001different in here. >> It's cold. >> I think it's how it reflects off the blue or something like that, maybe. Well, the chair, >> but we could have like a Laurel Smith who's like up here. >> Well, no, I don't worry about me. I'm worried about him. >> Okay. more technology probably. >> Oh, that's right. Just finishing. This special meeting of the Independent School District 535 School Board is called to order at 5:31 p.m. on Tuesday, October 21st, 2025 in room 137 of the Edison Building. Present at this meeting are school board members, Superintendent Kent Pquel, a non- voting exeicio member, and Assistant School Board Clerk, Miss Anne Kramer. Miss Kramer, would you please call the role? >> Director here. >> Here >> the board acknowledges this site and all RPS sites are situated on
002the 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. To the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all. >> Item two 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. Any opposed? The agenda has been approved. The agenda and documents for this meeting are available online at rochesterchools.orgsembly. Our first item is a focused topic on curriculum related field trip fees. In accordance with the pupil fee law found in
003Minnesota statute section 123b38. Before the initiation of any fee not authorized or prohibited by sections 123b36 and 123b37, the school board must hold a public hearing. Tonight we will hold a public hearing about field trip requests for students of Rochester public schools where students fees will be charged. The new field trip requests which we are bringing forward to the public hearing are described in agenda item 3.2. The attachments in the agenda item provide information about these field trips. The field trip is all high school's environmental awareness sports bio class fees. The attachment SB approved enrichment field trips lists all the field trips or schoolboard approval for a fee has already been obtained. If there are members of the public who wish to make public comments and any of the field trip requests, please raise your
004hand to be recognized. Once you're recognized by the chair, you may come to this table and choose a microphone to speak into. You'll have three minutes to speak and the timer will be displayed in front of me. Is there anyone who would like to make comments on the field trip fees? Is there anyone who'd like to make comments on the field trip fees? And a final call for comments on the field trip fees. Seeing no requests for comments, this public hearing is adjourned at 5:34 p.m. This regular meeting of the Independent School District 535 School Board is called to order at 5:35 p.m. on Tuesday, October 21st, 2025 in room 137 of the Edison building. Present at this meeting are school board members, Superintendent Kent Pel, a non- voting exeicio member, and assistant school board
005clerk, Miss Anne Kramer. Miss Kramer, would you please call the role? Director >> 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. And 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 the republic for it stands nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all. >> The next item on the agenda is a new item. 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
006and our decisions as a board. For those of you watching online, the back wall of the boardroom now displays the mission, vision, and value statements of Rochester Public Schools. Tonight, we start with our mission. Our mission is to equip every student with the knowledge, independence, and resilience to pursue a fulfilling path. The next item on our agenda is the approval of the agenda. Are there any changes? >> Move approval. >> Second. >> It has been moved and seconded to approve the agenda. All those in favor say I. >> I. Any opposed? The agenda has been approved. The agenda and documents for this meeting are available online at rochesterchools.org/simly. Item three, there are no comments to the board this evening. So we'll move on to information and outreach. Our first item is the recognition of unified
007program unified programming at Mayo High School. Superintendent Pel. >> Thank you, Chair Nathan and board members. I'd like to invite Colin Thomas and the team from Mayo to come on up um and join us, I think. Um take a seat where wherever it works. And we want to make sure either if Miss Kramer's going to be clicking through for you or if they need the clicker. Um board members, uh this wonderful program which uh we are here to celebrate tonight at Mayo High School exists in other schools, not just in Rochester and across the state, but across the country. And Mayo High School's program was recently recognized with the Special Olympics National Banner Award. Uh it's an honor that's bestowed upon a select number of schools across the United States to develop and implement unified
008programs. And you're going to hear about the unified program in a moment, which I know board members uh are also familiar with. Um that meet the highest standards set by Special Olympics. Mayo High School is only one of five high schools in Minnesota to be recognized as part of the National Banner class of 2025. And over the past decade, Mayo High School is only one of one of only 15 schools in the state to have ever received this national nomination. So, we want to thank you for the amazing programming that you do for our students and uh look forward to a little glimpse of why uh you were recognized for such excellence. >> All right. Thank you guys for the invitation to come today. It's it's an honor and it's a it's a pretty unique
009opportunity that we get to sit here and tell you about this amazing program that's transformed the high school experience for so many of our students with without special needs. I'm going to tell you this is all come about from the ground up. This was not something that came from above administrator or teacher. This all came about because of one student who had a brother with special needs. She called me up one day. She said, "Colin, I want to bring this unified program to Mayo High school. Would you be willing to do it?" And I I knew this student. I knew nothing about what she was telling me about, but I believe in the student. I said, "Sure, I'll do whatever you need." Lo and behold, we're sitting before you today, and this program has absolutely
010exploded. The unified program is designed to build relationships between our students with and without special needs. For the longest time, our students with special needs sat in that classroom or they sat at that lunch table or they were over here during a pepfest. And this student saw something potential for more than that. As a result, we've transformed the the culture there at Mayo High School where our students with special needs are walking through the halls with their heads up looking for their buddies to give high fives. Our students with special needs there at Mayo High School are going to homecoming. We had a group of about 40 to 50 students who went to homecoming this year. Our students are getting involved with a club every Thursday morning. We've had unified classes. We bring them on
011field trips, but it's not just impacting our students with special needs. It's impacting our gened students as well. And I know as a school district, it's important to the reading, writing, and math are really important, but just as important is learning how to love and serve and care for other people. And this program is meeting that need like you wouldn't believe. We have people across the district are asking, "How do we get this at our school? How do we get this at our school?" And up until this point, it's been mail and we're slowly branching it out to try to get it to more schools. And we realize that this is an opportunity for you guys to become aware of what it is. And hopefully we can also get your support as we attempt to
012grow this throughout the district realizing the impact it's had here. So we're going to start with a quick video that uh was produced back in the coified together all different backgrounds, ages, abilities together. [Music] The unifi brings in the general education students with the special education students. And our whole goal is all about relationships. We're building relationships. >> So, it provides uh that greater gened experience but in a more manageable dose for kids in my classroom because sometimes when there are a lot of kids, it's overwhelming. So, when they come to us, it's in a safer environment that we're familiar with. So, we really can enjoy activities together and have a shared experience. >> Unified is designed to create a community of acceptance and inclusion for students with and without special needs. We currently do
013that through a wide variety of means, including at this time offering both unified art and unified physical education classes. >> I think unified is a great place to, you know, just meet so many new people and maybe even see some old faces and I think it's just a great way to get together with the entire student body. >> Something a sculpture. >> So, a sculpture doesn't have to be made out of clay. A sculpture could be made out of paper. Unified art is this class that came to us a couple years ago. I come in and the students are chattering with each other. They're coming together. Um whether they're a student who has special needs or a student who's a general ed, you would not know in that classroom because they're all interacting with each
014other as if they're interacting with their best friends. They're all learning about each other and how to communicate with each other. [Applause] right arm, left arm. >> We're building relationships in a PE setting. So, we're doing all those super great PE activities, team skills, team activities, team sports, individual movement, fitness, all that stuff, but we sprinkle it in heavily with relationships. And we're working on behavior skills, social skills, and a lot of social emotional learning like how am I going to react if I lose this game or um how can I maybe use five finger breathing if I'm getting worked up about something. It's all about peer um leadership skills, just gaining all this friendship. I enjoy being involved in Unifi. I have lots of friends and I get to hang out, do lots of
015activities. >> Every school needs the type of culture that we've built here at Mayo and the environment that we've created at Mayo is so strong because we have unified programs and a lot of other schools just don't really have that. >> I I saw a quote one time that said something like um you learn more about someone through an hour of play than a year of conversation. And I don't think that's exemplified anywhere else like better than unified. >> You get a little glimpse of it here. But uh in order to exemplify it even more even more, I brought a couple people who have been integral to h making this program happen. We'll start with Andrea Bacon here to my right. Andrea was there from day one when it first started and she is our
016adapted PE teacher. She's the one who's helped unified PE take off here in the district and uh her vision and passion for it is compared to no other. >> Thanks Colin. Um sorry I got emotional in there. One of our former students was in there >> who just recently passed away. Jonathan Gonzalez Lo Young man in there that was in there with glasses. He was why we do what we do. the impact Unified had for him, it it changed his high school experience like you wouldn't believe. He scooted through those halls and everyone knew Jonathan. >> Everyone knew Jonathan. >> So, >> he always put my chocolate his chocolate milk on my on my uh cart. >> Anyway, so um I wasn't expecting that. Um yeah, so um in some capacity I have um done
017some sort of unified um at Mayo. Um I was trying to look back on Skyward and I was like okay well it gives me back about 2011 and um within that time range I've had about 125 um general education students come through the program and um at the end of the semester I always ask for their feedback and the most common feedback I get from them is that it's their favorite class that they've had um in their whole high school career. Um and a lot of them come back and um take it again. Uh the student that I was going to bring with today, but he couldn't come. Um he's in his third semester of it. I can't shake him. But um they just love it. They'd rather do it than um take um like
018an open hour or whatever. Um but it is it's about relationships. Um it's an environment where everyone um feels safe. They feel loved. They It's completely I know I'm going to come in here and have a good time. Um my date students, I always have a group of them that they run. They literally run into the gym because they're so excited to see their unified friends and it it it like Colin said, it branches out. It just doesn't stay in the gym. It goes out into the hallway, into homecoming, everywhere. And you know when these kids are um with their gened friends out in the hallway like the student I was going to bring he's on a soccer team so his soccer friends see that that oh he's hanging out with him so that's cool
019you know and it just it's just like a domino effect but it's really amazing and I just babble but thank you for having us. >> We're going to go back one slide there just uh if you don't mind if um looking at these pictures here the impact that it's had. Yeah, we see the large groups and we got the polar plunge that we bring to all the three high schools now. But the photo that means the most to me is the little boy who's sitting there shooting a basketball. Okay, it's quiet. There's no there's not a crowd cheering him on. But that's one of our gened students who quietly comes alongside and builds that relationship to be able to make that shot. And that is the quiet essence of what Unified is. Yeah, it's great
020when we have the big stuff, but it's those moments when they take it on themselves. You'll see a couple, you know, our prom pictures there, things like that. Those moments are great, but it's that personal one-on-one relationships that's transformed that high school experience for both of those individuals in that photo. We're going to turn now to a couple of our student leaders. Uh this if you want a poster child for Rochester public schools, these are the two that you want right there. Um their heart and compassion is unbelievable and you need to hear how this has maybe impacted their high school experience and their lives as a whole. >> Okay, I guess I can go first. My name is Violet Hallum. I'm a junior at obviously, but I was asked to say like how Unified
021has changed my life and how it's affected and I was thinking about it. I was like, how do I even pick one? Like Unified has like my life before Unified, it was fine. But like after it's there's just been so many ways that it's just affected and just like created me into the person that I am today because of it. And I think a couple of I'll just give a couple examples, but it's allowed me to step outside of my comfort zone. Like before high school, I was very shy. I didn't really talk to very many people. But coming to Unified, I or coming to May High School and then realizing that I should join Unifi Club, I was able to step outside of my comfort zone and realize that I can focus on other
022people instead of myself. And when I serve other people, I'm able to, you know, grow and these other people are able to see that I'm here for them, right? And it gives a relationship for them and me. And some of these kids are just like my favorite people in the entire world, right? They're just like the most genuine and pure people in the entire world and they will just love you. And you just when you realize that and realize that you can step outside of yourself and just serve other people. I think that's something that's really important that I've learned at Unified. And I think that other people are able to see that too that you know you don't have to be you don't have to fit into a mold to be loved, right? you
023can be different and it's the people the different people that build up everything that creates unified and you know that's that's what I love about unified. >> Thank you Penny. What do you got? >> Okay. Well, I'm Penny Hower. I'm also a junior at Mayo and I feel like our Unifi journey started off with like it was like the club fair in our freshman year and we saw this like club with like a lot of music and some games like at a table. We were like okay. And then so we went to our first unified club and it was like maybe like 20ish people. But like we just like we kept going and then two years later we're co-presidents of it and it's just it's changed me into such a different person. Like same thing
024with Violet. Like I I moved here like pretty like recently like when we were in freshman year and I like didn't talk to a lot of people. I didn't grow up with these people in my school and but I feel like Unified has just made me like connect with so many more people both gened and special ed and like those those kids are so funny and they're so like they're so awesome and like they're such good friends and they're so pure and like I if even if my week has been going terrible or something like terrible happens like I know that like Thursday mornings like it'll it'll be okay like everyone leaves with a smile on their face like everyone Everyone says they have a good time and I didn't prepare anything for this. I
025just it's made me a better person. Like I'm able to find those people that I've seen at Unifi Club. Maybe I don't remember their name because I'm really bad at that. But like I'll see them, I'll say hi or like we'll sit with them at lunch or we'll find them at homecom like we go to homecoming and prom with them. like um or I'll see graduated ones that like I'll see him like I saw one of our graduated students at Panera and I was like, "Oh, Jonah, what's up?" And um it just like I feel like a like a nicer, kinder person. I just I it's helped me with relationships with special needs kids and like general ed students. Like just being able to love everyone and just like giving benefit of the doubt and
026just like being a good friend for anyone who needs it. And I think Unifi's been a giant help with that. And I don't want to graduate because I don't want to leave it. And >> we can make that happen. >> Let's do it. >> No, we can't. >> History class. >> We'll see how macro goes. But yeah, it's just I I love it and I would be such a different person without it. But I'm glad of the can't talk. I'm I'm glad I'm the person I am now. And I know it's because of Unified. >> We have one final person who wished to speak and that was Sawyer. But Sawyer plays for the Raiders and the Raiders have a huge game tonight in Dakota which if you consider like the Yankees a major Dakota's like
027you want to beat them. So Sawyer's like what do I do? I said you go beat Dakota please. But Sawyer created a little video and he wanted to share that with you. We'll hit play here and then we'll wrap it up. >> Hi Rochester School Board. I'm Sawyer Hansen in ninth grade at Mayo High School and I'm part of the unified program. >> And my name is Bart Hansen. I'm Sawyer's dad and uh we are so ecstatic that he's part of the unified team and it's made this transition to high school amazing. And what are the things you like most about the unified team? >> We play games, eat breakfast, play games, and you can see friends and You can go to the homecoming dance. We eat pizza. Um, take pictures and dance. >> And
028the the group is made up of tremendous adults, but even more amazing students. They include Sawyer and make things a reality, like going to the homecoming dance, which he would not have done without the unified club. >> Go mail. All right. So, we'll wrap up and I wrap it up with this. >> We are looking to grow the program into other high schools. Right now, we're working strongly with John Marshall and Century. We're working to try to get into more elementaryaries and middle schools. And in all honesty, we're going to need the entire school board's support in helping make that happen because we realize the impact that it's having not only our gened students, our special ed students, but also their families. Okay? We want to transform the lives of students beyond reading, writing, math
029skills. We want them to when they go to the grocery store and get their groceries bagged, might maybe someone with special needs, that they take the time to learn that person's name, that they take the time to say hello to the person, they start to learn that value of that character while they're in high school. And Unified has done that. So, you're all going to be receiving an invitation from Penny and Violet to join us for Unified Club. We would openly invite you guys to come Thursday mornings. We do unified club. We do unified classes. We do unified events. But our club, you're going to hear us before you walk in the doors of our high school. You're going to hear the music. And when you see it, we're going to be spread out the
030halls. We're going to be throwing axes, bean bags, flying drones. We're going to be doing race cars. We're going to be doing Uno. You will lose in Mario Kart if you show up. But we expect you to come and give it your all. And it's okay if you lose at Mario Kart. Nobody will ever tell. But, uh, we would invite you to come experience it firsthand so you can see what a difference it's made. Superintendent Pel's been there. He can speak firsthand. He's seen the impact of this program and we'd invite you all to come join us. So, thank you for giving us the opportunity to come and extend the time here just to kind of share the story as we try to grow this throughout the district. >> Okay. >> Oh, thank you. Okay.
031>> Also, tomorrow we're is our unity day. Um, which is we're trying to get everybody to wear orange to promote inclusion for kids with and without special needs. So, if you guys want to join us in wearing orange, we'd really appreciate that. So, you know, it's not a common color, but just Yeah. So, >> any questions before we wrap up? >> Yes. >> What time on Thursday mornings? >> 8:20. >> 820. If you want to get there before the moment of silence, show up at about 8:15, but by 8:20, you're going to be asking, "Do you have any earplugs?" But we'll get you invited. >> Other questions? >> Director Marlor, >> not so much a question, but a observation. Andrea, there's nothing wrong with uh being authentic and so I appreciate the uh emotion you
032show and the passion as I look to you as uh RPS employees. What a blessing. I mean we uh as a board uh superintendent uh those responsible for having hired you and supported you uh you're what makes RPS RPS and the students. Thank you so much for being among those 17,000 stu plus students that we have and because of what you're sharing out the future is very bright. >> Okay. And and to hear you talk about you're looking beyond yourselves or not just at yourselves but you're willing to see perhaps those you didn't previously see before but you see them differently now. That is so important in the world we live in today. So, thank you so much for sharing your stories. >> Oh, director. >> Well, uh, thank you so much for the presentation.
033Thank you also for, uh, clearly stating the the opportunity to do more in our district. I I I have four kids um in RPS and it is so easy for me to imagine um really all of my kids enjoying a program like this both as um gened students and as uh and and for some of them you know as as part of the um unified group. Um I I I'm just struck by this program that started at the on the initiative of a student and goes back to at least 2011 according to um uh the Skyward records, right? Um >> well considered a TA at the time >> and is still so obviously driven by student leadership. So I I guess my question for the co-presidents here high schools I know it seems like a
034long time but it's actually so brief and to have maintained that studentdriven leadership required a lot of handing over of the torch to make this culture sustained at Mayo among the students. I just if I could ask you to reflect quickly on how that has been done. How is it that each group of upper classmen that have seen the value in this program have passed that torch of leadership on to the next set? Could could you offer any reflections on what has made that work at Mayo for the last over 10 years? >> Yeah, so obviously there's something special about Unified Club and I think that's probably what drives it. There's something there that's not in like and I was talking to Mr. Thomas the other I was looking at like all the posters and
035you know the school of all the different clubs like marine biology club or carb club or all the different types of clubs but unified club is a club where everybody can go to like these different clubs only if you're interested in that or only if you apply to fit in this certain mold then you can go to that club but unified club everybody goes to that club right and I think that's something special about it and this year we've started doing more leadership so I guess in the past we haven't done as organized leadership but this year we've started like with different groups so we have like social media team and we have, you know, a new member coordinator team that like check up with the new members and like invite them back. And so
036I think that's been helpful and, you know, having giving everybody something to do and having everybody help and and I think that's been good to have all the tasks be handed over and stuff. >> Congratulations. >> Thank you. >> Well, thank you very much and the honor is welld deserved. Um, I think one of the most important things you do is you make students who may have been invisible visible >> and not just there but part of your lives and that is a um selfless and um lesson that we all can learn from you. We appreciate your efforts, your long term um and we'll see you Thursday mornings. >> You got that. >> We're on it. We're on it. >> All right. Thank you guys very much. >> If you ever have any follow-up questions,
037feel free to send me an email at any time. >> We will. >> A round of applause, please. >> Yes. Thank you. [Applause] >> The next item on our agenda is a recognition of National School Bus Safety Week. This is a great opportunity to review for our community some key reminders. When a school bus When a school bus's red lights are flashing and the stop arm is extended, drivers must slow down and come to a complete stop. This is not a suggestion. It's the law. Yellow flashing lights indicate the bus is preparing to stop or load or unload children. This is when motorists should begin to slow down and prepare to stop their vehicles. Motorists may begin moving only when the red flashing lights are turned off, the stop arm is withdrawn, and the bus
038begins to move. Drivers are also reminded to respect the school bus loading and unloading areas called the danger zone. Specifically, this is any side of the bus where the bus driver can't see the child and therefore the child is in the most danger. School bus riders and their parents and caregivers rely on the other drivers on the road to follow the law and keep everyone safe. Slow down and be aware of school buses and children gathering at bus stops as you travel the area's roads. Our next item is board member updates. Does any board member have updates from committees or any events or other information to share? Director Marvin. Uh this morning our student school board members, our high school student uh school board members met in this room. Uh we had about 30 representatives.
039These kids are chosen by their high schools to represent their student body. Um and we began the day. Sarah Louise Henry is the uh staff person who um the heart and soul of this operation. Uh we started today with Dr. Pel who came in and met with the students and reviewed uh 10 of the initiatives that our board and our district is uh looking at this year and asked them to discuss those explain to them what what they involve to discuss those and then determine which ones they think that the student voice might have the most impact on. which ones were they the most interested in really studying and getting involved with this year. Uh we talked about the difference between student counselor student government which is very important and every high school has a
040group of kids who kind of organize events at their high school and student school board which operates with the school board and on district issues. Uh from now on, luckily there will be a student here giving the report uh about what happened rather than me. But um these are amazing young people and uh Sarah Louise and I and uh the superintendent really look forward to working with them this year. >> Any other reports? Anybody else want to report on our skip visit to John Adams? Nope. My turn. Okay. So, we had our uh skip um visit to John Adams Middle School uh last last week and um again, it was a great opportunity for us to see um the strategy that John Adams is using to implement its goals. They shared with us their um
041school continuous improvement plan and we visited a number of classrooms um and also we we visited a resource room. I have to make sure I have it right there. Pause. den and um a student can ask to um visit the pause den if they're feeling um overwhelmed or if they feel they they need a break. But what I really appreciated with the approach is they have to like give a specific reason and how they're feeling when they first arrive. And then they also survey them on what do they use when they're there. Do they sit and talk to someone? Do they listen to music? Do they do they do a puzzle? Do they do coloring? What is it that they sort of seek out to, you know, address whatever issue that they're having so that
042they know that they have what the students really want to to help them in the space? And it was also a great warm and welcoming space that I'd be happy to go to in any middle of the day when I'm having a moment. Um, but again, we got to see the dedication of the teachers um and the excitement of the students. Um, we had students working on a Zello project. Um, we had students in one class who were working on a budgeting project, uh, where they were down to their last $,000 and they had to figure out, um, whether they were going to seek out a job or how they were going to budget, um, to get, you know, over this hump. And it just showed the different kinds of teaching and learning that's happening.
043Um, so these monthly skip visits just continue to show how committed our schools are to our continuous improvement plan and what they're doing to make them happen. So, Dr. Um, I'd like to add on to that because I was part of that skip visit as well. And what I really took away is we visited um, one of the reading specialists and I think where it made the most impact for me is that with the district doing the multi-ter systems of support, we could really see that in action in that classroom and how it helps the students directly. So that initiative I think is and seeing that in I one of the reason I wanted to go to John Adams is to see how that was working in our literacy development in the middle school level
044at the secondary level now that it's rolling out there and it was important to see u that it's very effective um that that was so impressive. The one thing I did take away though is that it hadn't even dawned on me that the students in middle school who need help with reading they really struggle with finding books that are relevant to them but at their reading level. So that was just eye opening to me that I didn't even think through that that um you know they don't want little kids books. They want things that are interesting to them and that that's a challenge. So if anyone has resources or ideas to add to that I think that would be helpful. Um I also saw that it was um one of the things the principal said
045to us is that the way that they did get resources for the books that they are using in there is through the redesign of the of the um balanced budget model that they have resources now they wouldn't necessarily have had to dedicate to something that was so important for that room to have things that are attractive to those students and and those dollars are being used wisely at John Adams. So good to see all those things fitting together. And I also wanted to talk about um I know director Marvin and I uh attended I don't know if any other board members attended on the other days but we've been participating in helping students at JM prepare for their uh pitch day. So in a class there uh groups of students who are developing business plans
046and business models for a business that they today at the Chateau Theater did their final pitch to the judges and I understand that some winners were chosen but I don't know who they who they were but it was great. I got to go two out of the three weeks and um we were their coaches on their ideas and their presentations, their powerpoints, um their graphics, you know, whatever. And it was just great to see the evolution over the two weeks. And you know, these kids were getting like three or four coaches right in a row. Who knows if we were all telling him the same thing, but uh they they sat interacted with us, talked to us, and it was funny because um at the opening of the pitch day today, one of the teachers
047was talking to the kids and said, you know, your judges are here. And you know, sometimes adults, they don't they don't really know uh they're not necessarily comfortable talking to high school students. You know, they're they you know, they're not they're not used to it. Let me tell you, these high school students made it comfortable to talk to them. They all did such a great job with their final pitches today. Um, and it was really exciting to see how invested they were um, in sticking with it. I asked one of them today uh, if if they were going to be glad that all of the stress was over and they said, "Yep, they're going to take a nap eighth hour because they're going to be glad that this is over because it was a lot
048of work." So, congratulations to all of them and to the the teachers for putting this on. This is a really great event every year. >> And apologies to the eighth hour teachers. >> Yes. All right. Our next agenda item is our consent agenda, items 5.1 through 511. Um, 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. Any opposed? The consent agenda has been approved. Our next agenda item is our focus topic, attendance, data, and initiatives update. Superintendent Pau. >> Thank you, Chair Nathan and board members. I see uh number of my colleagues coming on up, so I'll give them a moment to join us.
049Um this presentation is one that um I think you've seen previews of in a number of other uh board meetings in which the other work that we're doing is obviously and powerfully influenced by the degree to which students are in school and in class. Um and so this is a overview of a work in progress that we're going to get a vision of from both the central office level and from two schools. The interesting thing about this presentation just board members to be really transparent. I have a number of colleagues who uh as superintendent who I don't think would schedule a presentation at a board meeting with content this detailed because the concern to be candid is that you are a governance board and you uh set the direction for the district at the policy
050level and as you're going to see this presentation that we're going to hear goes way down into the details. I personally disagree with the idea that you can be the governing board of the school district and not get down into the details. Um, I've always been very uh aware that this board while being very versed in the specifics as we just heard about from the directors who talked about our skip visits uh is aware of the details uh you always uh at least in my experience um make your decisions at that policy level. Um there was a colleague superintendent who I talked about this a while back and he said what you want is a board who are crop dusters. What does that mean? They're flying up here where they're making the decisions but they
051dip way down close to the field to learn what's really going on but they pull back up as opposed to getting so deep into what is our job as um administrators and teachers and others. So, as I was talking um with Angie McAnnandrews about this presentation and the work that she's been leading since uh she joined our central office team, I said, "Yep, it's time to let the board see the complexity of the specifics and then it's time to have some leaders from our building levels who are going to help us understand how it plays out." I do so with the confidence that you've already made the policy decision to include consistent attendance as one of the performance measures that will drive our school improvement plans and that will drive our new strategic plan. So
052you've voted for this unanimously as a critical priority for the next at least three to four years in Rochester public schools. So this is a snapshot of the specifics. So let me turn it over to you to introduce yourselves to the board and then take us down into those weeds. >> Yeah, thank you for having us tonight and for being interested in learning more about the topic of attendance because it's certainly something we've invested a lot of time in uh the last couple years. Um and thank you so much to these two colleagues for joining. I asked them to be here um representing uh their schools but also a variety of perspectives. They've both been very involved in attendance for a very long time um at the elementary, middle, and high school level. So, do
053you guys want to introduce yourselves just to make sure everybody knows who you are? Hello everyone. I'm Angela Rogers. I'm one of the assistant principles at John Marshall. >> And I'm Craig Schneider, assistant principal at Jefferson Elementary. >> And Craig also served as assistant principal and oversaw attendance at Kellogg, who is the middle school perspective, too. So can um speak to any questions that you might have when we get finished with our presentation. And Mona challenged me to make sure that I did not extend beyond 15 minutes. So I'm going to do a really good job in that right now. Um all right. So, I felt like the most important thing to do was to start in uh with some definitions because I think especially as um chronic absenteeism becomes kind of a buzz across
054the nation. Um there's confusion. I think that that confusion was highlighted for us a couple weeks ago when we sent our first uh text message to families and there was some confusion about what was being reported and what wasn't being reported in that messaging and I'll get to that in just a little bit. Um but the definitions we felt like were important for you to consider. The first is um average daily attendance and this is the total days or periods that a student is in attendance divided by the number of days that they are enrolled. Um and I think that when we think of attendance this is kind of what our brain defaults to. But that's actually not how consistent attendance is defined. So consistent or consistent attendance is defined as a student who is
055present for more than 90% of the time. So student is consistently attending if they attend more than 90%. This is true of excused and unexcused absences and the importance in that is that um we see that students whether they're excused or not are missing out on important learning um and that impacts their future successes. And so um whether excused or not uh 90% is the target. And for perspective um I believe we have 168 student days. So that would mean a student could miss up to 16.8 eight days of school and still be consistently attending. So, that by no means is perfect attendance. It definitely has allowances for vacations and illnesses and things like that. 16.8 days at the end of a school year seems like a lot of time for a student to be
056out of school. Um, but that would be 90% if they attended um all but 16.8 days. Chronic absenteeism is the reverse of that. So students who are attending less than 90% of the time or missing more than 10% of the time excused or unexcused. Um and again those are both included because they impact uh student success. Truency I think is what we uh typically people kind of default to thinking about truency when they're considering um chronic absenteeism. Um but truency is unexcused absences or absent without good reason by definition. We actually have two codes in Rochester public schools that are considered truent codes and those would be um unexcused absences and then we have a special code that is the M code. Um and M stands for missed significant instruction that actually was born at
057the secondary level um even prior to COVID. It's been around for quite some time. It was really kind of the function of um communicating when students were in class for some portion of time but had missed a significant amount of class. Um and so that is defined at the secondary level as kids who miss more than five minutes of class but they were there at some point during the period whereas unexcused would be not attending a class at all. That is actually the M code is actually now used at the elementary level um and that is new this year. And that was a conversation that we had with elementary principles trying to identify if that was a priority for them or not. And they felt like it was a more accurate way to represent attendance
058by including M as a code that they would use. And then it's also important to note that there are two different ways that we count attendance in Rochester public schools. At the elementary level, um because kids are typically with the same teacher throughout the day, they have what they consider two attendance periods, morning and afternoon. And we have set the definition as um morning being the time before lunch and afternoon as being the time after lunch. Um so if a student is gone in the morning they would be attending 50% of the day or if they're gone in the afternoon 50%. Whereas at the secondary that attendance is calculated by period. That will vary a little bit from school to school depending on how the schedule is created. So for example Dakota has a schedule
059that has block scheduling this year. So their period structure looks a little different than maybe at JA. Um and JM has you know different number of periods but generally speaking six, seven or eight periods depending on how their schedule's constructed. Then we thought maybe it would be important just to give you kind of an overview of the state of attendance. Um so I thought I would start at the nation like kind of across the nation then at the state level and then what is true for us here in Rochester public schools. So across our nation, there are kind of three big causes of chronic absenteeism. Um wellness concerns, uh barriers that are not just student barriers, but family barriers and then um issues that students encounter with the school environment. So for wellness, physical health,
060but also mental health, and I think that is a consideration that we see quite frequently here in Rochester public schools and sometimes access to care. Although I think um we have a lot of different ways for students to have some of those wellness um those wellness needs met in uh Rochester barriers including poverty, transportation, food insecurity, family responsibilities and student mobility and then the school environment. Um not only disengage but not feeling safe or comfortable or a sense of belonging with their school. I think a lot of times right now the conversation kind of defaults to well prior to the pandemic um and I I think that there were um I think we've recovered from a lot of the preandemic kinds of things but I thought that it was important to this conversation to at
061least acknowledge that there are post-pandemic factors uh that may or may not attribute to some of our um our consistent attendance issues. So there's a number of them listed there, but specifically some of them that we would see would be um some of the engagement issues or some avoidance um and then some of the stamina that kids experience too. In Minnesota, obviously this is a concern because we were one of 12 districts that was selected for a state pilot and the state recognizes that this is a concern. And the idea of the legislative pilot was um there aren't really great solutions and there isn't really a great answer for how we address the chronic absenteeism issues. And so the legislature has charged 12 districts to try some things and see what we might identify as
062reasonable strategies that will move the needle in terms of consistent attendance. Um with those 12 districts, we have monthly collaboration. We also have a few of them that we have developed um pretty good partnerships with just sharing ideas and troubleshooting things that we're experiencing locally specifically um Northfield and then district 191 that's Burnsville Egan Savage and so we have a pretty close working relationship with those two districts just to share ideas um and then we also have received a lot of support not just from the department of education and compass but also from the University of Minnesota uh the Minneapolis Foundation Ed Allies which is a advocacy organ organization and a few other um groups that we have been communicating with pretty regularly just trying to learn from one another and to figure out is
063are things that we're seeing unique to Rochester or there things that we can learn from other partners. So when we consider kind of the national and the state themes um we want to identify what are the things that maybe we experience locally here in Rochester and I would say of the things that I shared in the previous two slides these are the I these are the themes that we really see here in Rochester most prominently. I think in a lot of cases when you would look up um what types of things impact truency um and chronic absenteeism a lot of schools would identify transportation. We don't really see that in terms of um the students that we have not attending school regularly. And so that would be that would kind of be a set us
064apart from other districts and their experiences. We see more mental health, family responsibilities, taking care of kids, working to help provide for the family, uh student mobility, um disengagement, and then misconceptions about the impact of attendance. And by that I mean parents not understanding um really what the outcome is or what the um what the negative outcome could be for a student who doesn't attend regularly. And then post-pandemic wise we really see that mental ha health and academic gaps have led to decreased stamina avoidance and decreased engagement. We started our work last year pretty intensely um with some systems work and one of the things that we focused on was cleaning up some coding. Um we did an initial round of uh kind of simplifying our codes in December over the winter break last year
065and then we did another cleanup in June. Um and that was mostly a function of wanting to make sure that our data from last year was a really clean baseline for us. Um, there was a new legislation introduced last spring that um really clarified that anytime students are being supervised or instructed by people that we pay as a district um that kids should be exempt from that counting against their consistent attendance rate. And that was not something that was in place before. So, for example, in the past, if a student was um working in a restorative circle with a group of kids that they had a conflict with, they would be counted out of class, and that would count against their consistent attendance rate. Now, that's considered exempt. So, we have added this S code
066that says they were staff supervised at the time that they participated in that that activity, and so that does not count against their consistent attendance rate. And that's new across the state of Minnesota, but we felt like it was important for us to go back and correct our data before we had our year-end report so that the baseline from this last year would be comparable as we move forward, especially because we have to report our numbers to the legislature twice a year. Um, and make sure that they see what our progress is based on those pilot funds. Um, so we went back and we made all those conversions in June by adding the S code. And then we wanted to just be sure that we were real clear about which codes were excused, unexcused or
067exempt. Um, in Minnesota there's quite a variation in terms of codes and how those are interpreted at the state level. Um and so Kate Marorrow who is our uh attendance and truency coordinator, she she is also participating in the state advisory committee um trying to provide some guidance to legislature the legislature and to the department of education about these codes um and calculations. Um then we looked at calculations for consistent attendance. Um and uh we've talked a lot about day versus period. um making sure that we're aligned. Elementaryaries are calculated the same as secondaries. Um we had uh Peter Kristofferson, our data warehouse manager, has created dashboards that have helped us identify current um attendance data kind of at our fingertips instead of generating long PDF uh reports from Skyward that were really cumbersome and
068uh created some inefficiencies in our buildings. And then um we problem have problem solved some things like kids who have multiple enrollments and we were getting weird reporting things uh for kids maybe they're at CEK and Century and so their attendance was kind of being misreported there or kids that have some unique programs programming like they're at Fernick Fernbrook for part of a day and then enrolled for part of a day and there were lots of those kinds of situations that never we've we've never really spent the time looking at so work to clean those up. Also with calculations, it's important to note that the um report the state report card that's um that's posted on the Department of Education website um and often referred to as the Northstar calculations or the North Northstar reporting.
069Um it it has a year delay for consistent attendance data. So when you look at the report card right now, it shows you MCA data from just this last school year 2425. But when they updated the attendance data the same time they updated the MCA data, that's actually a year older. So that data just shows 2324 data right now. Um, and so it's hard sometimes to be able to make those comparisons. Also, there is not a standardization of how schools code or calculate their attendance. They just report what they report and that's what is calculated into the Northstar rate. So, we're also providing guidance on that at the state advisory committee level. For this uh for the 2425 school year, we were making sure that we had some standardization across our buildings. Um, and Angie
070and Craig will be able to speak to their attendance teams. We have a handbook that has kind of standardized processes for all buildings so that there's one place to go to have a consistent answer about how things how we respond to things attendance-wise. um the Mstead County partnerships. We really have depended a lot on the partnerships with not just the county but also the county attorney's office and those relationships have been very important to us. Um we've worked together to clarify procedures and share feedback about what our data tells us and what it doesn't tell us about uh how well our truency processes are working. Um, and then, uh, Kate and I specifically have been doing a lot of learning, uh, reading, attending workshops, presenting at some workshops, a book study between the district, the
071county, and Three Rivers Restorative Justice, and then sharing ideas with other thought partners. So, here's some data for you to look at, but I just want to caution you that um, some of this is the Northstar calculation. So what is um posted on the Department of Education website, but because that data is delayed a whole year, the most recent data is something that's in-house calculated. So that might be something that when it's reported later, we might see some slight adjustments in that. So this first calculation, you can see Rochester is the blue and then U Minnesota average is the orange and then the internal calculation for last year was the TW 64.9%. So that means 64.9% of our students attended more than 90% of the time. That's that consistent attendance rate piece. When we look
072at that consistent attendance rate for free and reduced eligible students, you can see the numbers here. Rochester compared to the state average. And again, we don't have this calculation. One of the things that we are working on is a local dashboard that would be able to compare same days and times so that we would be able to see these numbers pretty accurately for last year, but we do not have that at our fingertips right now. These are numbers for students who are um serviced with IEPs in their buildings. This is attendance rates for multilingual learners. And then I apologize for the print on this particular this particular slide. Uh but I feel like the graphical representation is probably the most important thing. These are side by side ethnicities and it's uh RPS compared to Minnesota
073in each of those categories. So you can see the ethnicities listed across the bottom. The last one is other indigenous peoples and that was a um ethnicity code that was just added a year ago which is the reason that we don't see the data for 2122 or 2223. So our current action we've spent a lot of time talking about social norm theory. One of the things that I did last fall was spend a lot of time learning from a organization called everyday labs and they have uh spent a lot of time creating what they call nudges. um and that is like uh sending notifications or reminders to parents about what their child's attendance rate is and why it's important. And so we have started that this year. Social norm theory is the idea that behaviors
074are influenced by the perceptions that we have about what's typical. And a lot of times our families don't have anything to compare it to because they only have a couple kids um and they don't understand in the grand scheme of thing how how their child's attendance compares. So, we've used this idea of social norm theory for a few different things. Um, and so, um, some of the tier one things that we've done this year, communication, just trying to illustrate the importance of attendance to families. Um, we gathered feedback from our interpreters with the help of U. Miguel Benjamin twice last spring, just trying to understand uh, what the gaps are that we have, especially for our families that have communication gaps with our buildings. Um, we sent a July newsletter to families and gave them
075last year in review so they could see their child's consistent attendance rate for the whole year. Last year we did a fall training with administrators and clerical staff sent to back to school newsletter and then have started monthly text messages. Um, the elementary calculations are again calculated by half day and then secondary by period. Um, and we've established the social norm or the attendance norm for what is consistent attendance in a child's building. Um, I think we had, you guys could probably attest to this too, but there were quite a few phone calls after we sent our initial text message. I think that we were thinking that our communication in July and then again in August was enough to set the stage for those text messages, but in hindsight, that probably wasn't enough. So, we'll
076be doing a little extra communication to give parents a heads up on what that data means when they get it. Uh, in the next month, um, we have actually implemented talking points, attendance lines in all of our buildings so that there's two-way communication in a pair a family's preferred language, which has been awesome. We've gotten a lot of great feedback, not just from families, but also from our clerical staff about the ease of that program. And then we have a weekly cross department collaboration with our technology department and with our data folks so that we're all on the same page of making sure that we're providing accurate information to our buildings as quickly as possible. Um we have building dashboards underway and district dashboards that are are still evolving. And then we have some policy
077alignment that we have coming up at some point in the not too distant future. So Kathy, I'll be connecting with you on that. Um, here's some more data for you to take a look at. This graph is by grade, but please note that kindergarten is at the bottom and there was not a way for any of us to figure out how to get that in a different order. So, but blue and green indicate indicates consistent attendance. Um, we we identify these a little bit differently. The green is 90 to 95% attending and 96 to 100 is blue. The idea would be the kids that are in the green are the ones who are maybe getting close to that level. So, we just want to keep an eye on on those rates. And the kids that
078are in the red are the ones who are very uh very chronically absent. Um here's another graph. This is a building specific graph. And um the way that this dashboard works, uh buildings can just click on the 95 number and that will populate a list of who those 95 kids are so that they have that at their fingertips instead of sorting through Skyward reports for that information. Um, this is another building. This is a middle school specifically. I did uh Oh, no, that one isn't updated. There was a disconnect, I think, Kathy, that you had noted, but um that update's not on here. So, um and then when when buildings get these reports, they basically can sort by any type of metric they want. So if they want to look at just kids who are
079unexcused, just kids who are chronically tardy, kids who have the consistent attendance rate issues, kids who are excelling and they want to be able to honor that in celebration, that's also right at their fingertips. Um then for tier 2 interventions, Kate is working closely with Willie Typton on um trying to prevent our 15-day drops. And those are by law we have to drop students after 15 consecutive days of absence. I think that initially was like a financial uh safety net for um the state. So we are not collecting funding on kids that we're not educating. Uh but that sometimes feels pretty aggressive to families that their child is getting dropped when maybe they're dealing with things at home. So we've tried to communicate that that's not that's not optional. Um and that we're required to
080do that. Part of the way that they're doing that is doing outreach with the building and then with um families at the 10day mark so that we try to do that before we get to the 15. I already talked a little bit about the partnership with our county and that has been great. We actually have uh at the secondary level we have truency summits in June, July and August. Um and then we meet quarterly during the school year just to make sure that we're calibrated and provide feedback to one another. Um, we've never done that at the elementary before, but that will be starting uh next week or the week after. We'll be starting with our first uh elementary collaboration. So, we're excited about that. We surveyed elementaryaries and said, "Would that be beneficial?" And
081I think 95% of them said, "Yes, please arrange those meetings." So, we're excited to get that underway. Another thing that we're doing through our pilot is the freshman on track program. Um, and we have four high schools participating, Century, JMO, and the ALC. Um we took a team of 14 people in June to do some grounding and learning on the freshman on track initiative which is essentially just early warning um an early warning system that includes attendance but also behavior and grades. Um and then um we went back in October and did some observation at Chicago public schools to see how this program has been impactful to their graduation rates um by early intervention for 9th grade students. Um the freshman success teams meet twice a month and they have a different similar to the
082um the attendance dashboard but have their own dashboard to help them identify who those kids are. So here's an example of that and this compares consistent attendance rate also with failing course grades. So it's quick and easy for them to identify who those students are. And then I think last but not least is the Uplift program which is um a pilot that we're doing at Kellogg this year. Um Kellogg actually is a grant recipient for restorative practice work through the state. And so that felt like a a easy match for us when we were looking for somebody to pilot this initiative. Um instead of students getting referred to the county when they are truent instead they would get referred a little sooner than um a county referral. So instead of an at 80% consistent attendance,
083they get referred at 84%. So the three rivers has a little bit more time to work with um with families and they do family outreach. Parents have to opt in. They have to sign an agreement that we can share the data about their attendance back and forth. And then they have um it's a nine-week intervention, but six weeks of explicit instruction, some family education, some circles talking about what are the attendance barriers. We'd seen a lot of research that indicated sometimes talking about truency with a neutral party feels a lot safer for kids and families. And so that was kind of where that idea came from with three rivers. And so that is underway. I think at present they have 11 referrals and nine of those 11 families have opted in to participate in that
084program through Kellogg and and three rivers. So that is uh truency and consistent attendance in a nutshell. and we'll take your questions and hopefully Angie and Greg can tackle all those for you. Direct worker. >> So I I have a question on some of these definitions. Um trying to understand that. So consistent attendance is 90% of the time. Um so 16.4 days absent is still within that 90%. Um chronic absenteeism obviously is the inverse of that as you said. >> So my my question comes to the truency absent without good reason. I have several questions. Um absent without good reason. Is that an un any unexcused absence or is there a difference between an unexcused absence that's a good reason versus an unexcused absence that's not a good reason? And then finally um on the
085drop it used to be that truent were considered it was consider considered truency if it was 15 consecutive days that were missed because otherwise if you miss 15 days you're truent but yet the threshold for 90% is 16.4 days. So that the question is around what is good reason since I'm assuming that these are all unexcused versus um Yeah. Do you want to address? >> Yeah. So, parents would call in and for example, their child was ill or they're going to go on a vacation. A lot of those are excused absences and and a lot of comes down to the communication um of the family. They would call in and provide a reason. And then like you talked about unexcused where a family wouldn't call in. And a lot of times our truency teams were
086looking for the number of unexcused absences and trying to find out why that student wasn't in school or wasn't attending school. Um, so that's the excerpt in school and then really narrowing it down. I think now sending out the letters and looking at attendance rates is really helpful because it's narrowing down the amount of excused absences to ensure that students are in school so they're able to learn or receive their education. >> A couple follow-ups. So, if a if a student who is consistently in school um has missed 15 days with excused absences and one unexcused absence, that would still keep them within the consistent range. Correct? Because it says on the on the slide, >> I think it's >> I think there's two different things to consider. So, the 15 consecutive day drop, it
087doesn't matter if it's excused or not. If we have not seen a student and provided education for 15 days, that's a drop no matter what. Um, and the consistent attendance rate counts excused or unexcused. So, if a child was gone for 15 days over the course of the year, even if they were all unexcused, but they attended everything else, yes, they would by the end of the year, they would still be consistently attending. >> So, at what point do they fall into the truent bucket? >> So, below the 90% mark would be chronically absent. and we do truency referrals at the 80% mark. >> Dr. M, when you talked about the program you visited in Chicago and freshman on track um in your presentation, thank you by the way, you mentioned a number of the
088things you do when kids seem to be on the verge of having poor attendance, contacting their parents and that type of thing. Were there other interventions that Chicago used or that you learned about that you're now using here or anticipating using now uh specifically for first year for nth graders? >> I think our freshman on track teams are um working based on whatever the individual student need is. A lot of times that starts out with connecting them with whoever their trusted or preferred adult is to identify what are the things that are not going well. In some cases at uh JM for example um they they are looking at kids who are who are consistently attending but are failing classes that has been a big priority for them and instead of their freshman team looking
089at all of those kids as a sum total um their uh freshman on track uh lead which is Emily Ellson she has been divvying up that data based on what classes kids are failing and then going to PLC's to speak with teachers. So it might be, you know, 11 kids are failing uh English with a particular teacher. So let's provide that list to the teacher and talk about what are the things that you can do and what are the things that maybe somebody else needs to support. Maybe somebody who has a stronger relationship with a student. In some cases, they're doing family outreach. I think what we learn have learned from the University of Chicago is that um it's important to have a really clear system on how we identify kids early and that we
090don't wait for kids to fail classes, but that just like attendance, the intervention and those connections with kids, the need varies wildly between between students and between buildings. And so they are working to figure out what are the things that are producing the best results. and they I think they've only had three freshman on track meetings so far in their buildings. So, we're very very early in the process, but trying to figure out um if the best way is through a PLC, if it's um having counselor, an equity specialist or somebody meet with a student and make those connections to identify what the root problem is. >> Dr. McLaren >> in um my day job in some of the different roles I've played either with young people or with families. The topic of bullying has
091come up in the idea of being absent from school. That didn't seem to come up on any of your slides talking about the reasons. Does that fit into things like the um unsafe conditions or would that be something different? I definitely think that I mean when we talk about disengagement academically and relationally that's a piece of it. Do you want to speak to those here too? >> I think the the overarching most important thing that we can do is making sure that we connect our kids with a trusted adult. And I think if they have that person at school that's the first step into getting them back. So who can who can we talk to? Who can we get them connected with? What are those barriers? It's bullying. What's going on? How can we help
092you so that we can get you back in? It's one class at a time. We'll take that and then we can look at more pieces. Do we need to change your schedule? Do we need you to, you know, have this advisory teacher? Do you need Miss Elson or whatever it might be? So, we're really tailoring tailoring it individually so that we can address what that barrier is to getting them to school. >> So, um when I look And thank you for all this information and data. I think before I start, I want to say to the superintendent's point when we started, I really appreciated that you shared the handbook with us. >> Um because I put a lot of the other things that you had in context, but um and and the handbook is available
093in Simly if anybody wants to read it. But I I think it it really points out that um you we're often called to task for our students test scores, but we we can't help a student learn to read or do math if they're not here. And it was very clear from that handbook that there is absolutely a village that is out there working um to get these get these kids to our schools and then what we're doing internally with the engagement and with the the climate and you know what you just talked about with the trusted adult to to make them make them want want to stay. Um so when I look at the numbers um are most consistent attendance as both excused and unexcused. Um are most of the absences we're looking at unexcused
094or or is there a pattern of you know where where parents are just nope I'm there's just a lot of reasons that parents are giving to keep their kids out of school and they fall into the categories that in our policy right now are excused. I actually asked Kate this afternoon if she could uh quantify this for us so that I could share this with you and then I skipped right over it when I got to that slide. So, at the elementary level, for every 5.4 excused absences, we have one unexcused absence. So, a little more than five to one. At the middle school, for every 3.2 excused absences, we have one unexcused absence. And at the high school level, for every 1.3 excused absences, we have one unexcused. So that varies quite differently at
095different levels. And I think a big piece of that is parent engagement in education. Sometimes the older kids get, the less parents are even aware of their kid is skipping class. Also, it's more likely that a student would be at uh like skipping a class during the day. They're at school but not attending a class. Maybe they can't face the fact that they're very far behind in math class. So they're not going to math class and they might not go for five, six, seven times. And we see those patterns in attendance teams. And then somebody somebody knows to like connect with the kid and and try to figure out what's going on. And sometimes the teachers teaching those classes don't know that the kids are in school otherwise. They're just not coming to their class.
096So I think that um it's pretty telling though that we go from five to three to almost a onetoone at the high school level. Um and you know parents are a lot more engaged at the elementary level and a lot more um in tune to like calling in and reporting oftentimes because if they're keeping their child home for the day, they have to be home also. U but I think that the further the more independent kids get the less the less uh connected to their attendance families get. >> And then you also mentioned the M code. >> Um can you tell us how you know if a student's absent from school for elementary first half the second half the day or the whole day or a period um that you know that's a concrete block
097but how do you handle calculations with the M codes where they may you know have a collection of M's over a series of days. How does that calculate into our days or our consistent attendance calculation? >> Sure. Do you guys each want to talk about what an >> So at um our secondary level, as Angie mentioned before, it's going to be if they were not. So tardy is up to five minutes and then the M would be they attended, but it was not tardy. So they made an appearance. Maybe they came for 20 minutes and then spent some other time in the bathroom or in the hallways or whatever, whatnot. But we when we first implemented the M, the parents were saying, you know, well, my kid says they were there because they were typically,
098you know, they were getting marked inconsistently. Some teachers were saying they were present, some were saying they were you. So, it just gave everybody that same universal platform for saying, well, the kids showed up, but they weren't there the entire time. So it really just gave clarity to the teachers, to the students, to the parents. They're they're attending but not the entire time. So they might be missing the core instruction. They might be missing that's maybe why they're struggling in that class. So it really tells a piece of the story as to what may be going on. >> And at the elementary level, it's that same concept where they're absent for the first five minutes, it's tardy. And then beyond that, it's missing 15. Excuse me. Sorry, I was thinking still middle school. Um, so
099then it's that missing significant instruction. So if they came maybe an hour late, we'd mark them with an M. And then our attendance team is looking at the number of trying to find out why they might be late. So there might be a reason. Transportation was brought up. So that might be one issue or the family is having a hard time waking up in the morning. So we're trying to other interventions like buying an alarm clock for a student for a family is could be a barrier for them. So really looking at when they come and that M can be really helpful for that piece of it. >> We do have one elementary school too because of um well maybe not just one but one that I'm very familiar with that um like they have
100a lot of traffic at the end of the day. So parents like to pick their kids up half hour 45 minutes early. Well instruction goes on till the end of the day. We have a lot of learning that can happen in the last 30 to 45 minutes. And so even at the end of the day, if a kid is picked up without good reason or consistently without good reason, that that would be marked as an M instead of that being excused. If a child's excused, they go to the dentist and they come in an hour late, then that would be marked as excused when they arrive at the elementary level and at the secondary level. U but if they just consistently show up 45 minutes late without any excuse, then that's an M. An M
101is calculated the same way as an unexcused absence. So that it counts as part of their consistent attendance rate. attorney is not at exempt from that calculation. It's still noted in the attendance record, but it's not part of the calculation. >> So if uh doing a better job with coding with the MS by the classroom teacher, is that helping so so if a student is supposed to be in class but is not in class, that means they're potentially elsewhere in the building. So is that helping you to develop other interventions for the people who have to address that student who is outside of that class? Does the data collection help or vice versa or >> Yeah, I I I I really do think so because sometimes it might just be a a single class that
102they're getting the M in. So then we can really dig into what's going on, what can we do? Maybe it's difficult. So, hey, during your advisory, let's go work on your math. That's where you're you're not going a lot of the time. Or it might be um a combination of um a lot of other things. So, I think that M really helps us to figure out what the story is and really hone in on what's going on. Typically, in the high school level, you're going to see I would say overall like more more U's, but if you see the outliers of the M's more often, I think that helps us to really hone in on what we need to to focus on. Dr. Cook. >> Um well, um Miss McAnners, I this question I think
103is for you because I I'm sure that you stepped into this leadership role with uh some um some views on the the causes of uh chronic absenteeism and and what the um potential strategies would be to try to address those. And as you've gone through this and looked at the nudges to establish social norms and I it's just classic University of Chicago stuff that makes a lot of sense. But what have there been have there been surprises um or anything that you weren't expecting? Um because I I certainly have my own ideas, but I I'm just I'd be really curious like what what you've learned uh that you weren't expecting on either the root causes or what types of interventions um seem like they're going to be, you know, most efficacious. >> Well, I h
104I have a couple thoughts. The first is I don't know that there's been anything that's really surprised me. I feel like our buildings all have um good practices in place. I think they all do They individualize as many interventions as they can manage. I think sometimes we have so many kids that are chronically absent that it's hard to intervene for all of them and that feels very frustrating to our buildings because we want to be able to provide that support. I think that was the reason that we pushed so hard for tier one ideas this year because obviously there's the saying in education, you can't intervene your way out of a tier 2 problem. Um, and we definitely have a tier two or tier three chronic absenteeism issue. So, um, but I don't think any
105of that surprises me. I think the things that I experienced as a building principal at Kellogg are very true for all of our secondary buildings, like kids with alopement, walking out of class without permission. A lot of it's attributed to um like peer conflict, uh an inability to uh be regulated and be still and have the stamina to get through a class period. Um not being able to communicate what their needs are. So, they're frustrated. um not you know not having the ability and the skills to be able to perform an academic task. So that feels overwhelming and I can't use my words to explain that. So instead I'm going to walk out. It looks like I I won't do what's happening in class but it's actually that I can't do that. But I think
106that we see the gamut across all of our buildings in very very similar ways. So in that regard that didn't really surprise me at all. Um, I I admittedly I've said this many times, like I had very little to do with attendance when I was at Kellogg unless it was some sort of uh associated with some sort of behavior issue. Um, because we have assistant principles who kind of take that and manage it. And so that was something I think that I think the problem was a lot bigger than I understood um when I stepped into this role. So I think uh Mr. Schneider had done a great job and Mr. Woodman before him when I was the principal at Kellogg in um addressing the chronic absenteeism issue but I think the problem is a
107lot more significant that I even understood even as a building. So that would be the piece that surprised me the most I think. >> Thanks >> Dr. Bar. >> Uh I just wanted to say thank you. Uh the superintendent was correct. We've taken out lowlevel dive and it seems like we're probably ready to go back where we're supposed to be. But it is u I think so important to uh have a working understanding that goes beyond just uh uh terminology, you know, well truent uh unexcused. uh we can now have a better um at least I can understanding what those terms mean uh not just individually but to the district and what we are doing to address them. So so thank you for that and and hopefully uh I would only wonder what can we
108as a board uh perhaps do to uh undergard or support the the effort. >> Uh more specifically uh to the message to the community of of attendance being so important. >> Right. I was going to say exactly that. I think just celebrating the message of um why why we send kids to school, why it's important for them to be here. It's not just so that they can learn math and so that we can intervene if they have a reading deficit, but the social connections, the collaboration experiences that they have. They're ways to uh become resilient and learn how they can bounce back from things that are failures and understand that like there are adults here to help you. There are a lot of reasons that we need kids to be in school, be present, and
109work through the struggles that they have so that we can help prepare them for all the things that they're going to face later in life. And so I think just making sure that you're celebrating that message that their attendance is important. We pro we do amazing things for kids in Rochester public schools every single day. Um and when kids are gone, it's not it's not without some sort of loss to their skill and their future success. >> Dr. um to build on your analogy which I was going to use, I think my crop dusting plane is is so low that it's landed. Um, what if any correlation have you explored between aligning attendance or absences regardless of whether they're excused or not? Because the kid is either there or not there. Um, with test scores,
110with uh reading deficits, with, you know, we want third graders to be um at grade level for reading. How much correlation or maybe you don't have the tools to do this yet. Is there between the absenteeism and those kinds of uh data results that we're looking for? >> That's actually exactly where the consistent attendance rate um the target of 90% comes from. I mean, there's a lot of research to support at the elementary kids are less likely to read by grade level. At the middle school, they're less likely to be successful and especially in their core content areas and they're ultimately less likely to graduate on time if they attend less than 90%. And so that's what we've been communicating to families that that that's paramount to this concern is that it's not just that
111they miss school, but there are al ultimately greater losses that they experience down the road if they're not consistently attending. And that 90% mark is not unique to Rochester public schools. that is um roided in research that is used by everyday labs by attendance works by um by be at school you know a variety of different organizations that really focus a lot on the research behind consistent attendance. So looking at at the the the easy to look at graphs comparing Rochester with the state of Minnesota then um if we're looking at the consistent attendance overall then we would ex would we expect our u rates of proficiency to be around that 64 65%. >> You would have to talk with Dr. Ruck about making that I don't know that's not I mean, I think if
112kids aren't there, they they're not learning what they need to be learning. And so in order for them to be learning, to be prepared for life outside of school someday, you know, they have to be there. So, I think this is just really where we have to start. And I really appreciate all the work that you've done, um, especially coming here to explain this to us tonight and and its importance. And, um, Barlo said, you know, if there's anything that we can do to help really solidify that message to parents about why it's so important for their kids to be there and, you know, we'll do what we can. >> Thank you, board members. We appreciate you. Thanks for coming tonight. Thank you. >> Our next agenda item is also a focus topic, our philanthropy
113strategy. Superintendent Muel Thank you, Chair Nathan, board members, uh, for bringing, uh, colleague Denise Moody up. Um, this presentation, board members, is actually the first of what is going to be a series of lookbacks at some of the key building blocks of our current strategic plan. And so, one of those 15 building blocks has been to um, build out a philanthropy strategy that Denise has aly been managing uh, previously. Um, I want to say with um, uh, complete excitement about the presentation Denise is going to give that we had a glitch and so the timer was not used in the last presentation and so this is nothing personal Denise that we're going to begin using the timer again and we are always going to use then so um I am so excited about this um
114as board members are going to see we have got an extraordinary record and you have been indispensable in bringing us to this point where we have uh raised a lot of cash to advance the mission of this district so thank you >> yes thank you for having me I'm curious about this timer like is it like you're Okay, >> it's in the drawer. Oh, okay. So, that's an even bigger. >> I don't see a timer. >> Yeah. >> Okay, great. I don't do the timer. >> We're being real here. Nothing personal. >> I'm Okay, well, I better jump right in. >> I just I just thought time stood still while we were talking about that deep. Well, I'm glad that felt that way, but I my concern uh Director Mcofflin is that it doesn't seem
115that some reports are timed and others are not. And so that is why. >> Thank you, Denise. >> Yes. Um thank you for having me. I am excited to do this first update that you will have on all of the different building blocks of the strategic plan. As you know, we are working on our next strategic plan, but this is a great time to reflect back on the work that we did um since 2021 on our first strategic plan um under the leadership of Dr. Pel. And so I'm going to be focusing on increasing our philanthropic support. As we have developed this strategy, we've really kind of identified these three buckets of support. And so um donations, advertising, and philanthropy. We are actively working on the area of donations and advertising and as I've dug
116into those we realized there's a lot of complexity there and a lot of um efforts that are still very much in development. We are a little bit farther along on our philanthropy strategy. So I am going to speak about that piece today and maybe we can come back and talk about those other areas as we are further developed. But just to kind of understand what those three are. donations is really thinking about donations that come into the district. So whether that's through PTSA, direct donations to the district through the Rochester Public Schools Foundation and that's kind of that bucket. The next bucket is around advertising. So thinking about um how do we sell advertising on our billboards um through sponsorships, a lot of that is through our activities is where we see a lot of
117that advertising pieces. The last piece we're going to be talking about is the or the piece we're going to be talking about today is our philanthropy which is primarily grants. And so there's a lot of different types of grants that we work with. Um federal grants, state grants, there could be foundation grants. We're going to talk about most of our funding that we're going to talk about today has come from state grants or private grants. In addition, there's federal funding, but most of those are awarded as block grants. So we talk about them as grants. They are referred to as grants, but they aren't competitive grants. We're not writing applications in the same way. And so, we're going to be talking about more of those competitive grants today. In general, when we think about philanthropy,
118we want philanthropy to support innovation that's happening in our district. It's helping our schools and our systems support changes in practice and structures. So, um, Angie talked a little bit about restorative practices granted collect. That's one example is that we are providing kind of those funds to be able to get something off the ground as we are working to change systems. There are a lot of different ways when we think about and are looking at what grants to pursue. We really want grants to match up with goals that we're creating. We don't want to see a grant and kind of have new shiny object syndrome where we're going to be like, "Oh, well, let's create a program because there's funding available, right? We want to look at what are the goals that we have. What
119are the systemwide initiatives and how can grant funding come alongside to support either a short-term project to kind of get that work going or to provide us kind of some seed money to move forward. We're trying to avoid um using grants to pay for ongoing operational expenses because it creates this cliff at the end that if this is an essential part of what we're trying to do and then we have to think about how to continue to support that ongoing. And so again, we're trying to look for kind of what are those projects and how do we use grant funds to support kind of the startup of things. The other um kind of area of grants that we do use and I'll point out a couple of examples as we go through is grants that
120might support things that we're already doing. So, um, one example that I'm working on that's due on Thursday is, um, AED machines for is a cardiac response grant. And so, we had a routine, um, maintenance that needed to happen to our AED machines already. There's a state of Minnesota grant that will fund $50,000 of A& machines. So, it's not necessarily maybe like a big goal that we had or is it a new project, but it's something that we would otherwise be doing. And so grant funds are able to come along and support that. And I'll point out a couple of examples as we go through the list. So I'm going to go back through kind of just highlevel overview of some of the grants that we have received since 2023. This isn't an exhaustive list.
121Um these are ones that I've been involved in. Um and are maybe some of the larger amounts. So, um I think you're familiar with the work the grant from Chan Zuckerberg that supported deeper learning. We also received um two grow your own grants that support um students and staff and community members interested in the area of teaching providing scholarships for them. Trauma-informed antibbias and the non-exclusionary discipline grant focused on professional development around those topics. And then As you are, as you are all aware about our federal school-based mental health grant, this was a grant to allow staff to rescialize in becoming trained mental health providers and was the grant that was cancelled for the fourth and fifth year um by the federal administration. Moving on to FY24, the first four there are CLSD grants. And
122so these were shortterm grants that really kicked off our work around the Read Act. So what had happened was the state had received a grant and they had some leftover funds and so we only had those grants for like a period of six months but it was perfect timing to really kick off the work that was already going to be required from the readact the redact funding didn't completely cover the cost of all of the training and so this was a great way to again we were doing something that was required and it was a great way for us to be able to um minimize that impact on the general fund special education pipeline is similar to are the grow your own grants but is specific to special education teachers. The stronger connections grant was
123a a piece of federal legislation that um supports a variety of different initiatives. We were it was unique that we were be able we were able to use that to fund really some project management around our strategic plan and so we were able to hire Gretchen Okasio through that grant and um so that was a really exciting opportunity to be able to something and to see how that fit in to helping us reach our goals. Multi-tered systems of support was a um grant that allowed us to add another individual to the MTSS team as we are building out these processes. So um our coordinator Jill Dunn is funded through other funding source, but this has allowed us to do some more professional development and add somebody else to that team. So next two are around
124again supporting there was some additional funds there were that supported um some professional development around those topics. Opportunity Labs was around mental health funding specifically and then you're again aware of the generous donation from Mayo Clinic to support um us through that fiscal year after the referendum failed. This is last year. So um we were able to get three grants to community schools. So that is one example. All of these three were community schools already and so we were able to apply funding that freed up general fund dollars in those buildings. So some grants have like a um they must supplement not supplant. There are a few grants on here that allow you to supplant and one of them is the community schools. They want to fund that initiative and so we were able to
125free up some of those funds at that at those buildings and be able to and received three community schools grants there. We are currently applying for two more um on Friday for two more of our community schools. Both the phabbotomy the Mayo Clinic phabbotomy grant and the youth skills grant um support transportation for students that are in our phabbotomy program at Mayo Clinic. So that is a program where students are actually at Mayo Clinic for the training and so great opportunity for them but not something that we necessarily have a funding source for that transportation. So those two grants came in the same fiscal year but um the youth skills grant youth skills training grant is being used for this year of transportation and the Mayo Clinic private donation was for last year. Okay, six
126minutes. We're almost to the list. uh the grow your own early childhood again um specific to raising up those that are interested in teacher positions in their area of early childhood. The community facilities project was a piece of it's federal funds that were awarded to the state. They were co era dollars that were about increasing accessibility and community schools as community centers. And so Gage is doing some work around their community schools room and around their kitchen. Um again to make it a more inviting space for families. Mayo Clinic um donated to allow us to hire the consultants that are working with us from Ed on our strategic plan. And then there's a couple on here. No child left inside, safe routes to schools and wheels to waterways. that are all things that Dedra Conroy
127wrote to support the work that she's doing around safe routes to school. And then the social work demonstration grant was just a little grant um about getting some more um items for our social workers. And then the last two there, the language revitalization grant and ethnic studies grant working with Natalyia Benjamin on those two projects. Again, those are kind of startup innovation grants. We're not done. One more. Okay, this is what we're working on right now. So, we recently awarded a um schoolbased health center grant. That was another one that allowed us to supplant the coordinator for the schoolbased health clinic out at ALC. So, again, freeing up general fund dollars as well as um doing some work about increasing access for our students that don't have stable housing to be able to access the
128schoolbased health center. Let music fill my world is a really fun story of a student of ours that Raone Campos who submitted for a um scholarship for college is what he was I think intending to submit for. But with it he was awarded and selected and so in addition to some funding for him individually it came with $300,000 to support a music educator at a school that has never had a full-time music educator. So, um, ALC is we are posting a music teacher position there for so they for the first time will have a full-time music teacher position >> and and the board's going to meet Ramona at the next meeting. >> More to come on that. Yeah. Um, and so then we have several things here that are pending. Um, we actually got notification
129on the cyber security. That's another one where we have cyber security liability insurance and all we had to do was fill out an application submit our receipt and we receive some extra. We received $175,000 of funding for that. So, sometimes we're funding innovation, sometimes we're just freeing up some dollars when they we are allowed to um write grants for things that are currently um available. So, um esports working at expanding that the non-exclusionary discipline um again focusing on some training there and working with Angie's team. Um, the youth voice, we have I'm working with Sarah Louise on that one and we're working on planning a youth summit possibly in the spring. And then, as I mentioned, the full service community schools for um that are doing walking quickly through our process around the grant. So,
130first is just identifying grant opportunities. A lot of that you will see that we're doing state of Minnesota grants. So, just monitoring those websites. We do have a subscript uh um database that we also can use for finding grant opportunities. The first step is just to review that request for proposal. Does it match with some of our strategic goals right now? Is it a good fit for us? if we think so after that and I say we me usually um and some who else I'm working with um we would attend the webinar submit any questions and then I really like to work with the team that would be involved in that work to develop a strong concept. So I like to have a strong concept really written out um to guide our work before we
131would go into actually writing a response. So making sure we understand what the goals of the program are, what we would be using the budget for, how we would um be building out this program. And so that's a lot of collaboration with um many of the directors and the schools across the district. Then we in the writing phase, we'll write that and build a budget in collaboration with finance. Um reviewing that with Dr. and cabinet members along the way, but kind of as a final check and then submitting it to the funer. There's usually about a 12 to 16 week wait period and then determining or finding out whether or not it was funded. Um then there's kind of comes this contracting period where we may need to make changes to the work plan or
132make changes to the budget based on how much is funded and we would develop a contract that outlines the grant requirements. So um working a lot stat on that process and then we will submit to the school board if the amount is over 175,000 and work with the team on implementation. So philanthropic oh I'm at my time. philanthropic support for pre-K2 education is in flux. Um the changes in the federal government have um I think put the whole system in flux. Um I follow one grant company that says everything kind of flows down from federal funding. So as the changes are happening with the federal government that's also changing some of the things that private foundations are funding and so many private foundations are not giving directly to schools anymore intend and prefer to fund
133kind of school adjacent organizations. So that is kind of affected kind of what our strategy is as a district. Um, right now state grants continue to be available, but with the uncertainty around the budget for the state of Minnesota, that may change as well. So, the next wave of our strategy around philanthropic support will really be built around what our strategic plan is and identifying what those priorities are and having the strategy come along to provide additional funding. >> Questions? Do Um does our track record especially in the private um funders getting like getting a grant from a Chan Zuckerberg does that open our doors to being either others are aware of us or like we can approach them as opposed to just waiting for something that's posted. I don't know how that works in
134the grant world. >> We we currently have a call set up. So I do think that when large funders support you and you have projects and also some research connections I think is also desirable that it opens up other organizations or other funders that would be interested in working with you. So that that's kind of our hope. Um we have a call later this fall with um Bush Foundation to see if they would be interested in funding um a project around one of our strategic priorities. And so we hope so. Yeah, >> great. >> Dr. Cook, >> I I just wanted to uh um reiterate emphasize uh something that you said um early on in your presentation that um one of the first things that you're looking for is coherence between the grant proposal and
135the strategic priorities of the district. Um because in in in my world in the like corporate enterprise environment there's this constant tension between product owners that have to decide what the product is going to be and how to define it and the sales team that is responsible for bringing in revenue and the sales team constantly just wants to bring in revenue regardless of how connected it is to the product. Um and it is so important to maintain the the diligence on um what it is that we're raising funds for so that we don't end up overextending ourselves and having all these sort of nebulous priorities all over the place. So um thank you for that discipline. Please continue it. And I know that we didn't really hit on the first uh two pillars of your
136strategy, but I I just I I have to uh take a moment here at some point in this meeting to recognize uh that um the long tradition of PTSA's um endlessly raising funds for the next playground build um is hopefully uh largely sunset here. We approved a significant playground um uh installation at Washington Elementary. I'm so glad that we're doing that. I have this I'm sure many of us have the scars of raising funds for uh playgrounds and those PTSAs can do plenty of other things that are creative and uh great investments in their schools and uh um that's wonderful. But anyway, thank you so much for what you're doing and for the approach that you're taking. Sure, superintendent. I >> I just want to I think um to cheer Nathan's point about uh private
137funders and the board as part of my evaluation every year um looks at how I spend my time and we talked about this in my evaluation uh and planning for next year. I would say the single biggest area that I'm personally underinvesting my time is this one that I actually have a lot of background in this and um there. It's not like I'm sitting around drinking coffee. There are a lot of other things that are um priorities, but working with Denise and others to cultivate funding. I think we've laid the groundwork. This is an extraordinary record. I've seen school districts get um recognized nationally for much less philanthropic support than we've generated here in three years. Um but this is one of those things where the tension for me is then I'm not in our
138schools. I'm not, you know, working on the skip process. I'm uh getting on a plane to go talk to funders in New York or California or up in Minneapolis. Um, but as I think about the next wave of our work, I it needs to be bounded, but I need to have the discipline of making sure that this use of my particular background and it's also being superintendent, but it's also, you know, having spent 15 years raising money at the University of Minnesota and Search Institute, um, this is a tool in my toolkit that I'm not adequately utilizing fully. Um, so I think we've done pretty well. Um, but I'm really looking forward as we move into our next strategic plan, really carving this out. And the board has made very clear that they support that
139allocation of my time going forward, even though it means somewhat less direct visibility uh on some things that we care about deeply here in Rochester, but we've got a lot of good things happening on that score. So, I look forward to really taking this to the next level um going forward. >> And thank you for your work. >> Thank you. Our next item is our prep for action the 2026 2027 course registration guide. We're scheduled to take action at our November 18th meeting. Superintendent Vel. >> Thank you Nathan and board members. As you can see we have um Heather Wilman our director of secondary education and Heather Hogan our director of academic sports coming up. Um the board's approval of the course registration guide and I see our chief academic officer Mona Perkins joining them.
140Um uh the course registration guide is annually approved by the board. We have taken this opportunity in addition to asking you to approve some specific changes in the guide for next year to give you a brief down payment on some of the things that we are doing to improve the registration process itself. So turn it over to the team and thank you for your work. >> Thank you. You kick it kick it off. Um good evening Lauren. Thank you for having us tonight. Um thing we wanted uh to uh ground our presentation in tonight is thinking back to last spring May when the board approved the RPS mindsets, behaviors and steps to student success and keeping that in the back of your mind as we are um going through some information about the registration guide.
141Um the um particularly the steps to student success. Um that um we're thinking about uh for example with our eighth grade students. Um we ask our um students to uh identify through training programs or postsecary institutes of uh interest. They're creating their fouryear academic plan and the registration guide is really key for them in that piece. Um students then are registering for their nth grade classes and they continue to review that fouryear plan um at least on a yearly basis as they're going through uh 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th grade in that planning for what their plan is for life after high school. Right? So you might wonder how we get new courses. Um, so we think a lot about how this aligns um, kind of similar to what Denise was saying. Um, how do
142how do these courses align with our mindsets, behaviors, and experiences? How do they align with the academic standards? How can they support deeper learning experiences? Um, and then how can we think about the pathways um, for our students and their lives after high school. So, as we're thinking about what we might want to add, we want it to be a dynamic um, course guide. We don't want it the same, but we also want to make sure that we're thinking about those priorities. So, our new courses for this year, um we have a new course, health and physical fitness for life at Minsk. So, this is um kind of a novel concept because it's co-taught. So, it's the health teacher and the um BIAD teacher teaching together. Um you might wonder what that looks like in
143an online environment. But there's a lot of self-reflection and then a lot of independent work that the students do, but they tried that model out and really appreciated it. Um, we have a comparative politics and government class that will be new at John Marshall. Um, it's proposed by Seth Leki who uh teaches social studies and does amazing things there and is really excited to try this out. Um, so comparing and contrasting government systems around the world and then a part of that will be a portfolio. think about that deeper learning piece really hits that. Um we have American Sign Language if you all um approve that. I think that's on the docket tonight. So that will be back in the course guide. Um we're excited about that. Um we have something called Intro to Family
144and Consumer Sciences at Century. So the um fax department at Century really wanted to try something new. They wanted to try kind of a sampler platter of all of the different things you could do in family and consumer sciences. So, we're going to see if the students are interested in that approach. Um, but that's what that course will be, kind of um a little bit of everything. Um, and then they can learn about that pathway. Um, the life transition class is a special education class. Um, and the students will be working on transition skills. So, it's any students with disabilities and then having that protected time to work on transition skills. And then the last one is interpretation and translation class. So any of our students that speak another language can think about getting trained
145as an interpreter translator. Um so there'll be um kind of a train the trainer model where we talk about the ethics of that and then they'll also have some opportunity to do some job shadowing and possibly support some family events in our schools. So we're excited about that. Um there's a new designation as well for sports biology. In the past it was NCAA approved. So, um we were able to provide some more documentation. So, any of our students that take that course and are also interested in um college athletics will be able to count that as a a science course. As part of the key initiative with the registration process um the last year we looked at enhancements to communication both for uh parents and students around the registration process. So, uh to highlight a
146couple um of additions that um we provided, um we had some college conversations events where um families were able to learn about how their students could earn college credit while still in high school. Um we did some online sessions for families um where they could learn um about their course registration guide um and how we were transitioning uh to utilizing Zello for the registration process. Um and then uh for the past two years we have administered a survey for parents on the registration process where they are able to uh share with us about that experience and provide recommendations on how they would improve uh how they would like us to improve the process. Um we've also added uh for students um targeted outreach based on um Zello profiles. Um so for example at Dakota um
147last year during the eighth grade registration process um the counselor was looking at uh students who um were either matched with careers in computer science or they had saved careers in computer science and specifically uh female students because we are dramatically under represented in our computer science courses with um our girls. And so uh the counselor did small group advising um for those students and um encouraged them uh to sign up then uh for those intro courses um for their ninth grade year. Uh we hosted um on-site college fairs um at our three high schools and uh we had that event again this year. Um and they were uh highly attended and if anyone had a chance to stop in at those you could see how highly engaged students were um with our college visitors.
148And then also the um survey for the registration process was uh provided to students as well um so that we could hear from them directly how the registration process is from their perspective and for them to be able to uh provide um suggestions for uh improvements to that process. Um and with our systemwide initiative this year on the registration process, we are working on implementing uh the recommendations that came both from families, students and then also our counselor and registration registars um at our high schools. >> Right. So we um lastly just want you to know that uh there may be more changes um more substantive changes next because as we work through that strategic plan, we're already having robust conversations about what else can we be thinking about to support our students and we're
149thinking about that idea of um educational achievement um student engagement and then attracting families. Um what are the things that our students really are interested in learning about and then how do we keep that academic rigor high. So, um, we want you to kind of have a preview that next year we may be bringing more things, um, when we come to talk to you about the course guide board members, any specific questions? So, I have some um, so are we at the point where we're or or can we use Zello for the registration process itself? Is that is that a >> We did last year. Okay. >> Yes. So, we've got nice automated electronic. That's great. >> Um, and then on the health and physical fitness for life, I was really excited to see that
150class because I know in the experience when my kids were in high school, um, a lot of kids were looking to try to meet those graduation requirements outside of the school year. So, they were going online or taking them at college to free up some space. So, I'm wondering um first of all, could a student currently have seven in-person classes and take this course or is our cap seven regardless of inerson versus online because I know some kids sort of do a mix. >> Yeah, I was trying. Yes, you can. I was trying to make understood the question though. So you said do they take can they take seven or are they capped at seven? >> Right. >> Okay. >> So they they're not able to take more than so they wouldn't be able to
151add an additional course and say okay I'm going to get that out of the way. >> Okay. >> Um and we don't have an opportunity for summer right now for pay. Some districts do that where students and families can pay for um particular courses. We don't have that set up right now. Um it would have to be one of their courses that are in their their schedule. >> And that was going to be my second question is if that's something that we could maybe think about considering because I with our CEK and our multiple block classes, you know, we want to encourage as many students to take that as possible, but it just becomes physically impossible with scheduling. You all know that. Um I'm glad you mentioned that the other districts do it because yeah,
152I look to they seem I'd rather get the money internally than send it off to a college somewhere else. Um, and then the other thing that I just wanted to mention is I maybe it's because I had kids in high school for, you know, eight years and then some years in between doing advocacy. You know, I look at the course catalog every year because I like to see what we're offering. And I I I think this course catalog is just such a great demonstration of the positive attributes of Rochester public schools that the thing that the superintendent always talks about is making us a district of choice. And I I I look through and I looked at some patterns and of course we have you know our core subjects but our core subject classes are
153very robust. Um but in addition, we ask our kids to take about 20 courses of electives and those options for electives are not minimal. There's 13 12 or 13 other subject areas that kids can take electives in. We've got CEK and PEK that offer these unique pathways towards the career certification or technical or professional work. We've got Minsk online. We have five programs to earn college credit and those are 50 courses and that's not including any PSO courses. Um we have our honors diploma program with the honors courses and our honors options. And um we have high school credit opportunities for like we heard tonight from um the unified program. They can do mentoring. They can do work experience. They can do internship. And we have the diploma recognition of service learning and world language
154proficiency. So when I hear what you talk about with Zello and the work you're doing to allow kids to find their pathway, um we're really offering them a robust list of opportunities to fit in those um those passions and their interests with the courses that we have. And I really appreciate what everybody does at all the high schools, what you do um to make sure that these options do uh remain both uh broad and deep. Um and I you know the course registration guide I think is something that a lot of people focus on only when their kids are in high school. But if you don't have kids in high school yet and you want to look forward to seeing what what opportunities are going to be available for your kids in Rochester public schools,
155that's your roadmap. So I really appreciate else board members. All right, we will move on to approve this in our next meeting. >> Thank you. >> Right. Our next item are not as exciting as the course registration guide. Our policy committee recommendations from our October 9th meeting. Um this is the first of two prep for action briefings and we will vote on these on December 2nd. Uh Director Marvin, I believe you're beginning. Yes, we'll start out with a very popular policy 412 and its associated procedure. Uh this is uh 412 is about expense reimbursement. Uh there were no changes recommended. Um however uh the employee out of district travel guide will be added to the procedure policy 515 and its associated procedure. This is protection and privacy of pupil records. The procedure adds um information
156that uh parent information cannot be included in directory information. Our district had already been doing that. It also includes an attachment um for the deadline of submissions of forms. I did four in less than a minute. >> Very good. Policy 533 has a clarification that homepreared foods and baked items may not be provided to students during celebrations and parties or snacks brought by parents during the school day. And um that's language that was moved from policy 730.1R that we're um proposing to rescend. Policy 534 includes mandatory changes from the 2025 Minnesota legislature um regarding our school meals policy and it clarifies the free school meals program and the ability to purchase a second breakfast or a second lunch. We also clarified account balances amount before uh going to um collection and um notification language on
157collections and added language regarding adults per being able to purchase lunches. Uh procedure 534A is an RPSonly procedure. Uh we recommend the title be changed to student meal accounts. We've we're changing family throughout our uh policies and procedures to parents and guardians. And we also changed the free and reduced price lunch application to application for education benefits and clarified negative balance amounts and notification process. So policy 702 accounting there were no MSBA model policy changes um to this policy and the references to some procedures that do not exist were deleted. Policy 705 investments also does not have any recommended MSBA policies changes. Um there were some changes in titles to superintendent or designate and director of finance. Um policy 707 there were mandatory changes from the Minnesota legislature on for this policy. Students with disabilities
158were added to policy 707. transportation of public school students language was changed to parents guardians and the title of the director of transportation was updated. Uh policy 709 also had some mandatory changes from the Minnesota legislature. Uh this is policy student transportation safety student safety training dates were deleted. Language was changed to parents guardians and the title of director of transportation was updated. So procedures 709.81 709.82 709.83 procedures there were no changes to those and these are all forms regarding bus drivers. Policy 710 uh once again no MSBA policy changes to this uh policy extracurricular transportation. Uh some titles were updated and the reference to procedures 2710 was removed because it does not exist. Polic 71 um video recording on school buses, policy 713, student activity accounts and policy 714 uh fund balances. There were
159no MSB policy uh changes or cabinet recommendations and these policies are part of the three-year review cycle. >> Policy 712 is video surveillance. Uh missing language from the MSBA model policy and legal references were added and our committee recommends that the title be changed to video surveillance other than on buses to match the MSBA model policy title. Uh policy 730.1R uh our committee recommends to resend this policy uh because other uh model policies and RPS uh procedures address the same issues. uh policy 533 and procedure 902A have been updated to ensure the intent of the relevant language in policy 730.1R has been maintained and the policy document notes uh where all current language is covered in other policies and procedures and then policy 801 uh which is equal access to school facilities no changes were
160recommended policy 802 disposition of obsolete equipment and material material. There are mandatory changes from the Minnesota legislature regarding the surplus books provision and language was changed to parents and guardians from family. Uh policy 820.1R, there are no MSBA model policy changes and the word cabinet was changed to superintendent or designate. And procedure 902A includes a clarification on the prohibition of the use of kitchen equipment and utensils by internal or external groups without the presence and supervision of a students nutrition services staff member. Any questions or comments on any of the policies board members? Great. We'll have a second briefing at the next meeting. Our next item is an action item, language access plan. The board discussed this in prep for action at the October 7th regular meeting. I'll read the resolution and then we can
161have discussion if necessary. Be it resolved that the school board of independent school district 535 does hereby approve the Rochester Public Schools language access plan as presented. >> Move approval. >> Second. >> It has been moved and seconded. Any discussion? >> Hearing none. All those in favor of the resolution say I. >> I opposed. Resolution has been approved. The next item 9.2 is an action item on our world language plan. The board discussed this in prep for action at the October 14th study session. Be it resolved that that the school district of independent school district 535 hereby approves the following adjustments to world language offerings at RPS. one discontinue offering Latin as a world language in a phase out model over the course of the 2026 2027 and 2027 2028 school years allowing students currently
162enrolled in the Latin program to finish their course of study. two discontinu offering advanced level German courses German three and four at the conclusion of the 2027 2028 school year allowing students who are currently enrolled in the German program to finish their course of study and continue offering German one and two only in subsequent years three beginning in the 2026 2027 school year the district will introduce American Sign Language ASL as a new in-person world language option move approval. >> Second. >> It has been moved and seconded. Any questions or discussion? >> I I have to say I really appreciate the clarification in the resolution, especially for um allowing the students to complete um their course of study if they've already started. And I have heard from um a number of community members how excited
163they are to see American Sign Language added to our offerings. So, thank you for that. Anything else board members? Hearing none. All those in favor say I. >> I. Opposed. The resolution has been approved. >> Our next item is our ABCD and I think we've got it on the screen. Um, November 18th at 5:30 is our special session on our comprehensive achievement and civic readiness report. That will be immediately followed by our regular meeting which will include monitoring of our annual inventory of fixed asset report comprehensive achievement civic civic readiness report to the board. We have a prep for action item on we may not have that strategic plan proposal anymore that might be replaced by our building blocks. >> Yes, it will be about the strategic plan. It will definitely not be >> that
164proposal >> beginning of the new proposal. >> Okay. Um, I think we're also going to talk about our briefing on the policy committee. Um, approval of the audit report for fiscal year 202425. It is that time of year again. And then the approval of the course registration guide. We have a meeting on December 2nd um where we will hear about our achievement and integration aid report and then another component of our strategic plan reporting. So any other items board members would like to add to a future agenda? Right. And the upcoming board meeting dates. Um I mentioned on November 18th, we have both a special and a regular uh meeting that starts at 5:30. December 2nd, our regular meeting. December 16th, please note that is a special session beginning at 6:00 p.m. for our annual
165truth and taxation meeting and that will be followed by a regular meeting immediately after. And then our first meeting of 2026 or sorry, we have a meeting on December 16th. Sorry. December 16th is our regular meeting and then our first meeting of 2026 is at 5:30 on January 6th. And hearing no other business, this meeting is adjourned at I get my watch to work. 7:44 p.m.