001All right, thank you everyone for attending tonight's meeting uh a study session. Just a couple things on the uh the docket. So um let's see. I'll look for an approval of today's agenda first. So move. Is there a second? Second. And a second by Mary Joe. Any discussion at all? Seeing none, all those in favor signify by saying I. I oppose the same sign. Motion carries. The agenda is approved. So our study session starts off. Tanya has got a interim grant report update on a non-exclusionary discipline grant. And floor is yours. Good evening, school board chair clot, superintendent Kren. Uh we are here this evening. Jamie Donaldson is our MTSS coordinator for Albertly Area Schools. Uh she serves in this position, um preK through 12. Uh we're here tonight to present updates on two of
002our grants, the multi-tered systems of support grant and our non-exclusionary discipline. Um on the agenda, it's listed as two separate items, but you'll see as we're presenting why uh we have it packaged together as one. Starting with our strategic directions when we are looking at each of these three or these two grants. Uh specifically looking at how we are amplifying student learning um fostering a learning environment that prioritizes student success for the whole child. And then uh both of these grants are heavy around personal and professional growth for our staff. Our first grant that we'll cover tonight is our multi-tered systems of support. Um the language directly from the Department of Education is to improve academic, behavior, social, and emotional outcomes for all students by providing a layered system of support. The focus of the
003grant is to use database problem solving and decisionmaking to identify our student needs and then implement the appropriate interventions. You have seen me present this graphic before. This is from the Minnesota MTSS model. Um within the Minnesota MTSS model, it has five core components. Um each of those components have their own uh benchmarks within each of them representing various areas of the multi-tered systems of support. So really focusing on our infrastructure and continuous improvement, family and community engagement, those multi-layers assessment and then database decisionmaking. this year. Um last year we our admin teacher leadership team completed a six session cohort um to for that district leadership team to go through training around these five core components. This year we expanded that out to a nine session cohort and learned additional pieces uh to help um
004solidify our knowledge in those areas before it moves down to the school level leadership which will happen this fall. Uh so that's the next step in the grant cycle is to now move from district level leadership training to school level leadership. MTSS grant had three goals. Uh the goals were focused on academic achievement in reading and math. And then the third goal was to focus on uh out of school suspensions. One thing that we've worked really hard on this year is taking um even within our grant work. So many times in education it feels like we have so many things. We have title, we have MTSS, we have Caker, we have NED. How we have HRS. How are we pulling all those things together under a singular umbrella and then how do they fit in?
005And so if we really use our comprehensive achievement and civ civic readiness um which used to be our world's best workforce plan is that big picture overarching. How do each of these pieces fit in? And as we were writing goals um last spring and summer for these grants, one of the things we wanted to do is keep all of them aligned so we didn't have multiple things happening. Um so the language you see is consistent with the language in our comprehensive and achievement readiness um that performance measure. The first one was fast a math. Our goal was to increase from 58% in the spring of 24 to 61 in the spring of 25. um that goal we did not meet and I will have Jamie talk through our progress and achievements in the math area.
006So looking at our fastbridge that early math assessment that we give our kindergarten and our first grader first grade students there was one school that while overall our proficiency was 53% at the beginning of the year to 76 at one of our elementary schools. uh the grade nine proficiency in math increased also from that 59% to 64% which is our five which is a 5% gain and we were looking at 3%. So if you look at that grade in particular as well that grade achieved their goal that we wanted for them and then proficiency for second grade went from 42% to that 46% as well. So th those were our gains that we saw in math. I know they did a lot of different interventions in the elementary school. They were looking at new interventions
007to help to see what we could do with math. So, they were triing a uh bridges, I think that's one. They trialled that this year and they're looking into potentially implementing more of it next year. The high school they the nth grade, no was eighth grade, it was eighth grade class. They had additional help with from their teachers as well. So, they were doing some additional math work with them. Our second MTSS goal is our reading goal. In reading, um, we were looking at grades 2 through nine in that low-risk and above average categories, increasing from 43% to 46%. Uh, this goal we are just shy of meeting. So, some nice progress here that I'll have Jamie share. One of our schools had the third grade teachers, both of the third grade teachers implemented the
008UFly foundations. It's a foundational literacy uh curriculum and they use that for intervention time with their third grade students that were struggling in that area. And they had significant gains throughout there. And then one teacher in particular, her class went from that 42% to 59% being proficient by the end of the year. significant gains there. And then our kindergartener, our kindergarten teachers, they finished their two-year uh structured literacy letters training this year and we saw one teacher's class go from that 30, what is it? 35% at the beginning of the year proficient to 68% at the end of the year. Significant improvement using the strategies that we've learned in structured literacy. So I think one of the things that we see particularly with these two pieces in reading achievement I think it speaks to we're
009seeing strategies when implemented with fidelity um that are working. So now how do we replicate that in other places across the district. Um I think particularly we know that found foundational literacy is so important. So, how do we tap into this success in this kindergarten classroom? And we know that we won't perfectly duplicate it across the district, but how can we best replicate what's happening there um so that we can see um uh greater proficiency rates in kindergarten and first grade that will in turn um lend themselves to success down the road. the proficiency increase is it's measured just by classroom performance or is there any other standardized testing used? We have the standardized e-reading test from fastbridge. So at the beginning of the year they were assessed with four different subtests and at that
010point it was the 35% and at the end of the year when they were tested again they added those tests together. Yeah. The third goal within MTSS um you this is where you'll see that MTSS and NED were are packaged together in our presentation um because our third goal of MTSS is the same goal that we used for our non-exclusionary discipline grant and that was to work on reducing our special education out of school suspensions from 23% um and rather than choosing a number to reduce. We really um are looking at having no more than the percent of our special education students identified in our district demographics. Um because that's really where you look at dis disproportionality. I stumble on that word disproportionality. Uh so that is our goal for both MTSS and non-exclusionary discipline.
011um non-exclusionary discipline falls under that work. The language for the non-exclusionary discipline grant is really to develop a professional learning plan for our staff to implement non-exclusionary practices. Um and then our focus area as I stated for MTSS as well is reducing out of school suspensions in those areas of disproportionality. When you look at the overall achievement for the district and you don't pull out special education students and you don't pull out non-white students, our rate of improvement is a 31.6 overall reduction in out of school suspensions. So, we've had professional development around this work and we've seen an overall reduction So last year we had 567 out of school and in school suspensions. This year 388. So looking at the overall it looks good. Now when we uh drill down our data a little
012bit deeper where we know we need to do uh so that we're really targeting interventions. This is what we're looking at. Um, so the first goal of special education, so we wanted to reduce from 23% to no more than the district demographic. So our overall, when you look on the far right of your screen, the overall district percentage is 21.5% of our students receive special education services. However, when you look at the column directly to the left of that, you can see that the percentage of special education students either the overall occurrences of out of school suspensions or the number of days students spent within out of school suspension far exceed our district percent. Um, so this tells us we have lots of work to do within special education. um disciplinary action, how we're responding,
013interventions that we're putting into place. Um it might be what accommodations or modifications are present within the students IEP. Um but definitely work to do um under the umbrella of special education out of school suspension. For curiosity sake, I pulled in school suspension as well to see if that was out of line. Um if it was disproportionate as well. This one looks better. Um, but there's still um a a little bit of imbalance there. We would want that number to be under 21%. But in school does look better. The second goal, oop, sorry. So, next step, what what are things that we need to do to in address that disproportionality? Um, as I mentioned, uh, with the special education students, um, really targeted professional development for staff, working with executive director Ree and, uh, the
014assistant directors that will be coming on board on that targeted professional development. Uh, working with Jamie in the implementation of tiered behavior supports um, and looking at special ed specific interventions. Uh and then we know we need to address some equity focused data monitoring and intervention teams. Uh Jamie can speak a little bit to the Tiger support teams and and what that's looking like for the upcoming school year. So we do have Tiger support teams at each of our schools. the elementaryaries, we meet once a week um for about half an hour or so and we talk about the kids that we're looking at needing interventions within the general education classroom. Um those don't target specifically special education. The special education would go through their case managers, but we talk about interventions that we think
015would work for them. Teachers have to fill out paperwork ahead of time so we know what is the area we're targeting. And then we'll look at the castle standards for social emotional learning and see what we can pull from the castle standards and interventions that might match with our students needs. We do that at the middle school as well. They also meet with the teams because we can't have it's a little bit different at the middle school and high school. We can't have the teachers necessarily all come in for one student whereas like a second grade teacher can come in and meet with us and talk with us a little more. But the the counselors there at or yeah the counselors at the middle no it's the social workers at the middle school meet with
016the teams and then they come back and as a team we come back and we talk about what is what are the needs for these students and we look at just different interventions that will work. I think next year we're going to focus a lot on like the check-in connect, the check-in checkout interventions just because they're using those at the high school as well. We've picked a couple at the high school team that the teachers have been trained in so that way there aren't so many different types of interventions and they can dip their toes in a little bit, get used to these, and then after they they feel comfortable, then we can look at a few me more different types of interventions for our high school students that are struggling as well. And not
017to put uh executive director Reby on the spot, but she also is looking at um weekly meetings with her special education teams next year and specifically doing some case study type work where um teams can bring a student to the table and they would discuss um some of these pieces that we're talking about. Would you have anything more to add there? Absolutely. We have done a lot of this in the elementary with teaming around um a student concern issue bringing stakeholders to the table that have we need their voice. We need their input on how we can best meet the needs of our students with disabilities. And those meetings will be held weekly in a different format moving forward next year. Really um the goal is to be very student centered um data driven and
018student centered. So how are we um determining interventions to meet the needs of our students? If we have interventions in place that meet the needs of our students, it should in turn reduce the need for um either in school or out of school suspensions. The second area of non-exclusionary discipline was to reduce the non-white out of school suspensions um from 55% last year to 48% by the end of the grant period. Um again in the data you'll see a significant uh difference. District on the right we're 45% non-white um in our district. Yet the number of occurrences and days served are significantly higher than our district percentage. And again out of curiosity I pulled the inschool suspension data as well. Same story. So, in looking at future plans uh as it relates to serving our
019uh culturally diverse uh student body, uh we really need to look at expanding that antibbiased and culturally responsive practices. Uh we did have some um implicit bias and cultural bias training this year. Um, unfortunately it fell pretty flat. Um, staff feedback, admin feedback, my feedback. Um, it just didn't serve our needs really well. Um, and so I've been, uh, talking with admin, teacher leadership on, um, different ways that we can can meet that need. Uh, the consultant we had just just didn't serve our needs. So, we we need more work there. um strengthening our restorative practices and student voice. Um the middle school is doing a beautiful job with this work. They have really um started implementing some great things. Um they started implementing lunch circles this past year which are going really well. Um
020they're seeing positive trend lines at the middle school level. Um so continuing to work through their student voice and then doing some more work around restorative practices. They have secured a training for in August um to continue that work of uh of student circles and um student voice. So that's exciting. Um and then looking at how do we build that out at the high school level. Um but we we have to be a realistic about student buyin too. That's important. Uh so finding those interventions that work at each level. Um and then again continuing those equity focused data teams and Jamie will be a p piece of those uh data review teams at each of our schools. Elementary level engagement specialists were um great. So our future plan for that is to um continue um
021having those engagement specialists. supporting students um working through the intervention modalities that they have learned through life-pace crisis intervention. Um we will have to look at um how to build that out at the middle school level at some point in time. Um part of the um non-exclusionary discipline grant funds end this year. MTSS grant funds continue for one more year and then we are able to apply um the MTSS grant is a state grant. Um so a new state cycle will open and we could apply for another MTSS grant. That being said, some of our professional development is in federal funds and so right now we are still in a holding pattern on any federal funds for title two which is all of professional development, title three which is everything related to English language learners.
022Um, so when we look at these future plans pieces, some of that is hanging in the balance until we get our approved funding in title two and title three. We have approved funding for title one currently, but not two and three. So, how much of some of those things can we do? If we don't have that federal funding, um, then as you know, that falls back on our 2% set aside and what that could potentially look like. So, that's those big picture impacts. Um, I wanted to give you an idea of where we have spent our funds for non-exclusionary discipline in fiscal year 24. That went uh a portion of that went towards elementary deans. approximately $69,000. That OAN came through um an OAN is your award certificate that came through really late in the
023year. Um so that's why that funding for FY24 is less. Um FY25 is uh completely focused on professional development and teach to heal lifespace crisis intervention and cultural bias. We did get an additional uh $3,500 to spend by October 1st. Um and that will help with a July training for lifespace crisis intervention. And then MTSS financial report um FY24 uh a partial funded partial year of our MTSS coordinator position. And then 25 and 26 um the funds go towards our MTSS coordinator position. So that was on staff. Um and then we built our our plans around that. Where is the future of multi-tered systems of support? Again, I'll let Jamie talk through that. So, in looking through all of our data and the proficiency of our students, it showed us that we really need to
024focus a lot on classwide interventions. There are so many students not meeting proficiency that we really need to focus on how do we get them to be better readers and understand reading across the content areas. So, we really want to focus next year on providing those tier one classroom classwide interventions. progress monitoring. When our students are in interventions, we want to make sure that what we're doing with their intervention is matching the progress monitoring tools that we're using. Next year, we'll have a little bit of change with uh the assessments we have to give our fourth through 12th graders that don't score proficiency. And those will give us some different tools for our interventions so we can find we're we're going to use as many open resource interventions that we can so we don't have
025to pay and they give they provide those interventions for us. So we're hoping to find some progress monitoring tools that will match those as well. Um and that goes along with the effective intervention and those curricular resources we have. Um, UFly I'd like to see used more in our tier 2 class because we saw that intervention work with those grade three students that usedly. So, I think we'll do a lot of implementation with the UFly. Being that we're noting those positive trends, our meetings for that database decision- making, we need to do that more frequently at the secondary level. The elementary is very good about looking at the data on a frequent basis, but it's just taking it to that secondary level because it's not something that we're used to that we've been forced to
026do for years. So, it's just being more um mindful of, okay, it's been this many weeks. Let's look at the data for sure to see how they're doing and then okay, now we're at the eight weeks. Let's look at it again. So, that way we're continually monitoring how the students are doing. We also built out um when we're talking about database decision-making, we also worked with our MTSS coaches this year and our administrative team to build out a schedule to when they're having um their databased meetings at the school level that then we also pull that up to a district level and have those district level discussions around our practices and the um multi-tered systems of supports. um so that we can see we can identify what are the trends within our buildings but then
027are we able to identify trends within the district. Um so how do we build that out uh better? Go ahead. And a lot of our phase one teachers, those are our K through three teachers, our multilingual language teachers, our special education teachers, and our intervention teachers. most of them have completed their lit their structured literacy training or will be completing it next year that is required by uh the state of Minnesota. So we're seeing a lot of good gains for those that have finished this year. What do we have? Our kindergarten teachers all finished. Uh we have some intervention and ML teachers uh that will finish with me this summer. I don't know the combination of the other group. There are some other second third grade. They're mixed groups that will also finish with me
028this summer and then next year we'll get through the rest of them and add more to our core OLA which which I don't facilitate but we have a national national facilitator that'll do that. So they'll all get through that by the end of next year. And thinking about literacy training for our para educators, they are also required by the end of next year to have structured literacy training. That will be an eight-hour training and it'll be throughout four different sessions. So there'll be two different sess two two-hour sessions with me. I just found out today that they will not have any homework. I asked some questions in a meeting. So they don't have reading outside of it. It's just what they learn from those two hours that they get with me and I'm going to
029training on that next week to find out what exactly we have to do. We do have that built out in our professional development calendar for next year as well. Worked with Sheila on what our parah educator calendar work calendars are. Uh so that is built out for next year for Jamie to uh she did the train the trainer so now she'll be able to complete that um within either our district gray days or our academy days. So, we'll be able to do it within our um PAR contract. We'll also at the suggestion of you Kim, we'll also be planning some parent information sessions on literacy. We're training everybody else on literacy. So, we need to take that home. And my plan is to do some training with our elementary, some for middle school, and some
030for high school because every literacy looks different at all three levels. I can't just cover them all in one. So sometime throughout next year, each level will get some training for parents. There is additional MTSS school leadership training that Tanya spoke about before and Compass through the state of Minnesota is providing additional training that many of us are going to participate in. There's some specific um data literacy and assessment training that I'll be part of. There's some tier one and tier or tier two and tier three intervention training that I believe the coaches and I are going to be part of and just different there. They have parent uh there's a parent train like a family involvement training too they suggested maybe we look at yeah we're looking at the family and community engagement uh
031taking that training so we can learn uh different strategies to eng engage the community. Um, and then Jamie and I are also doing one on um the MTSS handbook um how to write um and implement a quality MTSS system in your district. All right. I will provide this full um MTSS grant report in your board update. So, I'll put the link in there. Um, and you can read through all the details that weren't in the slideshow. Um, but for that snapshot, do you have any questions? I have a few. Go ahead. Sorry. Okay. Uh, so the grant when we talk about disproportionality, it's it's racial, not economic. Not economic. No. Have we looked at that data? I do have that data too that I can break down. Yep, I will include that. Um I'll include
032another link for that data. Okay, that'd be great. Thank you. Um the other I'm I'm sorry. Um the other piece that I'm working on that principles requested at our last admin teacher leadership team meeting is right now that data that you looked at is districtwide. We're also breaking it down by building. So, special education by building, um, ethnicity by building, and I can do FRP by building as well. Um, so that's the next piece that I'm working on breaking down for our principles because they're going to help use this data also to write their continuous school improvement plans. Great. Yep. Yep. Okay. Um the 69,000 for the elementary deans, was that per dean or was that 69,000 for all the deans? Yeah. So in in FY24, the year started out extremely wonky. We didn't have
033four deans hired yet at that time. So at that time, we had one dean that was serving all four buildings in a traveling capacity. So that $69,000 was just towards the dean bucket, not per position. Okay. Yeah. So I So compensatory or title or something picked up the rest. Compensatory was the rest of the dean. Yes. Okay. Um the the slide on the teach to heal. Um, I'm just going to share just in visiting with lots of parents and meeting with lots of veteran teachers, I think there's confusion in the district where responsive classroom is, where teach to heal is, where are we going? Um, and I think that brought up a lot of the parent concerns this year of the language and maybe not a clear direction to families on what it is and
034if it is truly a tier one um method versus responsive classroom. Not sure. And I'm not sure where we are with responsive classroom either. So yeah, but I heard that from veteran teachers and that was just like okay, we we do need clarification on that. I would wholeheartedly agree, Mary Joe. We heard that a lot this year. I think part of the disconnect is that um teach to heal is um it's not a curriculum. It's not like or it's not even interventions or strategies like responsive classroom. Responsive classroom gives you tangible strategies to implement in your classroom. That's not what teach to heal is or um is. It's more about um uh trauma response of knowledge in how to have that knowledge in how you engage with students in your classroom. Um that being said,
035um the feedback that we heard this year was a lot of exactly what you just described. And so we've been talking through um at the cabinet level and with administrators about um if it fits, where it fits, and how do we move forward? um we're really seeing that the lifespace crisis interventions which actually provide tangible modalities um are having a greater impact than we've seen in our teaching. Um and Sheila had a number of um consulting things lined up um with with our Teach to Heal consultant. Um and for various reasons we've kind of looked at um she's definitely uh revamped that plan and and what that looks like. We'll finish out this series. The next part is skills language. um uh administrators have looked through the skills language and part of what we're looking
036at doing is um providing a guiding document that lines it up for staff. Um it's more alike than different, but it's about communication and how we're presenting it. Um, Principal Kenneth and I and and Sheila have talked a lot about how can we close some of those gaps for everyone. I think we can get there. I think we have some good ideas about how to do it, but we have to provide a tangible resource for staff and families. Okay, great. Yeah, just sharing what what No, I I love hearing that. Thank you. Um, and I think the last thing on uh the suspensions, and it goes back to the parent meetings and the parent presentations we've had at the school board, um, and I know Superintendent Kren and I talked about this, is um, you
037know, back in the day as a teacher, we used to knew know kind of by a behavior plan chart, this is suspendable. This is like a three-day. um elementary it might be a three-day for a fifth grader. It might be zero for a kindergartener based on right what it is. So obviously it changes by grade level. Um and super friends asked me, "Do we have that?" And I said, "Yeah, we we used to a while ago." And so that might be something that we want to based on his advice of improving our behavior plans of because I think that's the thing we're hearing from teachers and obviously parents is what is suspendable, what what what is not, what is in school, out of school. Um, and I think just that whole, you know, we can
038always improve. So, it's just working on making that a little clear for our our staff and our parents. Um, that is on our principal um elementary principal summer workflow list. Um, so you got a lot done this year, superintendent. So, uh, they are one of the things that they're going to work on is a list just like you described. Um the areas that we talked about are things that are classroom managed and things that are office managed. Um and then again like you said in school suspension, out of school suspension, making sure we're being transparent in citing um some things are challenging when statute is involved. So make sure we're st citing um when statute is involved too. Um but that is on the summer workflow chart. I do think um are are you feeling
039the same way at the middle and the high school as there is at the elementary or getting that same feedback at middle and high school or do you feel that that feedback's more coming at the elementary level? High school. At the high school level, a student will be sent to the office for a certain behavior and they might be back five minutes later and that teacher's like, "I sent him for this reason. I don't expect him back in that classroom during my period." Well, if we don't have it laid out and we don't have clear expectations, let me double because I can even picture the chart we used to have. Let me do some double-checking on that. I can see the chart in my head. Okay, good feedback. Okay, and thanks for the presentation and
040yeah, there's information questions. Thank you, Mary Joe. And I'm glad Mary Joe asked about the teach to heal because at this point um based on feedback from staff and parents, I have a lack of confidence in it at this point to be very honest with you. Um and then I think I'm hearing that there's overlap between teach and this life space crisis intervention. Is that am I understanding this right? Teach to heal is teach to heal is not an inter it's not an intervention. It's not a curriculum. Life space crisis intervention gives you tangible interventions to implement. How would you describe it's a paradigm? Teach to heal is a paradigm. Um it's it's not a curriculum or an intervention. It's learning about trauma responsive practices and we've seen success in our elementary setting three classrooms
041particularly at at sibly um how for example how they arrange their environment what does their space look like um we have a tier 2 teacher in one of the settings who has done a fabulous job this this year with what just what does her space look like? It was so busy. She had so many things in there and and how do we make that that space student friendly so the students who walk in know this is my space you know this is what I can do in each space so it we have seen success at sibly in our setting three but then you have the team together who implement can see it all the way through working together you know I but I think it's important to say too when you see a 31% reduction
042in out of school suspensions What do you attribute that to? Is it is it targeted intervention? Is it better use of data? I mean, help me understand. I mean, that's a significant decline, and I think we should celebrate that. But what do you attribute that decline to? I am reluctant. I want to see what the breakdown of the data looks like by building. um especially after hearing some of Director Dorman's feedback um particularly with the how we are doing in school and out of school suspensions at the high school level um because if there is potentially behaviors that are occurring um but we're back in class within a short amount of time is the feedback that you have gotten then yeah there should be celebration but I would want to unpack it a little bit
043more and I would want to get feedback from the building administrators in what do they if they have a a a decline in their suspensions in their building what they would attribute it to. Um I think at the elementary level um our lifespace crisis using those intervention modalities are a plus at the elementary level but at the elementary level we only have suspensions uh you don't have suspension K3. Okay. So that looks different at the elementary level. Um I think at Southwest um when you look through the full report, Southwest would attribute their restorative practices to um increase or the decrease in suspensions because of the relationship piece. Um so I think I think we should dig into that a little bit more and ask those questions. is fair and this is where I'm my
044head is at and I think looking at data by building makes sense but again with with the with the concerns that have been brought forward to the board I'm developing a a sense that building leadership is linked to the effectiveness of dealing with on-site student behavior. Am I am I on the right track thinking that way? because I'm making that conclusion. Okay. Superintendent Kren, do you want to speak to uh leadership? I think it's important, Gary, and it's a good good question and a good and right concern. Um that consistency that we were talking about that Mary Joe asked about the disciplinary practices lacking that guidance and there's a wide variance between administrators. I don't necessarily believe that it's because um one is better than the other. It's just where where do I begin? Where
045do I start? It's mostly about the experience that we're seeing. Um and I think it's important to have that in place. I know our discussions with Sheila Sheilan and the administrators and Tanya about um the teach to heal. Um we're being more directive and se not directive selective in who's going to be trained on that. As Sheila pointed out, our tier three it really works but is it something that every teacher needs to have? Um, and I think that's we backed off on that and that's important because it does provide an opportunity for confusion by those teachers. Discipline starts in the classroom. We all know that and that classroom teacher needs a support of the principal uh so that when a student is sent to them, they're communicating the same message. And I think that's
046the second I know Steve and I have already had those conversations that um systemwide we struggle to have a consistent message that is um relayed all the way to where it needs to get to. Sometimes it's lost just at the cabinet level. Sometimes it's lost uh from the principles to the cabinet. But we've got to put in place a system and I know in talking to him he's a systems guy much like I am and that'll get straightened out. We've got people who want to do the right thing. It's just a matter of u how we how we train them, how we help them, how we guide them uh to get to that point. Um, discipline is something that no one says a thing about until it doesn't happen. And it, you know, um, just
047like a superintendent, what's the quickest way to get your lose your job as superintendent is not have a reality what your budget is. Well, we've figured that out. Um, as a teacher, the worst thing you can do is not have classroom management. We've got to figure that out. Not that they don't want to have classroom management, but when you don't have the guidance, you're afraid to do anything. And uh we have a lot of people now that are coming in first year, second year, tier one, tier 2 teachers who've never been in a classroom before, not even a student teachers. That's really what do I do and how do we put in place the supports to help them? We talk about student supports, we got to have that for our staff, too. Thank you. Good.
048Um, it's great discussion by the way and good questions and thank you DA. Um, teach to heal. Of course, any teacher, any educator agrees that we must teach to heal. It's if you were a math teacher, it' be a postulate or an axiom. It's one of those self-evident truths that we all do. But doing it is uh not simple. Uh and uh teaching educating is not simple. And and it's it's an art. And figuring out how you teach a student to deal with that student's infirmities to heal whatever is wrong with that student is a is an art, but it's it but it's also a science. Everything is. Um, I I like your your comment, David, about the uh the the teamwork that must exist between the teacher and the and the building leader, the
049principal. Uh, it's very much like an athletic team and and there's a lot of science and there's a lot of art to that too. and good team members work well together and and that's a combination of data which is the science but it's it's also uh very much uh dependent upon the art artistic ability of all those involved. Thank you. How um how is it over the u well first of all when when we set our goals for the NED and for all these other programs MTSS is that something that's done at the local level or is that done more at a state level as per a grant you were talking about some of that because as I see we didn't meet any of the three goals and that my next question would be how
050is that compared to the last two or three years because I'm sure the program's been around longer than that right? So multi-tered systems of support grant is a state level grant um but the work of a multi-tered systems of support um happens all over the nation Minnesota specifically is MN MTSS um and they have uh specifically identified um a framework around that multi-tered systems of support which showed those in that slide where it showed the five components infrastructure assessments the MTSS um so That's uh Minnesota's structure of of MTSS. Um this year uh so we've only had the the grant for the last two years. Um so when you look at our uh uh the results based on our goals, that's based on the two years that we've had the grant. Um, prior to that,
051to my knowledge, um, and I might tap into Mary Joe, I don't think we've had to report anything specific to M MTSS to the state, only our world's best workforce schools. Correct. Yeah. Yep. So, um, the only thing I've done differently, Chair Claude, is that um, I've taken with these grants, I'm trying to align it to comprehensive and achievement readiness, so we don't have all the different things. I really want us to hone in our focus. I was just curious um because it is startling, you know, to see that we didn't meet any of the goals and and to see a 46 on um which Jamie and I talked about after the curriculum um especially in reading because we know that's foundational, right? And so strategies around that, but I was curious about the trends
052relating to those. you you talked about some wins at different places. So, what and and you talked about next steps that that you're going to try to tap into that. Can you can you tell us give us like a little snapshot of what that have have you worked on how you're maybe going to tap into that or strategies you're thinking about or and then also are there um like common threads or andor barriers that you that we're not able to replicate that and what what could this team do to help with eliminating some of those potentially or the district? So, specific to uh reading instruction, um we know that we really need to focus on continuing to improve tier one core instruction. What do all students get? Um part of that is our literacy training.
053Um that I mean is mandated by the state, but that's great training for staff to learn about how especially our K2 teachers in foundational literacy. That is so important. Um, and when we shared some of those big wins, a couple of those big wins are a result of that foundational literacy training that they've received. Um, so I'm excited to continue to grow that. Um, we also uh with the adoption of our new curriculum, um, as with any adoption of a new curriculum, there are growing pains. Like that is not um something that that you can shy away from. That that's real. Um but um how do we continue to work through a strategic implementation of our core curriculum K5? Um we're also working through our K7 adoption this year as well. Um so those strategic
054ef efforts in um strengthening our core instruction is really important. Um, when you talk about barriers, a couple challenges that in fact we worked on our local literacy plan for a couple hours this afternoon and particularly at the middle and the high school level when when we're talking about interventions, tier 2 and tier three interventions, it just looks different. middle school and high school, they run on a schedule. They're changing classes every 43 minutes. Now, we're in high school and nth grade and we're earning credits. Okay, but I'm a below grade level reader. How do I work towards earning credits but read at the third grade level? What does an intervention imple implemented intervention look like? And so Jamie and I were talking through our local literacy plan today and um scheduling. What does scheduling
055look like? What does a length of an intervention look like for a middle or a high school student? Um, what interventions do we implement at that level for student buy in because they might be a seventh or an eighth grader reading at a first or a second grade level, but you have to have them buy in to that phmic awareness intervention. So those when you say barriers, those are some of the challenges that we have to look at and and really figure out how do we address them. Um can you think of other things we touched on today? I think we talked about um content literacy, content area literacy also. Yep. It's very, you know, we all in order for our students to access whatever they're learning in their classroom, what do they have to
056do? They have to read. So they're reading in every single classroom and how can we find those connections for literacy and those specific content areas. So we're looking at I found a document that has like literacy in the fine arts, literacy in science, literacy in mathematics. So I want to share those with teachers and we've talked about um different what kind of inter those classwide interventions how can we structure those reading interventions in those content areas or how can we help our content area teachers become better at the literacy teaching but again that's by we have to get that buy in with them as well. Yeah. I was just thinking of that the piece of that they're not they themies are the is it wasn't themies what yeah pathways the pathways that's that's that's the
057that's the hook right if there's something that they're interested in this is the literacy that's going to match up with that I think that that would be great because that's what we see at the next level too I think it's important to understand too the and kudos to Tanya and and the staff. These are stretch goals. Um those weren't just easy, you know, and the easy one would have been all of our students excluded. We would have easily met those goals. but taking the goals that that are more impactful to our student bodies and knowing that we are having an increase in our special ed populations and our non-white populations. Those are really critical to us at this point for the district to be successful. So, uh, as we look at that, I think it's
058important to understand that we weren't able to see the data, but to get to the overall district lower, there had to be lower in those areas. So, it's not as if they went up, they still declined. It's just they didn't decline where we believe they need to be. Um, and we're only given usually about an hour. Um, and I'm going to put a little pitch in here, and I know we shouldn't be advocating for uh spending money, but one of the things that that really u made impact um as we looked at goals in previous districts I've worked in is having a specific data individual. He was a math teacher. Why do math teachers always deal with numbers? Huh? He was a math teacher, but he worked specifically with staff, specifically with administrators, uh, showing
059the data, showing those small details. And because of his background as a math teacher, he could also talk about strategies and how to reach many of the goals that that the previous districts had. um in today's data-driven um artificial intelligence uh world there that position is really a critical one something to think about not that Tanya doesn't understand that she does but there's only so much one person can do well and I think the other key is that K3 class size for early literacy we have to that's where we have to hit the mark because we know after third grade it's it's more than a mountain to climb. So, um class sizes matter in K3 and the support the title intervent having intervention teachers. So, I think when we spread ourselves too thin in other
060areas, we're we're losing the number of intervention teachers we've had. Um if class sizes get are getting larger, those are all concerns. So those are things I think we all need to be talking about. I think that's a good point too. I think when we look at our data at this time next year um we will be a little thinner um in intervention at the elementary next year as well as um middle school. So it'll be interesting to look at those two pieces side by side as well. When it comes to the out of school suspensions, what type of behaviors are we typically seeing there that cause that to be needed? Again, I wouldn't that would be a question I would want to ask of the principles since I don't d work directly um with
061the suspensions. I mean, there's there's suspensions that occur um that are automatic. Weapons, uh tobacco, marijuana, um disorderly conduct, those sorts of things are going to be your automatics. Um but like specific pieces, I I would ask the principles to speak to that. What's that? Fighting. Yep. Yeah, definitely. Okay. All right. Thank you again. I'll provide the the full grant report in the board update. Good. Thank you, ladies. Thank you. Okay. That brings us to the end of the agenda. Just a couple announcements. Uh today, some have heard, some haven't, but our high school principal, Chris Dibble, has resigned to take a similar position at Northfield High School. Uh, I did have an opportunity to talk with uh our incoming uh well our interim superintendent today, but also our incoming uh uh Dr. Steve Hy
062and um he just gave me a little bit of a rough timeline. They're hoping to have a posting out by this Friday and uh then uh by the end of the June, first part of July, do a screening process and then maybe set up interviews by the 7th. uh he was going to send out an email to the staff there to let them know what's going on. He's also planning on doing I think Darcy uh is planning on doing some um surveys and things like that. So, all sorts of things in the works there to um uh work with that situation. And then finally, as we run to the uh end of 60 aotted days or so, David, thank you so very much. I think from myself and I think echoed from all of us
063for your help here um uh starting the uh the process toward our um new full-time superintendent. It's been much appreciated. You've spent a lot of time on the road. Uh thank you to your wife for sharing you with us. Uh, I never got to do, [Laughter] you know, and I think as you mentioned, I think we've got a position that she should maybe look at here in town, too. Now, that's a open, but no, thank you so much. Uh, safe travels, enjoy that retirement, and and again, uh, a lot of a lot of the results of things we won't see for some time to come. But uh appreciate and I know you'll be in and out as we go and always available to us. But uh thank you from uh from us for the time
064you put in. So without anything else um we our next uh Monday, June 16th, we'll have a regular meeting here at 5:00. No meeting uh no study session July 2nd. So then we'll move right into a July 21st regular meeting at 5:00 p.m. here. Thank you very much. Enjoy the summer as it continues to unfold.