School Board Meeting - March 17, 2026

001Oh, as far I have no idea. >> I don't know. >> I'm surprised. Hi. >> What's up? >> Happy St. Patrick's Day. >> Happy you're wearing green. >> I am wearing green >> actually. >> I get in the get in the spirit. >> Fair quite well. >> I I live on a corner lot. >> That's it. I saw your new beautiful that comes. have a long stretch of cyber >> but it just happened so >> and also the pile has a long stretch of >> build huge burn >> but u >> but I have a wonderful >> Julie had to go home for her laptop so I went out there prior to actually >> like it overall, >> but I have never had the experience where it runs out of I had to stop and

002recharge it twice, which actually was kind of nice. >> And that's where I powered through. And when all said and done, I Yeah. And I wouldn't have seen it because I don't have the resolution >> separate separated out. >> Which one is it? Which number? >> 8. >> 5.7. >> Oh, yeah. Right there. It's just adding it >> right. >> It's literally I can add it up right now. >> Make a motion to >> It's only in the >> No. Yeah, >> and can change it in simp and can change it in simply >> thank you for that. >> I need I need to step up my simply >> yeah there's a item seven in the consent it has xxs xxx fulltime positions and we just insert the total number 14.6 I can show it

003to you. >> That's that effort. >> Okay, Julie will be here. This regular meeting of the Independent School District 5:35 School Board is called to order at 5:32 p.m. on Tuesday, March 17th, 2025 2026 in room 137 of the Edison building. Present at this meeting are school board members, Superintendent Kent Pquel and non- voting exeicio member and assistant school board clerk, Miss Anne Kramer. Miss Kramer, will you please call the role? >> Director, >> here. here. >> The board acknowledges this site and all RPS sites are situated on the ancestral land of the Dakota people and we honor the Dakota nations and the sacred land of all indigenous peoples. At this time, we offer the opportunity to say the pledge of allegiance. I aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to

004the republic for it stands nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Our next item is the Rochester Public Schools mission, vision, and values. During this agenda item at every regular meeting, a board member will read our mission. our vision or one of our six values to emphasize their importance in our work as a district and our decisions as a board. Tonight we focus on our mission. Our mission is to equip every student with the knowledge, independence, and resilience to pursue a fulfilling path. Our next item is approval of the agenda. Are there any changes to the agenda? >> Move approval. >> Second. >> It has been moved and seconded to approve the agenda. All those in favor say I. I opposed. The agenda has been approved. The agenda and documents for this meeting are

005available online at rochesterchools.org backsembly. Our next item are comments to the board. It is important for the school board to hear from our stakeholders regarding issues that impact our students, staff, families, and schools. We welcome communication via email, phone call, and hear during comments to the board. The purpose of comments to the board is to give community members an opportunity to provide input directly to the school board about issues that fall within our authority. The board and superintendent do not respond directly to the speaker's comments during the meeting, but may follow up with the speaker if requested and appropriate. Persons who want to make comments to the board must fill out the online form by 5:00 pm on the Monday before the school board meeting. The form is available on the RPS website and on

006the assembly main page. Speakers, when your name is called, please come to this table. If you have written materials for the board, provide them to the assistant school board clerk and she will provide them to board members. Choose a microphone to speak in and be seated. Please direct your remarks to the school board. You will have three minutes to speak and the timer will be displayed right in front. And please begin your remarks by stating your name. Our speaker this evening is Shelley Springer. So on March 6th at the Pomoja women annual IFTAR dinner, Rochester public schools received the transform transformative award that recognizes the partnership between RPS and Pomoja women to provide afterchool opportunities for students. RPS is honored to partner with Pomoja women who supports East African women and their families to overcome

007barriers and to provide opportunities for women to spread their wings, be limitless, and prosper. This partnership would not be possible without RPS Community Education and the leadership of Amy Ike and Brian Feloon. And Brian is here tonight, so I'll have him come forward to tell us a little bit more about this great partnership. must. >> It's heavy too. >> It is a little heavy enough. Uh thank you for this opportunity to uh respond to the uh this wonderful award uh from Pomojo women who have been uh an integral part of cohort 9 of the 21st century grant now for uh three years. Um they too have transformed themselves from uh a very small singularly le uh operation to becoming one of our um leading partners and uh with uh the partnership they have developed uh

008at Ben Franklin to uh become a great success in the 21st century afterchool environment. Uh we continue to support Pamoja women as well as a number of community partners through the 21st century grant and uh we also support uh after school programming in our middle schools to give you a kind of complete picture of of where we are at with this uh particular federal grant. Um, if anyone needs to know anything else, I'm happy to fill some questions. >> Do do can you give us some examples of some of the We have some of the um examples that they provided in the program. What kind of um classes are we able to offer through the grant? >> All of those and more. So again, Prooia women having developed the relationship with Franklin are able to

009offer a wide range of enrichment activities including some sports. So some of their camps are very important to the kids. Soccer is is is a good one, but they offer sewing, they offer um robotics, which is another kind of interesting um addition to their programming. So from where they are based, their own offices, as some of you may know, it literally is a two office place. One of which is their food pantry where they uh again serve their community with food and provide family education in that space as well. But the partnership with Franklin has allowed them to expand and outreach into a wide range of enrichment activities. Uh other things that are happening in the 21st century environment um include a lot of STEM work. So again STEM is a big um part of

010what we do in after school both through robotics and through things like drone club and coding. Um one of our biggest successes although it's not being funded through 21st century this year has been esports at John Marshall School which was kicked off uh somewhat community ed with the image support and 21st century grant money. Um the range of of what we do across um our schools and partners is is amazing and again I would encourage any board member who wants to come and see what we do in those spaces are more than welcome to help facilitate that. Um yeah and I am fortunate enough to kind of manage it all but I am very cognizant that the work that is done at the front end of all of this and uh kudos to all our

011center directors and program staff who deliver these programs to students and families on a daily basis. >> Director Barlo. >> Yeah. I just want to comment and acknowledge the important role that Pomoia women play not only in terms of the East African community but uh for the uh uh Rochester community as a whole. And uh uh so I have observed uh not only an effort uh that is inward but uh maybe even more importantly outward focusing and so I do applaud them for that and I am glad that uh they along with RPS that we're able to engage in this partnership. Yeah, I would echo that Kada is a force of nature and um is is not only very concerned and embedded in her own community but has created a lot of outreach across the

012entire community here in Rochester and again given a lot of the kind of current circumstances with uh what's been going on with our community has been at the forefront of continuing to support them in meeting their needs. >> Well, given Oh, director McGloin, I just want to comment that it's really exciting to get this award, but also that they put on a wonderful ifar dinner that was one of the best events I've had. It's been a long time, >> women only. >> Which was also a really special opportunity. Well, given that we're going to hear tonight in uh our middle school uh strategic plan design team um recommendations about expanding extracurricular opportunities. We're really grateful for the groundwork that uh you and community ed have laid in developing these partnerships because certainly we are only

013going to need more um if we're going to offer um more opportunities to our students across the board. So, thank you very much. >> Very welcome. >> Take custody of the uh of the award, please. Thanks for coming tonight. >> Board members, does anyone have any other updates from their committees or any other information to share? >> Director Mcccla. >> Um, I attended the skip visit at Mayo High School a week or so ago. I'm kind of losing track of time here. Um, and one of the reasons I wanted to attend it was the what I saw as an early opportunity to see how the high school level was rolling out the um, MCSS and MTSS in reading at the high school level. And they had really um, their reading coach gave us a really

014good presentation about the number about how they assess the kids and then the ones and how they then service the ones that need some extra help to get them on track. um a little bit of information about the ninth grade on track program and just overall a really good uh opportunity to have insight into what they're doing at the secondary level to enhance our literacy efforts. >> Director, >> um yeah, there were four of us who had the opportunity to attend MSBA's day at the cap and there were a lot of people there. There was an interesting program in the morning. in the afternoon, we had the opportunity to meet with some of our legislators and it's it's always good to connect with them and, you know, make them aware of what our legislative agenda

015is and talk to them about general school things and what we're experiencing. So, I really want to thank those legislators who were able to meet with us. Great. Director Bergen, >> a number of schools have had polar plunges in recent weeks and um I I didn't plunge, but uh did it uh view what was going on at Longfellow and then at John Marshall and I I love the kind of community involvement that this district really values. We have groups like uh Pomoja Women Partnering. Um we have groups like Special Olympics engaging our students and staff to raise money for Special Olympics and um the kids love it and I think it's just so healthy for the um for the community. It was cold. >> I didn't plunge. Um the other thing though a number of

016us talk about uh collaborations attended um an event at uh Rochester's alternative learning center um and it was stunning. University of Minnesota Rochester got a grant to bring professional artists to the ALC to work with high school kids and uh we were then invited to see the exhibits. It was very clear uh this was a research grant because these artists professional artists were studying not just can high school students be taught art but also does being in that environment when you're learning art when you have experienced experiences of a hands-on creating something does that change you in any way and they have a study that they're doing in terms of what kind of effects does it have on student students student self-awareness and their their thinking about the world and their sense of belonging. So,

017it was just a win-win because the the art that they produced was wonderful. The artists were there and these surveys that they had students uh filling out and this is going to be a published uh paper at some point. It was just positive on in every area. Um, the art was wonderful, wildly creative, sometimes just wild. Um, and the students benefited in ways that I think so many of us don't expect. It wasn't just that they were able to create art, but it was that they were developing in their own minds a a sense of worth, a sense of purpose, and a sense of agency that they could actually do this. So, it was amazing. And for those of us who were able to attend, it was just it was a real gift >> and

018it was they had a whole week um with these artists and um the I was I was really impressed. They had uh the copies of sort of the pre-ervey and the post survey and then they did a post- survey for every session that they did with the artists. And the language that was used in these surveys I think is a great model for us to look at for some of the ways to ask students questions because it wasn't a stiff stuffy uh you know questions. they someone had really thought about how to have um the students reflect um um what their what their experience was and the the quality of the artwork and there were there were some um uh pottery, there were some um print blocks. They took um stuffed animals and made Franken

019stuffies, which is when you take parts of one an stuffed animal and another part and then you sew it together into something new and unique. Um there was a community model. I was fortunate enough to watch the superintendent craft his contribution, his floral contribution to the community model. Um I won't say anything about mine because mine was uh questionable. um and the fact that it's going to be part of a university study and I think I was having actually a conversation with Brian about what a great model it could be for our community partnerships is that you know if you want to partner with us maybe we need to do this kind of you know outcome analysis to see what is the real impact on the students so we know we're doing the best kind

020of programming but this was certainly a great opportunity >> well and Just one more thing, a win-win because a University of Minnesota in Minneapolis brought down artists who want to be art educators. So, they were learning not just how to create art, but how to help students learn how to be artists. So, it was just sort of a win-win because everybody was growing together and the Franken Stuffies were terrifying but creative. >> Um, uh, thank you, Chair Nathan. I I I will just say to Dr. Marvin, I did plunge and it was at Century High School and next year you could join me actually. >> Oh, you know what? I'm busy that day. >> Okay. >> But um thanks for asking. So >> uh on a less uh amusing note, uh on Monday I had

021the opportunity to join a large contingent of RPS staff at the uh funeral of Jen Prowley, who is a teacher at Fredell um and uh most recently at Dakota. Um it was uh an extraordinary service and um I found the uh the write up of Jen's life uh in the um the program for the service uh to capture just glimpses of the amazing person she clearly was. And so uh madam chair with your permission I'll just read a few u brief excerpts from this. Jen uh fought breast cancer for six years um and she worked up until January. She worked to the very very end and her commitment to students was clearly extraordinary. Uh and so her family remembered her um in part as follows. It is with heavy hearts that we announced the passing

022of Jennifer Anne Prowley, a beloved wife, mother, grandmother, and friend who went to heaven on March 8th, 2026 at the age of 58. Born on January 4th, 1968 in Shbboan, Wisconsin, Jennifer lived a life filled with faith, love, and unwavering strength. Jen was a proud graduate of Shboan Lutheran High School before pursuing her bachelor's degree at Concordia University in Nebraska. Her thirst for knowledge and dedication to education led her to earn a master's degree in 2019. It was at Concordia University where she met her husband Joel. Their bond flourished into a 33-year marriage characterized by love and laughter. In 1995, the couple moved to Rochester, Minnesota, where Jen made a lasting impact as an English and reading teacher at Rochester Central Lutheran School, Fidell Middle School, and Dakota Middle School. Her commitment to her students

023was evident in her teaching, and she continued to inspire young minds until January 20th, 2026. She was also known for her vibrant spirit and deep love for her family and friends. Jen had many passions from fishing and gardening to spending cherished moments at the family cottage on Enterprise Lake. She enjoyed playing card games, shopping, and traveling to be with her family. But her greatest joy came from the laughter and love shared with her children and grandchildren, Eliza and Parker. And so we're thinking of uh Joel and uh their children and family. And um uh really uh want to thank all of the RPS educators who um came out on a very bad weather day um to make that sanctuary very warm uh with Jen's uh family and friends and um fellow members of the congregation.

024>> Thank you. >> Any other updates, board members? Hearing none, we'll move on to our consent agenda. Items 5.1 through 517. Would any board member like any item removed from the consent agenda for separate consideration? >> Move approval. >> Second. >> It has been moved and seconded to approve the consent agenda. All those in favor say I. >> I. >> All opposed. The consent agenda has been approved. We will move on to our focus topic, RPS 2030 strategic plan middle school options. Superintendent Powell. >> Thank you, Chair Nathan. I'm going to invite uh our friend Spencer Sherman of Education First to come up. Um as you know, Spencer uh facilitated the working group that we're going to hear about now for our middle school design team. And he'll be back with us at the next

025meeting to describe the high school design team. Just by way of um introducing Spencer's uh presentation, I just really want to underscore middle school really really matters. Um I we we don't respond to uh people who come to comments to the board when they're talking and comments to the board, but now I can say whatever the heck I want. So I will just say I couldn't agree more that we need to make sure that all of our students are being challenged um at every level. And that's true at every grade level. It's true in early childhood. It's really true during the middle school years. Uh the middle school years are uh where student achievement often uh heads in different directions and and achievement in middle school is powerfully predictive of achievement in high school. That

026seems like a no-brainer, but I will tell you if you have talked to many of our sixth, seventh, and eighth graders, they are not as aware as they need to be of the importance of effort and learning in middle school. So it matters tremendously academically. It's also a time in early adolescence when identity is being developed when critical social and emotional competencies uh are becoming not just correlated with success in school but causal that kids who can control impulses, kids who can ask questions, kids who um can uh advocate for themselves are developing those life muscles that are really really critical um to develop during those middle school years. So, um, we chose because of the importance of, uh, really the middle school years to have these three committees that were actually segmented because we

027didn't want middle school to get lost. And sometimes when we talk about the importance of the early grades and we talk about uh, the jumping off point to careers and postsecary education, the middle school can seem like um, sort of a a no man's land, a no person's land. And we know it's anything but that. And so we wanted to have a focus on middle school. As board members are aware, um I will be taking the work that Spencer and Joe facilitated with our working groups, building it into the extensive feedback that we've gotten through other mechanisms and bringing you a set of highle priorities. Uh we hope for your approval in May and then a detailed strategic plan with implementation strategies um at the start of the next school year. So with that, welcome

028uh home since you live in Rochester now. Um, we had to have Joe on virtually, but it's nice that you could drive across town. Um, and so we look forward to uh this update. >> Great. Glad to be here in the low tech way of just showing up in person. >> Um, and echoing what Dr. McCel said, I think middle school I think came up with sort of, you know, in like family sometimes the middle child doesn't get as much attention. Sometimes happens for middle school, too. So, I think a lot of today's diving into like what are the things that our middle school students really need because it's super super important. Um, so, uh, like Dr. Pel said I'm Spencer Sherman from Education First. I will talk you through the middle school recommendations. My

029colleague um Joe talked through a lot of the process stuff. So I'll just like briefly remind you and for the folks in the audience who um don't know it, I'll briefly talk the process. We'll spend the bulk of today talking about what our recommendations are to improve our middle schools which came from a lot of feedback from the community. >> Great. All right. So um we had these committees. Um I'll talk about the middle school one. um broad amount of stakeholder engagement including public uh feedback forums, focus groups, interviews and so on. And then what you see here is what came out of that that sort of analysis. This will then share with you all and then that'll then get passed on to the RPS leadership to sort of make sort of final strategic plan

030out of these big ideas. Um we had a number of members including some people uh who are in the audience today who are part of uh this committee. Here's the ones for middle school. And we had 46 interviews we conducted. And so from um all the way from from teachers to industry leaders across um across the state. >> All right. And just uh one note just on how the recommendations are structured. So um on the lefth hand side you see here is like a table of contents showing everything that's in um the full report that we shared with RPS. The executive summary is where you know if you're just sort of trying to get the big idea I would focus on that. Um the uh middle school section has like one page and so for

031those members of the community and the audience who are just interested just read that one page. Here's the big ideas. Um the way it's structured um we see sort of on the right in the more detailed section because after the executive summary there's a section on each grade span. Today I'll talk about middle school, next time we'll talk about high school. Um the way it's structured is there are um priorities for each grade level, specific strategies for how to respond to it and then like a lot of detail which you'll see in the other document you guys have that has a list of actions the district could take a actions the school could take recommendations implementation based on sort of our experience or my personal experience working with other districts across the country and also

032a bunch of resources. So here's like some reports and research that can give you, you know, want to learn more stuff you could share with people in your teams. So a lot of information there. I'll focus on the high level for today, but just rest assured this is not the only thing we produce. There's a lot more information um at your disposal. Here are the four common priorities. These apply across all four grade spans. So these are it's our proposal that came from this committee of what should be the priorities. academic rigor and relevance, navigation supports, engaging offer offerings, and relationships and belonging. I'll talk in a sec about what that means specifically at the middle school level, but you'll see we sort of had these big banners across all grade spans. This can be

033sort of like the north star that we talk about all the time, but there's some differences about how it applies to different grades. All right. And so now I'll spend the bulk of um our time just talking about um these priorities and what specifically we recommend and then I'd love to turn over to you all for recommendations. First one is academic rigor and relevance. So the big thing we're trying to solve here is that when we did the interviews and part of before we started we just asked folks what are the issues that we're trying to solve here for for middle school. Start with the problem then move to solutions. The number one thing I think we heard was students feel that middle school doesn't really matter. grades don't matter. Like high school, yeah, I'll

034start paying attention high school, but like middle school, whatever. Um, that is that's not a good approach. And I think there's a lot that came up about how to how to solve that. So, and this goes to what I think the first speaker shared about the rigor being really important for middle school. So, there's four things we recommend to sort of solve this problem of academic rigor and the relevance of coursework for middle schoolers. The first is clear academic expectations. So don't start with the punitive things which is where conversation talked about how to be punitive for supportive. The committee recommended way more on the supportive side. So first explain exactly where the bar is. Students can't reach the bar unless you explain what the bar is. That means both sort of high expectations but

035also processes like what's the policy for like retaking coursework? What's the policy for grading? All of these things are things that I think are fairly complicated but you want to have sure there's like a lot of clarity and high experience for kids. Second is um these next two I don't want to get too like education wonky but there's this idea I call like the tiers tier one tier two tier three. The idea is some things work for everybody and we want to make sure that everyone is trained on what are the things that work for all students. There's some best practices that we've learned over many decades of research that work for all kids. Let's make sure we're doing those practices to make sure kids are staying engaged. There's certain things for example like me

036right now talking late at night for a long period of time that's not super engaging. doesn't really work well for adults. Definitely doesn't work for middle school students. But there are teaching practices you can do that are really engaging for kids. Get them to think more creatively. So we should be doing those best practices to all kids in our middle schools. The next one talks about we call tier two and tier three. Tier two, think about small groups. Tier three, think about individual kids. So some kids need extra supports. Let's make sure we're following best practices nationally and not provide extra supports for kids who need the most. The solution for a kid who's struggling is not to immediately fail them. The kid the solution when a kid is struggling is to give them more

037targeted supports. And we've learned a lot in recent years about things that are very effective um to serving those kids better. The last thing and I think it's important that this is last came under conversations is accountability. So if you try first provide clear expectations, second provide best practices for um supporting them and they're still struggling. Let's make sure there is some consequence to not mastering the content. And so we proposed a few different ideas for like how you make sure that if kids have not done up until then still is not working. How do you make sure that they do see oh grades really do matter. School really does matter in middle school. That's the first priority. I'll move on to the second priority. This is called navigation supports. The big idea um as

038Dr. Hill mentioned there's just a big switch in middle school. So what we want to focus on is making sure kids don't get lost in the cracks when they turn from elementary to middle and crucially from middle to high school. So we want to make sure that we're having these structures to make sure those transitions are smooth and kids are making that connection that through line across all parts of their life. Four strategies for this uh grad span as well. Number one, strengthen advising. There's a huge discussion. And you'll hear this come up a lot next or in a few weeks when we talk about high school about how we can have stronger advising systems for our students to make sure that they are aware of what opportunities could be open to them in the

039future and how that connects what they're doing today. Um related to that is providing adult mentors. There's a lot of research that shows that when students have a connection to a caring adult, they do better. So we want to make sure that we're building some of those relationships institutionally in our schools to make sure kids have those connections. Third is about middle school transition. And so we proposed at the camp committee was creating a course in sixth grade or some structure in sixth grade that allows for a smooth transition from elementary school to the expectations and the structures and the way things are run in middle school which is a big jump for many kids. So if you don't teach it then they might not be able to do it successfully. Um and the last

040is the mindsets, behaviors and steps to success work that I believe this board has talked about before. We want to make sure that that is being emphasized and incorporated into our middle schools. And so we sort of reference that explicitly in this recommendation. So that's the second priority, navigation sports. Move on to the third of our four priorities. A third is engaging offerings. So I think a problem that we heard this relates a lot to why do think kids think middle school doesn't matter. A lot of them think they think middle school is boring or how does it connect to me? And that we'll see that comes up even more in high school. But it really starts in uh middle school. And so what we found is that if kids think that they see themselves

041in school, they think it's exciting, they think it's fun, think it's interesting, they're going to do well, right? That kind of engagement carries through from academics to non-academics. So this engaging offering is making sure kids are actually engaged. Engagement is a precursor to effective learning and to high performance. Um so three strategies within this category. One is enhancing career exploration. We'll hear next time when we talk about high school about the importance of thinking about pathways to college and career for kids and helping them discover their interests and their passions. That starts with kids exploring. So some kids basically know about like the average kid knows like I want to be a fireman. I want to be an astronaut. I want to be an athlete. You know like there's the ones you see on TV.

042There's a lot more jobs out there and I think odds are most of us I mean I personally did not become an astronaut. I think I don't know who has. There's a lot of jobs that are actually out there that actually could be a great fit for their interests, but kids need to have some time to explore them, right? So providing structured time in middle schools, we'll hear next time that extends al also through 9th through 10th grade for kids to explore possible careers before they do any specializing that avoids the problem you sometimes hear with some career pathway stuff about tracking and so on. Really robust career exploration, particularly in middle school, is a really powerful tool. Second is elective choice. So there's um giving kids an option to find clubs, interests, and things

043that are um outside of maybe their core academics that they find really interesting. There's been some um experiments on this front of pilot in Dakota Middle School that came up a lot in our discussions um that had very strong receptive from teachers, students, and administration. And so we talked about examples like that, which is actually modeled off of Southview High School in Adina. Um examples about how you find more electives, kids respond very positively and get more engaged in school and generally perform better. The uh last is extracurriculars and sports. So, this is way before my time. I'm relatively new in town. Um but apparently there used to be middle school sports and a lot of folks talked about how much the loss of middle school sports caused loss of enrollment, caused loss loss of

044engagement. So, just be if you take the we were like trying to save money, but it actually may end up costing us more both in terms of like kids performance and kids who go elsewhere because they find sports so valuable. So that's came up a lot um with parents with community. So that's our third priority, engaging offerings. And I'll just wrap up here with our last priority, relationships and belonging. There's a lot of research that says if you feel like you belong, if you feel safe, then you're going to perform better because it's a safe place to experiment, to try new things. Also, it's a place you want to come to. We're seeing an an epidemic across the country of absenteeism. obviously that's spiked in recent months. Um, but religious belonging are like the antidote.

045If kids feel like, oh, I feel like these are my people. This is my home when I come to school, they tend to perform better, then it feels safer and they actually just show up to school more often. So, there's four strategies that we wanted to include to make sure we have that in our middle schools. One is um near peer mentoring. This is think about maybe high school students or older middle school students being mentors to younger students. There's a lot of research about this. It's very effective and it's a dual benefit. It benefits the older kids because they like people feel good when they care about people. You also when you're trying to explain what I've learned to someone else, it actually sort of forces you to understand it better yourself. It also

046of course provides a benefit to the mentee to the students. Our second priority here is about community building events. This was wildly popular when we talked about it with the students um with a lot of community members. Just finding ways so that it's not here's your home, here's your school. Sort of lowering the walls between home and school and community and school so that community really feels a part of school and school feels a part. The third improved family communication and collaboration. Families are trusted partners and incredibly important partners um to teachers and school administr administrators. Ultimately, students spend a whole lot more time with their families than they do at school. And so if it feels like a big difference between the two or you're not on the same team, it's going to be

047not nearly as effective on either side. So u we talked a lot about having two-way communication between families and um schools. And the last idea which actually came up in one of our uh last meeting is the idea of teacher teaming. So having you're not familiar with this idea, the idea is that the same group of teachers teach all kids in that grade level. And what that allows for is a lot of collaboration and allows for oh like do you see like Jeremy in this class? was he struggling? Oh yeah, I I know because I'm in this class this going on at home or and so on. It allows for that kind of collaboration and sort of wraparound supports for kids that is really impactful. It also allows for sort of intercurricular projects so you

048can see how to make connections between your math class and your English class, social studies classes. Um so that was another recommendation to explore how to pull those off those models. Um so those are our four um big priorities and I wanted to turn over now to the board to have any questions about these recommendations. also anything that's that I spoke about and again I spoke very briefly there's a lot more information in the packet um that you're really excited about and is there something as we sort of turn from this committee recommendation stage to the strategic plan um development stage what are some things that the RPS leadership should be considering either >> great thank you all of our presenters could learn from your uh timeliness and uh superintendent's happy about that board members

049anybody want to start with any comments or questions on any of the items? >> Dr. Mccclaclin. >> Um, I just had a question and I can't remember if I asked this last week, so uh bear with me um with your other colleague. The idea of using the problem statements and the problem definition in your documents. Is that something that the committees came up with or the district or was that insight from your organization as to how to I I like the way that's framed and I think it's a good way, you know, problem and solution. Is that something you added to this process or did that come from in-house? >> It's a bit of both. So I really feel strongly that's super important. I think a lot of times uh we have what we call

050like a solution search of a problem like oh I've got this thing I want to do let's just do it here and that happens all the time in these committees. So I think that's one thing that we sort of brought as the search standard when we do our work as Ed first. Um I will say it also did come up in the committee. So we had a member for example one of the committee members in middle school was a um had a business background. he's a grandparent and he said well from a business perspective whenever I start I start with like give me the numbers give me the data give me the problem and then I can figure out how to solve it and so sort of some of the committee members brought up similar

051ideas so we end up doing that process we talked about data we talked about some of the problems um that that we heard and then we turned to possible solutions >> thank you for that and I just want to share the thing that I'm excited about is the in I don't want to necessarily say enhancing career exploration because um I don't necessarily think that career is the end all for all of us, but I think having that exploration and that engagement is um something I'm really excited about seeing particularly at the middle school level. >> Dr. Workman. >> Um so, one of the things I was thinking of that really really struck me was the um mentoring of younger students. And I'm thinking about as an example, this was a long time ago. I don't

052want to figure out how many years, just trust me, it's a long time ago. When my students were at Lincoln, which is K8 school, and they were so excited when they got to the older grades, they could be the big buddy and they remembered when they were the little buddy and as a little buddy, they were looking forward to being a big buddy. And I know we can't replicate that everywhere, but just that idea of students helping others and certainly it can work um even in the same grade level with you know I I found in my own personal experience as a teacher that sometimes students really do a little bit better job sometimes than I could do of explaining something to another student. I think that's really really valuable. >> I totally agree. I

053think we found this is not just for students, right? this is for for all people. I'm discovering as an adult I wish I had more mentors like near peer mentors would be really helpful for me. Um but I think we find that just it's really exciting and really engaging and it just the evidence is quite clear that's really powerful. The committee shared some examples of models that happened previously in RPS and earlier you like bits and pieces earlier and so a lot of this is not just trying something brand new. It's more like that worked it works elsewhere really well. Let's find the best thing that happened here previously and other places previously and do it again. Director Whitehorn. >> Okay. Um, so I I as reading through this um and excuse me if I

054talk in a little bit of a circle here, but a lot of these things kind of overlap, right? They're very they're very overlapping. So, uh, when I was reading through this, a lot of very good information. Uh, but at one point I reread a page because I said I felt like I just read that, right? Because there's a lot of similarities in um the way these things are put together. So when I was looking at this I thought well uh when you get to the engaging offerings and again I have personal bias because I love the arts. I love the sports. I feel like they do a lot for students. I just come out of that era of growing up. But if I and I and I and and stay with me how this if

055if we look at this at as a as a building block somebody likes blocks around here. >> Um and we look at a foundational piece if we increase the offerings. So, as far as offering sports or or you know, music programs or art programs, um I think what's often overlooked is that those programs start to encompass these mentorship um ideas, these little buddy, big buddy ideas, these um exploring where else your mind can go. So, uh for instance, um you know, I had a lot of sons. They're interested in football, but you find out to be good at football there are all these other aspects that you need to master. Be it flexibility, be it speed, be it, you know, they have the jokes where they have the basketball or the football players taking ballet,

056right? But there were reasons for that because of agility, right? So, it allowed them to explore into other realms. Just running a ball is not going to get you to the league, right? There's a much bigger understanding. So when I looked at all of the concepts and even relooking at last week's concepts, I guess my my thought is as we move forward in creating this plan, what pieces can we implement that give us the most of all these pieces, if that makes sense. So, if we say we can reinstill the sports and the arts back into the middle school, it will check off a lot of these boxes because inevitably it's going to provide mentorship because you're going to have coaches. You're going to have people in the community that are going to be involved.

057You're going to be exposing our children to more people and fundraising opportunities and these things, right? you're going to get a subset of students that get very serious about it who, as I said, get into all the agility and learning about the muscles and, you know, I I have sons that really got into this thing and, you know, personal training can tell you all different things about how the body works. Uh, but it started with football, right? Um, so I guess my thought in all of this is, and I'm sorry if I dumb this way down, but my thought is as we're thinking as a as a team as to how we can um encompass these priorities, my thought was what things can we do that will encompass the most um of these priorities. And

058as I was reading through and again my personal bias, I do keep coming back to these electives and these sports and these arts because even if a child doesn't like it, um it still opens up, you know, a space, right? Uh whether it's art, somebody thinks art is just drawing until they touch paints, right? Or somebody thinks uh music is just playing the violin until you get to the section on composition. So there are so many aspects within the electives that I think open up a lot of these windows that directly attach to some of the other um priorities. >> Dr. Murder >> there there's so much good here. I'm really excited about this. Uh two things quickly. Uh first and this was alluded to when we were talking about um well our speaker actually

059was talking about more rigor in middle school. I mean this is all over that and and I think also you lay out clearly that there should be those opportunities for kids who are doing great to have more challenge and to have those opportunities to do something different and bigger. And I love that. Um when oh when you're talking about mentoring and especially younger students mentoring younger ones we have a whole lot of high school students now who are our um teachers assistants getting credit for helping the teacher and we have students who meet in this room once a month from our high schools and they're all about that. Mr. Ruffen started a program when he first came to this district where students, older students, helped younger students in high school and it was just a

060win-win. The older students were were learning more because they knew they were responsible for teaching something. The younger kids were learning in a different way and paying attention. And I think I told this story years before uh but there was one student I remember clearly a young man who had really struggled but he was coming every single day to get mentored in two different subjects and his grades absolutely skyrocketed. He got involved. He was interested. And I I remember asking him at the end of the year, Tyler, what was it about that program? and he said, "That girl who was mentoring me, she was really cute." So, whatever it worked, I mean, she didn't have to be cute, but it changed that kid's life. I don't think they ended up getting married or anything, but

061um but there was that. My question is this career exploration. Absolutely. We need every single student starting when they're really young knowing that they have a future after they graduate from high school. that they have to graduate and then there are all kinds of choices for them. A concern I have is with 12 to 14 year olds who sometimes you know their future is like two weeks from now and that's about as far as they can think and even going into high school. I I don't know if this plan is to just an awareness of possibilities that are out there and in the six or eight years before they're out of school, the whole world of work and education for that matter may have really changed. But how can we provide that kind of awareness,

062that kind of excitement for kids without pressuring him into thinking, you know, you're 14, buddy. If you don't know what job you're going to have by now, it's too late. >> It's over with. Yeah. And I I just I even concerned a little bit in high school. Um because kids change their mind and we want to make sure that they know about the potential but without thinking I got to pick it right now and I'm not sure or I thought I was sure and now I know differently and I'm stuck. So, have committees talked about that yet or is that too in the weeds? >> Not in the weeds at all. I mean, that's I think came up a ton. I think the way the phrase I've been using for myself describe it is momentum

063matters more than direction. And by that I mean like kids get momentum when they feel excited about something. You could be totally wrong, but it could give you momentum that'll take you somewhere else. So, like my personal like track in middle school, I really thought I want to be an animator. that's not really a job, but like I was so passionate about it and I learned everything about it and then I realized, oh, I actually want to do that. But I got excited. I learned a lot about it and then I just like, oh, now I'm gonna be a biologist. Oh, I don't like that either. And then I've changed a number of times. I think all of us have. So being right about your like future career is almost besides the point. What the

064point is like sparking your passions. So I think that's the point of it in middle school. And just learning other things that might make you really excited and interested. So director Whitehorn like I was horrible at art. Whenever I did art class, I was like, I just can't stand this. I feel like a failure. They made me feel miserable. The person next to me might have absolutely loved it. And that's when they felt most alive. Every kid in middle school deserves to have at least a few moments of like, oh, this is my thing. I'm really good at that. And if school is too much of just one kind of thing, then they may never find the thing that makes them passionate and excited. Every kid has something that they're passionate about. They don't know

065what it is yet in middle school. But if you expose kids to a lot of different things, they'll learn, okay, I don't want to be like, who knows what being a lawyer is gonna be like in the future, but like I love arguing, but okay, great. Argue with my sibling all the time. Is there a job that's kind of like that? Okay, that's kind of fun. >> Well, every middle school kid loves arguing. That's kind of >> So, it's it's more about that. So, it's more about like what are the like underlying like skills or the sort of personality traits that speak to who they are or what they're passionate about and give them a chance just to try that on like a pair of clothes for that day and sort of you know see

066if it's exciting and then far far later many years down the line they they need to choose ultimately but this is more about like finding excitement and passion in school than more that >> love that thank you >> and I just want to add to director Marvin because I'm over 14 and I still know what I want to be when I grow up. So, I'm really behind. Um I'm really behind. But I I just want to add a piece that just a thought and I can only use my you know personal examples but um so I was in a violin program as a child and I say this because what it taught me and I I didn't probably have a violin teacher in the beginning that was probably as nice as director workman but my

067instructor was very big on balance and we would have to stand for extreme long times and we had to learn how to have a steady hand and they were very big on this a lot of posture a lot of steadiness, right? And and learning the instruments. You may think, "Oh, I'm just learning music." And I and I'm I'm getting to a point with this because I didn't know what I wanted to be when I grew up. Being a part of the orchestra program throughout high school allowed me to realize I had a very steady hand. So, that allowed me to go into cosmetology school and cut hair because I can cut a straight line. That allowed me to be able to design and decorate cakes because I have a steady hand. That allowed me to

068be able to get into calligraphy. So I also can drive a D5 dozer and I can level a field because but the point of that is because I was able to relate it to something that I understood which was being steady. Not that I understood all the you know you don't always understand everything about everything but if you can find that thread of thing that you're able to do I don't I don't think what we talk about enough is how it transforms into so many other spaces. You know, I think people look at a music program and go, "Oh, well, are they going to play the violin forever?" But maybe not necessarily. But it taught a lot of other pieces that were very instrumental into me exploring other career fields, even into my adult life.

069So, you know, as uh Director Marvin said, we may not figure it out at 14. And as you also said, I just think that some of these pieces come together very nicely and it'd be nice to find the things that touch all of the spaces. And I do want to also say to academic rigor because we started talking about academics. I do also believe that sports and arts do that as well. Um because if you get into those programs, a lot of times there's an academic requirement um to compete, to be in contest, to do things. So if a child is not interested in math and science and reading, it can create that interest for them because they want to play, they want to be in the orchestra performance or they want to be on

070the field. So and again, I know that's not the option for every kid, but um there is a large subset of people that through the extracurriculars were able to see what they liked or what they absolutely didn't like, right? But allowed them to go into spaces that they might not have otherwise been. Director Cook. >> Um, yeah. Well, uh, I have a couple of questions to try to figure out, um, how to dovetail this if I can with the, uh, uh, recommendations that we received from the elementary working group. Um, one of the, um, so going back to that one, I assume you're familiar, but just for orienting us here, one of those recommendations was to explore the expansion of K through8 offerings. Um, and I I wonder it it seems like that would be

071in tension with the engaging offerings category of more career exploration um um you know enhanced electives and more extracurriculars and sort of traditional full service uh middle school um style things. So I I just I wonder is there any synergy there based on the observations of the committee um to expanding K through 8? How did that play out at all or anything you comment on there? >> Yeah, it's a really important question. I don't think there's any tension there. So, I think part of like the navigation supports thread for example is all about smooth transitions from you know fifth to sixth and from 8th to 9th. Um obviously if you're in a K8 then the trans from fifth to sixth is a whole lot easier than if you're switching schools. So I think the importance

072of a smooth transition came up in our committee as well. And I think the K8 came up from a different committee with a very similar idea about minimizing those transitions. But I don't I don't think there's anything intrinsic to the way a K8 is structured. That means you can't do a lot of things we recommend here. >> What it will mean operationally if you're a K8 principal is you'll have two sets of recommendations here that are aligned, right? They have the same four big categories. Um but there are some differences for the what we want middle schools focus on versus elementary. So the K principal will have to sort of think about you know slightly different focuses in you know the six seven eight grades versus the K through five but I don't think there's

073any tension between the two. >> Okay Dr. further. Oh, did you want to go? >> Okay. >> Uh, two quick things with the academic rigor and relevance. I um certainly uh we're all for high quality education for everyone. Uh I was curious though um to not necessarily see a um role that um technology more specifically AI potentially uh would play given the reality of the time in which we live. Uh can you perhaps speak uh uh to that? Uh I do know that um within that same module of uh academic rigor and relevance there was the consideration of um evidence-based um under the codifi I think it was under codify accountability. I may be off in that actually that was uh implement teaching practices where there's a reference to evidence-based uh practices. Um, and uh,

074I'm I'm just curious as to why, you know, if if indeed that is the case, and these are recommendation, suggestions, if you will, uh, why the net wasn't cast a bit broader and uh, is it too late to potentially uh, incorporate or consider at least touch on it? And um then I have a separate from this I'll allow you to respond. I have a um another question. >> Great. Yes. So I think about the AI um aspect I'll say two things and I'll turn over to Dr. Beckel because we actually had a sort of a conversation. I think the first time we all talked was about like should we have AI be one of our big priorities and we ultimately decided yes but not in this mechanism that AI is a big priority but it'll

075be handled by RPS separate from the strategic plan just because it'll be an operational concern that's changing so frequently that it's probably hard for me to say five years from now here's how A is going to impact R I I don't know how it's going to happen six months from now. Um so I think yes it's a priority but it's priority sort of operationally ongoing basis separate from the strategic plan. Here's why I think it does show up in the strategic plan and part of this is sort of my personal opinion so I have the whole committee. Um I do a fair amount of research about AI and the impact of AI in schools and I think um one thing that's coming up consistently is what is it what is cheating in the age of

076AI is very complicated and you know because when so many tasks that that people can do can be done by by a computer. So like if you ask is the teacher using AI to create the assignment and the teacher the kid using AI to answer the assignment and the two AIs talking to each other with that's complicated and so that's why when we talk about the academic rigor piece we talk about common grading practices and common um like retaking policies and so on. We don't say specifically because of AI because I think it's broader than that but I think AI will be an example of why those kind of practices are so important. And so we're sort of saying in the plan RPS will figure this out needs to figure this out. Um, but we're

077not saying specifically what the answer should be because that's I think just such a detailed and complicated conversation. Couldn't just scratch the surface of it that that piece. The second thing I'll say is another thing that's I think we're hearing a lot um in the sort of in this AI era is kids that you know screen time was already an issue. It's even more of an issue when like people are using you know AI for like social companionship and so on. And so I think what we're seeing is the people that are doing really well both in the you know job market and emotionally are people have really strong relationships with their people. And so that becomes even more important when AI becomes more common. So I think that's why I'm this was not directly

078because of AI but I think belonging is one of our four big pillars here because like the importance of human relationships and mentoring and things like that become even more important in age where there's more limited human interaction that has a greater premium. So, it's super important that our kids develop that. >> Thank you. And um so what I've done um with um some of my grandchildren, I have too many to offer extend this to all of them, but uh um I have offered to them if they will uh share with me daily something that uh they've learned and is a value uh to them, I'll reward them financially for that. And um not a whole lot mind you. >> Do you have anything for me? >> This day comedy though. Uh but uh last

079week and she's a middle schooler at Kellogg. Uh my one of my granddaughters said, "Well, Dad, today we've learned about uh learning styles and uh I asked her, "Well, what style are you?" And she said, "Well, I'm I'm more uh uh" she said, "I'm more audible." Okay. and and she described the other uh learning styles. I said, "Well, are you also aware that there are different teaching styles as well as curriculum type?" Uh and uh I only raised this as a information point uh leaning back into the implementing teaching practices. Is there any um value uh or way to if you will close that gap or divide where we have students they're not uh necessarily there's something wrong with these kids but maybe their learning style is not matching with the teaching style and that's

080really the issue and I think we have software that may potentially assist in identifying behind that. And I know we can't ideally match our teachers with those students, but if it's information that a teacher has in terms of Johnny's particular learning style, that potentially could assist uh that teacher and what they're able to deliver. Now, that's way beyond the scope of of this uh work, but I do think it's something nonetheless that should be at least bantered about. My final question deals not question statement deals with uh the nearpeer mentoring. Um I'm not a revisionist when it comes to history. Um my parents who uh grew up in the segregated South um uh proudly spoke of the one room schoolhouse that uh they attended and how there was that nearpeer mentoring occurring and and the

081value of that uh the uh benefit of it as well as the uh regardless of what Susie may look like Dr. Marvin, uh it was really the belief that each child could learn from uh the next child. And so I'm glad to see that you have uh built that into this and I know that it's part of what the uh student school board has discussed and I think we're putting forth effort to potentially implement that. So I fully uh support that and and thank you for bringing that forward. >> Superintendent Um, thanks. I want to uh invite you, Spencer, to to talk with us uh first about what the committee's discussions were around this issue of middle school accountability for learning, but then also invite you to share any of your perspectives on someone who

082works around the country. Um, to take a brief tangent, but I think it's illustrative and very relevant. Um, increasingly people around the country are either shocked, surprised, or thrilled by the progress that some southern states, most notably Mississippi, are making in improving reading outcomes. Uh, it's important to note that they're about 10 years ahead of Minnesota in the Read Act. And so there is just a um there's a time piece. It's also a lot of what they're doing is exactly the same as certainly what we're doing in RPS and by extension what um Minnesota's trying to doing. But in Mississippi, there is a third grade requirement that you don't move up unless you hit a score on the state reading test. So there is an accountability and the people I've talked to think that's fundamental

083to the progress we're making. That flies against a lot of philosophy and practice in Minnesota um that you would hold a kid accountable for a bar. So when I put this charge to the middle school committee, it came from many conversations I've had in our middle schools that suggest there is a subset of our students, it's a subset, but that essentially go through three years with doing no real work and then pass on to high school. And I want to put it in that stark of terms because that's the terms that I've heard it from. And there's a certain, you know, anxiety there because what I've heard from those educators is we don't have any tools to change that perspective. They don't fail classes. They don't have credit requirements. There's not a promotion. What the

084committee came up with, I think, is it's not a Mississippi like you have to hit a score on the MCA to go on to nth grade, but it's a series of district and school actions that are that I really encourage the board members to look at. uh and I will be looking at a lot as I bring you some recommendations that are actually I think quite meaningful but but quite subtle you know they're not a draconian no what we used to call social promotion of policy although you do have a summary of the research on retention that I think is very good and it's it's very brief so talk a bit about the committee's discussions of this issue um did they articulate the same phenomenon that encouraged me to put this in the charge to

085the committee. Um h where did you land on some of these uh because it's important for board members to remember the committee members that are listed on each of these reports agreed to the language in the report and some individual committee members might have wanted to go much much further like with K8 schools or with middle school accountability. This was a consensus document and so they all said yep you can put my name on it. Some of them might have wanted to go much further than others and you got us I think to a really good jumping off point. Um, so walk us through some of those things and I and as I mentioned, I really do encourage board members to look at this section um, in particular. >> Yeah, thanks for raising that. I

086think that's a core tension that was probably one of the main things we talked about in our committee meetings. And so I'll just to radically oversimplify. I think there's one camp of people that are like, okay, well like got to be harder. Let's like more Fs that'll make, you know, if you raise the bar, people just will jump higher. That's the way you need to do it. Like you know, tough love kind of camp. there's another camp that's like okay let's be soft let's be gentle and like it'll all be fine and you know you got to be kind to kids and like let's not fail them the answer is you can do both and so I think that's where we went here is like you can have high expectations and you can really support

087kids more and that's I think what's been most effective when we see it else happen elsewhere so Dr. is alluding to what's now called the Mississippi miracle. Mississippi was I used to teach in Louisiana and we always joked that the state motto of Louisiana was thank god for Mississippi because they were always 50 and Louisiana was 49. So it's like thank god for Mississippi because they're always worse than us. That's not true anymore. If you look at like you saw news today um the highest growth in the nation on some new test scores is Mississippi. Mississippi did was a number of things. One thing they did was the accountability. So you need to have the accountability piece. They said you cannot get promoted beyond a certain grade level in elementary school until you're good at

088reading. All right, so like that's that's harsh. That seems like that's more this camp, but that wasn't it. They also had here's like best practices and research on how to teach reading better. Here's small group instruction. Here's all when I talk about tier one, tier two, and so on. All of that was also part of the the Mississippi miracle. So when you do both together, when you have high supports and high expectations, that gets you to really good good place. So that's why in that section we talked about all the things that are the high support things. The tier one, the tier two, tier three, declare expectations, so on. That's the high support piece. And then the accountability piece, we had a few things. I'll just sort of name them quickly here for the like

089what the sort of um high bar piece is. Um established district standard operating procedures for grading, retakes, and missing work. So what we heard from some of the folks including principles were saying like it's kind of a wild west. everyone's doing their own thing and that's confusing. Even like the same kid going teacher to teacher will have different expectations. It's really hard to meet expectations when they're not consistent. So consistent expectations that kids experience within a school but also across schools so we can learn from each other and figure out what the best policies are. So that's one thing. The second and the language here is a little softer. We didn't say this had to happen but we said explore the possibility of mandatory summer school to support students who are not on track to

090progress to the next grade level. So there's a lot of interventions that happened beforehand, but if you're still not there and you're still not learning, there was still a concern about social promotion. And so can we give kids a chance over the summer to really focus the target learning what they're missing? And I'll just as a quick plug from some my personal work previously, um there's a lot of research here about the the power of high quality tutoring. There's a very specific model for tutoring. It's not just what I got when I was a kid of just like here's the book, go read and figure it out and come back later. there's best practices that we can learn from to help kids catch up and we've seen that work in states including um in Mississippi

091and Tennessee did a fair amount of that as well for co recovery. Um and then on the district action side of the accountability piece we talk about communicating to families the grade and promotion policies. Oftentimes families and parents and guardians are the ones who can sort of be the back stop if a kid is struggling in school. make sure the parents and families know and that they can enforce those same policies with their kids. Um, another idea which um was brought up by some uh school counselor folks was to explore the idea of a current grade point average um to help kids just understand it's not used for anything but just information because kids don't know that they're failing a lot of classes and that might be a problem, right? So that just like gives

092kids additional information. Um, and the last thing was celebrating academic achievement. And so there's all things you can do like when I used to teach high school, we gave like awards every week to like most growth and academics and so on. There's ways that you know kids are rewarded and feel like, oh, I belong because I improved academically. Something they want to celebrate. So those are kind of things that we did. Dr. Ger find that balance between high support and also high expectations. >> Yeah, I I appreciate that. And we have not um shared with the board much about the fact that we do have a pilot underway this year uh in high dosage middle school tutoring and math with Saga Education, one of the nation leading uh providers that we are learning a lot

093from. And so I think that high dosage tutoring piece uh has got to be a tool in our toolkit um that I look forward to. We need to get that on a board agenda to let you know we are in the midst of rolling that out this well it's rolled out. We're in the midst of implementation. Um, so I don't have outcomes for you yet, but um, I'm pretty excited about the fact that we're bringing to bear and we're going to learn a lot that might inform this this sort of middle school accountability strategy. >> I'm gonna take a turn. Is that okay, >> chair? Um, when we talk about the things that we're the most excited about, I' I've always thought that um, improving our transition um, between elementary and middle is key. I

094I had a a student who went to a K8 school. So I I know um there was a very intentionality of even though they were stayed in the same building, there was a a real strong intentionality of that transition between and you know the kids talked about it, you know, all the time about the difference of being, you know, upper. Um so I I I can see I see the value of that. Um, I wonder, um, and I didn't see a lot of, um, uh, research or resources or or what you might think of, um, giving parents that same TLC at that transition. Um, I think sometimes we just, uh, assume even a parent in the education system for five years, you're you're ready to to, you know, follow your your kid in middle school.

095We know that involvement in parent organizations drops tremendously in middle school. Um I will admit I've said many times over the years it's sometimes because our kids don't want to see us. Um you know they're changing and going through new lives and new friendships. Maybe they don't want us as involved in school and middle school as as elementary. Um, but I I just wonder about whether we should focus on or or maybe you have some examples from some other districts where you really focus on the intentionality of recognizing this is a whole new world for parents too. I know the studies show that the uh parents that have the most mental health issues are parents of middle school students. Um, and so what, you know, what can we build into this uh to our planning

096to really focus on parents? >> That's a great idea. We didn't explicitly include that, but I think it very much is in line with the what the committee talked about with um the two-way communication with parents and sort of building like building stronger bridges between parents in the community and schools. So, it's not explicitly in there yet, but I think the committee I can't speak on their behalf, but I think they would all agree that that sounds like it very much aligned with what they were recommending. So, I think that's something I wouldn't do the strategic plan we could add in it. >> And and it fits in with what you just said about making sure the parents know what the expectations are because, you know, they are that that backs stop at home. >>

097Um, and then, um, the other piece that I was interested in was the teacher teameing. Um I think um I don't know I don't know the word pods keeps coming into my head about you know organizing organizing students around a group of teachers. How does that and maybe maybe it would still involve a lot of you know transitions from you know teacher to teacher and class to class. That's what we hear a lot from parents is that middle school you're moving around. You're experiencing different teachers. So, it's a better preparation for high school than maybe a different kind like a K8 where you might not be moving around. How does um would that still happen with that smaller group of teachers? And is that is that that big of an issue for later high school

098success to experience almost the mini high school experience in middle school? >> I think there's like a mild drawback which is what you named. But you're still getting I think it seems like it's a good intermediate point between elementary when you have like the same teacher for everything. In high school you have a different teacher for everything. The idea of teaming is something in the middle like appropriately for middle school where you have a different teacher for different subjects but they talk to each other and everyone has the same teacher and so they have some more common expectations and more more connection tissue. So I think it's much better to avoid kids getting you know falling between the cracks which I think is a far greater issue for middle school than the sort of like

099oh different teachers is more like high school. The other advantage too that I want to name because it came with the committee is it helps with student belonging. So people are talking about oh like we can do I mean not just for like academic preparation but you can do like fun like pep rallies and stuff that are all built and like have like goofy stuff like inside jokes that go across different like classrooms the kids experience which is a lot of fun. Um I actually when I was a teacher we did teacher teaming and like you know you like pull pranks on each other different teachers the kids are all in on it and just like that kind of stuff builds a lot of belonging. Um I also it came on the committee this builds

100belonging teachers as well. So like teachers a lot of when we're talking about this some teachers were saying you know this all applies to teachers too it's not just kids so they're saying if we can have teacher sense of belonging that's really big deal for like teacher retention and so on um which is really important for the district and so they they they said they found teacher teaming being something that helped them have a community as well so I think it could be both >> director >> um so first I want to make a PSA for all the grandparents on the board that we are not offering uh monetary donations for your opinions. Um there are some grandparents that wish to not be contacted and I'm one of them. Um and I I speak as

101for the grandparents. Uh but I also wanted to say as uh we were sitting and I it's just a question what I didn't see and I was surprised as I was listening. I didn't see anything about physical education. Um, and I bring that up because in the in the uh elementary we spoke about the play therapy and how that helps kids because they're interactive and they're moving and I guess in elementary I mean in middle school the kids are a little bit older and I don't know if that was a topic that was brought up but I I didn't really hear anything about any structured physical education. Um, and that's probably aging myself as well where we had to do physical education every day. Um, but there are lots of studies out there that speak

102to, you know, what 30 minutes of e actual structured exercise does for the brain, for young people, for adults, too. Just going out and taking a 30 minute walk. Um, and again, this is in my thought process of what things are easy to implement that are coste effective that get us to some of the goals that we want to overall um meet. And that was just the thought was physical education ever brought up? >> I'll defer to Dr. McCuel. We didn't talk a ton about physical education in middle school. We came a bit in high school because there's like state requirements around physical education. What did come up was this idea of like middle school sports being really powerful. I also say like the flex time piece which is part of the engaging offerings. Those

103are also ways of just breaking stuff up of going from like math to English to having the exact you like academic coursework after academic coursework. in Dakota um the middle school folks from Dakota Middle School said kids found a lot of like a big energy boost when there have these you know like a CSI club or whatever in the middle of the school day those kind of different things whether athletic or non-athletic were like a ways to break up the school day but I don't know Dr. I think about middle school PE. I'm not as aware of the requirements for that. >> More in high school than middle school. >> Uh I uh thank you Director White for highlighting that. You're right. It came up more explicitly with recess in the elementary grades and I

104I was in a meeting today with some of our education support professionals and recess came up again at the elementary level. Um I I take your point and I'll make sure that we think about that when we get to the middle school level. As Spencer noted, the extracurricular piece has come up a lot. I will just say as a broad generalization, I've been very encouraged by the quality of our middle school PE classes in Rochester that they are truly developmental experiences for kids as opposed to just kind of I'm going to teach you to play a game and you're going to play a game. So, I think we have some good things to build on. Um, uh, it's a very minor comparatively minor part of the day. Um, and to the point that we were

105just talking about with teacher teaming, in the end, a lot of this comes down to money and scheduling. And so, taking a look at what we can realistically afford to do in terms of the number of minutes we have to dedicate to something like PE and the dollars we have to redesign our middle school schedules to make true teacher teaming, which is a very powerful strategy. It's just generally more expensive. Um, that's part of why we're going to take the summer to do the really hard implementation work to bring you a a plan in the fall that has got um those hard questions answered. Um because we need to make sure the minutes work. Uh were we to expand PE, we need to make sure that we're getting the academic coverage. But we'll take a

106look at that because you're right, for a lot of kids that is a it's a stimulant. Um, it's certainly the point the that the ESPs that I met with and others met with today at Bishop made about the benefits to student self-regulation of good recess. So something we will we'll put that high in the list of issues to look at. >> Anything else board members? >> All right. Thank you very much. >> One more level to go next. >> See you guys next time. Our next item is 7.1 prep for action the schoolboard draft response to APAC. Um we will take action on this item at the April 7th meeting. The last meeting we received our letter of non-concurrence from the American Indian parent advisory committee and the draft letter that is in uh assembly

107provides uh the board's responses and proposed actions in the areas of staffing recruitment and representations professional learning and cultural understanding student support and transitions community partnerships and cultural programming curriculum collaboration and partnership with the Prairie Island Indian community and data student identification and program program sustainability. Board members, do you have any questions, comments, or proposed changes to the draft letter that we can share and get this ready to be delivered? Director Workman, >> I'm just wondering if there's going to be any kind of a component on on monitoring some of the commitments that we're going to be making from from our end or ideas just to see how are we progressing rather than a whole year rolls by and well, we didn't do this or this or this. So maybe just tracking. >> So we're

108done. Um, I think we're we're looking for your feedback on things that we might enhance in the in the letter. And so, um, if Director Workman, you're wondering if we can take a look at these commitments and find some way to, uh, essentially, uh, have a checklist. Uh, that's something that, uh, Mr. Ruffin and I did last year with, uh, the APEC commitments from the board. uh it could be something that we could replicate um again this year and take a look at that. Whether we put that in the letter or have that as a separate monitoring device uh is something that um uh I could come back to you with. It might make for a kind of awkward letter, but it also could help the board to say, "Okay, now here's our checklist of

109how we're going to monitor the commitments that are in this narrative letter." >> Um but I I take the point because you're right. We don't want to find uh ourselves a year from now and not able to point to substantive progress on the plan as I think we were able to do this year and as I think the members of Apac uh acknowledged even though they didn't reach a vote of concurrence. Would you um think that we would schedule a board agenda item to um give an update at so that our ne so that our next update on American Indian um programs and services isn't that not you know the letter from Apac but that we have something sooner than that >> if that would be of interest to the board and members of APAC.

110We'd be glad to uh add that to um uh the schedule for the year and perhaps even include it in the final version of this letter. >> Madam chair, >> yes, >> I think it's an excellent idea and if the superintendent is amanable to that that we should calendar it, look forward to it. >> Any other comments on the letter? >> I just uh Madam Chair, I've already mentioned Mr. Ruff and I want to thank um Guthri Capasella um also for a really great work and then of course most importantly the members of Apac for giving the time to make this happen. >> All right hearing no more comments we will take action on this at our next meeting. Speaking of action, our um action item is the achievement and integration plan which we discussed

111as a prep for action item on March 3rd. Uh board members will note that there have been some updates to the plan document including um updating some of the baseline data and goals and that there were some updates in the narratives. Does any board member have any questions or any other um comments before I read the resolution? >> I didn't know one thing. Um uh board me uh if you gave a detailed read to this version of the plan, one thing you noted was that there are um uh notable additions of technology supports to the plan compared to the last time you saw it. And um the reason for that is not because we anticipate using um extensive ANI funding for technology although there is a a component of the strategy but Rochester along with

112Minneapolis St. Paul and Duth has the authority to levy for support for student devices that is aligned with our integration plan that we are able to request from the Department of Education um at uh predetermined intervals. And so we have used this to purchase student devices um mostly to um replenish the devices that were bought with federal COVID funding during the height of the COVID pandemic. And so in the last this has happened twice since I've been in Rochester and each time I work with the commissioner of education to do a review of that request. um this time in anticipation of that in 2027 or 2028, assuming the legislature continues to give the four those four cities of the first class as they uh used to be called the authority to do that. We wanted

113to make it more explicit in the plan where technology supports the achievement and integration plan. So, it's um it it's it's not a substantive change in this plan, but it is making explicit uh what I anticipate in a couple years from now we will ask the Department of Education to approve in terms of our ability to replace student devices because they advance this plan and this is a three-year plan. >> Yeah. >> Any other questions for Oh, director Bob McLaclin. I just wanted to point out um I I appreciate the changes that have been made from last version to this version and wanted just to highlight the one that talks about what am I looking at here? achievement integration goal three strategy three um the career and college readiness and rigorous c coursework for underserved

114students but including all the students enrolled at ALC that I really think that that population sometimes misses out on opportunities like that and I really appreciate explicitly putting them in here so that we can focus on that. >> Absolutely. >> Back to Marvin >> and I just wanted to point out for people who aren't reading this it's a 24page plan very specific. It must have taken an an inordinate amount of work and time and thought to put this together. And um I appreciate all of those things. And I think I mentioned this last week, but and reading it through again. Um even though this is uh tied to addressing some specific gaps with specific student groups and at a specific school, the strategies that are being implemented are affecting all students. >> Um and will

115will have positive effects for all students. Um so I I think this is the first year that I've that I've really felt the integration with our broader strategy um across the board. Um and I think it I think it will help implementation and I think it will also um just I think it'll help implementation. So all right I will read the resolution. Be it resolved that the school board of ISD 535 endorses the achievement and integration plan proposed by the superintendent and directs the superintendent to submit the plan to the Minnesota Department of Education and to implement the plan during the 2026 27 2027 28 and 2028 29 school years. >> Move approval. >> Second. >> It has been moved and seconded. >> All those in favor say I. >> I opposed. >> The resolution

116has been approved. Thank you board members. The next item on our agenda is our ABCD. The current version of the board calendar is available in this agenda item for reference uh for the community for every board meeting. Upcoming agenda items are our April 7th meeting. Our focus topic will be the uh 2030 strategic plan high school options and we will take action on the school board response to the American Indian parent advisory committee. On April 21st, we have a prep for action for our school resource officer contract. Uh, are there any agenda items board members would like to raise for consideration as a future meeting agenda? Hearing none, you heard that our next two meetings are April 7th and 21st, followed by May 5th and 19th. All our regular meetings at 5:30 p.m. And hearing

117no other business, this meeting is adjourned at 7:03 p.m. I'm fever.