and access management platform um
188and in box five uh one of our priorities is to make sure that we have a uh clear datadriven insights and analytics we want to make sure that we can provide those real-time insights for decisionmaking along with um some of our um exciting things coming there are some challenges we have a fixed budget constraint we are um there's no dedicated State funding that is going to support us and so we do rely on our community to invest in our technology we also have ongoing cyber security issues that we have to pay attention to and be mindful of and then of course we've already talked about Staffing and professional development being a challenge for us so our road to 2030 is definitely an ambitious one um but it's filled with exciting possibilities for us um this
189work is going to require collaboration across our system and across our departments you'll see one of my favorite quotes at the top of this slide technology will never replace great teachers but in the hands of great teachers it's transformational so we look forward um to working with you and our community to shape the future of what technology looks like in Lakeville area schools thank you for your patience in listening to all of that director Nicholson couple quick questions so no questions on the cyber security Hardware all that stuff awesome um the integration in the classroom that's that's my con question right now so the the the way we integrate technology in the classroom um do we have standards for use do we have like standards for PD like how often are teachers getting uh some
190sort of an update or training done by the digital media specialist like hey these are new things that have come out we' found this app you know these schools have used it really well do they use it you know across the board like how do we disseminate information like that how does um how does iPad use in the classroom at all the different grade levels like are they using it consistently are all the classrooms using it consistently have you know everybody from the teaching and learning side bought into the concept of using this very powerful tool to help augment what they do every day so I hope that is to some degree what I've highlighted in the presentation that our initial roll out of these devices did not include any of that because we were
191doing that in in a pandemic um but as we're moving forward that is the the direction that we want to go we want to make sure that this is integrated with our tier one instruction and so uh that slide where we had the MTS SS framework making sure we're integrating there will help us to um to um say hey we're here and we want to help and people will begin to integrate that on the T TDE or the teacher development and evaluation um having a stake in the game on that will show people that this is important for us to be able to integrate and then being part of the standards review process shows that um teaching and learning does want us to be in there and help integrate technology so on those first two
192that you touched on was more of a you said you know we hope we hope they're going to ask for it so I guess that's kind of my question like do we have a standard do we say like hey you know like is teaching and learning and it here like are we integrated yet like are we at a point where you know you guys have agreed that this is sort of the right usage of this you know you should use it this many hours or you know limit it this many hours or minutes or whatever or you know it's not just oh hey you did good you're done early you get to go sit in the corner and read epics you know like I tend to hear that often to directly answer your question no
193there aren't standards that we have but by integrating it into the mtss framework and teacher evaluation it becomes more important to people because they see it front and center and so seeing it there uh gives us the the foot in the door so I guess on that topic like how have like what have they put in terms of like what their assessment is going to look like from a technology use or integration of it like what does that look like on the teacher evaluation we're not done with that process yet the the committee is still meeting to flush out those pieces okay yeah director Anderson I just wanted to compliment you on a very robust presentation This was um I mean I feel for how long you've been standing up there um both of you
194but and also um thank you for being here as long as you have Patrick and Tracy I cannot imagine coming in when you did and just um as a parent during that time I was wasn't on the board I did not know um I mean obviously we were all going through the pandemic but um these iPads came home and things I mean things were figured out and it was not very clear we had a new person in the role that you were in so I just want to compliment um kind of how this um department has navigated us through the p pic and also you know I I know the questions tonight are tough in terms of where we're at and it's clear that we're kind of like on a jumping off point in terms
195of how we use this data and how we um get all staff on board and all those things so I just think you guys are doing a great job so thank you thank you you can tell we're really proud of all the work we've done because we couldn't wait to show you thank you all right thank you um we're going to take a recess let's come back at 5'2 that's okay e e e we are back on um down to 6C board reports any board reports Dr Cameron thanks um today I um was able to visit uh the opening open house I think it was called or the grand opening of the student Lakeville Student Art Show which is at the Lakeville Art Center um if you haven't been over there yet it open on
196March 10th it's open until April 3rd and there's art featured by um K through 12 students in our district and it's it's pretty awesome so go check that out if you hadn't have an opportunity and then also on my way to the meeting I stopped at Culver's because my kids want in Culver and it was JFK night and um uh so all the proceeds or not all the proceeds um a certain amount of proceeds I forget which go to uh the schools that are designated that night and tonight was the special ed team from JFK and so I just want to give a shout out to all the teachers who go to Culver's night I think it's a great Community Building opportunity for our schools to come together but it's also a time where they
197are unpaid um serving our students and our families um to uh help our schools earn like $200 or $300 so our teachers are out there putting in unpaid time um to you know create Community but I think it's of note to to kind of thank them for their efforts um and to acknowledge that um that is something that they're asked to do um in addition to their contract nice uh director Nicholson the um I swung by the sentury PTO they were fantastically quick and they Pride themselves on it in and out in 45 minutes I was shocked and thought it was great um also thank you to our digital media Specialists I spent uh multiple hours with three of you um I think you gave me a lot of insights into how everything's working right
198now for you guys um the library program how the techn being utilized where some of our gaps are and what we can work on to do better so I I really appreciate all your time thanks direct Baker uh so I just want to say that the board had a wonderful time at um the home and garden show that was um put on by the Chamber of Commerce uh this last weekend um we had several board members in attendance we got to talk with community members all day long um I really enjoyed the young entrepreneurs section that had students from within our district and from from within surrounding cities that had um things that they were selling I spent a lot of money there um really cool things that kids are doing and then the highlight
199of the show I would say would be because we were by the community ed booth and I had chickens thrown at me all day long um at first I thought this was unintentional as I was standing by the basket but I think I heard Steve Porter say if you hit a board member you get two extra points but no one can confirm or deny that um I did ask if I could keep chicken at the end of the day cuz it did have a Lakeville symbol that was like burned into its belly and I thought that was kind of cool and considering that I got hit with it several times I thought it would be kind of cool to keep as a souvenir but anyway um I did make it in the top basket I
200threw a chicken and I watched superintendent Balman make it in all three baskets so we all are very very capable of throwing chickens in baskets on the board and we proved that on Saturday so anyone else Dr Thompson hi attended the Expo as well and I attended and and I would say I would say that the youth section was pretty awesome I I've never been to an expo Expo before and to see all um all the ven vendors that are out there but also the youth section was pretty cool um I did spend more than I needed to or wanted to probably in the kids section but I did get a really cool sticker that says no bad vibes and so who the lady that I the the the child that I bought it through
201was pretty awesome and so it's on my wallet all right uh superintendent report well I was gonna I was going to talk about the full house that I got in Plinko but we'll skip that um I do want to say to uh to um our young entrepreneurs um and and their supportive uh parents uh and Guardians and uh I think a few Grandparents were there to um that that program is amazing uh the chamber is very supportive of it I know other board members talked about it but a tip of the cap to all of our students who are energized to learn uh about business and have businesses and yes spend a little much there too but that's worth it to me so just want to share that and I'm GNA yield from here because
202I think we have more work to do all right um recommended actions uh we've been talking about this all night so let's get to it um I'll make the motion but uh very interested in discussion what people have to say in any amendments um to the proposal so I would move to approve or have the school board approve and adopt the resolution as drafted is there a second I'll second it it's seconded by director Carbone is there any discussion on the motion director Cameron um thanks I'm gon to take a step back I feel like it's an intense environment um in that um I have a lot of thoughts about the resolution um and questions and not opposed to having good data and making database decisions so that's the first thing I want to say
203um I think our Board needs to seriously take a minute to figure out what our processes are how do we want to operate how are things decided to be put on the agenda we ask our Administration to give us presentations like the the ones we've heard tonight in an effort to help us understand digest have conversation and then we come back later for key decisions like around the levy we're not deciding on the levy tonight right because we need time and we've asked for this time for um to make things better to make things make sure that we're hitting all the right um right elements with different items and ask for the board to vote on something that has never been discussed in this form um I think is unreasonable um I really think um
204given the many meetings we've had now and I'm sure some people maybe are surprised about tonight that this is like a moment to figure out are we going to work together or are we going to as it and try to build consensus and try to make things as strong for our district as a collective or are we going to put things on here that we know will have at least four votes I think that is a leadership decision that needs to be decided um obviously you probably know how I feel that we need to build consensus collaborative I think it's what's in the best interest for the district and the community um that being said I think what we haven't done as a board in collaboration with the administration is determine what are our priorities
205and goals for for the board but also for the district and so it's impossible for me to vote on this tonight because as um superintendent Bowman has multiple times expressed there are limited resources and there are many many many needs right so how do we prioritize how do we triage what the needs are and in my opinion because we do not have work sessions any longer if you look at almost every school board in the Metro they have work sessions to try to figure this stuff out in collaboration with their Administration they're setting goals they're making priorities they're making good Collective decisions for a student body um we are not doing that and I think that is something that we need to reflect on and I think this is inefficient I think it is divisive
206um and I and I don't think it's in it's what's in the best interest for our kids ultimately that are um that are going to our schools um I I want us to be a collaborative highly functioning board and a highly functioning District this is not it and we've heard from multiple people and I am in full agreement I'm embarrassed to sit here and to have to participate and even say these things tonight because I haven't had the opportunity to be brought in on building consensus on building relationships with people to set agendas for our board I think this um resolution implies that we are not doing any of this work the presentation T night was to the contrary of many like at least half of what's in this resolution and so there's no possible
207way that in this format this resolution should go forward tonight um and I think at the heart of this it shows that our board and I put myself in this boat because I learned a lot tonight we don't understand everything that's happening and that's okay we're not I mean we're not we can't be experts in everything what we can do is assume that our leaders are qualified that we put trust and faith in our superintendent to run a district and that we are here to hear what are their challenges what are they not able to accomplish and how can the board help facilitate that to better improve student outcomes to better support students we're not doing that instead we're creating mandates to put on Administration rather than hearing from them I see in this resolution
208tonight many things that our district is already doing and what I'm and I can attest that for example in here is information about wanting our district to put in intervention systems if a student is struggling I know from many families um friends of mine the second a student is flaged in fast Bridge or whatever the assessment is intervention is implemented immediately and then assess to make sure that kid gets up to the grade level with whatever skill that they're struggling with it implies that we're not doing that we are I think we can do better I think our Administration tonight has even said that we need more resources but what what I was surprised at is that we have the data to make these decisions what we don't have is the student support staff um
209to help M make sure interventions are successful in all levels like for example the Middle School presentation we had from teaching and learning a few weeks ago go there's no intervention staff at the middle school so all day long we can note in a dashboard if a student is struggling but we have no staff on the ground who can actually address that and so I need I want our board to set priorities in collaboration with Administration before we start writing resolutions that take resources away from perhaps what is actually needed I have a bunch of questions about the particular language in this but I just want to put all that out there right now that I think we to take a moment to breathe and to um kind of check ourselves on how we want
210to operate director Nicholson so um I read this um Sunday um and my assumption was a lot of the stuff that we got covered today um sort of answered quite a bit of what was actually in here so um with the the way it's written now and the fact that we're we're talking about voting on this as is I don't see we need to um I think we can move on from this at this point and probably talk about how do we actually access the data that's actually in these system so now I think that's a little bit of a different resolution or a different directive um how we go about that to your point probably need to figure all that out but um I I think a lot of it now has been sort
211of answered that the physical infrastructure is probably there we need to figure out how we're going to ask for the information or develop a dashboard or whatever it is that we need to see it cuz I I for one and I said it before I don't love the the dashboard thing that we saw it was not in my opinion that that that wasn't a dashboard that was just hey these are the graphs that we had to pull manually and put up there so if it if we do have that capability I would like to see more of that type of thing presented so uh that's kind of where I'm at now director Baker um so I would Echo what director Cameron said um I feel uh incredibly frustrated as a board member when um it
212it feels like a surprise at the table I I pull up the agenda and I'm I'm reading a resolution that I had no part in um determining what should be on it what shouldn't be be on it um and the process we've used as a board again this is a past process and every new board has to determine what their process is is that um we had several things that were brought to us um and all of a sudden we just had to vote on it and all of us that are sitting here were incredibly frustrated with that because we didn't have time to gather data and make informed decisions um and so the process that we've used in the past or that we had tried to follow was that it was brought to the
213board we discussed it um and then we had another week or so depending on when it was brought uh before there was another board member so our board meetings so that we could ask questions so that we could refine it so that we could make changes so that we could fully process and understand the information without needing to make a a last minute decision um which was what I requested and why I requested the item be moved um which and it was denied because we they didn't want to not vote on it tonight which I I don't think that I think as a board we need to figure out what our process is and stick to it because um putting things on the agenda that board members didn't have any say in it's it it
214puts us and it backs me in a corner to where I have to feel defensive um and and that's that's how I feel tonight I feel like I'm looking at this going but our district is already doing this like I want to know what the administration is recommending as far as a res resolution and what we need and then I look on these things on some of these things that I'm um reading in the resolution and there's dollar signs attached to that um we don't have the money to do that right now um so how are we going to do that and um when the board I mean we are the leaders of the district and when the board puts an initiative in front of the district from a resolution then it ties the hands
215of the district and they have to do that they have to follow what the board is putting forth um then I worry about are we really working in collaboration with the district because we're definitely not working in collaboration with each other um and then when I see something like this I don't feel like we're working in collaboration with the district either um I I what I'm looking for is um what director Cameron said like I want us as a board to be collaborative I want us to have discussions where I come in and I feel like my opinion is valued too and that we make changes to our motions based on how other board members feel so that we're working on things in consensus and I guess when I look at the the meetings um
216for the past several months it's been this is the decision and the majority goes and then we go but where's the board collaboration where's the where's the work that we're doing to make sure that what we're bringing forth is the best thing for the kids and the best thing for our district and unless we're looking at the different various opinions at this board and using those to make our policy it's just one voice and not the board's whole voice it's one voice of the majority which I get that that's how the board functions but you also have to take into account um what other people are saying too um so I get that you that there's a motion in a second on the table um I would vote to amend the motion and table the
217resolution until there can be further discussion I second that motion thank you there is a motion to amend and table or well I guess it just be a motion to postpone I'm assuming the amendment to the motion would be to table the resolution until we've had further discussion on it no I think it'd be a motion to postpone to a later date because amending it would you be changing the motion but you're asking to an amendment can change the motion but you're not changing the motion you're postponing the motion right tabling is tabling it to a later time today which I don't think you want to do but postponing would be moving to a different date is that what you're looking for I I would like to just not not have it at all and
218just vote no on it but I'm not sure that that's being collaborative and I'm asking people to be collaborative so um I feel like I would like to hear more information from the district on how this resolution would impact what we're already doing and if it's something that can even be done um so I would say postponing would probably be uh the correct motion all right there is a motion to postpone is there a second there's seconded by um director Cameron uh is there any discussion on the motion to postpone sure director Nicholson I think that makes sense right now I mean what we just saw was not necessarily what we heard from the other presentations so again with the way I read this we were talking about things that we didn't seem to have
219in place or we didn't have access to apparently we have access to it we have these systems in place so I think we need to think about what we want to go after what the direction is and how we're going to either give them the money or figure out a way to tap into those things so that we can actually get some of the things that we want to see as a board so um um I I think that makes sense right now J Cameron I think um and I might be off base here so jump in if I am um but what I'm feeling over like the last couple of meetings and in in conversation here tonight is that there's an interest amongst all board members I think in learning through data how is
220where is 194 doing well and where do we want to improve and then when we identify both where we're doing well and how do we want to improve how do we need to allocate our resources and able to continue to do well in those areas but also to improve to me that is the question it it doesn't necessarily need to show up in a resolution but that is in my opinion the the overarching questions everyone wants to address and we need to do that in collaboration with um District leadership and set some priorities set some goals um I I think that's what everyone is trying to get at and that's what the point of this is but it's just so in the weeds and I'll I'll address that if I can um yeah I agree
221I mean I absolutely agree and we've that through hours of presentations now on assessment data um that have just they've been it's it's data that I can go obtain online you know the MCAS and then the fast bridge data and we looked at data from 2013 um Nicole Adams was pointing out that test scores have dropped since 2013 it wasn't just a a covid issue um so that's where it gets concerning and then we did ask for data you know what data is available um and we were told well you'll be able to see it on the the data dashboard and it just wasn't there right so I you know my understanding from our meetings was look we all are interested in seeing the data to seeing where we have strengths where we have weaknesses
222so we can allocate assets as needed um we can see what interventions are working um I mean that's the goal of this resolution I guess I understand there's some frustration in the procedure um I don't see any specific tax on on the the requests of the resolution or the directives of the resolution itself um and I I was surprised too to hear tonight that hey we do have these systems um but apparently we're just not using them to their fullest extent so we might already be partway down the road um but it seems like yeah again if we are making decisions you know as a board how do we do that without all the relevant data and we just clearly don't have access to it at this point and that's the intent of this resolution
223but uh again I don't know I I I guess I'm I'm I'm not opposed to continuing the discussion at all um director Baker I'm not opposed to that I guess I'm just not sure what the objection is to the requests of the resolution so direct Anderson thank you um so I I agree with a lot of what has already been said and um appreciate everybody's input I think for me the the challenge is two things um and uh director Cameron has already highlighted a lot of how I feel about just how this board is functioning and I think part of the challenge is this is a very new board in general um so even three of us who have been on this board or our veterans are two plus years into this and so um
224one thing that I think is really important is we acknowledge that that we have a lot to learn and how to function better as a board and so you know something that I will just give feedback on is it it really doesn't feel good to have something put on the the agenda that um we have had presentations but we have not established collectively as a board in terms of what we're looking from or for from the superintendent one thing that we have not gone through as a board yet is establishing the goals for the superintendent and that's a really important process we have a we Mr Bowman you are not new to the district but you are to this board in terms of your your role and um you're back in this role and we
225have not set the priorities for you in terms of um creating a clear the goals and priorities that we want you to attend to and so at this point we've received a lot of information from all of our um different departments which is great I think everybody's in a place of learning and for those of us who've been on the board it's good review and we're also learning new things as things Advance um but for for me so for me the problem is twofold uh one the process I emailed this uh School Board several years ago uh two previous boards where I saw such dysfunction in terms of how the members of the board were interacting with one another and want to remind us all that we are at the top of the leadership in
226this District so if we are not interacting well together that sets the the stage for everybody else why would why would our staff interact well why would our students interact well together if our board is not interacting well together so I feel like for me where I feel like that is failing at this point is we do feel surprised we do feel like we don't have all the information of where this resolution is coming from um as well as my second concern is that with the resolution itself is that we are already doing all the things um we can clarify I I would not vote to table this I would vote to have this die at this point just because the the district is doing this already it's just the decision of what level of
227information does the board need to support the governance not the management of this District so I feel like everyone maybe has a little bit of a different opinion about that we need to talk about it we need to kind of our veteran toe board members need to you know what I mean need to talk with our new board members about what we all want and what is reasonable for this board going forward so I would actually not support tabling it I wanted to go away at the I don't know don't we have to vote on your amended motion we can amend you're the motion to postpone has priorities so we could yeah but she can amend that motion too I don't I think that just has to any other discussion on the motion to postpone
228director Thompson yeah uh I think I've been fortunate to work with you for the past two and a half years or two and a quarter and uh since then we have asked for metrics and data so that we as a board two years ago would have better visibility of how our district was progressing from the financial side to Staffing side to the academics and we got something started uh but again not at the level that uh from my perspective uh would be as as valuable now I wouldn't ask an educator to to do that because they're not in in that profession but I feel that I've got a unique uh business professional background that have melt that that have uh worked with multi-million dollar operations and so forth to be able to know these are
229the kind of metrics that I'm looking for to make sure that operations are running uh successfully and smoothly and efficiently and so that is what I feel that I can bring to the table as we think about how we want to manage our $300 million operation a $1.2 billion operation the next four years over the past 90 days this board has been informed the data is not there the data is not connected that there is no apis whatsoever uh everything's a manual intervention XYZ and so one can come to a conclusion someone with my background as well as as well as over the past two years of the data not being Rel relatively available to us in reports that something is missing and so seeing this resolution make sense to me in establishing a data
230analytics team to power the necessary reports as individuals on the board uh to to leverage to to to Monitor and to govern now State statutes again does State we are to superintend superintendent manage every board member has the right to interpret that at your discretion uh but based on my inter uh based on my interpretations uh I need this information so that I feel that I am confident in the decisions that I need to make and vote on so that our district is moving in the right direction um I am not opposed I'm sorry I I prefer this not to die because and it sets in stone that this is something that the district needs and now while some of the things may already be in place based on today's conversation which we didn't have
231over the past 90 days and uh and if it was known over the past 90 days my hope is that it probably would have sh been shared over the past 90 days that all the data feeds into Infinite Campus uh there are uh extra uh there there are separate environments in Infinite Campus that you can upload financial data you can upload Staffing data and and Personnel data and then that in that that feeds into educ climber and and we've got hookups and already set up with Tableau that fees into you know Infinite Campus to create the reports that you want but we just don't have the money and the Staffing and and so that that I think piece of information was uh was not as you know wasn't available and which probably um which led
232to the decision on the vote earlier today to move this forward so knowing more today I am in favor that uh that let me rephrase that um I still believe that the resolution is warranted and I'm okay if we need to adjust it but if things are already done in that resolution the district can come back and say yes we're using Infinite Campus yes it's already going into here yes this is whatever this these are how many resources we need so that the district has a dashboard to accurately show that our our our school is moving in the right direction and so excuse me I am uh I am in favor of this moving forward but that that be my point of view director Cameron and then um director Kone I think um director Thompson
233you and I agree on this and I agree with many people on this SP that like everyone wants the district to improve I think District admin agrees principes teachers everyone right like we're doing well in a lot of ways of course there's room for improvement I think if you look at all I would say of the highly performing school districts in our area they are not doing business through resolutions this in my opinion is an aggressive mandate not taken into account it's not co-drafted by anyone on staff to say is this actually how we're going to move the dial is these are these where we need resources to get from 75% to 80% my guess is no this isn't how you do it and so I want to be a highly functioning board I want
234to be a highly um per a high performing district and we are in a lot of ways but this like in my opinion like attack on the way we do business in our district is creating a public perception that we are not a high quality district and that is dangerous for a lot of reasons one of which being the upcoming Levy I want to see us to work with Administration to sit at a table out here during a work session to say okay again we want to move the dial 5% on on this how do we get there what does the district need to get there and that is not what this is I'm not I'm just I don't know what these numbers are they're just arbitrary numbers and and that's the issue right um
235to that point like and that's the question I've been asking and again you're not in the agenda planning meetings but I've been asking that question what are the metrics that we can use to accurately assess student performance and student outcomes and improvements and because I want to be able to set realistic expectations I don't think the state standardized tests are ones that we can set our goals based off from um and the information we're receiving is we don't have access to the other data because I do think it is it's probably proficiency right are are children hitting Proficiency in various categories for each grade level um but so far we haven't been we've essentially been told we don't have that data and so in order to set goals for the district you know we have
236to have data in order to set those goals and then review those goals and assess them um and my understanding is we just or what we've been told is we just are shown is we don't have that LEL of data um so I'm in alignment with you I believe um yes to jump in and superintendent B I'd love your opinion on this but to me great that you've been asking those questions like behind you know in these small meetings this is a board level discussion and because we've eliminated the opportunity to have work sessions I'm going to repeat myself when over again you look at way Zetta Min tanka 196 they all have work sessions to go over this and we're not doing that and I think um the lack of willingness to collaborate with
237the experts in our district to to maybe maybe the data doesn't exist that'd be interesting to hear I from my perspective I've seen the data I don't agree with your interpretation um director Thompson on on what you heard about things are analog and not integrated I heard the opposite at presentation so we need to come with a better understanding but also um we don't no this isn't solving performance issues this resolution it's a very cost costly tool um that we don't even know if we can afford I don't even know know what it's asking for to be honest we have and we have many of it I have in my notes already doing this already doing this already doing this so whoever wrote this and I don't know who it was that'd be interesting to
238know clearly doesn't understand how the district operates and that we need to start from that place first director Carbone yes um I also worked for major corporations as director Thompson and one of the things that data analytics shows and provides is it discovers things that need decisions that you didn't even know you needed to make decisions about and if we go back to what we're talking about giving uh superintendent Bowman goals finding out why there was a slide on the board on the on the screen on um February 18th that showed 67th and eth 67th 8th and ninth graders instead of at the 80th proficiency level down at 59 to 62% proficiency and on in reading and math and and where are the data analytics where are the data analytics to show why where and
239what are the solutions this this resolution is driving the question this resolution is simply asking that by June 1st it's putting a deadline on it so that it moves so that this initiative moves forward and these questions are forced to be answered on June 1st it is to be presented back to the board all of us so you'll all get a chance to listen to what if 80% of this resolution is already done by Tracy Bravo Tracy I I Pat you on the back for that then there's 20% in this resolution that still needs to be accomplished and in that respect whoever is presenting probably superintendent Balman can tell us the good news is 80% of this is done 20% of this we still need to do as a matter of fact I thought I
240heard Tracy say that by 2030 one of the priorities is datadriven insight and analytics if we can help her get there that helps all the students that helps all the teachers and it's our responsibility as a board to drive these things forward and to not look at slides that show sixth seventh eth and Ninth Grade functioning at proficiencies well below the 80th percentile in math and in reading so I think the resolution needs to continue and if 80% of it's done then on June 1st in the report back to the board say say so and we'll work on the other 20% but again there deadlines and their initiatives to be driven and that's what this is about because we're all talking about students right we're all talking about how we going to get students to
241get better academic outcomes this is one of the ways data analytics is one of the ways to identify things that aren't seen now director Baker thank you um I appreciate your experience in the business World um I appreciate everybody's background on the board because I figure these different perspectives give us a better idea on how to make policy for the district um so I'll just give you my background um I've been a birth to two teacher been a preschool teacher I've taught kindergarten first grade second grade third grade fourth grade fifth grade sixth grade seventh grade um I have a degree an undergrad degree in elementary education and early childhood education I've special ed lure in early childhood education autism spectrum disorders specific learning disabilities emotional behavioral disorders and I also have a um a
242degree in administration ation for a special education director I have over a decade of classroom experience um before that I was uh involved in my church and teaching activities with that and I have the last three years I've been a district administrator um I understand that you're looking for data I I I understand that but I also feel like you're missing the mark when you're looking at the the data and and how you're interpreting it how do you know what proficiency is how do you know that 40% um based on that's test score is not proficient uh we also look at our state standards which is is a better measurement of what we're looking for at each individual grade level um when you look at a classroom of first grade students in that classroom of
243first grade students you're going to have maybe five kids to eight kids that don't even know how to speak English but yet they're taking that state examination uh when you look at that classroom you're going to have maybe four to six kids that are in special education and to qualify for special education there two grade levels behind their peers so they're taking that same state test you're also going to have kids that maybe aren't at the first grade level maybe they're reading at a kindergarten level you're going to have kids that are reading at a third grade level or maybe beyond that I I'm just looking at that test score as not a good accurate prediction of what the kids are doing every single day within our curriculum within our district so then the other
244question is why would we need that information as a board to make our goals so if you have all grade level information for every specific building and you're looking at the test scores for East viiew Elementary in the second grade classroom are you going to write a board goal that you want that second grade classroom to get to 45% proficiency instead of 40% then we're only focusing on one grade level in one building how is that moving our district forward it's not it's moving one classroom forward maybe or maybe it's even five kids I don't know um so when I look at that I I just don't understand why the Board needs that level of information now if we look at all the second graders in the entire District that's great but again we're only
245focusing on one grade level and not all of the grade levels and we're responsible for all of the grade levels our district serves students from birth through age 21 we're focusing on test scores and all of this data but you're not looking at all the other data points that's why we have administrators and then I also look at what's your definition of superintend because the superintendent is an ex officio member of the board if we're to saying as a board that our job is to superintend then we might as well just fire him and superintend I don't know about you but I don't get paid enough as a board member to superintend this District um I have a day job that pays my bills um so I'm looking at this going again I don't feel
246like as a board we've even had the discussion because I wasn't involved in writing this resolution um I don't feel like we're looking for the right data I don't know what the board wants to do with the data for that for that matter like that targeted data um and I really think like if you want to make reading and math a priority let's make reading and math a priority for the board let's just say hey we want to see improvement in our scores we don't need a percentage attached to that we'll let them worry about the percentage what are you guys doing to improve our reading and math scores we don't need to make it specific we're high level we're not detail oriented Carly can I have one just say one thing um I mean
247we we are discussing this right now you know I mean we're having this is collaboration to some extent I mean you can you can not address the actual resolution which again i' I'd rather have you point out issues you know director Cameron like you said you have issues with the the resolution I I don't get everyone's saying we're not opposed to data but we don't want to vote on the resolution you know um and here is our our our conversation is going on right now I mean we can have this um and again it's the collection of data we're not specifying exactly what data we're going to analyze at this moment but having a system that you know we can access and will speak to us you know we can pull the data if we
248want to have the assessment performed so uh sorry director Anderson go yeah I um so it doesn't feel collaborative because this this has not been reviewed by the board in a like we're supposed to vote on it tonight that's that's where we haven't really put forth a collaborative process but I want to say very simply that if superintendent superintendent Bowman were coming to us and saying you know what I really need I really need more in data analytics like that is what I need in this moment we are of limited resources as everybody knows we've talked about how we need more digital media Specialists we need a more robust counseling system in our school we're trying to improve those kinds of things we need Behavior interventionists we need you know there are so many needs
249right now and what I do not hear and Mr Bowman feel free to jump into this I do not hear him coming to us and saying I need more in data analytics and what our job is to is is to create goals for the district that we expect and goals well not goals for the district goals for our superintendent for him to follow through on that and deliver on the assignments and I feel like what we're not we're hearing him say he has different needs and we're seeing positions posted and things like that and at that point we have to trust in the leadership so I feel like and I hate to calling you Mr Bowman but my biggest concern is that we have no idea about is what is the number on this what's
250the dollar count on this that is going to result in us not being able to do other things that are critical to our student outcomes um so Mr bman I have no idea if you have any ballmark estimate well I I I do um I I don't have a a financial estimate because there's some specified implied tasks uh within this resolution um and speaking to process uh which I think is kind of is is part of the Nexus of this is um the the challenge we have um without the work session process and I've counseled that multiple times my concern um and where I see this is we we the data is the data in terms of what we are collecting on is really not an issue uh where the data issue we have is
251in the the establishment of key performance indicators and agreement around that through all the different um major lines of operation which have been spoken to here academics or teaching and learning uh which has multiple layers to it Finance or budget uh which is another uh another part of this and whether you want to bring in uh student enrollment or other things of that nature and having a a standard Suite of agreed upon key performance indicators that are processed through Tableau at the appropriate either strategic or operational level for the board in order to identify as uh director Carbone spoke to or um director toson spoke to um we don't have that in a um in a synthesized or fused manner um I did speak to the board uh and to the public about having a
252quarterly Business Review that seeks to aggregate that um we have a lot of work to do inside the system in order to accomplish this um and I would have preferred this as I have stated in counseled as a performance requirement for me as the superintendent and I can figure figure out how to deliver to you the school board and to our public what you're asking for and shape it within the priorities and the systems that we have in existence so that's that and and then item number two which speaks a lot to curriculum which isn't even really talking about data but it is setting conditions around data in order to have a um a Level Playing Field if you will um the the wording in here I think needs refinement that I would like to
253offer um because we are beholden to the state system and given our current resources Financial Resources Personnel Resources and our ability to um bring that to fruition with buyin in a labor environment um is different than probably most your business environments that that uh you guys spoke to having experience with and I don't know I I don't know if you work in in unionized environments or not but they're different uh and you you have to be respectful of that and and bring people along so those are those are some of the challenges at the Strategic maybe even operational level but having Tableau having educ climber uh we have the things part of the Scaffolding in the infrastructure but we don't have the Personnel that uh we need I think to focus effort on delivering a
254a authentic and High Fidelity system that I think this is asking me to do and again I I would say um yes we haven't the board has not directly given me goals but my techniques tactics and procedures are to listen and if you go in my office you'll see on the board I have goals written out based on various conversations and listening and saying I think that's a overarching goal that I need to uh address and pursue and in the absence of orders I figure out what is needed and I execute on that through a prioritization process and don't have my staff confused so I I'm working hard at that um again a resolution is a technique um I I I don't consider it to be the best technique but um I am not opposed
255to trying to accomplish these things because when I returned I think one of the things I shared with several board members was we need to have a better way of articulating and showing what we uh where we're at it's called see yourself how do you see yourself and how do you share that with the public create that transparency and trust and then where are you where are you going to focus effort for improvement in a in a resource constrained environment so I get it um and again I I've counseled these things uh as they've been presented to me um and so you asked me to say it out loud so I said it out loud director Cameron thank you um for that uh superintendent bomman this is going to be a pretty direct question so
256um but I think it's important to ask when I asked who wrote this um director Nicholson you motion to director Thompson Brian did you write this resolution you did not I wrote the motion okay or the resolution thank you it's helpful to even understand where this came from yeah and again I mean the origin was from you know multiple discussions understood Brad's motion sorry multiple discussions over a number of months and the presentations that we've received and the goal being to you know be able to have kpis that we can review you know on an interim basis to assess you know how are our schools doing when performance of our job of superintending and managing the school district because otherwise um right now what are we what are we doing you know I think our
257number one goal is to improve this the outcomes of our students um and I don't know how we assess that unless we have actual data to look at so um sorry did you have another question I think I think just to superintendent Bowman's point I agree and I think I've already said this but just to reiterate I think if you look at highly um functioning boards in um highly performing districts they're not doing business through resolutions so I think it's important to look at our processes to get at the goals we all want can I okay yeah yeah I again I just want to come back to we have not been through the process as this new board of reviewing the the role and the goals of the superintendent and so that's what I feel
258like is missing from this is this board has not been through that and so Brian and uh Kim and I can think about the goals we created for the previous superintendent and we have an opportunity as a board to do that soon um and so I would recommend that as superintendent Bowman suggested we think about how we want to as a board um get data um what level of data do we want and how do we want how do we want him to deliver on that and that is what we can task him with and then he can come back to us or put on the consent agenda positions that he feels he needs to be able to deliver on our goals for that um but we do have to think about that again in
259the broader um what are the priorities of what are our priorities right now and where does this you know and that's for him to consider as well where does this sit with other priorities that he has from various cabinet members so um I would suggest we consider this as part of the superintendent review process that is coming very quickly and we can create kpis and come to consensus around that um as a board director Nicholson um I understand where everybody's coming from I get it um if we're looking at the data that has been presented though I don't think any of you want me to be the one to start saying we need to do something cuz when I looked at the fast bridge scores and I looked at them with my wife who is
260a kindergarten teacher I said what does this tell you and I'm not going to share right now what that in that response was from her and then what my interpretation was so I'm hoping that we have a clear understanding that we want to see data we want to see how we're really doing and if fastbridge is what we're going to use or if the MCAS are going to be what we going to use okay be that as it may but my directive is going to be not acceptable as in we are failing so I don't want that to be my answer I want us to I want to know that we're doing better because I feel like we are I really do I've met a lot of kids the kids are not I I don't
261think the bulk of our kids are there but the data we have seen does not show that so that's the scary part for me I don't like seeing that that's the piece that I think we need to somehow get there so I agree let's postpone where we're at today and let's let's reconvene here and figure this out and we need to figure out how we're going to put a direction in place that says if there's better metrics or more information please show it because if I'm looking at that I don't I don't want to be the one that you're going to look at me like I have a hammer then because I'm going to say we have not met our expectation to the kids if we're really showing 53% in math I mean come on
262we're we're a $300 million District we can do better than that so I hope that is not where we really are and I really don't believe we are but again that's all we've seen so take that as it may like I know we can do better than that so I know we can somehow show better so director Carbone yeah um to springboard off of something you just said director Nicholson I think time is of the essence I really do I'll go back to what I said earlier 6 7 8 and N uh proficiencies in reading and math instead of 80% down in the like 59 62% every day every week every month we sit here and postpone some type of decision there are students who are struggling and there are students who aren't just struggling
263now but they will eventually struggle when they get into the upper grades and get out of school I'm assuming that if 6 S8 and n they're struggling 10 11 and 12 isn't going to be any easier because of the foundations that aren't established so that being said one of the concerns I have about uh postponing and cancelling and all of the phrases we're using up here is time time to make sure that these students get what they need as fast as they can to make sure that we can give them the outcomes that we are all looking to achieve director Thompson yeah all I I feel like I'm Flying Blind and I have been over the past two and two and a quarter two years and a quarter we have been and and we keep
264looking at the MCA scores and and like I think this was the first year that we were even introduced to the fastbridge scores and so again I'm not going to go through my resume but here's the bottom line guys here's B like you need the data to run your operations it doesn't matter if it's a school it doesn't matter if it's a business you you need that to be able to set targets and goals now if we have a lot of this stuff in place great uh director Cameron made a great comment where 50% of our levies in Lakeville are generally approved and that's the appetite of our community and so we're not going to have the funding like y Zetta or or whatever it may be but that means does instructional coaches does Elementary
265art does fifth grade band does high school class sizes which one takes a priority and but if you don't have the data to validate which one takes a priority then we're throwing you know darts blind and and so uh if I get the need to have a performance evaluation or set performance goals but can we can we all agree that we need good data to be able to make good decisions and if that's the case we don't need to wait 3 to 6 months to put that in a performance goal pass a resolution and then the superintendent can come back can say this is what we have in place this is what we don't have in place this is how much it's going to cost to get us there do you want to spend that
266money and so if our goal is to drive academic achievement and while I'm not saying we need to spend money out of our savings account all right but if if the investment is there I'm okay making the investment to make sure that our kids are where they need to be or for for the district as a whole to be able to have the dashboard to know where we are to know where we need to get to and that's that's an investment that I'm willing to make director Baker I think part of being a good board member is also um looking at all the data and trying to look at everything not just what's right in front of your face and I and I understand that the academics is your main concern right now and it's
267my main concern too I want kids to do better in school but if you're not in tune to what's going on in the legislature within our state with our budget um that's a real concern right now and if you looked at the governor's budget and the update on that um what's still on the table is is decreasing the funding for special ed Transportation there's also a decrease in the pration rate for how they fund special education that will be millions of dollars for this district and so um looking at how we're going to how what how we're going to do that like right this this to me like this resolution is another unfunded mandate without thinking about all the different repercussions of that decision every decision that we make has consequences down the road and
268right now we're making a decision to to put forth funds towards something that I don't even know how much it costs you're asking me to vote yes or no on something I don't know how much money I'm spending here plus knowing what's going on at the legislator and that decision is going to be made by June 1st um I just know how much that costs special ed transportation is huge the pration rate so if you don't understand how special ed funding happens let me tell you how it happens so basically they take our October 1 child count and that's the fun fing that we get um for the school year that we're in they go from our child child fund count from last year so the funding that we will get this year we have
269to pay it upfront and then they reimburse us at the end of the year so they go off our child count from October 1st of last year so there are students that moved into our district that have special education services that we're paying for this year that maybe that's more than we had last year that we have to pay for well now they've decided that they're going to change our pration rate so instead of reimbursing us us 100% for the stuff that we've already spent this year that's going to be 95% that's at least a million dollar right just thinking about that at least yes right and now you do specialed Transportation so here's what that costs for our district we pay the same amount for special ed transportation that we pay for all of
270the Gen Ed C all of the Gen Ed Transportation that's how much special ed Transportation costs that's a huge cost that we may be incurring by June 1st so again you're asking me to vote on something without any information I don't know how much it costs I don't know the repercussions of the this decision but I do know that the district has these dashboards in place again I don't understand what information the board is looking for how granular do you want to get with this data because again we are up here not down here at the classroom level I want kids to do better in education so why can't we just say as a board we are going to increase our reading scores we're going to trust the administration to implement interventions we are working
271on the react we've been doing that all year we don't even have all of our teachers trained in that yet again so I mean just think about what you're asking here you can't just look in front of your face CU you're missing the forest for the trees like it's a high level thing on all the things that you have to think about as a board member director Anderson I feel like we could go in circles about this for the next two hours I want to be very mindful of everybody who's still here in the audience like you guys are all Champions obviously we all have to be here here um and the district um cabinet too and so I just want to be mindful of where we're at because it's 10:00 or 9:59 um and
272we still haven't even talked about what's in this which I have multiple concerns as I know others do as well um I come back to what Mr Bowman said earlier which is he has counseled against this it therefore does not feel collaborative with our District administration to move forward of this kind of resolution I would love to see us do something collaborative with him um again we have a new superintendent to us we have many new board members we can create a plan and create expectations and get things delivered but to me right now it's now it is 10 o' I've been talking for a full minute I think I think we're just going to keep circling and going to do about this tonight so the motion to postpone is the motion on the table
273right now um there is no date attached to it um again so I'd rather not slap it back on in the next meeting um if we're going to postpone it what do we say 30 days between now and then we have a discussion we can ask the the district to come in and say hey this is what we actually have the capability of doing right now with our system um so we know you know because again there's been conflicting information on this but then it won't delay it that much we can discuss what our expectations are I mean some some board members seem like they're not interested not interested in the data at all or they don't think that we should be asking for it um that's true I don't think anybody's seen that I
274just don't know what data we're looking for board member sorry not not yeah uh but again say it was an interesting data but again that would give us some time um otherwise I think that the motion to postpone is still on the table um and we'll have to call it here pretty soon are you asking me to amend the motion to put a date on it or to amend my my proposal would be put put a date on it um but director Thompson okay are you I'm sorry did you make a motion or are you did you not or are you suggesting the motion that would be my proposal so I'm I'm putting a feeler out there to see if we can wrap this I would be supportive of that so that that we've got
275ample time and give director broal enough time if there is if that is enough time to understand the current state of where we're at um and and kind of and and then revisit the resolution what I don't want is to not vote to table it and then we're blind for the next however many months I'd like to have a timetable Associated to it it's clear it's it's oops it's clear clear to me that you want uh movement I want movement I understand what you want me to do clearly the level of granularity will probably be the next conversation but we're moving with alacrity and dispatch in this direction so you put a date on it I don't need a date I'm moving all right um call the question yeah I'll call the question for a
276vote uh there's a motion before the board to uh postpone um the vote on the approval of the resolution for the data analytics system um all those in favor say I I I all those opposed say no all right it's pass unanimously and it is postponed um with that I will move to adjourn is there a second there's a second by director Nicholson all in favor say I I all oppos say no we're done e for