001it is five o'clock stand for the pledge i pledge allegiance of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation and god indivisible with liberty and justice for all uh anybody interested in taking part in the open forum one pretty easy to randomize that all right gary laroud you're on my name is gary larud i'll be as brief as i possibly can i've been attending the school board meetings for better part of a year now point number one i was present at one of the board meetings recently where one of your board members jill marine asked two questions that didn't get answered in my opinion that's inexcusable all board members should be working together for the common good point number two critical race theory has already been introduced once to our minnesota state
002legislature and was defeated you can be certain that it will be back again at some point in the future as a board and as a community we have to be very watchful for that kind of thing i for one will not tolerate this kind of poisonous garbage to brainwash our children i thank you kindly for your time um well i don't see mr durban in the audience so cross-country team come on up here yes sir margo you can take over for mr irvine so so why does everybody come up and stand behind mr score back here in front of the front of the monitor behind him why don't you tell us great group of guys here that we have and uh the journey that they took part in this past fall school board community these
003guys are absolutely fabulous they have put in hundreds of hours of running in the summer running uh competitively in track and down across country and we were rewarded by going to state and these guys are very deserving what they do so i'm very proud of all of them coach you want to add anything to that just describe being really hard workers in their sport they're spectacular individuals and we were blessed to be able to spend every day with them you know they pay us to do that and we're like wait a minute i just don't want to pay yeah they deserved everything they got because they worked their tails out and it's five days a week saturdays and every day in the summer so do you guys want to talk through your experience what was
004it like it was definitely a fun experience knowing that like it's an obstacle that many many people do not overcome and uh it's cool that we were to go to state in like last 40 years or whatever and it's fun to do that as a team fun to see everyone else's well on behalf of the school district i want to congratulate all of you for your hard work [Applause] um junior senior wish me a seventh grader junior eighth grade a couple of guys couldn't be here today to have other events that type of thing so we have almost everybody back that ran on the state team so that'll be fun that's great we look forward to you going again we look forward to your pressure can i just say i thought there was something that
005was slightly overshadowed because going to state as a team gavin hankey was a section champion [Applause] thank you very much awesome job guys that is a definitely cause for celebration celebrating community success crossroad church dr funk so as many folks are aware this has been a challenging 20 months for our school district um this year probably has been more challenging than the last and you know crossroads being a great member of our community um stepped up and contacted me probably early december late november and said hey we want to do something special for your for your employees and so shawna you want to just go ahead and shawna dawson's here she's a member of the church works for the district you want to tell a little bit of what uh a crossroads did yeah so
006we just cannot emphasize and identify with kind of a strain that the last two years has put on everybody so we just wanted to do something to kind of spread the sunshine and we decided to bring a meal to every school and also to you guys here um just to kind of let you know that we appreciate all that you do and that we're thinking of you so that's what we did so thank you on behalf of the school district thank you great community partnership there thank you [Applause] okay next approval of today's today's agenda i'm looking for a motion to approve moved by dennis second seconded by dave any discussion hearing none all those in favor signify by saying or wait a minute um jill are you there i'm sorry we need to recognize
007jill she's not on okay in that event then i don't suppose it's necessary to do a roll call vote so uh all those in favor signify by saying i opposed motion carries consent items uh you have the list in front of you do i hear a motion to approve move to approved by kim seconded by angie any discussion every none uh all those in favor of approving the consent item signify by saying i i oppose the motion carries all right reports as listed superintendent funk so tonight i'm going to dedicate my entire report to our current situation with covet 19 within the district go ahead ashley you know our intent this year really is to minimize disruption of student learning and keep our students and staff stay safe particularly during the surge that we have
008going on right now go ahead so here are numbers really since july the red line is freeborn county the blue numbers at the bottom are albert lee area schools you can definitely see we've been on a roller coaster and we are nearing the peak of the most recent surge according to news reports out of the mayo clinic which anticipate that it should peak the end of next week for minnesota it's already peaking on some places within the on the east coast next slide these are cumulative numbers to date for the school district our excuse me cumulative active cases by date you can see our number is i know that's completely accurate today does that include the 50 that we just added kathy okay so our actives within the district are currently the current cumulative actives
009are the highest they've been um within the school system next slide uh this is the number we follow and remember i said if we get this number you know initially we said 150 or below and then we said okay if we see a trend downward trend we could you know maybe see relaxing some of the mitigation we are currently over a thousand we've been that way for about a week right now this slide does not show it but it has a projection going out dropping towards next week so again again we're hoping that we are at our our peak here next slide so mitigation strategies um most of these we we are well aware of um the the last two are what we we've seen some changes or we've modified as we're trying to make
010our way through through the surge here next so we have reduced the student quarantine to five days per cdc guidance and since we are one of the we're very fortunate that we have a lot of rapid tests for our students and our staff a lot of places do not we reduce it to five days with a negative test on day five so students are showing no symptoms and they get a negative test on day five they can come back to school we also are doing our vault voluntary alternative to quarantine so if a student's been identified as a close contact they can continue to test and as long as it's negative they can remain in school students who are positive who are identified as a positive case again have the option to come back after
011day five with a with a negative test and so that's that's a real good thing for our students if the test is positive they still are out 10 days students who are 90 days out from a positive there's no quarantine required and students are considered vaccinated with two shots at this point in time and they do not need to quarantine for staff it's a little bit different staff test positive are identified as a close contact or their test positive are identified as a close contact without current vaccination status or they're 90 days out from a positive can take a rapid test at day five if negative they can return on day six if positive they still have to still stay out through day 10. staff is different current vaccination staff for status for staff is
012a two shots with a booster with the moderna or the uh the j and j um with the booster um if they're further than six months out and there's no wait time once you get your booster you you don't have to say you wait for two weeks or anything like that so here's our current this is an accurate this is actually this does not include the around 50 cases that move that camera or the the video there i think there's a box down there yep 58 approximate cases that we have not added to this from the weekend so our numbers are the highest really district-wide that we've seen a big concern we have is staffing you know we are some of the strategies at elbertley high school we are now for a few times this
013past week we've reduced if we have shortages of subs we may move two or three classes into the auditorium or two or three classes into the cafeteria have one sub watch those students students have been told and the parents and the teachers all the lessons the teachers gone the lessons will be pushed out electronically on the google classroom platform so students will have the work when they report to their alternative location that is helping us with staffing to some degree we're seeing a significant shortage in our support staff it's gotten to the point that actually ashley gets to go be the high school principal secretary for about a week for a few day a few hours every day to help get sub plans up and running so as he's been building secretary before so she's
014got experience at it so we're seeing a lot of support staff shortages as well but again i'm going to go back to my statement at the beginning of the evening and that is we are trying to disrupt minimize disruption to our learning as much as we can while still maintaining operations in a safe manner so i think the strategies we have in place the reductions to the quarantine the voluntary alternative to quarantine that we're providing students i think these are all things that are not necessarily common everywhere else but they're allowing us to to stay in school to this point and a lot of districts particularly in the metro in rochester have shifted to distance learning and i think we can agree that distance learning is not the best education for our students so that's
015kind of where we at tonight i think that's it next slide yep that's it so questions from the board on any of that i just have a couple of questions or comments so rochester being in distance learning do they still participate in their extracurricular activities okay and so has there been conversations about or have we connected any of the quarantine or or case numbers to our activities at all i don't have that that number for you i can tell you that the biggest number we're seeing in spreads is probably lunches okay would it be possible for us to get a hard copy or printed copy of some of this report there's a lot of information there that absolutely good question do you think we'll be able to avoid going to distance learning or is that
016something that you're thinking about i am optimistic we'll be able to avoid it if we have to do it i do not see us doing it district-wide it may be individual site but i do not there are no plans at this time to go distance learning district-wide other questions comments okay um school board members let's start with uh bruce well i went to my first in-person uh school board conference last week was very interesting process some of the classes i liked was pay equity and open meeting law and playing by the rules so i think i gained a little bit of knowledge there the teacher of the year nominations are going along nominations are due today we're going to review the nominations on january 25th we select the finalists on march 1st and then the
017reception is april 6th i enjoyed the msba conference and the one that i uh the one meeting i liked the most was when we talked about cyber attacks and of course the presenters are always there trying to sell their trade but it was very interesting to find out what some of the attacks are that have taken place on schools and you know are you vulnerable or not i mean it's only how smart the person is trying to get in but he had a you know had a lot of good question answer on that and then also enjoyed then i talked to our school bus company about uh i don't know if anyone noticed the cameras in the uh the arms the stop arms and there's a system and there's grants out there we've talked about
018that maybe seeing if they'll work down here in alberta leave for a little extra added security so that would be it all right so i also attended the msba conference last week really enjoyed it there was a big difference i thought between attending it in person this year and versus zoom last year i got a lot more out of it and i feel like i got to know you guys better i really enjoyed visiting with those of you who are up there particularly got to know bruce neil and kim a little bit better than i did before so that was fun um i did attend several of the round tables and workshops my favorite was on covet litigation issues um partly because the timing of that was just perfect it was right after the supreme
019court came out with their finding on the osha vaccine mandate so it was just so nice to have that happen and then immediately gets to go listen to an attorney kind of dissect what had happened and talk about other things um i also attended the business education committee on january 7th it was a very small group only four of us um one of the main things that stood out was we discussed quite a bit what the committee wants to do in the future what they want to focus on and some of the top more popular suggestions were doing trainings on helping businesses with succession planning and doing some trainings on poverty i was unable to attend the school board conference but it sounds like there's a lot of great information there i thank you for
020attending business ed for kim and i appreciate that we have our first finance committee meeting coming up in february so that'll probably be the first committee of the year for me i attended the toy committee and bruce reported on that always a great group of people working hard so if you know somebody that's on the toy committee committee either community member or school representative thank them because they work really hard on that committee um i attended the msba conference as well and i um i was looking forward to seeing the closing keynote but i was nervous about the weather so i left but um so i'll be interested to hear from you neil about that but um i did attend two workshops that i thought were notable and i'm looking forward to to collaborating with
021school uh representatives about it about them one of them was inspiring career interests through meaningful partnerships so the work that john double does the work that the business side committee does kind of managing that or coupling that for for working with our industry partners on on future um initiatives with the district and then also building student success through family partnerships i um was we were at that meeting or at that reception our reception the workshop and it was it was great to see that a lot of the things that this the presenters were talking about this district already does and so some good ideas mary jo and her team and working with our special populations have just been it's been great to see and they highly recommend that and and showed lots of opportunities there
022so i enjoyed both of those okay i've been involved in some negotiation sessions we'll talk more about that during our closed session and am i right i have two attended the msba conference and it's always a delight like a kid in a candy shop with all the workshops from which we can choose very interesting and informative topics i stayed till the bitter end on friday not being intimidated by a storm and uh it was worth the wait because because i did get to see ken asyndra kemphoff a very dynamic speaker an athlete a marathon runner and sports psychologist instructor at mankato state where she has contributed to the grit of people like adam thielen who now plays for the minnesota vikings and cited examples of some work that she'd done with him her you should
023buy her books uh or go online and discover uh what her message is it's it's pretty self-explanatory she's in favor of having grit which is a simple word for resilience uh tenacity fortitude all of those positive qualities that one associates with success in any arena and again one of the beauties of athletics is because it provides a very tangible arena for students learning these qualities that are necessary for success and high on anybody's list is grit i'm not going to rehash her presentation i would not do justice to it but one of the points that she made which particularly impressed me a couple points number one that you're not going to be successful if you don't know what your mission is and so one of the one of the first things that individuals has to
024do have to do in this world to be successful is decide what it is you want to do and then ask yourself consistent with the first speaker the question behind the question why is it that we want to do this you know and if you can't come up with a why you probably won't develop the grit the tenacity the fortitude to accomplish those goals another point that she made which i can definitely relate to one of the best educational devices to develop grit is to fail a few times people who never fail don't get a whole lot better you don't learn a whole lot from success but failure has a wonderful potential for it for teaching very important lessons and certainly grit because if you fail and you don't to brush yourself off pick yourself
025up and start all over again you you're not going to develop those skills necessary to be to be successful in this world she was very entertaining to listen to and did a fine job and i'm glad i stayed yeah go ahead kim i forgot to mention too we were able to attend the reception uh an awards reception on thursday all of us that were here that were in attendance were able to sit at the table with superintendent of the year dr funk and he was recognized by msba for his exemplary service to the school district and so that was a kind of a highlight of the of the event as well yeah our our cross-country team not only went to the state tournament our superintendent was named superintendent of the year so albert lee is
026looking good all right a teacher report last but not least well thank you for having me um december 15th we had one of our first virtual days and uh we truly appreciated it i know the staff that i worked with we worked together and did some lesson planning got ready for report cards just did some final work on that feedback at the high school as the teachers enjoyed it as well but they said some of the students commented on how much they liked that it was just a little bit of down downtime with the stress of christmas coming up and grades and report cards all of that so thank you for those those days on january 5th the staff was present we went to a presentation by dr phil work he spoke to our district
027staff about hrs high reliability schools level two i think we're doing a great job in our district already we've had plcs for very for many years but it just was really affirming to hear others speak about it and then there was a lot of new ideas and um information for us all it was a great day um i was going to mention toy as well teacher of the year as well but um i did you all beat me to it um february 1st is going to be the 100th day of school and that's a big deal for primary grades so we will be celebrating that february is i love to read month and our media specialists have um invited laura purdy salis who is a minnesota author to come to all four elementary buildings and
028speak to our students she's written over 130 books and she will be talking about the writing proc process with our kids and then i was told that the high school is starting play practice for the spring play so we'll i the people that shared the information didn't even know the title of the play but it was it's interesting to note that that's getting started already and that's all i have thank you thank you moving on safe and healthy schools elderly inclusive playground cara paulsen well thank you for taking the time to let us come and talk about our exciting news for our community um we are the all together albert lee inclusion playground and miracle field um um just a little bit about who we are is we are a group of parents we have
029some early childhood special education educators physical therapists and then we've been working really closely with albert lee park and rec leaders some people from our city and um we've come together to create this um a common place and we're gonna go with albert lee to create a park for um these interactions at the inclusion playground and we took this this kind of the committee came before or together a few years ago and looked at doing this and it was brought to park and rec a few times and they just never got past where the location was going to be and how they were going to get this to come together and after doing some different walks we decided that we needed to kind of get this going so um we just started bringing different ideas
030to the table and looking at different locations and albert lee about where we could do this so we went to the park and wreck on october 18th and they were all excited about it so we decided we were going to give it a go and look at different places i want to talk about the what so an inclusive playground is a playground that everyone regardless of their ability can enjoy the opportunities to play there and so it's an opportunity to develop physically socially and emotionally if if children are in a wheelchair there's activities that they can participate in if they have other physical handicaps or emotional handicaps there's things that can help all of them in there and it it kind of works on all the senses touch see hear taste smell and is sensory
031rich so there's different types of things that can appeal to all the senses so our mission is is that we want to create this place for all ages and abilities to come together and learn and not only that but we want them families to come together so that they can interact and socialize and then come together and have a resource to talk to one another about things they may be experiencing um support each other and just have some positive interactions with in our community um and kind of when we looked at this we looked at what the percentage was like in albert lee of students that were receiving um were on ieps or in ifsp's and then we also did reach out to surrounding communities like nerhag and like the smack and see like what
032percentage of their students and because we wanted to make sure what the need was um and we thought it would be a great opportunity to bring not only in our community but from surrounding communities because we know there's a really nice park in otana now they have recently developed and kind of finished one in the fairmont area um and then i think like mason city clear lake area has one i don't know if anyone's been to some of these but and there's many many parks like around the metro area so we thought we need one in albert lee so we looked at a lot of different parks in albert lee and wanted to consider lots of different factors not only is it safe for the children to be there but um is you know we
033looked at things like is there a train nearby because if someone who has autism is near there and a train goes by not only for safety purposes but it could cause some problems for those children it needed to be city owned to alleviate the cost and then we had to look at space issues we had a park that we liked but it was in a flood zone there's all kinds of factors that we looked at to bring or consider where we were going so we all kind of came together and narrowed down um and the city was willing to give let us use the land that is currently at edgewater park across from the new bay pavilion at one time a few years ago it was talked about that they maybe were going to put
034some soccer fields out there and then it was decided that they were going to use another area for those um and there was lots of different groundwork that had to be done with drainage and lots of different things some of this was well sarah and i and some of our team were like kind of above our head but we went and we got it all figured out and then we had to go to the engineer of course and and have them drop a plan so um so yeah so and you can it's i know it looks kind of little up there but there would be a driveway and then there would be a parking lot right now our parking lot has about 20 different parking spots and then the park would sit off which we
035have pictures of the park coming up and then the goal we hope to do it maybe in some phases obviously there's lots of grant writing lots of fundraising project projects that will be coming um so then the park would sit off to the side and then eventually we'd like to have currently we'd have to use the bathrooms across the street at at the pavilion but then we would like to have their own bathroom and possibly like like maybe you could have concessions there and then of course we would love to have the miracle field i'm sure many people are aware of what miracle field is so these next slides are just some images renderings that the company that we've been working with have created for us utilizing some of the equipment that we've picked out
036that we'd like to have at the park so as you can see there's lots of opportunities for wheelchair access that blue all that blue area is actually represents a little bit of a height difference so that's not water we had another presentation we had that they're like is that water like it's not water um so lots of um normal playground equipment that's adapted a little bit to accommodate the flooring itself is made up of a rubberized texture and it will be easily no trip hazards that kind of thing it eliminates those problems it's called like a pour in play and it's really like when you walk on it it's almost squishy like you're at a gymnastics club and then it has like where they know there could be like high fall areas and that one's
037a little more soft and then um so it's really geared and then when the company that we worked with we had to pick equipment that was like geared for like one and a half to a five-year-old and then there was a section where we had to have like five to twelve-year-olds so on the next slide i think you can see there's like this smaller little house with us you know a smaller equipment that's for the younger age group and then there's a bigger equipment kind of towards the back and then like this slide here has like some rolling so it has different sensory equipment you know different sensory input that children can get out of there and then we had to have an older like um five to twelve and then a 12 and up
038and so it like has like a zip line and i had another family had went to a different park and they said it was fabulous because they have like a two-year-old and then like a 14 year old and it was fun to see how the age span they all enjoyed different things but then they could come together and do some of the things together so again that multi-generational bringing families together there's opportunities for music in the upper left-hand corner there some drums and other areas so that's kind of neat too we don't have any perks in albert lee with anything like that this just kind of shows the the big play structure in the middle and how again all physical abilities can access that these are just some more images we've kind of gone through
039some of these already the drums the swing that in the lower right hand corner can fit lots of children on the roller slide and those little houses we thought were just adorable and then again the merry-go-round if you were in a wheelchair you could drive in there and it was lock your brakes so you would wouldn't have to get out and then the swing to and then the zip line of course all the kids loved the zipline we had to have that and then this is the miracle field component of it that we're hoping to get um going as well this might go to the second we'll just have to see our fundraising goes in their different grant writing but we know we can do this and we're hoping that we can even break ground
040and not this spring but we're hoping next spring we have big expectations for our community but yup so back in that picture it kind of showed you um the kind of i know it's really hard to see um whoops one back so it kind of showed you like the darker one is yeah that's kind of where it doesn't show up as good on there as it does like on the smaller but yeah that will be where the miracle field is and then eventually um the city and park and rec would like to have like they are hoping to expand even on another phase to have like maybe a soccer field and a basketball but that would be down the road but they would really like it to be continued on to have more activities there
041it's quite a large piece of land there that's currently right now empty when we got the plans from the engineer from like this like one soccer field was like about our whole park and i mean it's it's very large so i was like whoa it's a very nice piece of land out there that will be a great space to utilize yep and that money is sitting in the chamber um so it's been sitting in that chamber initiation fund for the inclusion playground this whole time and that's kind of where we were like where did that go and what happened with that and i know that some of the people that were on that committee moved out and they just it kind of fizzled out and they between the city and then they couldn't really come
042up with the location um and we were really proud of our community because i think other communities have taken a couple years to get the location kind of and do take a park that already exists and then that needs new equipment and take it out and put you know um and then the area is pretty large that we need so we really worked hard to try to figure out that part of it for a long time both yeah the city's helping us with a quite a large grant for 250 000 through the dnr otherwise it's all going to be coming through the chamber foundation so the group that we've established and then through the chambers where our funding is actually like that's where our funding is housed so when you write a check it's to
043the chamber but you put in the memo inclusive playground so we've already had um three different blocks that have contributed to the um the donations we've had two rocker socks walk um one was on down syndrome day and then we had to pull pull the other one so it was in down syndrome month and um so we have one plan again on march 3 um close to 3 21 at 5 3 19 and then um last may's walks with the autism of that all the fundraising of that and then we've had different people community members that have family members like nieces or nephews or you know where they've come up and said wow my this is great you know we went on a buddy walk in this community that we love going on this block
044um i've got a company that will match ten thousand dollars so we've we've got these out and it's not necessarily just an elderly but like the greater you know freeborn county that are very interested in having this because it's a huge need and as it's me wanting everybody to move it's a great place and i think um if people have ideas too like at the end we have our um like it has we have our own email and stuff so we would love feedback we would love ideas um yeah so we're super excited to share this because then the more word that gets out then the more ideas people can share about how we can get this moving yeah so that was one of our exciting pieces about bringing it to you guys tonight is
045when is it the whole committee did a great job we're from the wilmer area danny and i and so we connected multiple trips to walmart and looking at the playground that they have there which they had great community support from hormel and then they were able to get matching friends in the community and you know what you think it's going to be 700 thousand dollars ends up being a multi you know over a million dollars same with it and it ended up being 1.2 million so um and then with all these other phases we'll be teaming up with the twins for the miracle field hopefully we can you know team up with the soccer here in minnesota for the soccer park so you know maybe the wolves with the basketball you know looking to see
046what each of these groups can offer as we move from face to face and we'll keep on going farther west towards the entrance of that edgewater bay um as far as where it will go so sarah and cara how close so like i know when we looked at putting the soccer fields out there it was important because that's when st john's was building their campus so are the the residents going to be able to take in any of that activity or is it close in proximity not that they'll go to the park but like see that like do you know what like down where there's like the shed like the maintenance shed oh yeah yeah it's like kind of to the what would it be to the west of that open one there's trees it's
047like kind of right across almost because we have to we have to be able to use um that ada bathroom for now okay until we get to the phase you know because the park is the main and the first most important thing yeah and then you know the bathrooming we have to be able to use that 88 bathroom first so it's going to be kind of right across so being a member of the water ski team okay right behind the water ski team show site where the beaches the sand is where the seniors could come down their sidewalk comes right on that street right there so they can access the water ski show they just have to keep going down the road and then they can ask them and actually that would be great if
048you're in a wheelchair they can put their that's why we didn't let her come up some of the same pieces we have yeah we have yeah ours is yep i think all the drainage and that part of it most of it has been taken care of now but there is there might be some of it left to do but a lot of that drainage because they put like that compost like pond in i'm learning all this stuff i'm like because they send me to the engineer but yeah so a lot of that draining and tiling was taken care of when they put that pond in across um and then also when they did that st john's piece of it um some of that like the water and the lines and all of that were all
049changed up because when was the rug because that was part of the soccer piece is that it was going to be really expensive but then once they put st john's things out there some of that got resolved so that's why it kind of opened this up again um because one of the things that the big dnr grant is is it can't be in a flood zone so all of that has already been checked out and yeah so there was lots of um i would say pre-planning that had to go into it before we could confirm that that was going to be a spot that we could use because and we're really hoping that that dnr grant will be that state grant will be a good one for us because we know rochester's got it twice
050austin's got it once so we're hoping that it's albert lee's turn right um but yeah those things were really looked into closely um as we've kind of touched on it's quite an expensive project the playground alone is going to be about 700 000. that's the surface itself that this children will be walking on is pretty expensive 250 000 and then 326 000 for the playground equipment and then the installation is quite a chunk too um we're still trying to hammer out the costs for the other things at the playground like the parking lot those kinds of numbers too so it will be going up i think now that we have the the part the park drawn out in the park put it put in where it's going to go in the parking lot now we
051can start getting bids from the next so we're essentially going to be looking at every opportunity possible um like we mentioned feel free to contact us if you have any ideas um the chamber is going to be helping too probably and so grants we're going to be talking to businesses i've already been talking to service clubs some and then fund lots of different fundraising opportunities and of course in kind as well we're also looking at selling different parts of the playground so like a business can buy i want to buy this merry-go-round and you know this is our contribution and so we have a list of what each costs and we hope businesses will get excited about that option oh and then we um i think bob had found this donation wall that we really
052thought was an awesome way to recognize some of those the donors so we were looking at using this as our donor wall and then they would be recognized on this with their name on the leaves we thought we have lots of creative people here in albert lee that we could get this made up so that's one of the ways that we'll be recognizing some of our our donors so we're hoping at least i'm hoping that some of the special education teachers and advocates especially for the district might be able to help owatonna for example did a penny wars fundraiser with the students at their schools something simple like that that gets the kids excited about it and other ideas as well and just the awareness that's why the tech could do but we just think
053it'll be great for our community and we hope everybody gets as excited as we are and it's just going to be a great opportunity i think for albert leon it's going to bring in we feel like a lot of people um from different communities surrounding us and maybe even further away and if anyone has any questions we have our our email on there and um or if you have any ideas um yeah if you have any i know we're super excited right i mean we're just yeah and we meet like almost every week and we have more exciting news or oh did you hear about this and so it's really it's really exciting i think it'll be great for families okay thank you nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm you certainly have that number
05410 on the agenda curriculum and instruction highlight high reliability schools update mary jo all right well chris kind of already introduced us so thank you chris we did some pd on january 5th yeah um for high high right reliability schools um let me get the clicker going here and we've already talked about the high reliability schools at the school board so this is more just an update on where we're at and so on january 5th we did bring in somebody from the high reliability school dr phil warwick and he was a phenomenal presenter the feedback from teachers was great i'll share that in a bit but he first did a review of just what level one was because all schools have been certified in level one which is safe supportive and collaborative schools and really
055talked about as chris did reviewing what are plcs why are we doing why are we doing them and how can we be more effectively in it so teachers are really supporting each other and growing and he talked a lot about collective teacher efficacy and the importance of it so it was a good review to start the day with and then he got into the the focus of the day which was our work now as a district with hrs level two which is effective teaching in every classroom and so he really defined what what our focus is talked about instructional models um we talked about the importance of first instruction or we also call that core instruction that our our teaching has to be so on target for the core tier one teaching that we do
056because we'll never get ourselves ahead if we keep relying on intervention so for students who are needing extra help yes we will provide intervention but we have to first look at what does tier 1 look like and so he spent a lot of time on that work the instructional model in albert lead this comes from marzano and you've you've heard these terms before neil's heard of marzano he's been in education for decades and so the model in albert lee that we're using is the art and science of teaching and it really focuses focuses on what are the good teaching practices that we know our research that we we can do and then how do we bring those to the classroom and talking about strategies of teachers still bringing their art their art of teaching so
057the science behind the research on what really works and then how do you deliver it that's up to the teachers with strategies and and the art is the best way to say it and part of me was there a question nope that i heard somebody say something each building has picked some of the elements the elements are those 43 items listed and so it's really focusing in on we're not going to do all 43 in year one but we are going to start with 10 to 15 of the elements and each building has picked their own through their leadership teams and that's what they're really focusing on is how do we as a collegial profession teaching group continue to grow our craft because i think the message teachers all of us kept hearing over and
058over and not surprising to any of us is teaching is a very complex craft and we need to work together it's not a it's not a solo profession you really need to rely on each other to learn from each other support each other etc um the the 43 items that we saw called elements i will get you one now yeah it was great stuff um here's just an example of taking one of the elements so on the prior page you'll see the 43 items listed those are called elements and this next is just an example of what an element is so i chose element six because we focused on that a lot with dr warwick and it's on chunking content and so the element dives into what is the teacher evidence what is the evidence
059that the teacher is using best practice for that element and then what does it look like on the student side what is the evidence how do we know that the students are learning it so it's really helping us define what good instruction is on sharing with each other on well as a teacher what's my evidence what should i be doing and then the student evidence is the learning happening and then there's rubrics to help talk through conversations etc and so all this work will be coming what is already being done in buildings but will be done in the plc's the the collaborative teams of working with team members to improve our craft this was just talking about instructional effectiveness of you know how do we prove it it's just not an mca score what is
060it well it's the actions by the students it's our our questioning to students and then how do we prove it with the artifacts what what do we have as you know we talk a lot about evidence we can talk they're learning well how do we know it what do we have do we have teacher observations do we have uh work produced etc so a lot of great conversations and i'm just giving you a quick overview that was seven hours long so but i think most exciting to teachers with the last part of the day of talking of now what because we've heard veteran teachers new teachers already get to go into veteran teachers classrooms and see instruction in action see the teaching in action as veteran teachers we don't really take those opportunities so what
061we're moving to is they're called instructional rounds and so teams of teachers will go in and they'll go in the classroom administrators won't be a part of this this is meant to as dr ward kept saying beg borrow and steal of what do you see that that teacher is doing well that you're going to walk out of that room with something that i can put this into practice because i know that's a good practice and so that's what you'll be hearing about this coming semester obviously coven makes things a bit tricky too with not having enough staff necessarily at the high school but we're working through some things but you'll see this in the coming semester and for sure the future years of supporting teachers so that collegiality of learning from each other really does
062you know we give the opportunities for that and then after the pd day on january 5th i just sent a survey and just asked a couple questions and the first one was did dr works training solidify your knowledge of hrs level 2 and the week work we will continue to do in the district so you can see 78 or 78 percent of the staff that completed the survey said yes or were eight nines or tens and for a ten i i had put that you would say totally got it could teach it a one was like please re-teach me i i didn't get this at all or why we're doing this so that was the first feedback we got and then i just thought you know what i'm just going to open it up for
063comments and so i have a couple pages here of comment and i'm just going to let you read those and if you just want to go ahead and read the first page this will give you a flavor of what the teacher talk was of the training okay and the second page there's a little bit of a break um because there were i don't want to say negative comments but more questioning or concerning comments so i added you got the comments so um the first part are kind of in the same vein as what you just read and the last three bullets more just some questions or concerns yep and we have um again after this happened what i could share is that i sent all the feedback to the building principals to share with their
064their staff and so early childhood has already met and kind of talked through because he gave elementary examples he gave high school examples we included early childhood in this and really what it comes down to is good teaching is good teaching is good teaching and so we just had to bring down some examples of well this is how you could do this so it's it's still that learning stage of what does it mean for early childhood okay and so then uh last on this is the next steps for hrs so again we shared the feedback with all the buildings they're now taking all of the information and talking through it and and continuing on each building's journey based on dr warwick's training some of the buildings because we had already selected the elements each building
065had on what they were focusing on after his training some buildings talked and said you know maybe we want to switch this element to this so some so some of that work is happening right now but the great thing about hrs it's a framework and it's a framework that puts us all going in the same direction and i think i've given this example before but if a new teacher comes in or a new administrator it's not following the new administrators what that person would like to do in the building it's following what the building's already decided that framework is built so we stopped the well now we're going to move here with this initiative and oh now we're going here because this person wants to do this that's going away we don't have time to
066do that in education we have too much work so it's moving everybody um in the same direction so it's been very positive and then the other thing we'll be doing is this summer there is some pd up north through sorswell is offering us to some of the northern schools who also do hrs so some of us may be going up for that some teacher leader teams and then you know we're looking at 20 22 23 school calendar to see when possibly we could bring dr warrick in again as he's been very impactful in supporting guiding talking us through of how we keep moving forward so we we become a really focused district moving forward so that's the hrs update any questions comments now the art and science of teaching it's it's always always been a
067favorite uh conclusion of mine that everything we do is a combination of those two and one is objective that is very subjective it's a perhaps a little more difficult to teach art than it is science but it's it's teachable and observing is a what is a very useful tool there you learn by watching people do things that they're good at and the other thing you said today neil when you were sharing about the coaching i felt that's what a lot of this is like it's really defining the why for us we all need the why but then beyond that okay how what are our next steps what does good teaching look like i might think what i do is really great but somebody else might look at it well we might need to talk about
068that and so um i think i think it's just really growing our profession in a great way and one of the other comments that wasn't in the comments section but an elementary principal sent it to me and he said you have to read this what i got from a second year teacher and the second year teacher went on about how supported she felt in the district how clear she feels she understands where we're going and i thought we can only hope for that from new staff because we want to keep new staff so i think it's also going to help new staff with this is over at least direction and we'd love to you know have you join and make sure we train you well so you feel comfortable being here okay very good any
069other questions comments retention is certainly a very important thing we do okay thank you there you go number 11 effective and efficient operations oh i'm sorry so 10.2 all right you're right um so you have the proposed copy that we're bringing to you for approval of the 2022-23 calendar uh the district-wide calendar committee has met um two times lots of feedback in between going back and forth with emails etc every bargaining unit is on this committee their feedback is all brought to the meetings discussions occurred the proposed draft has went to the learning team who is kind of the overseer of hrs professional development they gave their feedback and so it's been a culmination of everybody's feedback now put in this calendar and bringing it forward to you um the calendar honestly hasn't in the
070overall framework hasn't changed much from this year's calendar um you know if you look at it the triangles just for quick reference are are just the conferences and um number of days are the same um for secondary and elementary are as is the current year we're not doing any virtual days that we added where we are planning the covet will be under control by that by the start of next school year one difference is the 23rd of november is a non-student contact day so that will give people time to travel that that's a a different we are not doing eighth grade or excuse me sixth grade orientation at southwest teachers felt that with the open houses we have and the meetings with staff ahead of time that the kids are comfortable so we're not doing
071that we are still doing an eighth grade orientation day at elderly high school but a very similar calendar to this year i think we shifted one day with with the calendar and the other thing that's unique that we're doing differently moving forward here is what we're going to start talking to the teachers about in the next day or two is for years and years we had a three-day in-service at the beginning of school for brand new teachers and so we are basically just overwhelming the new people with information okay here's your first three days of stuff all about the district and then day four they start with all staff coming back so we've been discussing this and we were thinking maybe a more prudent approach would be maybe they meet one day a week before
072school starts they can learn about the district they can think about things and then they meet maybe a day or two and then everybody comes back so it gives them time to reflect a little bit and rather than just just taking a bunch of information so that's not on the base calendar those are always been three additional days and we're going to be having discussions over the next few days with them but again that's never been a part of the traditional calendar that we approved which is the three yen service days so is the intention on january 3rd and 4th to be similar to then what just happened yeah so again first semester ends on the you know right before the winter holiday there january third and fourth is an opportunity for staff to get
073caught up in plan and then also provide some staff development different this year is january 16th we are you know i think in this calendar president's day this current calendar president's day is a pd day dr work is available on martin luther king day he's not available on president's day so we are suggesting that presidents day or excuse me martin luther king day be a staff development day and then president's day the staff would have off so it's just a flip-flop with those two days and then scrolled onto graduation ashley and so you can see that the commencement ceremony is on that friday which is traditional and then the students come back for a couple days and staffs last days the 24th when do seniors take off they typically if their last days the 19th
07417th 18th would be the they'd have a senior breakfast probably on the eight morning of the 18th and then rehearsal for the 19th so i would say they would be off the 18th to the 19th they would be they would be probably off on that day that's where they would do a rehearsal so those two days with 18th and 19th they would be off are we keeping our same start times or is that not discussed in this um we haven't even we have not looked at feedback on start times i mean i've heard no feedback on start times which is probably a good thing um so we would typically if the start times are approved with the handbook um so they're not typically approved with the calendar so if we're gonna make any adjustments it
075would be this summer are parents surveyed as part of this process or they have been historically when we especially when we move to it there's a lot of feedback within the community on calendars and pre-labor day calendars and we haven't for the last few years and we've really most feedback we get from from folks is more of the i like my kids and it's mostly at the secondary level having the opportunity to breathe over the holidays rather than worry about homework because we're lined with the colleges that way because first semester is done before christmas okay would you be able to remind me i know that the calendar issue was a big deal a few years ago and i didn't follow it at the time what was what were the main benefits that we were
076looking at by changing to go early and and how do you feel we've done with that we met there are two main factors one of them i just talked about was the alignment historically school districts have a post labor day start and when they do that they don't have enough time to finish the first semester before christmas so what happens is students come to school they're there to the holiday break they come back and then two weeks later they have their finals on information the vast majority of it which they learned back in before the holiday break so that puts them at a significant disadvantage and i think two two issues there one is student stress okay over the holidays i've got to worry about my homework getting caught up i got my finals now
077they do not have to have to worry about that and then the other piece is actual performance on on their finals and then the third piece that goes along with the with it is it's a it's much easier for our staff to have the holiday break come back for two days of staff development or or work and then prepare for their students to come back in this case historically what happens is it's typically like scroll up a little bit to the ticket to january actually typically it is somewhere in that martin luther king week when the finals are offered in a normal in a normal post-labor day year and so you're adding again your staff comes back teaches non-stop for a couple weeks and in the middle of the month okay now we've got a
078day or two off to get ready for second semester it's just it's not it's a it's unnatural the the final thing i will say is in and the jury's not complete on this but mary jo scroll ashley down to like march and april one of the mca's given mary jo typically so we'll start the mca short shortly after spring break so i don't have the exact date but for sure by march 27th we'll be in full swing going through the month month of april they have to be done by usually it's the first week in may um science extends a little bit beyond that but um so reading and math have to be done the first week in may typically so i don't know the exact date for this year service so i will there's
079the point i'm making here is this so scroll back up to august alright so we are now getting basically 10 days of obstruction or more in august before the mcas there that we take in april and then when school is done when the mcas are done in april if we weren't in this calendar we would be into may and into june and i can tell you teachers will have 10 extra days that they have been tacked on to the end of the calendar instead of the beginning of the calendar to prepare students and they're just okay what are we going to do with these kids um and so by by structuring it the way we are mcas are done okay we got two weeks of different activities that we we complete with the kids a
080lot of its field trips a lot of it is um just different outside learning things that they can do and then they're done for the summer so it's just the alignment is is much well i can say it's a fifth grade teacher so i gave my say the class finish their mca let's take this calendar on may 5th or may 8th it's not that we're not doing anything in the class now we're going back we're doing them especially fifth grade there's a couple end of the year field trips we would do um that tie to the learning but it's you're going back and you're remediating some of the standards that maybe have troublesome or that re-teaching for students be sure before summer break but we've already tested and as a teacher you feel they'll defeat
081it like i'm not done teaching yet but we've already tested and so when we were going into june 7th or 8th that was a lot of time between testing students on the standards versus the end of the school year so um i think you know teachers if the feedback has been very positive to keep the calendar as is for that reason okay this is an action item we can have more discussion after emotion is made do i hear a motion to approve this calendar second all right now any further discussion or questions angie okay so i had a couple other questions um i know mike in an email last week you had said in response to a question i had that the board has the option of approving this two years in advance if we
082want to is there i know a couple parents have said that would be helpful to me is there any downside to doing that no um [Music] no i just don't think this is that's just not been the tradition of the district so you know you could we could approve this calendar tonight and so people know and then you could come next month i mean or it would be probably a couple months because again we would follow the same process we utilize with meeting with groups internally and then get one and then you could structure it so that once you get two in the hopper you're only approving one every year because one's already already out there so that's no that's uh i think the community would appreciate that would we need to decide that right
083now if we wanted to do that or no i mean we can i mean that's just something we could bring as a future agenda item to approve you can approve the 2223 tonight in a couple months you could approve 23.24 so there's there's no um there's no downside to that okay um i guess just one last question was when it and this is just my my own thoughts on this but when it comes to calendar issues maybe not with everybody in the public but it often seems like people and the public want the board to be a little bit more involved than what we are like with this tonight i'm just curious is there a way that if members of the board wanted to be more involved in the process that we could do that
084while still working well with with you and administration and not stepping on toes could we be a part of the calendar committee that i i saw this was shown to or other ideas that that's a possibility um sure okay that's all i got okay good questions any other discussion hearing none all in favor of the calendar as proposed signify by saying aye opposed same sign yeah i'm going to run through this fairly quickly ian rigg was here last month but we are not approved i'm not asking for approval for anything tonight i'm just going to give you the overview of the city's plan and then if the board seems interested in that we will go forward and we will create a policy modeled after the cities that will bring forward for your approval so they
085have a new tax abatement plan that's aligned with their climate action plan within the city and the other thing that they have with their new abatement plan is not only for its new construction it's for rehabilitated construction as well next slide so they have kind of different components to this there's a single family duplex component and there's a multi-family component where the single family you could get abatement for three years for new construction multi-fam with if you meet some criteria you can get expanded out to six years and then multi-family it's six years and if you meet some requirements you can extend it out to another six years next so um to get it extended so basically what they're saying our old policy i think was six years where people could come new construction we
086would abate the taxes for six years now what what they're saying is we'll give you three years but you have to do some other things with the new construction to get the additional three years so one of them would be you know density for single family density for duplex energy efficiency you have electric vehicle charging stations you have solar panels panels etc you do these things you can get your abatement extended for up to three additional years okay now for [Music] other things you could do must be built on an empty lot where building used to stand so if it would replace the building you get 50 percent for additional three years if it's low to moderate income housing for these are bigger complexes you can you can get 50 percent of the increment value
087for three additional years and then if you are in what they call a qualified census tract which i'm not exactly sure what that is you would get 50 for three additional years and then that so that's the additions to the typical abatement and then they also have rehab abatement available which would be for six years and um for multi-family it would be for nine years with the ability to extend another three years under the abatement editions below go ahead energy efficiency you get 100 if you did that go ahead ashley um low to moderate income you'd get 100 if you did that and then qualified census track or historic district if you built it in the historic district you get 100 of the increment value for three additional years so the concern i have is
088we can model our policy after this and i think there's a lot of good stuff in here but we're not going to be we're not the city is going to have to tell us that these people qualify we are not going to track who qualifies and who doesn't so when the city brings something forward requesting abatement they are going to be the ones who have looked at whether it's energy efficient whether they have made you know solar low to moderate income etc etc and then we will be consistent with what they are doing and like the colony i think will be doing the same thing yes because typically historically it was just six year abatement and now they're saying three year abatement and if you want further abatement there are these stipulations that yep so
089just interested in your thoughts on that yeah so so for example in december we had a half dozen homes that came forward for tax abatement they had already been approved by the city for tax a payment city recommended that we provide our tax abatement process would be very similar so we'll we will par we will approve the base policy and then when the individual homes are seeking abatement or apartment builders then they will come city will will approve them and say okay they qualify and then they'll come to us seeking the abatement correct and so we we have to adopt a policy that that aligns with this criteria before we can move forward with this and so that's why i want to just get your input on this tonight before we start moving forward with
090the policy that they've adopted correct so we'll we'll have somebody draft up a policy then i'll bring that to you for your approval at some point down the road sorry about that can the policy be um like a more of a summary of that that we follow the guidelines that's one of the things i'm going to check yeah instead of getting into the weeds right because ultimately it has to cut they vet it and they approve it and it comes here and we that's that's what i'd like to do yeah yes i wanted to say i work in housing and i can confirm that we do have a big housing shortage here and it's been going on for a long time so i'm very much in favor of this anything we can do to encourage
091more building especially i love seeing problem buildings you know rehabbed and turned into valuable properties i love that that's such a win-win for everybody um i wanted to say that this does you know the housing issue i think does affect the school every year when it's time to give out contracts to new teachers there is in the housing industry a arrest to try to find them a place to live and we're not always successful at that there have been more than once that robert and i have worked with a potential teacher who ended up not accepting a job here because she couldn't find he or she couldn't find anywhere suitable to live so i think this is a good deal if we are going to vote on it i might need to abstain though because
092i do have a blighted property that i probably want to apply for this program for so so yeah and then you know you brought up a really valid point we are really short in our community for market rate housing and you know for years and years and i've testified a few times in front of the legislature on this years and years they have their the legislators focus is really on low-income housing and that's there's absolutely a need for that but in our community there's a real strong need for market rate housing as well and we we see that every year the start of the school year you're absolutely right you know teachers come in with their fathers and my kids not living here um and then you know they'll they'll go someplace else so i
093think the more we can work on housing overall for our community the better off we'll be i think it becomes a win-win i think we talked before is we're not getting any tax revenues for any of those properties right now so it might delay the amount of money we get but down in the long run for the whole community school district city and the county it will help us out as we look forward all right next on the agenda is a closed session pursuant to minnesota statute section 13d .03 we need to close to deal with labor negotiations do i hear emotion to close been moved close this meeting for labor negotiation any discussion none all those in favor say aye aye we are closed