School Board Meeting - April 22, 2025

001This regular meeting of the Independent School District 535 School Board is called to order at 5:31 p.m. on Tuesday, April 22nd, 2025 in room 137 of the Edison building. 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. Present at this meeting are school board members, Superintendent Kent Pel, a non- voting exeicio member and assistant school board clerk, Miss Anne Kramer. Miss Kramer, would you please call the role? Director Barlo here. Treasurer Cook here. Director Mclofflin here. Clerk Marvin here. Nathan here. Director White here. Vice Chairman, we heard you. Thank you. At this time, we offer the opportunity to say the pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of

002America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Item 2.1 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. Board members, all of our votes tonight will have to be roll call because we have a board member attending virtually. So, Miss Kramer, will you please call the role on approval of the agenda? Director Barlo I. I. Director I. Clerk Margin here. I director White I. Vice Chair Workman. The agenda has been approved. The agenda and documents for this meeting are available online at rochestererschools.org/simly. org/simly comments to the board. It is important for the school board to hear from our stakeholders regarding issues that impact our students, staff, families,

003and schools. We welcome communication via email, phone call, at our community engagement listening sessions and hear during comments to the board. The purpose of comments to the board is to give community members an opportunity to provide input directly to the school board about issues that fall within our authority. The board and superintendent do not respond directly to the speaker's comments during the meeting, but may follow up with the speaker if requested and appropriate. Persons who want to make comments to the board must fill out the online form by 5:00 p.m. on the Monday before the school board meeting. The form is available on the RPS website and on the assembly main page. A reminder that policy 206 and procedure 206A set the time, place, and manner, procedures, and restrictions on comments to the board. By

004participating in the public comment period, each speaker agrees to abide by this comment procedure. Speakers, when your name is called, please come to this table. If you have written materials for the board, please provide them to the assistant school board clerk prior to your remarks, and she will distribute them to board members. Choose a microphone to speak into and be seated. Please direct your remarks to the school board. You will have three minutes to speak and the timer will be displayed in front of me. Please begin your remarks by stating your name. Our first speaker tonight is Joanne Barkmeer. Item 4.1, information and outreach, is National School Bus Driver Appreciation Day. Today is School Bus Driver Appreciation Day, and the purpose of the day is to recognize school bus and our van drivers for their

005efforts to go above and beyond in order to transport students to school every day. Here in Rochester, our bus and van drivers ensure the safety and well-being of our students while transporting them to and from school. Every day, our drivers transport over 10,000 students on yellow buses and almost 900 students on vans across over 13,000 miles of daily routes. The 260 bus and van drivers that transport RPS students are the first people to greet many of our students in the morning, the last to say goodbye each afternoon, which significantly impacts all of those students every day. We thank these essential members of our Rochester public schools community for supporting the safety and sense of belonging for our students. And just a reminder, we are still facing a shortage of bus and van drivers and first

006student is hiring. So you can view the opportunities at workfirst.com. Administrative professionals day is tomorrow, April 23rd. Our receptionist, secretaries, administrative coordinators, and office managers do an exceptional job and work hard to keep our schools and offices organized and running efficiently. They are the front line of welcoming families and students to our buildings and offices and often the first stop for addressing an issue. We are grateful for their friendly and professional presence. Please join us in thanking them the next time you call, email, or visit a school or district building or program. Our next information and outreach item 4.2 is activities update Century Chess Champions. Superintendent Pel. Thank you, Madam Chair. Uh it is a pleasure to ask Chuck Handlin and uh some of our Century High School state champion chess tournament winners to come

007on up to give us a brief overview of the incredible victory that they achieved and the great work that they've been doing. So great to see you, Chuck. Great to see you guys. Why don't you take a seat? Um board members, we are going to be trying to every board meeting from this point on recognize some type of student accomplishment. Sometimes they will be athletic, sometimes they'll be academic, sometimes they'll be artistic, sometimes they'll be none of the above. And so tonight is one of the first in that series. And so it's great to begin with all of you. And so thank you. Let us know what happened the state tournament. Well, um I'm Chuck Wheeler Hanland and I've coached the Century Chess team for 25 years. Uh, and I I'm sorry to say that

008two members are playing tennis, but I'll talk about them later. Um, but these gentlemen would probably be more comfortable behind a chessboard with 30 seconds left on their clock than they are right now. But I'm going to let each of them just introduce themselves and say a little bit. Uh, to my right is our captain. So, we'll start and you can introduce yourselves and say a little bit about what the experience was for you. Uh, hi. Hi. I'm Cole Lappy. Uh, I'm the captain. As he said before, this is my third year uh here at the Century Chess team. Um, it's been a pretty great experience as you could imagine. It's a little stressful. Uh, sophomore wrangling a bunch of freshmen. We have a young team this year, but we've done amazing and I'm hopeful

009for the future. Uh, we have so many great years ahead of us. Our team's only going to get better. Yeah. No, I think they're all green means go. Um, hi, I'm Calder Win and I've been on this team for around say two years and I think it's been a great experience. just everyone's always been nice, per se. And I think my friend Cole over here, great captain, but I'm sorry it's a deal with all of us. Tell them uh how what place you were in the tournament. Oh, in the state tournament. I'm if I can recall correctly, I pretty sure I got 11th place. Yeah. 11th out of probably 125 students. Okay. Hello. I'm Andrew Merkel and I've been with the chess team for I think one year now. I'm a freshman. Well, with the

010varsity, but he played junior varsity. Yeah, true. Um, chess has always been great for me because I I've just been able to connect with so many people and being on this team, we go to so many different tournaments and you just meet a lot of people. you're able to exercise your intellect and overall just be able to be good at games that you like to play such as chess. So, uh the two members that are not here right now uh both were uh got trophies in their division. So in the United States Chess Federation, you have a rating and when you start your ratings probably about 500 and if you're in the 2000s you're a master or grandmaster. So in the under 1,200 grouping um one of our freshman Johan Mayberg placed first and uh

011his colleague Josh Joshua Wang was second. Uh, so as Cole mentioned, we have we had four freshmen and I had no idea what their ceiling would be because in the previous year they were in the junior high tournament, but now they'd be playing against the big boys. And they were hyperfocused. To give you a little idea of what this is like, it's a two-day tournament and they play four games. the first day. Now, each player has an hour to make their moves. And it's not uncommon for a game to go two hours or more. So, they put in about 10 hours of chess for some of them on that first day. And you would think they were wiped out, but when I took them to McDonald's, no, they were not wiped out. They were still

012ready to go. Um, and then the next day they had three rounds. So they played seven rounds and you know I've always told the team if you get four out of seven that's above 500 you know that's pretty good score but we had three players get five out of seven and two of them were freshman. Six out of seven you're in the you're one of the co- champions probably. So just their first year they did just an incredible job. They were super focused. We went into the last round with um three teams. Well, there were actually five that were within a point of each other. You get a point for a win and a half point for a draw. So you could get if seven if and they count the scores of the top four

013on your team. So you could get 28 theoretical points, but there were like four teams. It was very bunched up and it was anybody's chance to take it. I knew we needed two points and we got that from the round and were able to tie with two other teams. It it was pretty uh amazing that they outdid last year's team which took second. So, um, one of the things I want to mention is there were other successes for Rochester public school students. Um, I'm just going to mention that uh eighth grader Luke Selin was able to place eighth in the junior high tournament and then a Mayo High School senior Isaac an placed fourth and he was in the playoff for the national champ the champion for the state that would go to the national

014tournament. So, in the 25 years, uh, we've had a Rochester team that's been in the top 10 or top five. In the top 10 every year and in the top five for like 12 out of those 25 years. And why is that? It's because of the Rochester Chess Club, uh, a nonprofit that we work together. They host tournaments. They've funded students to go to state. They've written grants for the schools to take teams like the English speakers other languages in the years past. Um we work collaboratively. No other sport does that. You don't have all the hockey coaches working together to improve each other. Uh and it doesn't matter which team you're on. We help each other when we go to state. We have one team for one room for all the Rochester parents, players,

015everybody and every coach is willing to do an analysis of a players's game. So the these guys are hungry. In fact, I'm taking to them to a tournament in Wisconsin on Saturday um which there are will be some cash prizes. I've told them what my percentage is. Uh but with the NIL, we don't have to worry about them losing any eligibility. Um before we finish here, um Cole would like to uh on behalf of the team, uh do a little presentation here. Yeah. To thank you for your uh support, I wanted to offer this shirt to Dr. I'm cool. Finally. Yeah. So awesome. Thank you. Now, show the back because we want you to know the Panthers got your back. You move, we pounce. That is so awesome. Thank you so much for your support.

016Great. Madam Chair, Director Barlo, I I wanted to acknowledge uh Chuck, you know, retired uh school teacher. um your continued commitment to our students um is a a true blessing and I hope uh the team members uh recognize uh Mr. Han is doing this you know out of his love for uh the game and I think the future that he sees in you and I just encourage you to strive to do your best. Thank you so much. Thank you. And if congratulations if anybody's watching it and has young chess players having had two chess players be coached by Mr. Hanlin and had a lifelong impact on um their academics, their their approach to life. I suggest you get your kid involved in chess. Um get them to learn it's a great sport. I think these

017guys can vouch for how exciting it is and um and it's not just it looks like an isolating game because it's just you and someone else. But I've seen the camaraderie on these chess teams and how they support each other and um it's just a really wonderful opportunity that we offer our kids. So, thank you Chuck and to all the other coaches who kept it going for all these years. Yeah, thank you. There I mentioned the Rochester Chess Club. They meet every Tuesday evening uh at the Mayo Harwick building and they'll take six year olds and work with them if they want to learn the game of chess. Community Ed runs some things as well. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you guys. So our next item is 4.3 board member updates. Any board member have

018updates from their committees since the last meeting or any other information to share? Oh, director Marvin surprise. Um at this time I'd like to invite Cypress who is a member of Rochester Public Schools Student School Board to the table up here. Uh last Wednesday, Cypress and four other student school board members um attended the um Minnesota attendance convening um at the Minnesota Department of Education building. Uh the focus of that conference was to learn about and to share some of the challenges and possible solutions to the absenteeism rate that's common throughout the K12 schools in Minnesota and really throughout the nation. Um Rochester was asked to send a panel of students uh to attend and to to provide a presentation um about their perception and in terms of chronic absenteeism. Uh Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanigan

019facilitated a discussion before the panel among the adults there about why their schools uh were seeing so many kids were were absent um chronically. And it was interesting that across the state in rural areas and and uh bigger cities um it was sort of the same kind of of message. They said that kids were not coming to school because of transportation problems or because of the physical or emotional challenges. Some of the students didn't see that any positive outcome would uh would uh result uh from an education. They said that schools weren't welcoming or classes weren't relevant and they said that they had fallen so far behind they needed support and they just felt helpless. And we heard this again and again and again. Now we know that when we talk about students and the

020challenges they face and what some solutions might be, we had better listen to students and not just listen to them but really act on what what they're saying. Um the audience there was riveted to what our students had to tell them and they gave them a lot of information. Our students are thoughtful. They are profound. Um, they are eloquent and they have done a lot of listening to students in their high school. So, they represented, I think, our district well. Cypress is one of the five who attended. And Cypress, I'd like you to introduce yourself, where you go to school, what grade you're in, and then talk a little bit about the panel that you were part of. Oh, and I should say too, sorry, I asked you to do that and then I interrupted

021you. You had that experience before. um Will Ruffen and Sarah Louise Henry were vitally um influential in getting this group together and getting them transported and both of them um and along with me were able to witness what a great job our students did. Go ahead. Hello, my name is Cypus Pivar. I am a senior at male high school and I would like to speak about the student panel that we attended I say last week or two weeks ago and I'm one of the five students and I would like to name them out. I'm Cyus Pivar. There was Katarina Julia Katarina who's a senior. Julie is a senior. Uh Julu from Century who's a senior and I hope I don't butcher it. Ayen Ayen Ayen from Century who was a sophomore. And we learned from

022this meeting that one of the biggest reasons why students won't attend school like absenteeism is the lack of connection that they feel. And so when we of male high school or RPS, we mentioned the TOPS room which is located in male high school. And that is is a program that is about peers supporting each other, having someone to speak to when you need help and you just just always having someone to reach out to and it helps a lot of the connection. me I am a peer supporter at in the top room which stands for teens offer peer support and daily I help students who walk in asking them how's your day how are you doing um would you like to speak and I wouldn't say all the time they they would say no because

023they like to hide that in but every once in a while I'll get one student that likes to express theirelves and let that weight off their chest. And I learned from I don't really know anything about what how it affects them, but I learned from uh one student who came to me the next day and said, "Thank you a lot for letting me speak to you about these things." And they seem to do way better now at school. So I feel it does it has had a big impact on the school system or schools. And speaking of school system, Century and JM have now tried to incorporate their own uh mental health mental health programs just like for Mayo. And sorry, I I feel that this program is actually very helpful. And speaking of who

024like liked the program was Peggy Flanigan herself, the lieutenant governor, she expressed that she wants to know more about the program and even visit Mayo High School herself. And so the student school board, we have uh made a draft of a letter to send to her as an invitation to our school. And so I feel that we have just kind of came up, you know, from like we've really done something in this program and in this club. And I would like to speak about how this has affected me. uh starting freshman year, I didn't think I would be doing anything this big in my high school high school years and joining the Topps room actually was the reason why I'm here. And so I thank um Amanda Burgette who is the the runner of the

025Tops room at Mayo High School. and with how much it's affected me is one day I was called to the principal's office asking if I could attend a student schoolboard meeting which was to to promote the tops room and and ever since then I've been attending every single meeting and that student panel was probably like the biggest thing that has ever happened to me in high school and I'm like really proud of myself and glad and I thank all of you for having me here for to speak on the behalf of the student school board. Thank you. Thank you, Cypress. And and let me say we're really proud of you, too. And uh the thing one of the things that you all the five of you talked about was how the TOPS room was working

026for students who had some emotional issues. But it could absolutely be the kind of place where upper classmen could tutor students who were struggling, any student who was struggling academically and be there for them the same way the TOPS room works. Perhaps they could get some sort of credit. And that was what uh Lieutenant Governor Flanigan picked up on. and she wants to come and see how that works and how it could extend to helping kids with uh who need academic support too. Um, can I so speak? Um, actually of that what you're talking about the student tutoring. There are some students at in the talks room that like to kind of have they they kind of make their own like almost like a it's not a therapist, but like they have like uh they

027actually do make connections. I've seen it like real time at in the room. I see students coming in asking for a peer supporter like like and whenever I see that it's like I it makes me really happy just how this room actually does help with connections. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. Any other updates from any other committees? Board members hearing. Oh, director. Um, I attended the community curriculum and instruction advisory committee um last week, which one of our speakers spoke about as well. And it's a fairly new committee to me, so I'm still kind of learning the ropes and how that committee works. But it's a I think we meet quarterly. And this quarter we had uh first we had an update from the elementary literacy website that parents

028can access to get um supports for parents who want to help their children with the new wit and wisdom curriculum and a lot of really good resources on there from ebooks to printable worksheets that students can work on at home. So want to get the word out about that as much as I can. And then we also shifted then to a town hall format where parents were engaged with the various areas of early education, elementary, secondary, advanced learning and the graduate profile to provide some feedback on those programs from the parents and um you know just learning from the parents about their experiences so that we can improve the curriculum and instruction. So looking forward to more work with that committee. Madam chair. Yes. If I could ask um Director Mclofflin a question regarding the

029committee. Uh as we heard earlier from uh one of our parents and uh she echoes the uh need for parent parental awareness and involvement. uh is there a link or uh can you suggest how a parent could maybe obtain more information about uh the CCA? Um the what I can tell you is that I actually saw a post about the meeting on Facebook on the district website. So I know that it's being uh promoted there. Um it gives the date and time and location. um that I would suggest reaching out to Heather Wellman um the secondary um director of curriculum and um they had a you can sign up to be on the committee and attend um so I know that they're you know taking names and contact information so I think that's the place

030to start and it's open to all parents okay that's important because sometimes parents either feel they're unaware or not invited to be a part of and thanks for bringing to our attention. Sure. And Dr. Marvin's a member as well. Did you want to add something? No, just that it's open to the community and we get grandparents, we get parents, we get people who are expecting children, uh we get staff, and it's a good opportunity for people to learn a little bit and then also to let the curriculum instruction folks know what they're thinking, what questions they have, what needs need to be addressed. I don't think we're ever going to get good enough at communicating um everything and all the opportunities for people to come and let us know uh what what they want to

031say. So, uh I think we need to keep focused on that. But this is one really important um committee and you don't have to be on the committee. You just have to show up and um talk, listen. And I really appreciate that they include all different areas of students including the earliest learners in our early education programs because I think that that's a way for parents to start getting involved when their children are really young and hopefully continue to be that way as their kids uh go through RPS. And do we know what the next date of the CCIC meeting is? I think this was the last one for the year. Yeah, this was the last one for the year. So in the fall, parents can watch for that kind of communication. Absolutely. For it

032to start up again, right? All right. Anything else, board members? We'll move on to our consent agenda. Items 5.1 through 5.12 are on the consent agenda for consideration. Would any board member like any item removed for separate consideration? Hearing none. Is there a motion to approve the consent agenda? So moved. Second. It has been moved and seconded. Miss Kramer, will you please call the role for the vote on the consent agenda? Director I. Dlo. Hi. Director Wman. Nathan. Hi. Director. Hi. Director Marvin. Hi. Director White. I. Thank you. The consent agenda has been approved. Our next item is 6.1 focus topic housing stability initiatives update. Superintendent Pel. Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to ask uh Lita Casper, our coordinator of community partnerships, and her team to come on up to uh get in places

033so we can move forward. I'll let the team introduce uh themselves as you take a seat up here at the table. Um it's common sense and there's a ton of research behind the fact that kids who are experiencing housing instability face perhaps one of the greatest obstacles to academic success. Um, obviously solving the problem of housing instability lies far beyond the walls of Rochester public schools. And so it's work that inherently has to take place through partnerships. Um, but partnerships don't happen uh, as has been noted tonight um, by magic and without effort. And so this work is a lot about bringing resources across our community together to support families uh, who for many complex reasons find themselves living in circumstances where they lack stable housing. And so I want to thank Lita for her

034leadership in moving this forward. She works closely with Amy Ike in our um office of community partnerships and engagement. And uh I know this is a subject of great interest to many board members and community members in a community where housing is a hot topic for good reason. And so lead I'll turn it over to you and thank you all for the work that you do. Um this has been a subject that we've been working on since I've been in Rochester and long before that. But I believe this is one of the first in-depth uh presentations we've given to the school board. So, um it's long overdue. Thank you, Dr. Pel. Um thank you, Chair Na Nathan, members of the board um and cabinet. Miss Kramers, thank you. Um I am really grateful to be

035here today and I'm really thankful that you gave us the opportunity to to share a little bit about the um really innovative and interesting work that we're doing here. Um, I'm going to allow um my colleagues here to introduce themselves and share what they do for for for work. Thank you for having us here this evening. My name is Nicole Westead and I'm the McKini Vento liaison or point of contact for students and families experiencing homelessness within Rochester public schools. Good evening. I am Shay Nichols. I am the eviction prevention specialist um point of contact for Rochester Public Schools. Good evening. My name is Mary O'Neal and I'm the associate director of the housing department with Homestead County. Thank you. Um we are really excited that we get to share with you some of this

036innovative and really interesting work um that's taking place here in Rochester. Um and we really do believe that it's innovative in um across across the state and really across the country. Um focused on solutions to really complex challenges um youth and family homelessness. This work would not be possible without the strong leadership um and the intentionality of multiple uh entities including Mstead County um and Rochester public schools. So, I want to just take a moment to thank um some of our leaders who who really do support this work. Amy Ike um and I see we have Dave Dunn who has also joined us. And Dave Dunn is Mstead County's uh planning and housing director. And so you can see physically here um the support and the collaborative work that that um that that exists. So,

037thank you. So, our presentation goal, we're really just trying to build a shared understanding of what we are all doing together to um to ensure that like Dr. Pel said that um that students experiencing homelessness have their basic human needs met so that they can access their education every single day. As I mentioned, we don't do this work in isolation. None of us can solve youth and family homelessness alone. And so we are really grateful to get to work with our strong community partners. You see the lo logos here. Um we just we we couldn't do it alone. Just for some interesting historical context, um in 2019, um Three Rivers Community Action, Mstead County, Rochester Public Schools partnered together um to uh around a grant called Homework Starts with Home. And at that time, um,

038we had piloted, um, this opportunity within a few different Rochester public schools, elementary schools at that time. They were primarily our community schools where we had on-site housing, uh, navigational expertise through this grant um, located in our schools. And we saw some real success with that model. And just from my experience being at Riverside at the time, it was wonderful to be able to refer a family who was experiencing homelessness directly to a person who could who could really help them navigate a really complex challenge that certainly our school social workers don't have the expertise and the capacity to do um from from their lens. Um and so we expanded the model and so that's kind of how we're here today. Certainly, we've made some um some significant changes to the model and we continue

039to focus on continuous improvement, but just so you're aware, this is where this kind of began. And so, I'm going to turn this over to Nicole who is our um our homeless liaison here in Rochester public schools. She's um just going to share a little bit about um our team and our structure. So you can see the photos of the members of our team that meet twice weekly that are on our collaborative um including Mstead County and Three Rivers, Goodwill, Easter Seals, Americanore, and Rochester Public Schools. We do deep work together. We certainly don't just meet twice per week. We're messaging throughout the week. We certainly also have not solved all of the concerns of housing in Rochester. And you're going to hear about the gaps and things that are still needed yet in our

040presentation tonight. But as Lita shared, this team has grown and expanded over the last two years, and we're thankful to have a group that meets and works well together and is closely embedded with one another. So part of our work, and if you've ever been involved in a collaborative with different organizations coming together, you know, it can sometimes be a little tricky to navigate too with different federal definitions, different dollars received, um, different grant requirements that we receive. Something to just note is that even the definition of homelessness differs depending on which federal organization you are referencing. According to McKenn Vento statute or educationally it's lacking a fixed regular adequate nighttime residence and as you'll see on upcoming slides that means it includes things like families that are living together not by choice and they're

041doubled up because they have to be. Um there's a different definition that is offered by HUD and I'll let Mary share that as well. HUD is um an acronym for the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development. Um and the HUD definition is literal homelessness, imminent risk of homelessness, or other situations like fleeing domestic violence. HUD has made the decision to focus on those and target their funding for those who are most in need um and people who are literally homeless, which would be defined as families that are in shelter or are living in their cars or a shed or other places that are not meant for human habitation. So that is the difference between the educational definition and the HUD definition. So you'll see that some common situations that our families experience under

042that educational definition of homelessness under McKenna Vento law are that they're doubled up in shelters, hotels, motel unsheltered. Oftentimes unsheltered will mean living in a vehicle. Um sometimes it can mean literal homelessness. And our most common scenario for families that we're working with is that they're doubled up with family or friends. But certainly and unfortunately, we have families that are experiencing all of those scenarios at any given time during the school year. When we think about what leads to family homelessness, there can be a lot of stereotypes or stigma around that or common perceptions by the community could be that oh that's an individual problem or an individual factor. It's regarding someone's mental health concerns. It's regarding substance use concerns. But what we'd like to take a moment to clarify and I'll let you read

043for yourselves some composite situations of families that we have worked with and assisted this year. Typical situations. Um please note that 81% of RPS families families experiencing homelessness do have household income. And so we're just looking to also combat some of the stereotypes and um perceptions that may exist as well in terms of who we're serving. So you may ask where are these families staying when experiencing homelessness? And so um we do a po each year we do a community point in time where at some point um we pull numbers and in January this is what we got. One family was facing eviction. 19 families lived in hotels. Nine students lived in a a youth shelter. Five families lived in the women's shelter. One family lived in inadequate conditions. So that could have been shel

044uh a shed um campground. Um one family lived in a vehicle. 95 families were doubled up with families or friends and 65 families have been um housed since being homeless. So, how does homelessness affect a child's education? Um, chronic abi absentism, academic challenges, um, graduation rates are low, educational instability, immobility, uh, social emotional challenges and, um, a lot of students feel shame and stigma. Um it was identified that RPS um students there was ninth grade there was 41% um of ninth graders who experienced um a decrease in the odds of graduating high school than their house peers. This is some recent statewide data that was put together by the department of the Minnesota Department of Education and anecdotally we see similar trends in Rochester. Um obviously you see the this the disproportionate impacts. Um but

045for us this really promotes the urgency as educators and and the other piece to this is it's it's part of this the why our collaboration is not only necessary but really really um critical in in solving um these complex um challenges. Okay. So this is very this is a very it's a very busy slide. So, I'll try to take a minute to just share a little bit about what we're doing to help and how we collaborate. You um you've seen MTSS in some of our um in some of Rochester public schools work around lit literacy specifically, but it's also um it began as a public health model. And so, the intention of it is really to serve an entire population of people. Um what I like about this graphic is that it really shows how

046we work together. It identifies sort of where our roles are, where um where each of our organizations sort of fit in this multi-tered system of support. Um and it also allows us to identify where gaps are. Um and so I won't go into the gaps necessarily right now, but um we can perhaps save that for for questions. Um, you might wonder how a family would be how a family would enter into this multi-tered system of supports. Um, I say this all the time, but our schools are community's most trusted resources. Our our schools are oftentimes the very first uh places that um a a family member or a student will share that they are experiencing homelessness. And so Nicole has done an incredible job of ensuring that each of our schools have a key point

047of contact which you'll see in that in that um tier in that tier one area. Um and so what she what what will happen is a school a student or a family might report homelessness. They report it to their school social worker. Their school so social worker will fill out a a referral. Nicole and Connie will get that referral or SHA potentially and um they will call and and and try to better understand what the family is experiencing experiencing and understand the barriers. Um sometimes that might just look like working with some of those uh tier one supports, right? School suppil school stability, transportation, um community resource and referrals. But sometimes it could it could require a little bit more um intentional and uh targeted support services or or uh intensive support services. In which

048case at our collaborative triage meetings, Nicole might bring that bring up um a situation and try to figure out how how to best serve um a family based on the barriers that they have. And so that's really the nature of this collaborative work and how we are working together to solve these incredibly complex community challenges um and ensuring that we are promoting educational stability um while also promoting housing stability. I'd like to provide a little bit of context in terms of how and where the funding comes from. So, local homeless prevention aid was legislation that was passed in 2021 and funding started in 2023. It is guaranteed um through 2028. And these are the amounts of funding that Homemate County has received. Um, the unique thing about local homeless prevention aid is that it's a

049direct allocation to counties based on population and student data that actually RPS and other school districts within Homestead County reports to the state each year. Um, so this number does vary, but if anybody knows anything about government funding, um, direct allocations are pretty rare. We oftentimes have to apply for grants. So, this has been really um such a unique way to provide funding and resources to counties. The other nice thing about it is there wasn't a lot of detail and expectations around the use of the funds. It's pretty broad and how we can use it. We do need to target families with school-aged children, hence the relationship with RPS and we must provide rental assistance or case management services and we do provide both. So, our two hope navigators, soon to be third, we just

050hired a third, will be um joining the team. So, they provide case management services for that top tier that Lita had just discussed. Um and then we also provide some rental assistance. We're also able to fund some hotels for those who need shelter. Um we have contracted with Goodwill Easter Seals to provide a career navigator that's also embedded within our team. Um, it's a quick access to um to employment to an employment resource who can really help them engage with employers, navigate some of the challenges that people have as they start to get back into um employment and the workforce and to increase their income. So, the the funding has been extraordinary and like I say, a lot of flexibility within how we can use this funding. Um, in terms of how Rochester Public Schools

051funds funds um the positions that are um that work within the system, we have uh funding under the Mckin Vento um uh homeless grant and we are one of seven across the state that get this um formula grant. We also have funding within our title one grant and so within the title one grant there are multiple set aides. included in those required set aides is the homeless set aside. And so, um, we we're funding our Mckin Vento liaison out of that. And then we fund our, um, our Mckin Vento navigator out of that. Fascinatingly, this is kind of where the where the where this collaboration sort of expands and where we get to get excited about the work that Sheay is is doing. Um through this collaborative we were able to um lean into some

052publicly available data, some publicly available eviction data. And so over the course of one year, we checked that public eviction data against some of the some of our data systems um to just figure out like how many students and families are actually getting evicted a year. And what we determined was from December 22 to December 23 that roughly 452 students were likely evicted totaling about 211 families from Rochester public schools. And so from that, we started to ask ourselves, what if we were able to use some of our homeless set aside to fund an eviction prevention specialist to fund this opportunity to um not only uh under under the Mckin Ventto law, we we um are are required to um identify families. And so using this really unique set of data to identify families who

053potentially were being evicted. Um and and so that's how that's how this um this this sort of dream came about. I remember asking Mary, what if we could prevent like 20% of these evictions? Like what would that do for kids and families? The ability to stay in their school, the ability to stay in their home, the ability to have their basic human needs met so that they can access their education to the fullest extent. Um, and here we are today. Um, we have we have um our we fund the eviction prevention specialists, but then we utilize all of these community resources that you'll notice below. For example, um local homeless prevention aid, Salvation Army, we work with legal assistance of Mstead County, Acts for Kids, Diversion Funds with Family Promise. Um there are others as

054well but um just a really interesting um dynamic opportunity and um we have this in a later slide but I can't help but share uh Sheay has been able to prevent um based on our last count 90 out of 96 evictions for students and families in Rochester public schools. So, I'm just going to give her a little cut. And what that means is that kids and families are safe and stable and can continue to access their education at high levels. Can I just add um with the numbers that that were found um the 211 families from Rochester public schools as of Monday um we are at 180 students for Rochester public schools. that means that there's about seven months left. Um that's almost that's over half of that number. And so um to to be

055in this position um I'm truly humbled to be able to work with families um in making sure that we can try to save their housing because the numbers I mean they just don't lie. But thank you. So, as Lita just said, um Sheay has worked with Legal Assistance of Homestead County and their eviction clinic and the families to prevent 90 evictions out of 94 um only since October 1st. So, that is rather a huge impact. Um, going back a little bit, looking at some data, our hope navigators have housed 65 families from July 24 to January of 2025. Um, we have, as I said earlier, a lack of um, shelter for families in our community. So, we have been utilizing some of our funds for hotel stays for families. Um so in 23 we we

056helped 28 families and then 40 families in 2024 and all of them secured permanent housing after being in shelter. We also have provided some assistance um to our family support and assistance team department at Homestead County. So we are able to provide additional assistance above the emergency assistance they receive through the state. And you can see how many households we assisted um with that funding as well. We might have taken over our 15 minutes, but thank you for for taking the time. Any questions, Dr. Bara? Sure. I'll go ahead and start it off. Um first of all, I was very impressed with the um presentation as I viewed it. Uh thank you so much for including the link to the NPR uh article interview that they did. you. Um, and I listened and read with

057a great interest. Um, I didn't realize, as I'm sure others may not as well, uh, fully understand that, uh, many of these families are working full-time. It's not that they're just hanging out and, you know, doing nothing. Uh, they're doing their best. Uh, uh, even the the one person in the uh MPR uh she was working, she was housed but with a looming eviction and and what a blessing for you to be able to uh step in and and intercede. Uh my question um I saw the reference or use of the term permanent housing. Now, in my mind, I thought, well, is that housing ownership or can you define permanent housing? We would we would define permanent housing as a family um having their own name on a lease. Okay. Um that would be one.

058Um but that they're not doubled up or they're they're not sharing housing with another individual or family. Okay. And thank you. I just wanted to clarify that in my own mind. And um so 387 students as of March 2025 uh what can we do to increase, if you will, the uh successes you guys are able to bring about. Um and and I use the term we and I expand it beyond the collaboration of the the county, Three Rivers, um and RPS and the other uh Goodwill, the other organizations. Um, are there other um opportunities for community organizations, nonprofits to um, if you will, come alongside of or um, perhaps as a result of your presentation this evening, uh, they've developed a an awareness and may think that they can play a role. How could they

059uh potentially find out uh that the role they could play and and the support they could provide? Certainly there's always room and you can see when you look at the numbers under the 387 I checked today and it was 416. Um certainly there's gaps and when we first started presenting we mentioned there's room for the community. I know that this is a limited opportunity right here, but I would just say we need folks in the community. We need the community support at large. Um, we need voters at large. We need everyone in involved in Rochester. Looking at how affordable rents may or may not be for folks. You could see the numbers of folks that have income coming in versus can they afford what they're expected to pay at rents of what they are right

060now. And that's a complex issue, right? like we know that that's a complex societal issue. I'm not certain that we have all the answers sitting here today, but certainly we would invite anyone to partner and come alongside us because frankly our students need you director. I love it. I love the uh I love all the work that everybody is doing. Um but coming thinking from education because that's what we do right here at schoolboard education. Um and coming from that lens so putting on my education hat um and being heavily involved in the community. I know one issue is that we often have families that return into the system right because they are working. get them housed and they're kind of right back in that cycle sometimes by no nothing of their own doing, right?

061Because life happens, cars break down, people pass away, you have situations outside of your control, and um some of us are familiar with living check to check. And if you're check to check, one messed up check can make a can start these snowballs. So, with that thought process, my question is and not to negate from any of the work that we're doing um but just on a preventive hat, you know, what how can what can you see or in the work that you do and how can we partner in whether it be financial literacy is that something that needs to be done sooner? Um I mean I know we can't do much about some of the societal things and you know pay rates and like you said these are bigger issues but are there things

062that from a school system perspective that we should be uh promoting or partnering with to you know maybe help with budgeting or you know help with uh you know savings and these things things that people often don't think about until it's you know until you're in a bind right then you wish you would have saved you wish you would have did these um is there an educational um partnership or opportunity there? Is that something that could be funded? So, you know, some people end on that that hamster wheel. Um I think there's there's you we could go on all night about this like this. I want to be careful because I could I could we could we could I could talk all night about this, but one of the um one of the things that

063you know through our MTSS um multi-tered system of support, one of the gaps that we identified was really this that we don't have a f we didn't have a family homeless shelter. And so that has been an area that actually our team including Mary O'Neal, myself, Dave Dunn, many others have really gotten involved in that family promise. And I know thank you for I know you sent your husband came to the family promise opening, director Marvin came to the family promise, Dr. Muel spoke at the family promise opening, but that what you're talking about is not band-aids, right? Like we we are trying to really um ensure that our system has a response, that our community has a response. um where where we are working with families um you know when families are going to

064enter this new family promise homeless shelter the the first thing we're going to be talking about or the first I'm saying we because I I'm on the board at at family promise but um one of the first things that we do is start talking about housing immediately right we are we are driven to ensuring your own safe and stable housing going forward and all of the skills and tools that you need to be able to that we can do work together to be able to ensure that that this doesn't happen again. And so I think the other piece with our tier three that hope navigation housing outreach to promote education, I know I didn't go into that very well, but really that level of case management um is intended to really create and to to

065to um ensure that that there's a true understanding of the needs and the barriers that a family is experiencing. and then sort of that really um um extensive case management to support a family into that long-term safe and stable housing. So, those are two things I I don't know if anyone else would add. Yeah. Um I would like to add so one of the things that I've observed um when I took the role as the eviction prevention specialist was okay, I think I've seen, you know, a family on this list twice. How are we going to get this family off the list? um where they don't keep running into this same cycle. And coming from an exper from experience, it's some of these things are generational where if you didn't teach your kids about financial

066literacy or if they don't know anything about credit, um they don't know. And you don't know what you don't know. And so one of the things that I've we always bring to the table is how can we reach out to community members and other organizations um you know when we talk about partnerships to say can we provide someone who has this specific um expertise whether it's math teachers and whatever the you know these are always talks that we're having um when we're meeting as a collaborative um it's not something that's going to be solved obviously, you know, with that one time where that person, you know, we may have been able to prevent eviction, but that generational stuff is generational. And so, one of the things that I'm really working hard on um is to

067find ways um to collaborate with community um out partner with other community um organizations that we can come up with, you know, do some budgeting and some financial literacy. But um the the c is so the evictions are so urgent and homelessness is so urgent that there's nothing that those families want to do more but to find a place to stay. And so, you know, when we think long term, I think, you know, when Lita talks about the shelter, you know, when those families go into those shelters, the the goal is to have a plan and allow them to be um have some type of stability plan in budgeting or whatever the case um may be a part of that plan. I think it's just trying to meet those specific family needs and looking at

068working with Goodwill Easter Seals, for example, on employment and increasing income. And I guess I would also add to in terms of community and it's a societal problem, but why can't Rochester be the community that ends family homelessness? Why not us? And so in terms of asking like what what is it with the community? I'm not certain. I don't think this table has the answers, but I do think student and family homelessness in Rochester needs to end. It's unacceptable. And so what are we doing to lean in? And just just for clarification, I I I I knew some of this, but I guess what I was getting at is kind of where Shay was leaning that it is generational, right? So, how do we take the data that we have knowing that we do have

069kids that are more high risk um to be in this situation and prevent that, right? Because I think the goal of any organization like this, like you said, would be to end homelessness. you know, not that I don't want to put anybody out of a job, but it would be a good thing to say we don't have kids that are that are unhoused and I could, you know, use my my skill set elsewhere in education, right? But, you know, how do we identify those students and maybe make it so the list doesn't continue on because as she said, you'll see, you know, in family par planning, the parent was homeless and now, you know, the child has a child and they're struggling with housing. So, is there a space that maybe we can find that

070we can pre be more preventative? I know this we like she said home um being unhoused is a serious thing and that's a big concern and once we get past that but you know it's a very reactive process. So, how do we how do we start to shift that so that we can do some more preventative things so that we don't always have this family that's urgently being kicked out in two weeks, right? Because a lot of this uh we could see coming with some of the data that we collect. I think it's just in how we're looking at the data we collect. Uh uh thank you J. Then just to director Whitehorn's uh point earlier, we are standing up new financial literacy uh coursework for all students. It's a state requirement but we'd be

071doing it otherwise. Um so that's a really important point and let me just say with great respect to my awesome colleagues, we do need No, please stay. The board is not done but please you're so passionate. It's so great. The board has a very long agenda for the evening. So please if we can uh keep our answers as pointed to the board members questions and they would never say that because they're much nicer than I am but this is fantastic. Director McLaclin um thank you for this work and thinking about Dr. Raquel, I'd like to give um mini goat award to you all for the attachments that you provided that they were incredibly helpful and you could go as deep as you wanted to and um director Barlo talked about the NPR article, but then

072it had links to other articles. So, it was, you know, very informative and I really appreciate that that we could, you know, pick and choose what we wanted to look at. And I think your presentation here answered a lot of my questions, but I just kind of want to point out um from my perspective um mainly because I actually work at Southern Minnesota Regional Legal Services, so I have some connection to this work, more my colleagues than me, but I know what you guys are doing and how important it is. But what I'm understanding from the first of all, I love the collaboration, but thank you for tying it to the MTSS because that makes sense to our world here at the board table as to what you're doing. But as I understand it, the

073level one is to um make student and family homelessness brief, rare, and non-reoccurring. And that seems like the the um level one intervention, but the level two, as I now understand it, is the prevention. And I really love that because there's so many pieces of our system that we never get there. And the fact that we're doing that here, it's really exciting. Um, so this does answer a lot of my questions, but I did have two. Um, one of the attachments was about that gap analysis. There's a slide in there from the state data that talks about u breaking down the state data by grade level. Does is that reflective of Rochester as well or are there do you notice any differences with that? I overall I thought the data was pretty reflective of Rochester.

074Um yeah. Okay. So there nothing specifically to that slide, but I wasn't it wasn't super surprising. Um just for your own interest to um across the state roughly 2% of of students are experience experiencing homelessness and here in Rochester we're about 2.5% right now or three. So we're right we're not far off. Got it. And then my other question is I appreciated the attachment that had the strategies for working on this work. Um and you talked some about um the school level point of contact. I wanted to make sure that we had those in all the schools. But it also talked about professional development. How can you talk about how um how informed our regular classroom teachers are about this or are there professional development things we need to do to improve that knowledge? You

075did you did an excellent job of reading all of the information. Thank you. I'll let So, we do have professional development opportunities in place, but certainly there's room to grow. Um, each building does have a designated point of contact assigned, and I'm in regular contact with that designated point of contact. Each one of those contacts has received training in identifying what qualifies someone as being eligible for Mckin Vento, when to reach out. were in regular contact with each building. We did at the beginning of the school year provide training for our ESPs during back to school week so that some of the folks that might have first contact with our students also have that training and awareness. We offered training to each building this year. I'm hoping that more buildings take us up on that

076offer for training in the upcoming school year, but our team is always available to provide, frankly, a similar presentation to what we shared with you, but also the impacts of what that would look like on your practice as a school professional and how to network with this team. Wonderful. Thank you, Dr. Cook. Um, well, thank you. you know, along with my colleagues, um I'm gratified by the work that you're doing. It's it's clearly incredibly impactful. I think as a community, the idea that two to 3% of our students are homeless ought to be shocking. It ought to be a rallying moment. Um because it's just so unacceptable. But the thing that that um that I I can't stop thinking about is that for for most of these students, I mean, surely the the prospect of

077eviction is is horrifying and it's urgent um and demands as much of a response as we can muster collaboratively, but the months leading up to that are also incredibly stressful in the home um and for those students and just the the absence of that security and safety and sense of stability of a safe place to go and be yourself. Um I I'm almost I I guess Lita, the thing that you said is that for for many students that go through this process, the school is the first time that that they share that information with somebody. Do we have examples or or is it are we able to assess that some families are moving into this uh very stressful period where they're not yet served with an eviction notice but they're becoming unstable. Um, and do

078we have the capacity to respond in any helpful way like prior to the eviction stage um, our capacity right now is from the Rochester public schools that that tier one is really where we we'd need that that level of capacity. Mhm. Um, so no, I would say we are um I don't want to speak for Nicole, but working sometimes 12 hours a day, right? Like really significantly over time because you're right, these these experiences are urgent and stressful and scary. And um we need to respond urgent urgently. Um and so yeah, I mean right now I would say that we don't have the resources to do more, which is why we lean on our collaborative partners um for that for that work. I will say that since word has gotten out that Rochester Public Schools

079has an eviction specialist, we've been getting I've been getting um more calls from landlords and property managers saying like, "Hey, like I know you do this. Are you able to support this family?" And in these cases, it has been prior to them having given them notice or given an eviction um filing an actual eviction. And so one of the things in my role that I really want to work on too was just cultivating those relationships with obviously there's a lot of landlords and property managers within our um homestead county but getting you know my name out there so that they know that there is a contact and that you know I am playing the mediator between landlords and tenants you know to save the family's homes. Um I do feel like they some families will

080be upfront about it if they don't have any type of like resources or they don't know especially for example like a family who may be a multilingual family or they don't know that there's resources for them within the schools. Um I can see in working with those families it's been um a lot of panic and they think that when they go to court they have to move that day you know. So, um I really stress too just when reaching out to families um to say like the biggest thing that you can do right now if you've already received an eviction notice is to appear at court because if you don't then you'll be defaulted and you automatically get an eviction on your record. Um, but even just being able to provide some education or on

081like what's happening in the process, I felt like families are more at ease in the urgency that they are um in a housing crisis. That's really good to know that property managers are reaching out to you proactively in some cases. I think it's a um that's good to know that because I you know the other thing that I I just wanted to acknowledge is that eviction specialist role is not something that we had in RPS until very recently. So um really glad that that uh that this is doing such a good job of being impactful to the uh families that were able to reach. So anyway, thank you again very very much and thanks for the presentation. Thank you. See if there's any other comments for there. No. Um, as director Cook just said, we

082haven't had this 18 um before uh for before. Um, and then I look at your sources of funding for Olmstead County and I look at what is funding our um our staff and our services and we are talking about how the community can get involved. Is there anything that our state legislators or federal legislators are considering right now that is threatening any of these funding sources that our community needs to know about or stay aware of? Um because if that funding goes away, we would have to make some hard decisions about how to support this work. And obviously the um the number of students is going up daily. So anything you can share about that? Um, from the Rochester public school side, like I mentioned, we are funded um largely out of title one. Uh,

083the homeless set aside is within that budget. And so I I don't um I'm I'm hopeful that um Title One isn't um Title One continues, right? I mean it's it's been around for a long time and since before the department of education and it serves uh you know it's federal dollars that serves um the entire country and certainly there are areas of this country that would be um really challenged without that those those dollars and so um it is a bipartisan it's been historically very you know sign strong bipartisan support. So my hope is that it's not but yeah you're right I mean it's a it's it's a serious consideration. It's a serious consideration. Thank you for bringing that up. Anything at the state level? Um we had a we had a a a grant

084with a community based organization a year ago and um so no there's nothing consistent. The consistent funding that we have um is through Mckin Vento and um Title One. Board members. Well, thank you very much. We look forward to keeping updates about this work and thank you for having us. We really appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Our next item is a monitoring item, curriculum review and revision process. Superintendent Pel. Thank you, Chair Nathan and board members. Uh our chief academic officer, Mona Perkins, is coming up and our um uh director of secondary education, Heather Wilman. Um, this presentation may be a bit of cruel and unusual punishment for you as board members because it is only going to be a taste of the deep work on curriculum that is happening in our office of

085academic services. We wanted to provide this because we know that the implementation of our new literacy curriculum has been much on people's minds and we know that the board has already approved the implementation of a new science curriculum for next year. We wanted to show you that we are thinking uh far beyond those two immediate next steps. Um, thanks to the passage of the referendum, we now have a base of $1.2 million a year. Not sufficient for all of our needs, but a base on which we can invest in continually making sure our students are being provided with knowledgerrich, highly engaging, inclusive curricula in all subject areas. And so when I saw that the team was doing really deep work on this, I said, let's give the board and other folks who are watching kind

086of a preview of coming attractions. We know you'll have many questions about individual subject areas in this plan, about the finances in the plan, about implementation. We look forward to providing you with more information on all of that. But here's a snapshot of the years ahead. And I will just say I was in two schools this afternoon and questions came up uh in both instances about what's next after literacy and so this is timely for people in our schools as well. So Mona and Heather, thanks for your leadership. Thanks for having us. Heather's going to kick us off. Yeah. So before we get into the details of the plan, we just wanted to kind of ground us in our why. And really this is about high quality tier one instruction for every student. Um, we

087know we've been working on deeper learning um through our deeper learning teams, but now that's really going to live within this curriculum articulation cycle. So, as you think about MTSS, as they just talked about as well, this is really that high quality instruction for every student every day in every classroom. And when we sat down to think about our curriculum as a whole, we were really think trying to think about we wanted a long-term plan for our curriculum enhancement process. Um what had been what had been kind of the history was new standards come out, you look at the standards, you look at a what curriculum you're going to adopt, you implement, and then you just kind of let it go for 10 years until the new set of standards come out. and then you

088kind of repeat that that cycle. And that's not what we wanted. We wanted to um have a better process where you're constantly reviewing um the even after you adopt a curriculum, we wanted to be looking at it and making um adjustments because because you want to adjust to who's in front of you and nothing that you adopt um is perfect and so you want to be constantly looking at the materials um the instruction the P you know doing work with the PLC's and all of that. So when we started this work, um we started really looking at what are the phases that we that we want this to be in. Um and so we landed on four phases, but they're not necessarily four years. So a phase can be more than more than one year.

089And so you start with phase one, which is when when um it's just the very beginning, and you're looking at the current state. So you're looking at your current data. You're looking inward. You're looking around. Um you're analyzing for alignment with uh elements of deeper learning. Um and then you can start moving into phase two. And that starts your planning and figuring out what are your what are the best practices. You're looking at what curriculum you might want to adopt and you're looking at the different criteria, aligning it to standards. you might pick a couple curriculum uh that you want to possibly pilot. Um and if you ch if we choose to do that, the next phase would be a pilot. So that still stays in phase two, although that might be two years. Um

090and then if you're choosing to pilot, you pilot and then you move into implementation. If we already know what curriculum we're going to pick, you just you purchase it and move into implementation. prior to implementation, prior to the full purchase, the board does have to when you're making a large purchase, the board would have to approve the purchase if it's over $100,000. That's the dollar amount, I believe. Yeah.$175. 175. Okay. Um and then so like for example, this year was our full implementation of Witten Wisdom. So this year we are in phase three of Witten Wisdom. So, we're using the new materials and um instructional strategies, assessments, all of that. And you might wonder where student work or student voice comes in. And really, that would be in phase three in the full implementation. Although

091sometimes even in our planning, we may want to get feedback from our students or our families um before we make that choice. But um really phase three would be when we'd be looking at student work. Um, we also found this year with Whiten Wisdom, we needed more collaboration time and the teachers needed just more time to be able to really delve into that. So that would come in in phase three as well. Then when we shift into phase four, this is where the a lot of the revision stuff happens. And this is I think probably one of the the most important parts because and this is where we're looking at some tight collaboration between central office and um and the schools because 4.1 is the PLC work and data review where we're looking at materials

092and resources if there's any support that that we need from the central office to really look at any material adjustments that need to happen um systemwide any adjustments with assessments tools, anything like that. And then 4.2 is that's the work the heavier lift is more at the building level with in collaboration with the with central office and that's more around practice and routines. It's more around the PLC work. They're digging into the student data and making adjustments at the at the you know classroom level. Um so that would repeat and you're constantly making revisions and adjustments there. that is where like the the heart of the work is. Um and then you keep doing that work until you circle back to phase one which whenever that comes back up around but that's the important part

093because we're not dropping it you know for 10 years. I think one thing I'll say about our process, um, we did a lot of study of other districts and what what their phases look like and how did they really think about how to make this more of a continuous improvement process and not just we take a look and then we see you in you know eight or 10 years. So we spent a lot of time really looking at and hearing what worked and so I think that helped us land on these four phases. So then then we had to look at okay now let's actually outline the work and so we started with every subject area where are we at and outlining it this is the long-term plan and what phase are we in in

094each of these subject areas. So there's actually two slides here just didn't stick them all in one. Um so for for English elementary was in implementation this year and um secondary was in phase two phase two planning in the planning and so then next year um elementary will be in the revision phase. Do you want to touch on the Sure. secondary. Yeah. Um and with English um for secondary we really spent a lot of time on um looking at the standards looking at the instructional shifts and then um we've been working a lot on vertical alignment. Um so thinking about how do those standards build at each grade level and um one of the things that's come out of that work is single point rubrics. Um so we can see what changes in the standard

095from sixth grade to seventh grade to eighth grade. we didn't feel like we had tight enough alignment with that. Um we've also talked a lot about common text. Um and so then next year will be our year of implementation and then we'll be collecting student work and using those rubrics um in our practice. So that's kind of what the the process looked like in English. Um you can see in social studies um we're kind of at the current state right now. We're looking at what are the standards asking us to do um and where are their gaps? Um what does the data look like? Um, we've been spending some time at secondary with a a social studies leadership team that's been helping us think about, well, how do we now get everyone on board with

096that work? And one of the things that team really urged us to do is to bring all social studies teachers in. And so that's been a part of this work this year as well. Um, I think probably one of the most beneficial pieces for me was thinking about backward mapping and making sure that we have the right resources to be able to support all of these groups because um, as you can see there's a lot going on and we have to make sure that we um have that central office support especially for the phases one, two, and three. Um, and then how do we make sure we keep that PLC going? Yes. And we want to you you got to look at when the new standards roll out and you also have to think about

097if you're actually purchasing a curriculum. You can't have them all be purchased in the same year. Want to make sure that you have the dollars align as well. And so a lot of this like we had to look at there was a lot of looking at okay what what can we support when and making sure we're not missing when things need to be rolled out align with standards and and that type of thing. So when you look at math, element, excuse me, elementary right now is looking at doing um identifying what is a potential smallcale pilot that we can do for next year. So we'll identify um some some teachers have um volunteered to be part of a a pilot and then so well I they're looking at what what are the curricular resources we'll

098use for that. We'll do a smallcale pilot next year and then once from that from the information we gather from that the following year we'll have a larger pilot um then full implementation the 2728 year which is when the standards are actually need to be implemented at the secondary level that work has really looked um like a secondary uh leadership team. So, we have a math team that has um administrators, um some math teachers, um and we're really looking at what are the standards asking us to do, how have they changed, um and then we're doing some common reading together as well. Um and then next year we'll be thinking about how do we get our grade level teachers involved? But this first visionary group has really helped us think about what are the shifts.

099Um, one of the things they've been kind of talking with us about um, from MDE is that we don't necessarily have to have new materials, but we need to think differently about how we use those materials. So, we don't know yet whether there will be new resources needed. U, but right now we're just spending some time looking at how have the the standards changed and shifted and what are the instructional moves that we need to be thinking about. So that's it. This is our this other page is just the other topics for subject areas. That's all since you just talked about it. Um under the good timing. Um you talked about when the standards needed to be implemented for math. Can you tell us what years the standards need to be implemented for the other

100subjects? Yeah, we have all that outlined. Okay. But would that be the year of implementation for? We tried to align it as best we could for most of them. Some of them we did have to push it out a little bit just because so when you're looking at elementary, you have the same teachers doing all the subject areas and you can't overload them, right? Do you know what I mean? And so it's there's some where we had to we had to make some adjustments and just say like we might have to push it out a year. Um so math would be 27 28 28 and 26 27 would be social studies and then next year is um English although we were a little ahead of the curve with witten wisdom because we needed it uh

101sooner than what the the standards had to be implemented and for other courses like we experienced with personal finance we're at the mercy should the legislature decide there are new requirements or new classes that we have to implement. We have to somehow fit it in. Yeah. With this cycle. And we talked about that a little bit um just in preparation for this because we have this long range plan for you know we have new standards and then we're going to do this full um look but sometimes we have things like personal finance where we might have a course that's already in existence but we need to make sure that we're um adhering to what the state is asking us to do. Um, we also sometimes have situations. Um, a few years ago we had health

102where we really felt like we needed to really update that and even though there weren't new standards coming from the state, we were hearing from our community and our families and our students that we needed to take a look. So then we would do um probably more of a short-term u response to what we're hearing. So I think that's that's kind of how we handle it. So, personal finance, we've had some curriculum writing last year and then we'll have some this summer as well um to look at. there's lots of new curriculum because of the most states um adding this and so that's been a benefit and most of it's open source so it does there's no cost which is great and I think that's part of that fourth phase right like you're always looking

103at what curricular adjustments do you need to make and then you know what instructional adjustments do you need to make that just has to be part of what we're doing all the time because it's not it's if we think what we're going to roll out year one is perfect like it'll will never be and so we always have to be ready to make those adjustments. Dr. Cook, so um thanks for sharing all this. Um I just had two uh observation slashquests. One is I have come to and maybe this is just because of the last couple of uh curriculum purchases that the board has made. I've come to think of curriculum as largely subscription model and maybe that's not really quite accurate. Maybe it is largely a one-time purchase, but we usually there's a lot

104of consumables and often, you know, uh uh software subscriptions and things that go along with it. Is is that the right way to think about curriculum purchases or is it more of a one-time thing? It can sometimes it can be um like you can purchase books. There's some a lot of times subscriptions that come with it that need that are you renew after so many years. Sometimes there's workbooks. Sometimes it's you're writing it, you're creating it. So like there's different models and different types of so it's it's really like the the curricular resource is just one part of it but but the the big purchase is often that but it's not always so like the the ELA uh for secondary there wasn't a huge purchase this year. I think sometimes you you see the the

105more comprehensive models at the elementary level or K6 um and so we see more subscription there and then um we've been lucky like with science there's a next generation science standards and so there's a lot of open- source materials that are really high quality and that are are no cost or low cost. Um, so it kind of depends on the discipline, um, and what's out there in terms of the open source materials and if we think they're high quality enough. Um, and so we have to kind of, you know, do that digging and think about what's the gap and then what's our data telling us and and that helps us think about whether or not we need a subscription. And usually when you do a a textbook or a comprehensive program, then you'll get like

106an eight or 10 year subscription. But sometimes um so it kind of fits into that cycle anyway. Okay. If the cycle goes too long then you might have to figure out okay we gota pay for this for a couple more years um until we're ready to to look again. And then okay that's all super helpful. Thank you. And then uh the other thing I was wondering on the I I I think I understood that this is all aligned with the state standards and this is essentially our implementation of state standards. So when I look at science, it just jumped out at me that there's nothing for computer science. And is there no state standard for computer science? Maybe that's do I don't know is there. So there there are so we have computer science standards

107that are now embedded into the other areas. Okay. As well and then there are also computer science uh teaching standards. Um and so the state is really working on that, but that's an area where we don't really have it in our articulation cycle and we probably need to think about that. Um we're lucky we have a grant right now from the Department of Education for expanding computer science. And so we've been meeting um throughout this year thinking about well how can we build more um exploration at the elementary level um and then what does that look like in middle school so that our students can really feed into that high school pathway um because we have strong high school courses but we have I think it's less than 2% of our students that are actually

108engaging in computer science because we don't have the buildup at the elementary and middle. Um, so that would be an area that we might have to think about adding into our long range planning. And I know Dr. Pel has thought a little bit about that maybe in the next uh some of the next goals that that we're thinking about. Yeah, I think I would just say really briefly to chair Nathan's question about finance too. These this is the plan for the major subject areas. We teach many other things that need more targeted strategies. Unfortunately, computer science right now would fall into that category being a niche subject that that relatively few kids in RPS take. One of the questions that I think about a lot uh in a place where Mayo Clinic is reinventing medicine

109using artificial intelligence is should we have a much more ambitious computer science strategy as part of our next strategic plan. Um, but right now there are many different uh more targeted subjects where the curriculum review process is going to look more limited and targeted than in the areas that Mona and Heather have mapped out because these are the biggies. Um, but we'd love to continue that conversation for sure. Director, hopefully this is a quick question. When you are piloting a new uh curriculum or approach, how do you how is it determined where or who does the piloting? Um that's a good question. So this is uh for math this year we are we offered it up as like teachers um they volunteered. Um but you can do it differently. You can do it by volunteer.

110You can select like it it just kind of depends on how we want to do it. But but this year for math we asked them and we had quite I think we had a really good number in elementary that that have volunteered. Yeah. And as we discussed that a little bit we talked about the value of trying to have like a small school um or a larger school um or multiple grade levels just so you get feedback from multiple grades. Um but I think we just said who's who's interested who's willing. Yes. at least for this initial one, right? Um because you can I mean it could be great to have even if you don't have an entire school do it like to have like an entire grade level at a school do it but

111um yeah for this for this especially this initial small one we just did it by volunteer director. So just for my own clarification so I'm on the same page as everybody else here because y'all already may be there and maybe I'm not in the same book. Um, so the new standards are implemented every 8 to 10 years. Is that is that Usually they're on a 10 year cycle. 10 years. Um, but with COVID um everything got kind of compacted because there were a number of years where there wasn't the same um work that was able to be done at the Department of Education. Um, so well talk to me nice here because I I got a question I just don't I'm not grasping. But if we are implementing the phase one and the phase two,

112does this mean that when we're looking at curriculum, we're looking we're making an assumption of what the standard will be? Right? Because it seems to me that some of this work we're doing is going to be prior to the new standard coming out and things change rapidly. So when we're in that phase two, are we having to be mindful that we can assume that this is what the new standard is going to look like? I mean, how how does that look if we say we want to implement this fantastic program and then the state standard comes down and they're like, but we want you to do all of this. So how are we making an assumption for information we don't have yet? Or is there data somewhere that gives us a That's a good question.

113You know, how how are we not having to redo this process all over again when the standard hits? Yes. So, usually the the standards come out and then there's a period when people can give public comment and then they go through rule making and then you have a chance at the um the local level. So we don't um generally make any big decisions until they've gone through rulemaking and we know that there won't be significant shifts. So social studies was an example where it took a long time to get through there was a lot of p public comment. If we would have um purchased based on the first iteration of standards we might have had to make some changes. So we typically wait till they go and get through rule making and then that's when

114we start to look at at So we don't start phase one until then. It's way ahead of time like we already know the math standards that are going to be implemented in 2728. Yeah we already know. But if I think it's a really critical question no it's a really important question director. Phase one actually is agnostic to the standards. It's what's our current state? What's it's what's our internal how's it working? What where's the curriculum connecting? what does our data show? It's when phase two and shifting into phase three happens that we have to be watching the state in those subject areas where there are state standards. Um so that's where it's a very important question. The other thing too is at least in the three years I've been here, this is a much more

115formally organized approach than we've been taking. So we are actually articulating this to you as we are beginning to implement it. And so I think the process itself is new for RPS and I'm excited that you looked at as many other districts uh as you did in figuring this out because um I'm sure we're going to learn some things about how to get that balance right. Um you don't want the state standards to drive all of your local discussion because I frankly have been on state standard setting committees and it's just a bunch of regular people like us sitting around saying what they think kids should know. The Minnesota state standards are not sent from God or grounded in inalterable science. They're professional judgment. And so while they're very important and they're the law, we

116see what Rochester kids need. We see what's happening in our data. So we want to pay attention to that. But we also want to look, for instance, one of the great discussions about uh that I'm sure we're going to talk about in a moment when we talk about the skip process. Should we be aligned with the ACT, which is not based on Minnesota standards, or the MCAs, which is I've recommended the ACT because I think it's more relevant for our high school kids going forward. Uh, but it's not tightly aligned with the state standards. So, state standards matter, but they're not the whole ballgame um, as we think about this. So, is there a danger in us choosing a curriculum that doesn't align with the state standard? Does that affect our funding? like what what

117if we say this is what's best for RPS, but like you said, the state standard is is different. Yes, that's a very important point. If you if you adopted a curriculum that was highly misaligned, you it would start to show up in your test scores because where kids are actually not being introduced to concepts at a time when they're taking that assessment, the curriculum might be teaching them one or two years later or uh it might be teaching them in what we call a spiraling fashion where the kid is introduced to the concept but then they get it deepened over time. And so we do have to think hard about the level of alignment. I would just say it's not a straight jacket like we want to be thinking. I mean the wit and wisdom

118purchase is a good one. Is it broadly aligned with Minnesota's uh English language arts standard at elementary school elementary level? Yes. There were other curriculum options that we looked at that maybe were more aligned, you know, uh at every grade level point, but I think we made the choice not just for alignment with state standards, but for deeper learning and for engaging curriculum. So, it's a it's a balance as you make that decision. We do have a healthy skepticism when we look at most curriculum companies will say we are highly aligned to the standards. They all promise that and you really have to take a look and make sure that it does match what you are aiming for. Um, and because we have deeper learning built into this now, we'll be looking for those pieces.

119So, we don't always just trust if it says it's aligned. We spend a lot of time making sure that's that's the case. because I was with Director Cook, I thought it was a subscriptionbased uh situation. I'll just say having got friends in the educational publishing business, they want it to be like software. That's their dream. It's just like oo 3.0 pay up. Um that's what they're all aiming for. Um depends on what subject area is, if they can kind of get there and how techbased it is. And having heard how you've selected curriculum in the past, the issue of making sure we have curriculum that aligns with the needs of our PS students, it doesn't just have to be one purchase, right? We could we could purchase a a tier one, for example, and then

120there's a lot of other products that we could fill in. And we we did that a little bit with the reading curriculum, right? Completely. Do we have three separate uh resources? Yeah. and the rubrics that we're using as we're looking at like the as we're looking at the different curriculums like it we're looking at does it align to state standards? Does it does it have components of deeper learning? Does it have a tier 2 interventions and that are aligned to the tier one instruction? Does it have tier tier three components? Like we look at all of that. So um so that we're looking at the at the curriculum as like a comprehensively to make sure that so that we know if it's pieces are missing then we know what's missing. Anything else board members? Clearly

121you have a lot of work on your plate so thank you very much. So, board members, we have four prep for action items in front of us. Um, would any board member like to take a recess at this time or power on? Uh, I think a break would be productive. Okay. So, can we do it in five minutes or 10 minutes? Five would be okay. Five. Five. All right. Board is adjourned at 7:25 to return in five minutes. Sorry, guys. Prep for action. Um 8.1 SRO contract. The board would take action if it so chooses at the May 6th meeting. And under the current SRO contract, uh the contract automatically renews for a period of 12 calendar months unless either party provides written notice of termination to the other party. And as we'll discuss on

122the agenda item, the board has other options for action. So what I'm looking for, board members, by the end of this discussion tonight, is some direction as to what you want that resolution to look like for us to consider for action at the May 6th meeting. Superintendent Pel. Um, thank you. I want to ask Jackie Peterson, who's our chief of schools, to come up. And I think Jackie, we're going to bring uh Chris Lingan, who's our director of school safety, and Sergeant Joel Blottic from the Rochester Police Department. Are we bringing another colleague up? Very good. Come on up. Ryan Magnus is here. Okay, great. Officer Magnus, good to see you again. Thank you. Um board members, as you know, the our school resource officers provide a very valuable um source of support for our

123students, our staff, and uh sometimes our families. Um that said, this board since I got to Rochester has also been deeply engaged in making sure that our officers are positive uh forces around relationships and school safety. Uh the board has been directly involved. I want to thank Director Mclofflin in particular for helping us rewrite the contract which I think has held up very well um to meet the needs. So this is our opportunity both to get an update on what our school resource officers have done over the last uh school year and then as chair Nathan mentioned uh certainly to give the board the opportunity to decide if you want to take any action regarding uh the contract which otherwise does renew with no action. So Jackie, thank you Chair Nathan, members of the board,

124Superintendent Pel, we're pleased to be here with this uh report, which I think uh does a nice job of explaining the work that's gone on um this year with our SRO's, and I'm I I'm pleased and proud to work with this group of uh officers who serve our our buildings and and our students and families. So, I'll just jump right into our presentation. Thank um I'm not sure if I've ever shared uh photos of our SRO's in our previous presentation. So I thought I'd share these are middle school SRO's officer Arzola who serves uh Dakota and John Adams and Officer Royston um Kellogg and Willow Creek. And at the high school we've got Officer Condan at Century, Officer Gilbertson at John Marshall, and Officer Jackson at Mayo. and they also share time at the at

125the area learning center. Uh they have an office there and um take turns providing support. And then we've got officer Cordom who spends his days at Phoenix Academy. And um and then we've got officer Blanik here who is the team lead and uh provides us districtwide uh support as well. We appreciate uh all the work that he does with us. He works regularly with Chris and if we have anything happening um districtwide that we need some guidance on we um we are lucky to have u I won't say 247 we try not to call him um in the middle of the night but uh he takes our calls anytime which we appreciate. So I put this slide in here I think uh at the end of the night here you're going to be looking at

126uh you're be talking about um policies that um that we've been recently updating and this is directly from a policy on school resource officers. So, I thought I would just put this slide here to remind us what uh what our statute says about the work of uh of resource officers. Um and I don't know that any of us would argue about any of these points and um we certainly feel well served by our team of SRO's on all of these points um in our schools on a daily on a daily basis. Um I won't read all of these but definitely um I would say on a daily basis many of these um points come up um probably safety drills we're not doing those on an everyday basis but uh we do continue to uh run

127our um safety drills that we're required to do and we do receive guidance on both our crisis plans that that set the tone for those safety drills and then um our SRO's are a resource for how our drills have gone when we do have those. Um we you we um Sergeant Blanik pro provided the activity logs from all of our resource officers. So six officers about seven and a half months of data and um with the help of Dr. Peter Ruck we were able to um process all of that information into some usable data for you to see um how frequent those activities. Now this is these are activities that actually uh director Mclofflin helped um uh uh scope in the contract. Other activities that we were looking for um in terms of um building

128relationships and the things that you see here below, presentations to classes and whole grade levels of students. Um helping individual students uh helping resolve issues. um meeting with families when they had issues either in school or issues that happened outside of school that were impacting their children at school like social media posts and um and and threats of violence and concerns that happened outside of school that were impacting their children in school. So you can see that the greatest uh greatest issue that our SRO's are working through are those uh we call them meetings on violence but really those are as I was mentioning a student who's really struggling with um an issue of um uh maybe with one student or a group of students feeling that um there's an issue or a threat coming

129for um through social media or they've had an an ongoing issue with a student. um or group of students that uh is disrupting their learning environment and they're looking for support to resolve that issue is issue peacefully. But by far that was the greatest over 400 uh situations like that reflected in those activity logs. Um, in addition, we uh we also used uh uh um AI to summarize those the logs. Although I will say I I took the time to read all of those uh all of the logs and actually really enjoyed um getting to know a little bit more about the individual events that occurred in all of our schools. We try to categorize categorize what those uh activities have been. And so the first category, a high focus on violence reduction and support

130supporting social issues or really social media issues or um individual issues between students or groups of students. So, coordination with administrative administration and staff would be um really would highlight a lot of different issues, but um really safety issues that might be coming from students or might be coming from parents calling into the school saying, "My child is reporting this." Um it might be something that was posted on social media that brings up a concern that might be coming into school um as a threat. So, we are working closely with our SRO's to um investigate and make sure that our schools are a safe place for our kids to be every day. Um and um and sometimes the followup to behavior as you see noted here might be a request from uh school um and

131it might be a request from parents who would like to know more about what um what our SRO's can do to help. Um participation in school and community events is pretty self-explanatory. Um, our SRO's are at a lot of events that happen during the school day and after the school day. Um, I noted some of those that were showing up in the activity logs like uh the cert back to school event. Um, uh, if celebration uh, one of our SRO was invited to and went to the um, Shabbat pancake breakfast that some of the kids invited him to and he was maybe five or six kids that uh, invited him there. the polar plunge a lot of our SRO's are participating in and then the final bullet here incident response and crisis management. Um so

132uh as I mentioned before planning and helping with uh safety drills and um collaboration with us as district leaders if we've had uh threats um that we are investigating to make sure that our schools are safe. Um we also there you've heard probably about swatting incidents where a school might get a call. It might not even be a school in our district, but might be get some sort of a bomb threat or something that ends up being kind of a national event. Um, Officer Blanik will call us and tell us this is happening nationally. You might want to let your schools know to be aware if they get a call um that it could be a a swatting event or a fake event and but they should let us know. It helps us um not

133uh not uh immediately go to high alert but know that there's something happening in the nation that um that we should be aware of. Um in the area of student support, this this shows up a lot. We have students who really um are looking to SRO's to help them when they're facing issues of um as I mentioned before social media tends to generate a lot of um issues between students where they maybe are the um subject of a social media post that that is putting them in a difficult situation among friends. Maybe they are feeling threatened through a safe a social media post. uh maybe they're hearing that there might be a fight that's going to take place, but there's there were a lot of instances um indicated in these activity logs of students seeking

134out SRO's for help, advice, um guidance. Um to make SRO's aware of something that might be happening. So, a lot of individual counseling and guidance. Again, the trust and rapport building. Um some of that is just being um available in the lunchrooms and in common areas. Um, okay. In common areas for um for just to build those relationships. Um, I was uh Dr. Pel and I were out giving an award to officer Al. He received the goat award recently right after spring break and afterward many students were coming up and receiving I think uh they he was making paracord bracelets for a while. So, they were asking for those and asking for for items and having personal conversations. So, those good uh connections were being made. And then the safety and emotional well-being um helping

135students with their concerns um uh in the neighborhood around the school. There were some many incidents of officers helping with traffic control at the beginning of the year, making sure that our neighborhoods, our streets, um uh that that parents are approaching school safely for drop off and pickup. all these things that you um really appreciate that sort of help um and guidance. And then finally, the educational engagement that we had that's called out in the contract um that is happening across the district both in individual classrooms um and in auditorium environments. So for classroom teachers may be asking like a social studies teacher might be asking for an SRO to come in and talk about um the constitution or talk about their role in the community. uh and also SRO's are pre are preparing and

136presenting um whole grade level um presentations on things like the uh the dangers of uh social media or what to watch out for with social media. Um there were some presentations on um on fighting and um you know how to avoid fighting and what can happen if you do fight. Um and so just trying to be proactive with students. Um and then um the the last point here, interactive and practical learning experiences. So onetoone discussions with students and families um and and helping students understand what what the SR role role is and then I'm going to turn it over to Chris to talk about our data and we'll try to speed through them. I'll scroll scroll for you. We'll try to go quickly through this. Um, this is the the data that that we've talked

137about numerous times that continue to grow with and you've asked for it in different ways. I think we're hitting that spot I think that we've talked about numerous times of what exactly we're looking for in our data. So, if you look at this, there's three main parts to it. There's the incident type uh things that the SRO or RPD responds to. Um, we've got a reporting source what our schools are, our high school, middle, elementary or ALC's and the outcome. um no action, a citation, three rivers, diversion, um convicted, in court or open, I'm active. Um the numbers will equal so your total number incidents will equal in the green column and they'll also equal in the blue column together. So example is let's look at assault. Um we've got six um in the high

138school, the middle school, and one at our ALC for 13. Okay, numbers add up. If you go across into the blue column for the shaded area, we've got six that had no action, one that had a citation, four went to Three Rivers, and two are still in court. There's our number 9 to 13. Now, when we talk about um some of our issues when we when we talk about um our schools that um refer to our police officers, those are items that probably will have a level two. I can't say every one of them, but those will have a level two and have some sort of documentation in our Skyward system. And if you go a couple down to community service, there's 28 items. Those items probably are not in our system as far as

139a level two because they're not a discipline system. Those are things that that our SRO's provide outside of our regular pieces that you're thinking of a discipline part or a conviction part of thing. Keep scrolling down. because community service might be going to change a battery in um an ASD students um device to a location device. Yeah. For example, so there's and this is also in your board pack so you can see it as one document. I know it's hard to see on on a slide. Not sure how in depth you want me to go in each one of these, but it kind of gives us our our background as far as where came from. One last one. I think if it's if it's if it's fair, Madam Chair, I would just say in the

140big picture, what we're seeing is that very few essentially none of our students are actually moving through school to convictions. um they're all being uh dealt with through uh what we might call either more restorative community serviceoriented with a couple of exceptions where it's still in process and where we would also expect it to be resolved along those lines. Does that seem fair to you? And again, this we really are grateful to the board for pushing for this data and for RPD for producing it because when I first got here, we did not, at least from within the school district, we didn't know exactly how many of our kids were getting uh, as they say, caught in the criminal justice system. And what we're seeing is, at least as it applies to our SRO in

141school, um, it's essentially none. Um, now they're interacting with law enforcement. But just to sort of my big takeaway from that And I think another issue that we've talked about in the past is that no action column or or the the all the outcome columns that it's not who makes that decision as to how that moves through the system. So could you just touch a little bit on um you know Yeah. So an event takes place um and we refer so let's say I'm at male high school and we have an issue an assault that happens at high school. Um I refer that to our SRO and from there it becomes in them. I don't have any way of saying to them you need to charge this or I want you to charge this. This

142is now on them. they do their pieces um SRO wise and then within the county within county explain that part but once the event happens we do it separately and then off they go on on their part say they may come back and say hey is it okay to look at three rivers look at that that type that's why I see a lot of the three rivers piece within that or diverse type thing yes of course we're not in the process yeah so actually as it gets referred over to us uh then the SR will review the incident. Uh they'll meet with the student, meet with the parent, they'll have a conversation. Uh they'll talk about the incident itself. Uh they'll look at it at the big picture and then how do we resolve this?

143A lot of these incidents we do refer to three rivers. Um sometimes parents say, "Hey, we'd like this to be referred to the courts." Uh that doesn't say or negate anything that it wouldn't go to court, but then we do have relationship with county attorney's office. they also look at this uh incident and some of these incidents uh may also just get restored over to restorative practices and then deferred from court. Um I've seen a lot of great res uh success with Three Rivers. We really believe in it. Our department is strongly involved in that. We've seen just a lot of great outcomes. So it does work very well and it works well for the school district. Before we move off the data, one question um for our team. This doesn't mean that there aren't

144disciplinary consequences according to our student handbook and our policies on discipline for any of these incidents. That's correct. And we'll see that data July this year how we I think I totaled up the number and if somebody pulled up a different number that's 277 that may not be the exact number. Um but we don't have 277 referrals that we refer to law enforcement. So some of these are not Some of these things that came in from the community or came in that way. We don't we don't put animals into Skyward, right? Animal calls. Yeah. Vector. So, these are incidents though. So, how can we get a number of students that are impacted? Because at the end of it, I believe it says what was it 16 persons are involved but there only two three 10

145um Three river incidents reported. So I guess I would like to see actually more accurately how many students are impacted. Um because a fight can involve 13 students. I mean so the data is a little misleading that you know you may have one kid in court for it but the call could have involved uh multiple students. And then I'd also be curious to know in um just in the work that I've done in in the criminal justice that oftent times there's multiple charges. So a kid could be have a disorderly conduct that also is with an assault. So we're counting it you know as two separate incidents but sometimes a one incident can result in multiple uh violations. May I say is that reflected here or is it just so the incidents that we refer

146to like three rivers. So let's say there's a fight that'll probably be referred as disorderly. It goes to Three Rivers as disorderly. They go through that program as disorderly. So like you're exactly right. So one incident there could be uh five or six students involved, but again it's getting referred to as a disorderly. I I don't think though Director Reinhorn and you guys correct me. I don't think in these data and again we've only been doing this for a couple years and it's gotten better every year. I don't think there's doubling up of incidents. So there's probably each incident is standalone. Are there many instances in which a disorderly is also an assault in this data or if it's happening in school is it usually one or the other? It's usually one or the other

147I think in most case. Now your point about number of students is we haven't had that request up till now. I think we probably would need to build that into next year's reporting but we could do that. Um because right now the request was to track incidents when there's an incident and I think we've gotten pretty accurate in the distilling the incidents but we could certainly look at that for future years of number of students impacted in each incident going forward and that information would be reflected in our July report. Correct. So we will see it at some point separate if it's disciplinary to RPS as opposed to from them. Yeah. you'll see it if it if it resulted in RPS. So, example of the special circumstances, 22 of them, that's not going to be

148reflected probably in our discipline data, but it could be I don't know if it's 22 different students or if it's eight students. Yeah, we Dr. Mccclofflin, um I really appreciate this work and I think that it's reflective of um you know, Dr. Marlo and I can talk about this and Dr. you see us not here, but um this is what we were hoping for over modifying the contract is is having it in a way that's digestible and understandable. So, I appreciate that. Um one question I do have is that the logs that the officers are doing, is that going to continue so we can continue to see this kind of data? Absolutely. Okay. I just wanted that was just like a one-off or we're going to continue that. And then um I had a question

149about the other data. I think um that one escapes me I guess. Um the other point that I wanted to make Oh, I I really appreciate and I think one of the other intents of all that earlier work we did in earlier years is to completely separate the discipline data from this law enforcement data and the fact that we're talking about it in two different months is what we were hoping for. So really appreciate that work as well. Anything RPD we've asked of them is Sometimes takes a little bit of time. Any more on the data before we let them finish their last slide? I got one more question. Is there also are you noticing any repeats kind of like we were talking with the eviction process uh where she had mentioned that she is

150seeing certain families come through two or three times you know for an eviction um are you noticing the same kind of trends from the SRO's are we noticing certain children or groups of children and I'm asking for this information as to how we could be more proactive and preventative if we are recognizing trends you know maybe there are things we can maybe do to intervene before they are um incarcerated. Yeah, and that that's a great question and I think that's something again we could look at the data and numbers because sometimes um if they go through three rivers we see great outcomes with that by doing restorative circles it works great but if the student would be moved let's say to a different school or they maybe go online for a while then come back

151and we haven't been tracking that and uh we can do a better job doing that and again it's more data that we can certainly and try to collaborate again together for um next year for these numbers. I can definitely get them to you. In July when we share the discipline data, we we do show you that repeat, you know, how many kids have multiple instances of behavior. I haven't been here in July yet, so you'll get that in July. Thank you. I remember my other question. Um, uh, this for you, Officer Bonik, that it seems like historically, um, the school resource officers were tasked with investigating things that were referred from within your department to do interviews and that kind of stuff at school. Is that still a thing or are the officers not SRO's

152not involved with that aspect? That is no longer the practice. I would say too that some of the incidents that get reported to them if they're through Minnesota Department of Education that become very critical immediately get a hold of our detective division and they're brought in and then they usually meet with the student either off campus or they meet with their family home. Okay. And that seems like just for the community's knowledge that that's a change in your department then um that choice that you all made to to differentiate those roles in our community. Yes. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. The last slide really has to do with the contract and as uh as you mentioned uh at the onset the contract is written such that as long as if neither party indicates a desire to

153either amend the contract or terminate it, it simply rolls over currently as it's written um to the follow to the next year. Um there was some uh uh inquiry made to RPD as to whether there may be interest in a multi-year contract and uh Chief Franklin indicated yes that would be of interest and so that's uh the information that Chair Nathan provided that there could be a conversation about a multi-year contract. My colleague John Carlson had provided information about a number of uh contract contracts for service that are multi-year here in the district. So, it wouldn't be out of the ordinary to do such a thing. Um, so there would need to be a a a motion or a resolution to do a multi-year contract should we decide to enter into a contract of more

154than one year. Chair Nathan, I notice we're using the term contract versus memorandum of understanding. For the most part, they're one in the same thing. Or have we officially migrated fromou to contract? I I think the theou that we you can help me director McWacklin developed in the past is now combined in one document with the contract, the agreement. Yes. Okay. Do you want to talk about the cost of the contract? certainly can. I the there's been an increase uh in uh cost of uh law enforcement salaries and benefits uh percentage- wise commensurate with the increase that we've seen in Rochester public schools uh over the last three or four years. So the uh aggregate increase uh as you can see um is on the screen and it's my understanding though I'm sure lots of

155officers might like it as might lots of teachers they're not expecting that level of increase every year for uh the next 10 years. So this was important I know from the chief's perspective to make sure Rochester is competitive for the best officers and can retain the great officers we have relative to other departments. similar to the steps that we've made since uh I joined uh Rochester public schools where there has been a very significant increase in compensation and benefits for our employees as well. So the increase is a reflective of increase in the salaries of the SRO's not an increase in our share or any additional costs. It's straight up their salaries and salaries and benefits reflects our cost cost sharing of that. Yes. Okay, director Cook. So, is the I I'm just I'm trying

156to understand the the posture that we're at with the contract. Has the city or the police department indicated that they intend to terminate the agreement without a change in the financial parameters? Um, they have not indicated they plan to terminate the agreement, but the standing uh long-standing practice of splitting the cost led them to, I think, appropriately propose that again this year. So, should the board want me to go back and direct that, um, I certainly could pursue it. Uh, and I I appreciate Chair Nathan kind of asking me to speak to this. I obviously, uh, maybe should have addressed it more proactively. Um, it's not an insignificant increase, but I think it's an understandable increase. uh as I've said it's commensurate with the increase we've had and I think that um the cost sharing

157that we have had with our department is something that I think works very well both sides have skin in the game. Um I know school districts where they bear the full cost. I know ones where the city bears the majority of the cost in which case it frankly lessens even though we have a very effective partnership it lessens the shared ownership of the strategy. Um and so that would be the logic I think of uh continuing to pursue this. Um obviously every year I've presented you with a balanced budget proposal to consider in June and I will present another one in slightly more than a month that would incorporate this cost into the budget. During the break, we were having a discussion about contracts and talking about our teacher settlement and the fact that we

158don't have um large pools of candidates applying for our teacher jobs like we did many many years ago and how we're trying to attract attract and retain the uh the best possible teaching um staff that we can. And um I'm sure it's not surprising to learn that RPD is facing the same challenges that they're not um seeing, you know, auditoriums full of people waiting to get on the list of possible candidates. Um just like uh just like we are sometimes watching to make sure to see if people are actually going to finish an application so we can call them for an interview. We just don't have people lining up and and they don't either. So I can understand that um need for an increase in salary on their end just like we needed to do.

159So just from a contract negotiation perspective just I is is your recommendation Dr. PEL as you know in in view of the relationship with RPD and so forth to amend the agreement to reflect the increased um amount that you know whatever the actual amount is that would roughly split the cost of the officers um because the the current language is just calling for a 2% annual increase. So it we I I don't if I'm understanding correctly then the superintendent's recommendation to the board is not to do nothing but is instead to either amend the contract or perhaps explore a multi-year agreement. Is that correct? Yeah, I appreciate that. In retrospect, uh Director Cook, it's an oversight. The resolution should have been written as you just articulated it and we could update that for your consideration

160of it at the action level. Um, I also am not making a recommendation at this time about the move to a multi-year contract, though generally speaking, my my my perspective on my job is to always give you a recommendation. I'm actually agnostic on that. I know this has been an issue of importance to the board going we have a lot of contracts that are two and three-year contracts. Uh, I'd be pleased to make a recommendation to you on the multi-year contract, too, if it would be something that you'd like me to bring uh next week. Uh but yes, I will recommend I can say for sure that we uh continue the 50-50 cost sharing of the actual cost of the service. Um you know, the one of the things that I have uh noted since

161I've been here is that uh RPD assigns us its best. Um as soon as our SRO's are not in our schools, they're on the street. Actually, they don't get the summer off. um and they choose them for their ability to work with kids um and families. And I've always said were I to ever feel that was not the case, it would dramatically change uh my strong support for this. But I don't feel that. Were the city uh or the department to come and suggest changing the percentage that maybe the school district should do 70% and they should I think I would have to actually think very hard about making that recommendation to you. But because they're recommending we continue the long-standing tradition of evenly splitting the cost. Uh that would be my recommendation and we'll

162update that language for uh your next meeting to reflect that fix because you're right uh it's a bit confusing where we suggest no action is needed but you would need to um authorize this expense. Can I add to that a little bit? Sure. Um, I think that and I and I agree with that that based on the language that I think the the number in the contract represents the 50% sharing, but that's not explicitly described in here and that the 2% obviously is is going to need to be updated as well. The other thing I want to say about the contract now that I've looked at it a little bit and to answer um director Barlo's question about theou that I think what is attached in assembly is I think it was anou that we

163did to increase from the five officers to the six officers for a period of time and that's why we referred to it at times about anou because that required anou because it was a change mid-contract but that the and the dates of this document seem to reflect that too. Um, but I think the language of this docu I think what's attached here um is the actual contract. We just referred to it as the MOU because it was making that change from 5 to 6. And then I think at one point in time we had to do anotherou. It might be why we're talking about it that way because we weren't ready to make a decision on the deadline and we had to extend it a month. So I think all of that has been um

164creating some confusion here. Um while I'm speaking I had one more point that I wanted to make. Um reflecting on um what um um you're saying about retention as well, retention of teachers, retention of officers. One of the things that I personally envision, and I think Dr. Garcia and Director Barlo and I talked about this when working with this contract is a desire to have someone from the school board sit in on the interviews for the SRO's. Um, I did mention that to the chief when I talked to him recently. And I think that that not that we want to participate in the decision- making, but just to have eyes on the person that's going to be coming into our schools to make sure it's the good fit with being with our students. Um, that

165I think that there's some value in in having us at least at the table listening in to make sure that um, we are confident that um, a good decisions being made. Dr. Marvin, two things. Um, I actually did as a board member did sit in on the interviews and it was amazing not only to meet those who were interviewing but also to listen to the kinds of questions that were being asked and I I'd never felt more heartened and confident in our SRO's than I did at that moment. So, I appreciated that. Um, if my understanding is that we are need to come up with an agreement now about what's going to be in the resolution that we'll be voting on, we're talking about multi-year contract. Is that two years, three years? I mean, has

166that been were I to make a recommendation on that? I would recommend uh uh piloting a two-year contract. Were I to do that? I think given that we've only done one year, um I think that gives the board um and by extension the community that cares about this issue a more limited time frame than like you're stuck with me for three years because you gave me a three-year contract and Oh my. So, um that would probably be doc Dr. Marvin what I would recommend. Should we do that? And and again, I I really appreciate this. We will be pleased to uh clean up the resolution for you for the next meeting to reflect the this feedback. Okay. And then a quick question for you. I'm guessing that being an SRO is is the best job

167a police officer could get and also possibly the most exhausting because you're spending all day every day with adolescence. What what be do you think for for some um some sort of security if they're thinking, "Yeah, I'm going to do this and I'm going to I'm going to get to be the best person I can be with teenagers and I know I'm going to have to invest a lot of extra patience and learning into how that works. Would it make it a little bit easier to have people become SRO's if they knew I got this at least for two years?" I mean, assuming that they do the the job rather than one year and then you're Yeah. I I think you know, you look at um Officer Cameron Jackson, uh with his background, uh he

168actually student teached so he knew coming into this when he approached me and was interested in it, he already knew what he was getting into. So, he already had that investment and then he networks and works very well with the collaboration with Mayo High School. So, I think sometimes we look at these backgrounds with which what the officers have. Uh if they're engaging in the community, uh if they're volunteering at the Boys and Girls Club, um and again, it's just a lot of good background that they bring in that helps out a lot in the schools and they network really good with the uh that administration that's in the school as well. And I would add to that that when we select uh school resource officers, we are looking more in that long term. We

169don't want them to be there just for a year. We want them to be there for multiple years because I see our school resource officer is that community policing at its best. Right? So they are that community is that schools police officer. So we want them to have time to build those foundations, build those relationships within that community uh year after year and build on that. So we do see those as long-term investments in the school. I think to your point about the two-year contract, I think it is a kind of a vote of confidence. I know over the past few years it's been a little bit nerve-wracking when we come around to this time of year for our SRO to wonder. Yeah, director Marlo. Uh, question for RPS, I mean RPD, sorry. So, um,

170this increase as reported in the post bulletin is a 24% increase, I believe. And is that tied to your, uh, labor contract or your recent contract? And how many year contract is that? So, uh, yes. Uh the increase is uh one of the main reasons is uh like superintendent Pquel mentions our our 50-50 split um with the current contract SRO contract um our labor agreements were not or the school resource officer agreement was not keeping pace with our our labor agreements. Okay. Uh then now we have since uh new ratified uh labor agreements which are for the next three-year term uh which had significant market adjustments in them um which played uh greatly into this uh increase and I will you know reaffirm what Superintendent Pel's mentioned about uh our commitment to the schools and

171I can assure you that we will not be coming back to the school board asking to increase that that uh 5050 share um because we see the added value of having the officers in the school as well. Knowing that that officer or SRO is going to spend 75 to 80% of their time in the schools, that shared cost of 50/50. Um we see the added value of of contributing that to the to the community, to the school district. On top of that, we have um added buy in and support with Sergeant Blanik here, which is is actually an additional resource to the school district, which is not governed within your current agreement. Um so, the police department provides that in addition to that to make sure that your leadership um has immediate access to a

172supervisor at the police department 24 hours a day uh as he does answer the phone a lot of times late at night. um as well as to be that supervision for those SSROs that are within the schools. So we see the strong partnership there um and we really see the value that not only this district brings but that we bring to the district. Right. So I just wanted to be clear then that um uh for the next three years uh we shouldn't anticipate a uh increase but we should also be aware that uh as future labor uh or uh contracts uh are renewed and negotiated there may very well to keep our SRO's uh in step with uh uh your line officers there may be an additional know, three years from now, I'm not asking

173you to project into the future, but it's quite possible three years from now, we could be asked to um uh uh fully fund uh the SRO's. I just wanted to make sure that we're not communicating, oh, well, we're good uh up until the next contract. Yeah, we are good. And uh uh I'm a retired union guy, so I more power to the union. I'm not, you know, saying that's a bad thing. I just wanted to make sure we're communicating, uh, you know, above board. Everyone knows and thank you for what you guys are doing. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, I would just I would say that yes, our labor contracts are locked in for the next three years. Um, I would say that this contract cycle was a very uh this is the largest market increase

174I've seen in my career, you know, 25 years in law enforcement. So, I don't anticipate we would see that again. I think there was a lot of market forces that came into play with that and nor do I anticipate that we would ever come back and ask the school district to fully fund the SRO program 100%. We always see that partnership there, the value in having that partnership and splitting the costs. Thank you. So to build on that question, the um base payment in the current contract um would have to be updated to this um 45,993 per month, which reflects the increase. But there is language here that says that there will be a 2% cost of living adjustment applied to the monthly payment paid by the district each January 1. Would that still happen?

175Madam Chair, I'd like to look at that. It's very clear there was some homework that we should have done before tonight and so that is very much on my mind to update the language for you. Okay, great. So, we will do it because that that was historically in there as a predictable rate of increase. I think to Director Barlo's point sometimes it's not a typical rate of increase and so let's make sure we work with RPD to come up with some language for you to consider at the next meeting. Okay. If I can if I can provide some clarity for you as to how we came with that 4% is that's based off our um contractual agreements for our labor union through 2027. So that's where that 4% came into play. Um and then the

176second piece would be that in the resolution um I'd like to see and I'd like to hear other board members um feedback. I'd like to see the total cost of the contract also included, okay, in the resolution so that we know the dollar value we're approving. Um, and then the second question for me that goes along with considering a multi-year contract is the um provision for the term. um this uh tradition we've had of having this contract automatically renew unless we provide written notice of termination in the event we want to change the contract language. Now we have to have a resolution and take action. I think this board has committed to having a agenda item on the SRO contract every year because we've said that we want to see the law enforcement data and

177we want to discuss have a discussion as to whether we want to terminate the contract and I'm wondering if the board would like to have this um be like other contracts when the contract comes up in term we have a conversation about whether we want to have a subsequent contract as opposed to this automatic renewal if we don't take action to cancel it. Well, Madam Chair, I think that is a great idea and that in past iterations of this uh contract, it wasn't actually tied to the labor contract. It uh we now have that awareness and so I think we have um every reason to um uh support your recommendation. Additionally, uh any ongoing concerns should there be any which would arise of the uh superintendent and chief Franklin I'm sure would have communication and

178if there were anything that rose to the level of a need to perhaps tweak or modify it would be brought to our attention at that point in time. I would add to that discussion based on the work we did earlier is that we probably want to have that renewal time at springtime so that if there is any time that theoretically one would want to terminate either side that we would be able to have plans for the following year. Right. So keep it on this keep it on that May 1st schedule. I think that makes sense. Yes. Right. To give us a few months before expiration. Director Whitehorn. So, I can um just from what I from what I'm understanding is that there's just really some wording concerns and how it's worded. Um I would say

179I'm not 100% opposed to automatic renewal, but I would say maybe we can add language about, you know, the annual review in the spring. Um, I mean, I think that everybody should have a way out of a out of a contract, but if there are no concerns, I see no issue with it with it renewing without a a vote, per se. Um, and I think that's the question that we're we're putting forward is the current contract should no board member, let's say we had this discussion, there wasn't any changes to make in the contract, we could say thank you very much and end the agenda item without taking any action. um versus saying at every time we renew this contract, there has to be a board vote to affirmatively renew the contract. But if there's

180any changes to the contract, right, like if there's a cost of living change or if there's change to any language, I would think that the board would want to take a vote to approve the contract. And under the way this is worded, we would have to take a vote to terminate the contract before we modify the contract and then take a new vote. I mean, we we can propose a new contract that that specifies whatever term we want and it can call for um cancelling the previous there's nothing that would prevent us from doing that. I I if we're if we're going to go to a two-year agreement, um I think getting rid of the evergreen automatic renewal um is fine. I don't really feel strongly about it. I could envision that actually working to

181RPS's advantage in some scenarios, but it I don't feel strongly about it. Um I wouldn't if we were going to retain the evergreen or automatic renewal language, I wouldn't want that to be for more than one year, though. Um so those are my thoughts on it. and the superintendent I believe said he was going to work on the language and perhaps u he's heard what we have have to say regarding this and if he's good to go and he's captured our concerns we could probably as long as board members I would still like to see though I I would I mean even if we're not going to vote I'd still like to see language that does require some accountability of a review well Director Whitehorn I don't think we need to put that into our

182contract with RPD, though, but I I think as a board, we should absolutely be committing to that. And if if the contract terminated with a two-year term, we would be forced to do it um because we'd have to talk about it in order to enter into a new agreement. And I think this board has made clear in the past that we want to see that this annual conversation happen. So, anything else? No, I I thank you. I feel like I have some good guidance and I I think I can think of some ways to make sure that that you're confident about that review as well. So I think we can bring you a good proposal. This essentially would align this contract with every other contract that we have which is time limited and then you

183got to reup or the contract is done. Um but I think that uh I think we can work together in pretty short order to bring you uh some of this additional information to consider next time. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Our next agenda item is 8.2 performance measures and skip 2.0 process. This is a prep for action item tonight and the board discussed this at the April 15th study session and is scheduled the board scheduled to take action at the May 6th meeting. Superintendent Pel Thank you, Chair Nathan, board members. You heard a lot from me last uh week at the study session and you had a long memo from me which we have uh uh spent some time uh considering in the week since we talked last and some of the

184feedback that you gave us uh last time was uh really quite influential in bringing the proposal that's before you. Uh I'm going to attempt to be brief because we talked about this a lot and I want to save the time for discussion. Two points I think emerged at your study session and they've emerged in several meetings that I've had in schools um this week including one at Mighty Oaks and one at Riverside today that I really want to begin. The first really critical point is how do we frame the skip the school continuous improvement plan and as I talked with folks who were at your study session and who are in our schools I realized in some cases people are thinking the skip is everything. It is the master plan for everything that happens in

185a school. It is the guide book to every subject area, every grade level, every aspect of school. And very importantly, that is not what a skip can or should be. A school improvement plan is a targeted strategy to address a limited number of areas where we need to get better. Maybe it's because we have low performance or maybe it's because we have solid performance that we really want to improve. So skips do not and cannot address everything that schools do. So there are many aspects of our schools that we will continue to be attentive to that are not going to be spoken to in a skip. A skip is a tool to frankly if you have to put it at its most essential uh level address your biggest problems or your biggest challenges but it's

186not all-incclusive. The second point um has to do with the measurement piece which um looms large if we're going to be doing serious continuous improvement which is that we have based the proposal for the performance measures in particular that is before you now on the measures we realistically will have in the next three years. I have made the mistake in my career multiple times of writing plans that had goals that you can't measure. which doesn't mean to the point I just made a moment ago that we shouldn't work on those goals. But let's not pretend that we have measures for them. They don't belong in a skip process if we actually can't measure them. This is the place where we do the continuous improvement work. So very briefly in the resolution uh that you have

187you can see that there's a set of design principles that are there. There are uh a list of performance measures that I will come back to in a moment that I'm proposing would guide our school improvement work for at least the next three years and also guide the design of our strategic plan starting next fall. There is an articulation of who the skip team members will be and uh as board members know it was a subject of significant discussion last week as we heard about tonight. I am not recommending that parents be required to be on the skip team. I appreciated the point that's been made many times. In fact, I love the uh the attention that some in our stakeholder community have given to the skip teams. Um and you'll see on the next

188point I am recommending that we have a required opportunity for input and feedback that is part of our skip process. The reason ultimately I'm concluding not to require parental or caregiver involvement at this time is that to my knowledge right now on none of our skip teams do we have full integrated parent participants and I think before we mandate something we ought to try something. Skip teams are professional dialogues. Uh at Riverside today we had a deep discussion of the fastbridge data its meaning its use and the administration of the test. If you don't speak EduSpeak, someone would have had to translate for someone else there. Now, is that impossible? No. But it would change that a lot. In addition, as happened today at Riverside and Mighty Oaks, those teams meet during the workday. And

189to try and have teams meeting at alternative times would be a huge expense and a burden on our teachers and other staff. Um, and then finally, the point which again is is well taken. No single staff member represents all staff. No teacher represents all teachers. No uh education support professional represents all education support professionals. But they do have vehicles within the school to reach out to their colleagues. They have tangible ways to talk to the other teachers, the other ESPs. A parent who is there as a volunteer parent does not have a realistic way to get feedback from all parents in the school. And so there is another important difference. Now, I want to strongly encourage parent and caregiver involvement on skip teams. I believe some of our schools will uh embrace that possibility and

190I believe as we learn over the uh implementation of skip 2.0 how that goes, we might get to a point where that requirement makes sense. But I do think we ought to try it before we mandate it. not making the mistake that they made with the federal No Child Left Behind law, which was mandating everyone to do something no one had ever done before, which did not prove successful. That said, I am recommending an explicit requirement that parents and caregivers have an opportunity to learn about and provide feedback on their school skip every year and that there are ways that uh I'm sure our schools can devise uh opportunities to do that. that is not something that is happening in uh I think it's safe to say most of our schools right now and so

191that would still be a significant um step forward. Um the needs assessment component of the skip process is one that is a very important addition to the process that we don't have now. And I think to the point director Cook that you made in the study session um we realized that the self assessments that we proposed to build of key structures in our schools multi-tered systems of support professional learning communities really were not quantitative goals to achieve through the process. their tools for the needs assessment. So, we've moved that third category from the dashboard, if I can call it that, into the needs assessment. It didn't fall off, but now it's part of the needs assessment, not what our schools would actually be aiming to approve over time. The components of the skip, I'll come

192to again very briefly in just a moment. It has not changed since last week. Um, one thing that we've also clarified based on your study session, very helpful point. Schools will have a lot of autonomy to setting their intended improvement goals, their initiatives, their action steps unless they demonstrate sustained low performance or downward performance, in which case we will step in and we'll say, "I'm sorry, you don't get to choose your goals, initiatives, and action steps because Houston, we have a problem here." And so there's an autonomy that goes with progress that is a result of our discussion in your study session last week. The plan remains a three-year plan. Critically, we need to get to the point that where our improvement goals precede developing our budget and staffing plan. That's why it's going to

193take a year to make this shift because you got to have the strategy set before the budget and it's going to take us the 2025 2026 school year to do that. We've tightened up the approval process. It continues to be the skip team voting to approve the skip. Um that principles will be responsible for the school budgets, but skip teams will have an opportunity to review and provide feedback on that budget and staffing plan. Um although it will be the principal's job to determine that budget and staffing plan. Um we have uh articulated that uh we need to step up our support that we provide from the central office for school skip teams. In particular, we need to build experts in every one of those performance measure areas who can support skips. And then we

194have some general commitment to board monitoring of the process that will be um there. So to just highlight two very brief components of that strategy that you saw uh summarized there, that's where we've landed uh on my recommendation for the dashboard, the performance measures. Once again, back to my first point, is that everything we care about in Rochester public schools? Absolutely not. Are those key areas for us to continually improve upon? I do think so. Um, I am recommending that we embrace the five essentials framework of ambitious instruction, effective leaders, collaborative teachers, supportive environment, and involved families. One other change from last week is we don't necessarily name the 5e survey as the measurement tool. I think that is most likely, but in talking with Dr. Ruck and Gretchen Accassio, our project management coordinator, we've

195realized there may be some other ways of measuring that framework that we should look at. So we're asking you to embrace the framework as opposed to the specific survey. And then finally, the basic structure of the skip has not changed from what we talked about in the study session. Those performance measures that you saw a moment ago would be our northstar, our dashboard. Schools would uh set their improvement goals based on their data. Which are the areas we need to work on? Is it reading? Is it math? Is it family engagement? Is it uh leadership? Um is it our graduation rates? Then they would select their improvement initiatives. We're suggesting no more than three um because capacity is a critical thing to keep in mind and they determine their action steps and we will deter

196we'll provide schools with progress management information on an ongoing basis that they can use to track progress toward those performance measures. And then critically off to the side there, when principles submit their budgets and staffing plans, they will need to show that the improvement initiatives and the action steps u of their skips are adequately resourced in their budgets and staffing plans though that will be the responsibility of the principal as opposed to the skip team. And so madam chair with that uh you have the resolution uh before you board members questions. Dr. Wford. Um, so, and I don't mean to beat a dead horse with the parent involvement part here. Um, and I I hear I' I've heard everything. I've heard both sides. So, my question to how you currently have it is how will

197you create the transparency? So I know we are kind of making the assumption that parents may not be available that stuff you know which I think is a big assumption um or language but my my concern is that if we do it this way um how will parents be notified that these meetings are happening because if we're encouraging uh parent involvement and not and not mandating it as you say um how will we be assured that parents are aware for the parents that do want to be involved, how will they know when and where these meetings are taking place uh beforehand if they do want to, you know, call in to work or whatever, do whatever they need to do because it's important to them. Um will we have some kind of way to make

198sure that is implemented? Um and furthermore to what you were speaking about the language and those things if we know that we're implementing a system um that can be difficult for our community to understand um what is our design around that will we you know host a town hall or something because you what I'm hearing is you want the parents to be involved and I'm hearing that there are barriers that may make it difficult for parents to be effectively involved. Um, but I I'm not really hearing how we're going to solve that, right? So, I I understand that this is something that can grow and we don't want to bite off more than we can chew and I I see both sides, but how are we addressing those concerns? So, it sounds like we have

199the time concern of the time of they were doing the the meetings. Um, but then there's this larger concern of whether or not parents will understand uh education legally, right? Understand the langage that being used so that they can be effective. Um, so I guess from my standpoint, in order for me to be comfortable in approving this, I would like to know what does that look like? H how are we going to ensure that the parents that are able to be involved are able to actually able to be involved and it doesn't become this closed meeting where now there's just a memo sent out? How how are we going to keep that open for the parents that want to be involved? Superintendent. Yeah, thank you, Director Whitehorn. Um, the resolution before you really maps out

200the highest level strategy and we would absolutely need to flesh out all of those specifics going forward. So, not just on this point of parent involvement, but on every one of these points, the resolution really is give us our marching orders. So, the language that I gave you is um encourage but not required to include parents and caregivers. I'm authentic in that encouragement. So the the the thing I'm not recommending is mandating. But then it says skip teams should be required to provide parents and caregivers with an overview of the schooli skip and invite questions and feedback from parents and caregivers about the skip. And so how we do that could be fleshed out and we could certainly come back to the board with detailed proposals. At this point I'm simply recommending that you require

201that. Um, and then there's lots of different ways that we could bring back uh options for schools to do it. I'd want to engage parents and school staff and talking about the most effective ways to do it. Um, I could hypothesize some of my own ideas at this point, but right now we're asked the recommendation is to require the input from parents and then I gave some examples that have come up in terms of you know open meetings, written feedback, things like that. Um that could be a very good subject of ongoing board discussion of if you approve this, okay, now how are we going to implement it? And we want to have some specificity because not just on the parent involvement piece, but on the needs assessment on um the other things. We're asking

202for your highlevel direction as opposed to all of your specific um all the specific action steps at this point. And I'm excuse me, I was just ask for clarification. I know we're saying not mandate, but then you do have the language of requirement. So, it sounds like mandate, but it's not. Well, no. The mandate would be input. So, there's a mandate for input. Absolutely. The mandate would not be you must have parents on your formal skip team. Um, that's the only So, there's a mandate for parent input on the skip. Now, so if we have a school where the PTA for instance or just a a parent is saying, I have no way to learn about or contribute to my school's gift. That's at odds with this mandate. Like we have to go to the

203principal and say, you have to have authentic ways for your parents to contri parents and caregivers to contribute to the skip. And we would need to flesh that out with them and say, what does that mean? Um, so there would be a mandate for information and input. Right now, I just think it's a and and the feedback from uh school principles in particular, but also teachers and others on skip teams was the mandatory membership on the team seemed premature to the folks we've gotten feedback on. Director Cook. Um, well, I I uh um I I like a lot of of what I'm seeing here. I think that um we're on a good path generally. Couple uh further questions that I've had is is there an expectation that lead principles would be members of the skip

204teams themselves or not? Yes, it it should say that. We'll we'll clarify that. Okay. Yes. Um that's useful to know. And then the as far as the membership of the skip teams, uh we're we're really this this process would delegate the recruitment and selection to the lead principles themselves, which makes sense to me if the lead principal is the one that is going to be uh charged with implementing the the budget that reflects the priorities. Um, one thought that I had and I I kind of wanted to just surface this for my colleagues on the board and for you, superintendent. Um, I I think it might make sense here to call for inviting the participation of parents and then leave it to the lead principle to I mean because the way I read the the

205proposal here is that um we are stipulating three specific teacher roles and then the lead principal and then the lead principal is going to be charged with recruiting whomever for the whomever they think will best situated to provide the type of input that they'd like to see from the skip team doesn't even really need to be a member of the school community. Um, I can think of some folks at some of my kids' schools that aren't current teachers, but maybe former teachers that would probably be great members of skip teams. So, um I think it would be I I I think it could be a good thing to call for even at this level of kind of abstract guidance explicitly calling for inviting um or soliciting uh potential members from amongst parents in each school

206and then delegating to the lead principal to determine whether any of them are are particularly good candidates that they they'd like to recruit and select. But I wanted to see if others had reaction to that. So the the one one point I'd add is and not to the to your suggestion about the parent point. I need to think about how that might work in practice. Um because you don't want to have a principal say, well, I'm going to invite you because the district made me invite you, but I don't think that I should have one. So I'm not really going to put anyone on. I mean it just to play it out all the way. But it we do have here each year before the start of school year principles be required to submit the

207names of their skip team members to the superintendent who work with central office leaders to review the list and ensure the required perspectives are represented on the team. So there will be accountability for making sure these are authentic teams that respect reflect those perspectives and should the board take a step to add any other perspective uh to the teams we would ensure that those perspectives are represented there as well. director. Um, thinking about the parent caregiver involvement in the comments to the board before the at the beginning of the meeting today, it seemed to me that it might be an issue of timing and perspective that it difference between perhaps the skip team getting their draft ready that the skip team hasn't voted on yet. that that draft might be what to present to the

208school community for feedback rather than waiting until it's draft is voted on, principal's done, the budget, we're all set, and then doing a presentation about here's what we decided. That's a great point. We that I think it's the timing and and the perspective of it, a revision to that effect. That's the intent. And you're right, it doesn't say that clearly. Yeah, I think it could be at the end of the sentence about inviting question and feedback from the parents and caregivers about the skip prior to skip team voting. That's intended. You're right. It doesn't say that. So, you don't want to say, "Look what we did. It's it's all done." Right. Yep. Great great point, Director Barlo. Yeah. Um so there is yes indeed a mandate for information and input for um parents and caregivers.

209Um Director Mclofflin, I appreciate your comment. Um I simply I I have um served on a number of advisory committees or served as a member of uh the community. Uh who was simply um informed as to the decisions being made and as a courtesy um input was solicited. But and you just made the statement decisions weren't necessarily made. But it's been my experience in the past though that oftent times the decisions are made and it's a courtesy being extended to oh yeah we're supposed to inform our parents and caregivers so we're going to uh call or convene a meeting to do that and um their due diligence has occurred. the uh parents and caregivers are made aware of what's been already decided. I guess my concern and and I don't want to be uh repetitious.

210I am um it seems like director Mclofflin has already suggested that there be some mechanism that allows for um uh input prior to the final decision made. Um the only additional uh concern I have is that um it's left up to the purview of each individual principal to decide what that might look like. It's my view and it seems like there is more than one or two or three of us on the board who would like to maybe see that be more than just a we'll leave it up to the individual principal. I think that it would be carry more weight if indeed uh that was part of the expectation that principles will uh other than the Bible, I'm not big on the use of the words shall and uh but um however you would

211think would be appropriate for uh you know communicating to the principles that uh uh there are some sincere effort and desire on the part of the board and parents. I you know um and I I'll end with that. I I think you've heard you've sensed uh even this is a response to our study session and I I I think we're getting closer and um I will be excited to see what the final result will be. I had one more piece of feedback. I want to make sure everybody who hasn't talked yet has a chance to talk, but we Oh, I you're gonna stay on the same subject. I just wanted to briefly respond to that subject, but if you're going to comment on that subject. Yeah. Just from a parent perspective, I I think I

212like the idea of giving some flexibility because I think about PTA at the elementary level, there's a captive audience of 30 people. PTA at Mayo High School, fiveist five or doesn't exist, right? So, that's where I think those our schools are. so diverse that I think we need to think about what's the most effective way to do it and that it's not going to be cookie cutter for each school is not going to be the same. I I I would just first of all let me commit to see if we can bring you some language to this point that is still flexible but a bit more specific um next time. So let me one thing I'll just say um having in my previous lives at the University of Minnesota and at search institute done a

213lot of work around parent engagement the way to get a lot of parents and caregivers there so not just the ones who will come to anything God love them is to have an event where their kids are doing something where their kids are performing delivering a studentled conference, whatever, parent ball goes way up. What's really powerful is if you can provide the info and get the feedback at an event like that, but you have to be really efficient because parents who don't want to sit in on committee meetings don't they'll come to something where their kids are participating. And can you get authentic engagement at at a setting like that? Because then you've got people who will make time in their busy lives to come to something that involves their that's when you want the

214broad engagement. Then there's sometimes you want the deep engagement with people who are willing to sit through meetings and stuff. But when you can get a community event like we have go to Elton Hills, it's jammed. And I've talked about this a little bit with staff there. They haven't generally leveraged their incredible turnouts for parents nights to also get feedback on issues of school improvement. Now, nobody wants to sit down and hear a big PowerPoint at a parent, but they have everybody there. And are there ways you can actually begin to get the the parent and caregiver feedback at an event like that that is teameming with those things? You have to that that's something we have to support our schools at getting good at, but it can be done. it can be done in

215a way that you know you say hey there's three big priorities we're thinking about for our school we have a quick poll that you can you know fill out and you watch a short video and then suddenly you have a kind of a gut level feel of what a very diverse group of your parents are thinking um and so it's just the kind of thing that I'm hoping this process will drive as we go forward director I was just going to say just because you know just a little out in the weeds and a little out of the box you know I think we're looking at this like for school But I think there's an opportunity to look at this from a community engagement perspective. Um, you know, we're meeting people where they already are.

216You know, uh, we keep talking about like reinventing things, but, you know, we have lots of opportunities in our communities where parents are, you know, where parents show up. uh the back to school event, the some of the events that were listed um in the earlier presentation. You know, those are places that RPS could be present and get some of that um engagement. You know, I think some of it is also, and speaking from a parent is sometimes we're just not aware. I think we make the assumption that parents don't want to be involved, but they really just don't know and they they haven't had the conversation to either understand the importance or what exactly it is or to what director Barlo says, parents that have been involved felt like I showed up, I sat

217at these meetings and I was just here to check a box. So, you know, there's a little bit of distrust with people getting involved on these boards and committees, even people that have done tons of them because they feel like, well, they already decided they just wanted, you know, to get my my quote and say, hey, we spoke to the the community and this is how they felt, right? But we're kind of not um engaged until the end. And I don't think we want to do that with this process. So I just think it's worth us you know looking outside of the box to see how can we get that information to parents and how can we make sure we keep that process you know transparent as uh to director C's point our school system

218is full of all different kinds of of of parents you know retired we have grandparents you know it's just not you know the typical mom and dad you know there are a lot of community members that can probably offer very valuable um feedback to some of these um these meetings. Um so I just think we should just as you said you'll reword it but I think if we were looking at this from a broader scope it would maybe assist us in how we are looking at this parent um involvement and engagement piece. But if we're looking at it per school and per principle of engagement, it does become more complex. But I think if we look at it at a broader scope, um we are underestimating the amount the power of people, you know. So

219if the information gets out there and to the right um community partners, you'd be surprised the outcome that we can have and the effective outcome that we can have. Um but if we're only looking at it from what this one school and one principal could do, then yes, we we wouldn't be able to effectively. Um, so building on the the parent and caregiver conversation, um, I don't think it needs to be in, uh, this level of approval, but when we're considering the implementation, I'd like it to be clear that it is the district and the school administration that is taking on the mandatory uh, parent meetings and parent engagement that and and that resourc resources of the district will be provided to help support it so that a principal can't for example put it on

220the PTA to organize it or another group of parents um and that the district would make things available like translators or you know um if there might be any family engagement funds to help with funding you know some of um some of our most successful family engagement events involve um you know refreshments and again I don't want it to be put on a a community. We could ask for community partners perhaps to help us with it, but I I wanted to be clear this is a school outreach on a school continuous improvement plan, not something that you know an outside organization is organizing. The other piece is I think we've got some great experiences from our CAPE workshops and these family engagement events that have been done at schools either by the school itself or

221in partnerships with PTAs that we can learn from in terms of how to activate that parent perspective. Um, but my personal feeling is that the the beauty of this plan is that it is school specific and that I think sometimes when we talk about district initiatives, it's hard to get people to fe to get feedback because they want how does it affect me? What's in it for me? And these skip plans, it should be the responsibility of the parent or I'm sorry, it should be the responsibility of the principal to educate the parents on how their child's experience is going to be enhanced and improved if they take these steps successfully. And I think that's part of the buyin that we'll get from parents is if the if the principles can deliver that message effectively.

222Um, it's important information for parents to have, but that's I think the important hook to get parents to to to then give their feedback if they understand that their feedback will really drive their their students everyday experience. I agree. And I guess what I was saying for the community outreach was more so of letting parents know that it's it's there, right? I know that it needs to be school specific, but my concern is that a lot of parents don't even know, right? So, I think I was thinking more so in making the community aware that this is a process that's happening at each school and then the schools can, you know, continue their their process, but in making sure that we're being transparent so that the parents that do want to be involved know the

223school or know to keep a lookout for, you know, those meetings and things. And I think the other piece of the parent caregiver involvement we haven't covered is the um requirement that um the skip team will review the data from the surveys and consider refinement of the skip to address weaknesses particularly for parent engagement. Yeah, it's a the 5e parent engagement uh data is very powerful. It'll show you where parents are not feeling engaged in a way that's often not comfortable. And we will have if we do adopt that survey, as we talked about the study session, that was another idea that I didn't think merited here, but it was not lost on me. We'll have a required participation rate for that survey so that we are certain that it is actually getting sufficiently representative

224uh that it is sufficiently representative of our parent population. Um, I think Peter said it was 20% in Chicago. That actually I thought that's not a bad percentage statistically. I think we could go a bit above that actually. Um, but that was another good idea that came out of your study session that we would certainly bake into the plan. Um, and one other question about the requirement. So the skip is developed for three years and then every year the skip continues to meet to update the plan. Correct? Yes. This the skip team. So, would the requirement for this uh parent engagement, parent outreach happen every year or only on the three-year cycle? Um, no. The intent was that it would be every year. Make that clear if it's not clear. Okay. Anything else? The the

225one thing I should probably just say because it actually maybe one of the things I know we shared this with you and we shared some of the feedback that um came from interviews when when I my first year here we tried skip plans that were something like where we're headed for in 2026 27 which is to say they were open-ended and schools could do it and the reason we moved away from that there our schools produced skip plans that had 18 initiatives. Nothing was eliminated. It was everything and therefore there was there was it was not implementable. There was almost no exception to that. The hard part of this is choosing a limited number of priorities. That's where the hard work on the team becomes. Of course, all of it matters and you go and

226you have to look at the data. You have to get the stakeholder feedback and then you have to say we have three big things, you know, maybe four. And so that's one of the reasons why this process does need to have some some control to it because if you get a bunch of people who care about kids together, myself included, we'll all dream big and we'll have so many priorities. And this process has got to focus on a limited number of really critical objectives and then the schools have to stick to them for three years because we all know the deep change doesn't happen if we keep switching plans year after year. So I mentioned that chair Nathan because yes they would be doing um an update in between their new skip plan but what

227they wouldn't be doing is saying okay parents and caregivers should we completely adop get rid of our goal. They're saying, "We're in year one of our goal around math and here's how it's going. What are your kids seeing?" But we're not switching goals until we get to the next plan. We need to sort of be tight in that regard. Sorry, I have a few more questions not on this subject. Um, on the performance measures, you said that it's going to be reported in the eight racial and ethnic groups. Why not English learners, special education? Yeah, it it should say that was a good catch. It should say the the demographic groups that the Minnesota school report card utilizes. Okay. So, it would be we now have eight that the state uses for racial and ethnic

228groups, but it would include students with disabilities, multi- language learners, uh free and reduced price lunch or whatever the state comes up with uh for that. Um I think those are the other biggies. So, yeah. Is there any value in gender? Um, yes, there's value in gender. I don't mean to suggest reporting given I had to think about that. Yes. Yes, there's value in gender. Um, uh, there um, you know, usually a that's Yes, we're seeing striking differences between genders. So, we'll take a look at that. Yeah. Um and then on our board work um in element 11 um should we make it clear since the board is approving this and we're we're giving uh the authority to the superintendent how to implement it. Should we does it need to be clearer that we are

229not the board never approves individual school skip plans or budgets but we approve the budgets as they are integrated into the district budget annually. You think that's important as somebody looks at this document down the line and says, "Well, when is the board going to approve the skip plans?" Or am I just being too? I mean, we my recommendation is not that you approve the skip plans. You're approving the performance measures. You're being updated on the skip plans. I do think that I will bring you uh more specifics on when we would be giving a school less autonomy because they're having problems on I think there's the language is sufficient here for now but I think I would define low performance or downward trend. So you can look at that. So there's a lot we

230would bring you to flesh out. Um I guess you could make it explicit if somebody thought that you were doing it but it I don't think it says here that you would. you do approve the budget and the staffing plan in the aggregate every year, right? So, it all rolls up to what John and the team bring you in June. So, that's for sure. The skip plans right now, you're right, you wouldn't be right approving individual plans. I'm just wondering if we should add a line to element 11 that kind of wraps it up that says the school board will approve a budget that reflects the budget and staffing plans of the individual schools. Sure. And to what you were saying about the autonomy, that was going to be my next question is some of

231the other steps are worded very specifically as to what those measurements are, you know, as how many uh skip team members need to be on each team. But when it comes to autonomy, it's very very vague, you know, as to what what would, as you like just said, what would make us uh put a school in position where you would be taking over. Um, so if we're looking at this, uh, document for longevity, um, it could be interpreted lots of ways, right? I can just see that schools could say, "Oh, well, we're like you said, we're working on it," which could take several years or what have you to get into a better spot. But how do we differentiate a school that is, you know, taking a big bowl that is a three-year goal from

232a school that's just not um, you know, just not making gains in whatever it is that they need to be doing? like what will be the metrics for us to determine that a school is needing us to walk in versus not. I I think well I don't I mean we're not going to be approving the skip plan and I I don't think it's up to us to make that determination whether schools are that's an administrative decision I think that they would have to be the ones and Dr. Carolyn uh would be determining that. I I think school by school. Yes, I do think I would want to bring the board more specificity to get your feedback on the broad criteria for that. I think for this board at this point to be approving this strategy

233and saying yes, we are going to empower our school communities, but we will step in if we're not heading in the right direction. is a very meaningful statement at this high level and then I agree we need to bring more specificity to the process as we go forward. Anything else? Well, I mean maybe to state the obvious, but this board or any future board doesn't need to give itself permission to exercise general control over the school district. We, you know, a year from now, regardless of what we say here, three-year commitment and all, we could totally upend this. There isn't anything binding about this. But I I think we are all committed to this strategy and that's that's a good thing. But I don't think we need to specify anything further than that. It's sort

234of inherent. So, okay, we'll continue this conversation next week. Thank you. Next meeting. Um our next item is a prep for action policy committee recommendations March 28th, 2025. Uh these were the recommendations um that were first briefed at the last regular meeting and this is the second of second briefing and the policy will be on the consent agenda on May 6th. Does anybody have any questions or comments that were raised in the [Music] interim? Hearing none, we move on to item 8.4 approval of start times for 202526. And this is planned to be an action item on May 6th. Superintendent. Thank you, Chair Nathan. Um, as you can see, our chief administrative officer, John Carlson, is coming up, and I'm gonna with uh your permission, Chair Nathan, I'm gonna ask John to give you an

235overview and answer any questions you may have on the the issue that we are asking you to take action on, which is uh a tweak, I believe that's a fair word, in our start times. After John is done, Madam Chair, I'd like to ask Mona Perkins, our chief uh academic officer, to come up and give you a brief overview of an issue that I know you've heard about regarding our elementary school special area schedules, art, music, media, and fed. That is purely forformational purposes. I want to give the board an update on ask Mona to give an update on where we are with that important work. Um it's related in so far as it has to do with time and schedules. This is the issue before you that we will be asking you to vote

236on. And then once we've uh uh adequately addressed your questions with this issue, I'd like to have Mona come up and give you an update on that issue just because we will be announcing some things in the coming days and I'd like the board to hear an update first. Okay. Thank you, Superintendent Pel and Chair Nathan. So, what I want to describe to you is indeed a tweak to start times for and end times for next year. What's really driving this is that um we have learned a lot in the first three quarters of implementing these start times for the 2425 school year uh that were uh decided upon in June of 2023. Um we have learned some additional things throughout the winter um as far as some drive times of some specific um DWOO

237transfer hubs and um what we're finding is we need about 7 to 9 minutes for a few of these uh deliveries of students to keep the whole system running on time. That's causing us needing to uh tweak the schedule a little bit. We also uh wanted to uh tell you that um when we were here in November, myself and my colleagues, we talked about um needing to uh drop down the ending time to 2:10 p.m. that is not shown on the slide right now for our district-wide option schools at Longfellow, Lincoln, Riverside, etc. Uh we're able to actually add that five minutes back next year and even add another five minutes to that. Um so they'll have 10 minutes more of instruction at those schools next year. To do that, we also uh need to

238make a a small adjustment at Bamber Valley, Churchill, Elton, Fwell, Gibbs, Hoover, so on and so forth as shown there. So, what we're proposing for next year is a start time of 7:50. So, that's about 5 minutes earlier and then going to 2:25 at the first um grouping of elementary schools and then having an end time at 2:15 at the second grouping of elementary schools. And that adds back the five minutes that was um adjusted this year and adds another five minutes to it for next year. Uh at our middle schools, this is all just a trickle down effect. Then when you make a small little change even by 5 minutes, we need to adjust all the way through the system. So our middle schools, we are proposing an 8:40 to 320 school day. Our

239high schools, it would be 8:55 to 3:35. We are not proposing any change to Phoenix Academy Rail or the middle school ALC. The high school ALC um we are adapting uh that time as well to 9:05 to 3:15. And that's direct feedback from our um ALC and our high school principles and really making sure that we get those students that need transportation from the ALC up to Century JM and Mayo so they can catch the buses home uh with their um neighborhood peers. And then we're not proposing any changes to the uh preschool program times. Those will remain the same. And that's uh the gist of the quick summary. Dr. Marvin, two things quickly. Have you gotten any push back at all from secondary schools about the five minute shift? We did on a earlier

240version when we had it extending to 3:45. We went back to the drawing board and um worked with it a little bit more. We're find we were able to find five minutes in there um on one end and then five on another and we got it down to 335 as tight as we can get. Okay. And then um maybe I'm saying this wrong, but it seems to me that Bamber Valley and those schools will have 15 minutes more and Bishop and that group will have five minutes more. So it's and because of transportation So, one thing I did, this slide doesn't accurately reflect. What it reflects is what was voted to as approval on June 6 of 2023. It doesn't include that five minutes we had to shave off in the middle of this school

241year. I didn't put that in there to maybe I should have, but I thought maybe it might be a little more confusing, but we're adding back that five and then another five. But to do that, we also can extend to the benefit of the other schools in another few minutes there. Can I just build on that for a second? So, it looks like um the DWO schools have an extra 10 minutes, but do the Bishop Franklin, Gage, and Pinewood gain five minutes? Yes, they are gaining. Um Bishop, did they go to 2102 last year? This year, Bishop does not. Bishop, that would be a new change coming for Bishop um due to a movement of of a or an addition actually of a newcomers program at Bishop. Um and then making needing to make uh

242some student transfers there. So the only ones that were pushed back to 210 after the June 6, 2023 vote were the districtwide option schools. Correct. Then and Pinewood as a result of being in Longfellow building, we did end those at the same time. I wanted to make it very clear that Longfellow and Pinewood operate on the same start and stop time. Okay. But the net gain in minutes is 15 for those in the first box. That is correct. Five for Bishop Franklin engage and 10 for Lincoln, Longfellow, Pinewood, Riverside, and Washington. I want to say Franklin engage are already at the 210, but I would need to verify that. Okay. I think it was just Bishop is the one change. Okay. Jackman, um, when I looked at this, I just want to make sure I

243understand because I originally thought it might be some sort of typo, but does this reflect that the first group has more instruction time than the second group of elementary? That's correct. Okay. How do we explain that? We explain that by we are operating within the constraints of what we have and we know that this is an issue. I guess what I can say is the middle group or the second group of elementary schools is getting the same amount of instruction as they got uh the the minutes are exactly the same as they were up through the 2020-2021 school year. But we also know uh that this is something that we need to talk about and it probably be addressed in the next strategic plan. Superintendent may or may not want to talk about that. It's

244going to be fun. Everyone's going to love it. Um, and then I I I guess I was thinking about is is it related to location in some degree? It's it's completely related to trying to move students from a district-wide or yeah, basically a district-wide program to an attendance area school so they can catch the same buses with their attendance area peers that go to the attendance area school. and trying to not add additional routes to keep the transportation as efficient as possible as we were also directing in 2024 to make sure that we did that. Got it. I I I I don't want to be flippant. We we have to we have to do some hard work on that problem. It's there's no simple solution to it. Uh the hub structure that we implemented for

245the district option schools has served some important purposes. There are consequences that we're one of which we're seeing in this instance. I have kind of a related question, not to complicate things, but does it somewhat relate to the invol the enrollment and where those kids come from in the district-wide schools? No. Um because they're delivered um to their attendance area school um about 15ish minutes or so early um and then they catch a shuttle then or another a bus just takes them they all split up and go to their districts from there. I guess my point is is for using Lincoln as the example. What if none of the kids from that hub area attend Lincoln? Would that would that not happen ever or would that change that? I believe we have students using from

246any of the hubs where we're where there's eligibility are being used this year. Right. So, I guess my point is is if that changed and that for whatever reason one geographic area didn't have any kids going to that districtwide, would that free up more time or not? Possibly. But we we know that we have multiple routes that are taking seven to nine minutes. So, it would be more than just one area that would have to drop off some ridership to compress it down to about a five minute time frame, which is what we would ideally want to have. 10 minutes um allows for those seven to nine minute transfers. Got it. So it's the complication and the efficiency that we want to deal with. Got it. So the changes are transportation based that that is

247this is a direct in um result of our learnings of our transportation structure this school year. And is it just due to the limitations of transportation limits or is it just because not efficient. I'd say we're doing uh this this makes it as efficient as we can be. The limitations are if we wanted to spend more money and go back to a different structure, uh we could look at that and we could have routes added that can provide more transportation higher cost. But we are adding 15 minutes of instruction for those um for those first 10 for the second group and 10 for the second. So that so we are adding minutes of instruction which is something we should be glad for and that was a reflection of feedback you were getting from staff about

248especially the implementation of literacy curriculum. Yes. As is the next subject. As is the next subject. Illustrate as well. Absolutely. All right. Thank you, John and the team. I know it seems trivial to be talking about five or 10 minutes, but I know the work that John and Justin and the transportation department and our first student partners put into even those fine changes. So, we appreciate that. If I may, uh, Madam Chair, Mona comes up. Um, board members have heard um about well, as Chair Nathan said, about the need for more time for interventions in literacy. And I know you've received some emails about an initial proposal to change the schedule of our special area classes, art, music, physical education, and media. Um, Mona, uh, in her capacity as our still fairly new chief academic

249officer has bitten this off, uh, and has grappled with the details in a pretty extraordinary way. Um, I'm happy to say I think we've ended up in a better place than the initial proposal, which I'll let Mona describe. Um, I realize I'm adding this to the agenda. I believe it fits with the last discussion we had. Um, but not because I believe that we necessarily will have all the time we need this late in the meeting to delve into all the implications, but because it's late in the school year and we do need to inform uh, in particular our special area teachers about what their assignments are going to be for next year. I want the board to hear about this before that process goes into motion uh, literally tomorrow. Um, this is not something

250that uh, I'm asking for uh, a board vote on. I believe it's fully within my responsibility as superintendent, but I want you to be very aware of the the complex change that uh we've landed on. So, Mona, um this is something I'm super super excited about because um when we if you remember when we met with uh when we had the Whiten wisdom presentation, the classroom teacher that was here talked about the difficulty in the schedule and I at that time said, "We're working on it." We had been working on it. We finally landed. So, um, our goal was to create schedules that allowed for schoolwide implementation of MTSS and also allowed for staff collaboration. Um, and our current model for our specials area was art is 45 minutes. The kids get that once every

251six days. And then media is 30 minutes a day, once every six day cycle. And then PE and music was also 30 minutes, but it's twi they're each twice every six day cycle. So just from looking at the length of the class, you can tell you could see like there's no way you can schedule them easily because they're not the same length of time. So the first thing we had to do was figure out how do we get them all to be the same amount of time. Um, and so this is I've shared this with you guys before. This is a sample schedule. This is an actual third grade schedule. I believe this might be from Jefferson. Um, and each so like 3E is one of the third grade classrooms. 3L is a different classroom.

252And you can see where that I just showed four of the six days so that you could I blew it up just so you could see it a little better. Um, you can see like they don't always have like 3S has media on a days at 9:15. Um, but then they have music on Bday days at 8:45. So they don't even have the same time like the time slot. So if you're in that 3S classroom, you don't have specials at the same time of day every day. And that just gets to be that's tricky for a teacher. And then when you're trying to schedule MTSS, what you really want is an open space for all the teachers at the same time because you want them to be able to share kids across the grade level.

253And so when you look across it, you can see the blue is the only time that it's completely open for all of them when they're when the pink isn't taking up space. And we needed to clean that up because that just is it's messy. It's just too hard. Um, so what we landed on was we kept the the rotation the same. So art is and media are both still once every six days and PE and music are will continue to be twice every six days, but we cleaned it all up and went to a 40inut rotate uh class um period instead. And so this is now what it'll look like. That'll be their rotation. So they'll have in the six days they'll have media um once they'll have art once they'll have um so that

254actually looks like they have media three times. They won't. That one class won't have it three times. I should have cleaned up my little picture there. But it'll be that clean where they have the same it's a rotation of um you'll have to have it at the exact same time period every single day. And then the blue then shows you now it opens it up. You can have MTSS at any one of those periods. And we are confident that this can be done within our contract with the Rochester's education association. And so that we want to thank Rea. I know that they have diverse perspectives in their membership. Um but we've uh worked you know closely with them and we're going to keep listening to our teachers um as we implement this. Uh we know

255there always is transition in there. I'm grateful. I also want to be grateful to our art teachers in particular who spoke up. I know there is a reduction of five minutes that's different than 10. Um but I want them to know we hear that. Um, and I think there may be some creative ways that we can engage our art teachers in working with kids uh outside the special time uh special area time as well. Um, so I'm I'm enthused I'm grateful to Mona and the team for where we've um ended up in a very complex uh effort. Yeah. Can I ask a silly question? Why are art and media only one per six days and PE and music? Is that a choice? Is it standards? How does that work? So I that is that's something

256that um has just been how it's done here. I don't think that that's something that has to remain. I think that's a something we can look at as we move forward. Um, I think for I do think it's something we absolutely can and maybe should look at, especially as we look at the arts standards are like it's there's five areas for the arts. So, it's not just like we all often just said art and now it's five areas. It's art like it's visual arts and music and then there's theater. It's just it's a I think there's other ways we can look at how we do it. But um but for this year for sure it's a bigger thing was getting the schedule right. I think the rest of it we can look at as we

257move forward in the next strategic plan. But that wasn't something that I think we needed to tackle necessarily this year. One thing and there's no change in um there's no loss of FTEEs. No loss. Maybe a very slight uh increase which we will account for in budget but very slight. Yeah, it's it was just a little bit. Board members. Director. Well, I I I love it. It you're all going to be waiting a really long time before you hear me not support something that's going to enable uh stronger supports for uh for literacy and for all MTSS um practices. So, um well done and thank you. And this is probably like this was a heavy lift and it's going to be so so worth it. So worth it. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Let's

258move on to other business. 9.1 our ABCD. The current version of the ABCD is available for reference for every schoolboard meeting. And beginning tonight, we're going to highlight um the upcoming agenda items at the next two meetings for the community and board members if you want to preview. At the May 6th regular meeting, our monitoring item will be budget development process update. We'll have prep for action of the 202627 school calendar uh mindsets, behaviors, and experiences for student success and the school resource officer contract. The two action items will be performance measures and the skip 2.0 process and the school start times. Um May 13th study session focus topic is the enrollment projection. Are there any items board members would like to raise for consideration for a future meeting agenda? I do have a comment

259though. Sure. I appreciate the fact that you are um allowing the community to know in advance. Still that information's always been there, but we're putting forth that additional effort. uh this is one of u of those innovative ways to ensure that the community is aware aptly in ample time to make preparation to attend participate uh educate and inform oneself. So uh kudos to whoever came up with that. I know you probably did Kathy but uh uh I appreciate how much I love the ABCD. Yeah. Um, and I think a good clarification for the May 6th meeting is uh since it looks like the board is go is going to have a resolution on the school resource contract officer's contract that would be an action item on May 6. We we needed to decide if it

260was going to be an action item by asking for a resolution, it's going to be an action item. Um, upcoming board meeting dates. Um, all meetings start at 5:30. May 6th is a regular meeting. May 13th is a study session. May 20th is a regular meeting and June 3rd is a regular meeting and hearing no other business. This meeting is adjourned at 9:25 p.m. [Music] Don't do that. Where did you go? Another