001e e e this regular meeting of the Independent School District 535 School Board is called to order at 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday July 16th 2024 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 pela non voting EX member and assistant school board clerk Miss Lorie Sam Miss Sam would you please call the role dor here director here here here here here at this time we offer the opportunity to say the Pledge of Allegiance I pled Al to the flag of the United States of America and to the which it stands one nation God indivisible
002and 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 all those in favor say I I any opposed the agenda has been approved the agenda and documents for this meeting are available online at Rochester schools.org assembly item three is comments to the board it is important for the school board to hear from our stakeholders regarding issues that impact our students staff families and schools we welcome communication via email phone call at our community engagement listening sessions and here 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
003superintendent 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 request to provide comments to the board form by 5:00 P pm on the Monday before the school board meeting to sign up for a time slot the form is available on the RPS website and on the simbly 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 participating in the public comment period each speaker agrees to abide by this public comment procedure prohibited conduct during a school board meeting should um should a speaker or meeting attendee display any of the prohibited conduct the school
004board chair will call the person out of order if the speaker attendee persists in the conduct they will be required to leave the meeting failure to abide by these rules could forfeit the speaker's right to participate in comments to the board at Future meetings speakers when your name is called please come to this table if you have written materials to 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 right in front of me please begin your remarks by stating your name our first Speaker tonight is Bob Warner e e e our
005eighth speaker tonight is Jesse ois e e e our next item is 4.1 information and Outreach our 2024 spring Athletics recognition this is an information item superintendent pel thank you very much I see you're out of order we're taking no no uh comments from the from the crowd thank you I see Brian Brian K here our activities director of uh John Marshall High School I do not know that I see David Perkins from centry high school is he here David is here as well um I want to invite you both to come on up I know Jeff Whitney from uh Mayo High School is I believe uh in transit uh and on vacation we board members are handling our recognition of athletes from uh spring Sports somewhat differently because it is the dead of summer
006as you know the Press of your agenda made it impossible to get uh uh visits from our athletes and um uh coaches to the board meeting in May and so we have had uh Brian and our new activities director at centry high school David Perkins uh here to uh obviously not be as engaging as the young people themselves would be but to give the board a brief overview of what happened in our sorry David that's the way it is um to give the board a brief overview of what happened during our spring season of course board members you know uh Brian well but David you are brand new to Rochester it's really exciting board we'll have much more chance to get to know you but um thanks for stopping by to give a recap of
007what happened in our spring season outstanding uh thanks for having us here tonight it's always a great honor to come out and get a chance to share the great things that we've got going at our school so I'm going to step in for Jeff I I looked for a green shirt and I could find one anywhere so I wore white shocks um so uh representing John Marshall and and Mayo tonight um John Marshall had two State entrance uh for the state track meet uh both distance Runners uh Abby tree was the section champ at the 3200 uh meter she's a freshman she went on to place eth and and won a met medal at the state meet um Ry matys was a state entrance for uh entrant for us as a uh female in the
0081600 meter as well so that's JM and now for for Mayo I'm going to start with track first uh boys state track participants at ma um Caleb hul was 7th place in the 100 meters fourth place in the 300 meter hurdles and 16th Place in the long jump subastian Barry was eighth place in the 200 meter dash Caleb Lumis was 11th place in the shotput Lucas Peterson was 11th Place in the P Vault uh the 4x100 meter relay um from Mayo was a state runner up and on that team were Carter hul again Sebastian Barry Logan rathy and Joseph bug balowski uh girls State participants for mail Taylor CTS was fifth in the 200 meter dash and set a school record as a freshman Jaden Lester was 10th in the high jump Julie labrash uh
009competed at the state for the high jump but did not place the male boys golf team was seventh um this spring and boys tennis uh the male boys tennis team was a state runner up uh Daniel mun and cable uh Caleb kenel with the state doubles constellation Champions and uh t uh VRA was a state champ for Rochester for mail this year and uh he's only a sophomore and I I creeped on him a little bit I Googled him so his State his state tournament he only lost four games he won 6161 6160 and 61 I might have had the semis and he he only lost four games in the whole state tournament and he's only a uh sophomore like I said so both Sentry and male and and uh I'm sorry both uh Sentry
010and JM will have to contend with him and the rest of the state coming up so that's it for mail and Jil okay I guess it comes over to me um we actually have a few of our great student athletes here um I don't know if this protocol or not I'm I'm new to the school board thing um the kids want to come to the front so uh people can kind of see these these fa of our scholar [Music] athletes come on O come on over don't be shy other thing I would like to do is kind of get some crowd participation with this as we support these kids I'm going to try this um y'all support me here I'm the new guy so just roll with me on this one um want to do
011a little call and response um as we start this out so I'm going to say can I get a recognition y'all and y'all say recognize okay can I get a recognition y'all recognize can I get a recognition y'all recognize all right rockchester Public Schools along with Century High School was proud to recognize um some of our Scholars that have achieved highly for the spring um athletic season um for the g girls in our 400 meters U we have Sophia cfair who ran a time of 55.9 at the state meet um our 4x200 meter team consisted of Megan Lund Clara Gart Ka Barry and Sophia cfair and their time was 1 minute 42 seconds. 23 seconds um our 4x400 team um also competed completed at the state meet and that team was composed of Ka Barry
012Emma Anderson Emily bunts and Sophia cfair their time was 3 minutes 58.85 seconds and for our boys we had Shan Waki who completed at competed at the triple jump and had had a distance jump of 46 feet 10 and 3/4 Ines and and also in the long jump sean Shawn also qualified and had a long jump of 23 feet 10 in um we also had Josh kyur compete in the 110 hurdles and had a time of 14.13 seconds uh and then for our for by 200 team they took seventh and that team was consisted of Jake Wills Shan Waki Max Elliott and John Shannon our 4x400 team took fifth at State and that team consisted of Shawn Waki Jake Wills Wyatt lungstrom and Gavin Bogle and Gavin also uh competed at the open for 100
013in the state meet and I'm proud to say the greatest thing above with all of these teams is that both the girls and the boys both met the gold standard for academic All State as well uh and then also we had our last but certainly not not least our adaptive softball team had placed third place in the state tournament would you mind sharing your names with us individually I'm Sophia I'm Megan Kyle well we are really glad to see you in the summer and we are so glad that you came to join us tonight congratulations on your accomplishments please share our congratulations with all the students and you've raised the bar David for our recognitions I think we're gonna we're gonna be seeing something a little bit more py in the future so welcome and
014thank you K challenged me I'm [Laughter] sorry than we hope you're having a great summer and I just also want to say the activities director job is a tireless one one and so David you're beginning it Brian you are now our Dean as Jeff is going to be going off into retirement but really these people work almost 247 so uh we thank you and we hope you're getting a little break this summer as well I got them lawn mode today all right thank you thank you thank you thank you item 4.2 board member committee updates does any board member have updates from their committees to share I do director mclin trying to UM multitask here um I have an update from the legislative committee on the 2024 legislative session um specific to Rochester Public Schools
015the legislature modified a statute that was um a modification that was both proposed and supported by RPS to provide for availability of f appropriation for PTEC funding to RPS for the 20242 school year and decreasing amounts in subsequent years there are now plans to propose legislation in the 2526 session that would would provide full funding for Rochester's PTEC for a longer period of time and also provide funding that would enable our district to launch the program other I'm sorry other districts to launch the program RPS has also included funding for pek in the referendum proposal for sustaining the ptech program the other update that is specific to our RPS is the legislature created a student attendance pilot program and RPS will be part of this pilot program receiving $670,000 to implement the pilot in the
01624 25 25 26 and 26 27 school years so that's something to look forward to there were also some other General Provisions that impact school district functioning and funding there were clarifications and changes to earn safe and sick time and paid family medical leave the public employer insurance plan par professional training and paid during school closures there were some changes to School Board elections including voting on polling place locations and board member vacancies and there was repurposing and adding flexibility to the Reda funding changing the funding formula to a per student basis so that is the same as the regular literacy Aid and I will put this update in um I'll send it to miss Sam to put it in our in our um uh assembly there is also more information in the msba 2024
017legislative recap document that I will um upload a do a copy of that document as well and there's a link in what I will um give to miss Sam okay thank you board members any other I'm with her okay you're with her all right thank you um items 5.1 through 5 11 are um the consent agenda items would any board member like any item removed from the consent agenda for SE for consideration move approval second it has been moved and approved uh to it has been moved and seconded to approve the consent agenda all those in favor say I I any opposed the consent agenda has been approved item 6.1 is a focused topic the 2023 2024 student behavior and discipline data update superintendent pel thank you chair Nathan and board members I'd like to
018invite uh Jackie Peterson our chief of schools uh Dr Peter Ruck our um research director Chris lingan our director of school support and Angie McAndrews who is our new director of student engagement and school climate to come on up to uh answer some board questions and uh run through some data and if Miss Sam we could just bring up the first slide I don't need the clicker but just there's there's some text on that I am board members I'm not going to read those bullet points to you um but I'm going to touch on a few of these before I turn it over to Dr r to uh move through a summary of our data this is our annual report for you on something that I know is of great uh interest to this board
019and to our community and that's the status of behavior and discipline in our schools um every once in a while you hear someone suggests that we perhaps uh don't take uh behavior and discipline seriously or maybe don't act on it enough um the data that you have seen in preparation for this meeting and that Dr Ruck is going to walk us through in a moment clearly shows that we take this very seriously and we are holding students accountable for behavior that said we all know you can't punish or consequence your way to Safe inclusive and welcoming schools and that's one reason why we've created a new position to lead the development of a new strategy that uh until recently our principal at Kellogg Middle School Angie McAndrews will be leading that really will be complimenting
020the work that Chris lingan has been doing ay with individual students and serious situations to look at the system piece of not only Behavior but the related uh issue of attendance as uh director mlin uh just highlighted we were fortunate to be selected to participate in a state pilot um around that the big picture for this work is belonging and that kids feel that they can be their best selves uh in our schools and that they can learn without uh disruption that our staff can teach um and that there is that kind of um community that we all strive for the data we are going to look for look at now is as board MERS know well uh per our student handbook broken down into different categories there are issues which you are not seeing
021data on that our teachers handle within their classrooms every day and those are things that are often handled with um uh relationships with priorities with incentives with conversations in the classroom when an issue goes beyond the classroom um we call it a level two and there's a series of behaviors that you're going to see in the data here that we call two infractions these are serious enough that they go beyond the classroom in almost every case an administrator would get involved but they don't rise to the level of something that is a suspension where we're removing a student from the learning environment either in school or in out of school suspension so as I was talking with uh this team this year about our data that we're about to summarize for you now one thing
022that has occurred to me is in the three years that I've been here which very importantly have started during the pandemic when our kids weren't even in school full-time to now where we are very much um I think I hope moving fully beyond the pandemic we focused a lot on level twos and I don't mean to suggest that level twos are not important and we've done a lot of work over the last two years to be sure that we are defining level tws in very clear precise waves and applying those uh consequences for level twos equitably regardless of a student's demographic background or other situations that said level twos are really a very um uh site specific type of Behavioral incident and so as you're going to see in this data our sites are dealing
023with those types of behaviors in different ways and I think that's appropriate as you look at some of this data it's important to keep in mind that because a type of level two infraction goes up in a school doesn't necessarily mean it's happening more that year than in previous years it can mean the school decided to focus on it and hold more kids accountable for it however while level twos are and must remain part of our Focus the more I think about the future of our work improving student Behavior the more I think suspensions is where we need to focus suspensions are the behaviors that disrupt the learning environment for all students the most and they're the ones that take students themselves out of the learning environment so my goals as board board members know
024which you are going to meet in close session to begin to assess me on included level twos this year and reducing level two infractions which you will see in a moment we did not achieve and did not include reducing suspensions which we did now I'm not trying to suggest we should shift that because I didn't do so good in the one um but it's the suspensions I think that are the most critical thing and we saw that uh reflected in actions that our legislature took this year to limit the use of suspensions with our very youngest students so it's important to look at level twos um through the lens of um a diverse set of behaviors that disrupt the learning environment not all equally serious and schools are dealing with them in different ways though
025as I said I'm confident they're not dealing them with it in different ways based on race or gender special education status or other demographic markers so that's Point number one point number two is this year for the first time we are sharing with you and the community school level data in this discipline presentation we chose for brevity's sake to show the three highest schools for E each infraction and the three lowest and it is so critical as we do this not to suggest good school bad school or effective administrators ineffective administrators each of our schools is extraordinarily different but the school is the unit of improvement you don't improve discipline across fifth grade all at one time we approve it a school at a time and as the data here will show and as board
026members um are aware there's no example of that that's better than Willow Creek Middle School where we put in place a series of changes in the leadership team and the entire staff really came together around a positive vision of a school CL climate and behavior and dramatically reduced disciplinary infractions over the course of two years we need to learn from that the board has heard about the work that Angie LED at Kellogg around their cares program so the school is the unit of improvement rather than the district as a whole but obviously if we improve outcomes school by school we will see the districtwide outcomes improve but that's why we're going to be sharing that uh that school level data with you um today I've already touched on the importance of suspensions that's the data
027that Dr Ruck will end with and then finally while this is not a presentation on the new strategy that um Angie McAndrews will be uh working with all of us to lead it is very important to note that we're putting in place that strategy and at its core it's not identifying um uh the misbehaviors it's identifying the effective responses that change those behaviors it's on the solution side we know a lot of kids coming back from the pandemic have struggled to reacquaint themselves with long established Norms of behavior in school that is a conclusive finding across very diverse schools in the United States it's time now to turn from identifying the problem to identifying those Solutions and so that's one of the things that we're really excited to have Angie on board and we'll be
028scheduling time for the board to learn more about that strategy as it unfolds so Madam chair with that background I want to turn it over to Dr Ruck um we have kept this presentation while there's a lot of data in here we've tried to keep it high high level um and I know Peter is always Adept at moving through it but we want to also provide you with time to ask questions not just of of Peter uh about the data but of um 3y folks on the the causes and strategies that we're putting in place to address it so all right thank you very much good evening board members so if we have bar graphs it must be Peter's turn all right so this is a new chart that has not been a prior year
029data this is the one that breaks it down by sight as Dr pel mentioned uh this is pretty typical for how we would see this type of breakdown districtwide our middle schools tend to be the places with most level twos um if you've met a middle school student that's probably not surprising um and then it trickles down from there uh leading away at our mids I know in the audience some of these slides will be a little hard to see but they are online so you can follow along uh this chart shows the relative frequency of various infraction types over time there are a few dozen infraction types fewer than there used to be and so this chart combines several types into one category um just for the Simplicity of uh displaying the data and
030as you can see so those two those three top areas have all grown over time um and then trickling down from there the main reason to show you this is not all of the bar charts are on the same scale later in the presentation um so make sure you pay attention to that scale because it matters so first we have Interruption to the learning environment uh every one of these tables or every one of these charts and tables can be relatively formatted the same you're going to have a scale on the left and a count underneath and then the bar charts are colorcoded based upon the year an increase in this area as well as physical aggression contact and damage just stop me if I go too fast l anguage violations our kids like bloviating
031a bit every now and then so we have uh language on the increase fighting has decreased uh as we have gotten further from the pandemic uh just to give a bit of context we have a lot of numbers going on on these screens so what does 472 infractions actually represent that's less than 2% of students overall technology personal device is one of the ones that has uh significantly increased as we have shifted our cell phone uh use policies in particular you see a lot of those at the middle schools primarily but they do uh show up elsewhere as well bullying has been essentially flat over time and has not changed threats uh and intimidation again it shows an increase this is one where I'd encourage you to look at the table at the bottom of
032the screen as the numbers are much smaller than some of the uh earlier infractions types that we had so while that green bar is quite a bit higher again we're looking at a different scale than we were before legal conduct drugs possession and use uh similar sort of pattern over time in 2122 uh we had a fair amount of distance learning as well mind property damage um 101 and 101 was really surprising to me because two years never match up and people like me find stuff like that exciting um so we have one 10162 and 101 assault a similar pattern to the previous slide or excuse me a couple slides ago alcohol drugs tobacco and paraphernalia which is a word I misspelled at least four times when typing the slide and weapons again a very
033small portion of our level twos um but not insignificant theft as well ending up with uh sexual assault and misconduct uh decreasing over time uh with very low numbers on the scale anyway academic dishonesty has also decreased uh as compared to last year one year does not make a trend though so this is sort of flying all over the place we left this slide in specifically just to show that this is a code that's no longer in use so the harassment code was used in 2122 it is now subsumed within some of the bullying codes so this is a slide we'll remove but since uh we have shown you this uh figure in the past we didn't want to miss it so now we're going to move into what schools are at the top at
034the highest level of totals and the lowest level of totals for each of these types the scale again is pretty important to keep uh in mind here as you look at uh Dakota Middle School having quite a bit more than our elementary or high school on the same slide but as you may recall from that first slide our middle schools are cataloging these things um very uh carefully Interruption to school environment this one I had to really play with scales because you've got a couple of really small ones physical aggression contact and damage highest totals were at Jefferson Dakota and John Marshall and the lowest monor will Creek for the midds and ALC had zero language uh highest totals at Jefferson Dakota and John Marshall Jefferson is a good example on that slide actually of
035a change in uh documentation uh the school decided to focus on that this year so that was an increase not because the school saw that many more infractions but because it was a focus of their team with the lowest total we have Long Fellow Willow Creek yet again and Minn online so someone was getting crafty with online Mone fighting uh Sunset Terrace Dakota and Century at the highest totals uh in the last year the lowest at Bishop once again Willow Creek with a substantial decrease over the last three years and ALC with n here's our technology personal device uh that we saw before um no surprises here given that uh we we know that our Middle School is really focused on this this year nine schools didn't record any technology infractions in the last three
036years so I had nothing to put on the slide here and I will turn over this content to so OSS piece um a lot of times we get asked what what is OSS and what exactly makes it happen um we look at four things as far as what OSS is that we would suspend for possession or distribution of drugs or alcohol which you saw in the slide before of level twos possession of a weapon or Inc device um a level two offense resulting in bodily or emotional harm now the first two are kind of cut and dry you got a weapon or you you have drugs or alcohol the next two are not as cut and dry they're a little bit more the level two result in bodily harm or emotional bodily or emotional harm
037and then finally a substantial disruption to the learning environment um this is one that happens a lot of times this is where we have um disruptions with within the school building as as a whole um and you'll see this when we see our suspension data a little later on on where some of those will go into but you'll see substan substantial disruption to learning environment in most of our pieces um so one thing that's come up is we've had a I don't want to steal your thunder is coming up we've had a decrease in suspensions why is there been decrease in suspensions well MD has come up with some with new legislation that we'd have to follow and part of it that is Ned or non-exclusionary discipline which an alternative to to the missile from
038school that requires Ned to be followed or non-exclusionary discipline to be followed before we begin this dismissal process um so we are no longer able I hate the word prohibition but it's the word that they use in there um but it's it's we no longer can suspend or dismiss K through three students unless net has been exhausted or there's an ongoing safety threat now what this doesn't say is that we still can send a k through through K through3 student home for partial of the day that's still an option as long as you're not a special ledged student the last piece of something that we've always done must have been some places in the state that did not do it um so that's why it was added in but there needs to be a readmission
039plan that must include measures to improve the student behavior um and attempts to obtain parental involvement within this readmission now you can't say you can't come back to school tell your parents come to do the readmission plan that's not that's not what it need to make reasonable attempts with that but that plan is very important because how are we going to fix this Behavior that's the whole key all the stuff that goes on the level tws the suspensions we need to have something to fix the behavior and that's where this piece comes in um that we're working with hope with Angie and some of the work that she's going to do that hopefully we'll be able to fix some of that part of it the remission plan is in this part so as Chris said
040he stole my thunder but suspensions did decrease a little bit between years uh between last year and this year uh again that 2122 uh we had fair amount of distance learning if you break it down by uh RAC and ethnicity the distribution is largely unchanged as you may recall from last year when we talked about this I matched this up against the distribution of students who were committing infractions and the infractions and the suspensions matched up the two distributions were very very similar which is what you would uh hope to see uh match between the two so that's our uh overtime again you've still got your three color-coded years uh per race or ethnicity of the schools with the uh greatest totals of suspensions uh sorry my scales got a little smaller on these slides
041it looks like uh Sunset Terrace uh had the highest total last year at elementary Dakota OTA for middle and Century for high school although some interesting uh differences in time there and the schools with the loest lowest were Gibbs uh with only two and that was in a previous year Gibbs actually had zero this year Kellogg at the middle school level and only two suspensions at the alc in school suspensions are on the upswing as an option that's utilized as you can see over time that is increase uh at all schools schools with each of the highest levels of uh in school suspensions would be Jefferson uh again Dakota and then John Marshall with the lowest uh gauge had the lowest in school suspensions uh of our elementary schools because they also had zero last
042year Willow Creek only had three in the prior year and century and Mayo did not use it that would conclude the data portion of our presentation board members director mvin um Dr Ruck when nice graphs by the way I I know you love I do those graphs um the numbers that were reported in all them those were the number of incidents not the number of different students correct this is a count of infraction so the modal response by Far kid has one or zero um the max was I believe 79 so it does for one for one student so it does vary and students are counted more than once not suspensions no no no just some fraction fractions right okay yeah no we man sure you got that part thank you no that's important thank
043you um and schools are aware of the sort of the repeat off oh very much so thank you and building on that you gave us some information in our uh questions and answers about the overall number of students um that were represented in this 5,987 level two incidents uh both both in numbers and percent can you share that sure I would have as I think it's a good point Dr Marvin that um we we re we recognize that our buildings are very focused on these not the numbers of incidents but on the students and um throughout the years I think we've had this conversation about um you know the administrators know which students have the one and which students have 79 which have any level in between so but I think it's good for the
044community to understand the the population of students that we're really dealing with absolutely so I I thank you for your patience pulled that up um so we have 8.4% of students in the entire School District who had any level two infraction last year uh which is 1,64 of our roughly 17,500 students uh 1.44% of students uh received a suspension or 274 kids um or in school suspension excuse me 3.6% of students received an out of school suspension which is 686 kids uh and then the other tidbit that I always run I mentioned before about how some kids are represented many times in the information if you take out of that 1600 kids who have a uh level two INF fraction last year the top 50 of the 1600 account for 25% of the level two
045District so the the number is uh fairly concentrated in a smaller number of at that higher maybe if I can and this really is a question for um Angie or Chris or or Jackie on this point that chair Nathan raises of the the kids who have multiple instances how are we working with those kids I know you can't generalize but obvious obviously this is something I hear about uh in schools all the time there's a subset of our kids who are struggling and um and and part of the strategy going forward is going to be figuring out what works but you know how you know whether for you from the district level or Angie as a PR someone who's a principal in until a month ago um how do we think about those kids where
046it's um multiple instances as opposed to a student who slips up once um I would say I mean we have our teams of teachers at Kellog were meeting I think every other week actually no weekly uh to touch base on kids that uh seem to have some patterns of behavior we try a variety of behavior interventions we would work with uh families use our counselors and social workers to get to the root of What kinds of things were happening maybe outside of school that were having an impact in school sometimes it would require um academic types of interventions because we'd see a lot of refusal or avoidance behavior and um high levels of alotment for some students uh so I think it would just be a matter of um you know a variety of our
047staff members putting their heads together to try to identify uh what the what the root cause of the behavior was um for some students we would even do um uh schedule changes we've had kids that we've even tried a reduction in days to get uh just like a reboot uh or reduction in uh periods in the day to get a a fresh start can we be successful for four periods a day then six periods a day get them back to fulltime so I think we put a variety of interventions in place to try to figure out uh what we'll get us to a more successful place for students um I think when we try a few interventions and they don't work typically what would happen is we'd look at our um a referral process and
048see if there's need for evaluation if there are other things that maybe we could be providing outside of just uh tier one support or tier two support for students um and to see if there's a way to increase the level of support specialize to students that demonstrate consistent Behavior disruptions so that critical piece of really going into investigation mode like this there what's underneath you know this me some people talk about behavior is a form of communication right and that what what is there um because we know there's a persistent issue here and so needing to really be in diagnostic mode before you're necessarily thinking about Solutions yeah and I think our data does a good job of helping us F you know identify who the students are that we need to be focusing on
049but I think the expertise of the people in the building um and especially our staff that have relationships with kids are what help get us to um resolutions that help students perform better um and like you mentioned the uh the belonging and that connectedness is a critical piece in order to help students U turn it around one thing I'd like to point out and we've talked about this in in reports in the past I can guarantee when we go to talk to uh an administrative team about their data they know it's not a surprise to them that they have a few kids that have more infractions it's not a surprise they know the students story which is what we can't tell here but they'll they'll be able to tell you yes they've had a change
050at home yes they've been struggling with up here um it's we never run into where they had no idea or they don't know the kid or know what's going on and sometimes it's a matter of we need to change up the supports that we have in place because they're kind of waning uh but that's encouraging to me that when we talk with building teams they um are very aware of their data and they're working to provide as much support as they can for that individual student give you one little example back when I was at Jefferson we had a a we didn't our fifth graders ate lunch like at 12:45 this is shows how much we go in investigation mode to figure out how the student Works didn't eat lunch till late late in the
051day had terrible mornings mornings were awful but not every morning we couldn't figure out what triggered it wasn't classes wasn't going to this class or that class we we had no idea and finally about the middle of the year we realized when when he walks to school he struggles but when Mom Mom drops off he seems to do better well it's because he got there earlier he had breakfast and he'd don't eat lunch till 12:45 the poor kid was hungry by the time when we got when he came in no matter what time it is our SNS group was great he ate breakfast he came in at 9:15 9:30 they saw have breakfast ready for him and all of a sudden magically things changed for him so that's how investigative you have to get with
052some of these pieces an invidual plan for that soon not every kid got breakfast at 9:30 but with his plan he did or she did not a problem you can suspend your way out of no right right director cook um oh yeah thank you so um I guess I I have a couple of questions I wanted to start with the the easy one when I look at the the charts um I I think um I I don't have to be real sophisticated to understand that with the one where uh the number of level two referrals at Dakota is twice what the next closest was and four the top four are all of our middle schools like what what is the takeaway from that what what is our district level understanding of that Trend in the
053middle schools or and the variation between them um I I just any color you could provide on our thinking there I think that um if you were to talk with the Dakota staff they would tell you because they came from all of our buildings together joined together to to to form this new staff they would tell you that the behavior they were seeing from students was not unlike Behavior they would see in other buildings they weren't seeing kids that were way out of control but they're building establishing their culture establishing their expectations and so the administrative team was really documenting everything and so I think there's always a we need to look at the individual school and what they're documenting compared to the other schools and and focus like Dr pel was talking about earlier
054the the school unit focusing on their um data versus like what are they recording compared to others you saw the Kellogg data for personal devices was really high because of the uh way for the day that was being implemented um and they were recording those infractions as level twos we've had discussion about should they be level twos we're teaching students about being responsible user users of tech is that the same as if a student were to get into a fight do we really need to call it a level two but we had a a situation at Dakota where we were trying to get a handle on the behavior and make sure that we responding um in a uniform way to behavior and so I believe there's probably an over representation because they were recording everything
055Angie did you want to since you were there I would say that that was exactly what I was going to say is that I think um although we all kind of use the same tools um so for example all the middle schools use PBIS rewards to document level one and level two behavior um level twos are all recorded in Skyward and there's a general um guide guideline in the handbook for what would be a level one or level two Behavior I think they're significant differences between how those processes work in our different middle schools um and Levi and I actually had good conversation about that because he I think he had some you know thoughts about um how they were recording at Dakota and and how that compared to how we recorded in other buildings
056so I think that's hard even though we're using the same programs and the same general guidelines I think that our practices look different um and again like what kinds of things you're focusing on really have significant impact there so when I looked at our technology violations I mean we had like I don't know 400 level twos and we had spelled that out to families and kids knew that and our staff knew that and our staff were doing exactly what they needed to do but by design of the system that we put in place and what we were focusing on this last year I knew right I mean about the third day of school I was like oh my gosh our level two numbers are going to be off the charts this year so um so
057I think that there are just some differences so even though uh you would think level two comparison would be Apples to Apples it really isn't um and and unless we are very systematic about how we do that across buildings I think sometimes it's a little difficult to um to put side-by-side comparisons in place at the same time I think we need to get that in check because um from my experience processing a level two making phone calls to parents making sure there's like plans in place it's time intensive so if you're if your focus is on recording and documenting everything sometimes you're chasing your tail and not spending your time on um on the the actual like work of being proactive so I think with Angie's position we can help buildings see like how do
058you what's an efficient way how do we acknowledge the behavior respond to the behavior but not spend all of our time in our computers documenting and um causing so much work that we can't get to the proactive part of things if if I if I I might I want to keep us on track and I know there's other business tonight early adolescence is a time of physiologic heightened sensitivity to risk young adolescence are getting an increased dopamine shot to their brains from pushing the boundaries that is developmentally normal and you know you know and Robert putam who's a um uh political scientist at Harvard has a wonderful analogy of uh as affluent kids or kids in advance advantaged maybe not rich but advantaged situations en counter that uh heighten sensitivity to risk-taking society puts um
059uh oh my God in your car when you have a crash you airbags Society puts airbags around them to protect them from that kids who live in poverty and do not have those uh psych circumstances as they have that natural uh adolescent pressing toward RI do not have those and there's no airbags it's a profound issue if you read his book our kids it's it's a it's an extraordinary study of that there is in our district a brewing discussion about Middle School redesign about fundamentally rethinking the structure of middle school this would have to be a major lift of a next strategic plan this is not something you do but as uh as Middle School teachers and principles as I've talked to we have almost no choice for middle school kids of choosing to study
060what they want we have no extracurriculars in our middle schools um we're not unique in the country in being in that circumstance um and um the Middle School's made some big changes last year partly for financial budget cuts reasons in some classes but as we look at some of this data there's always the quality of the educational experience that we have to be thinking about and are we creating environments that are developmentally attuned to early ad Ence who are by Nature pressing um and forming identities and those kinds of things so that's just one of those uh issues that is a long-term possibility and what we've said to school leaders and teachers and others uh is we we hear you we see this data I will also tell you without citing The Source we have
061some encouraging coming academic news about our middle schools some very encouraging academic news so there are some some challenges and some good things uh that are happening and that middle grade uh is very deserving of this kind of focus so that that's a a good seg to my second question and that's that's my last one on this topic but I I spend a lot of my um non-school board day job hours um in the measurement field um and one of the things that comes up constantly is is the the Maxim that not everything that measures can be mattered and not every or not everything that can be measured matters and not everything that matters can be measured and it's a a really good um the point you just raised superintendent I think is a really
062good um underscoring of that idea because what the reason that we spend time on this isn't because we want to see a particular Trend in the bar charts as nice as that is to and reassuring as that might be what we're chasing is a culture that is conducive to deeper learning and that is a really tough thing to put onto a chart and it's not even clear what the independent variable would be that you but but the the point is that's a combination of a whole bunch of clinical skills that are School level leaders and and um classroom level uh teachers need to have Fidelity with with using on how to perform a behavioral intervention um as well as you know building that sense of belonging that allows students to be vulnerable in the first
063place as well as all of the different supports we try to wrap our around our students but I guess what I struggle with as a board member reviewing this data is important I'm glad we do it on a regular Cadence I think that's important for a whole bunch of reasons but what are the Investments that we should be considering what are the next steps in pursuing a culture that is conducive to deeper learning um if there's anything in that category that you think the board should be keeping its mind on or making sure we continue to prioritize or or whatever um just love to hear about that so I mean I would say from my perspective as a building leader exactly what we have outlined in the skip I mean those are the things that
064will lead us to um better connection and engagement for kids so um the being able to identify students who're having that have unmet mental health needs that are in our school um finding ways that we can um expand the understanding of our staff of what deeper learning actually looks like in a classroom and how can we take restorative practices uh and put it in place in our schools and in our classrooms to help build those relationships back I think that um I've seen I've seen pretty average teachers get kids to do pretty outstanding things when the relationship's in place and I think that um that the restorative piece of that is something that's magical that happens for teachers that don't have training they just have good connections with kids and they're able to you know
065talk with kids about their behavior have good reflective practice with them and get them more engaged so I think I mean without um without being without it being too BR a brush really what the skit plan has in place right now are the things that are going to help get get our kids there director Mar uh thank you um it's and McAndrews my question did actually deal with correlation between Skip and um our diso data and you kind of brought that together uh but are they uh in different Cycles if you will uh we're presenting the disciplin data now uh when you have the Retreats at uh the building Lev level uh is this information readily available and are they do they utilize this to factor into their skip PL yes and part part of
066this with restor to piece remember we didn't have every site didn't the restore wasn't part of skip restor remember that part so there's certain buildings that focused on on restorative practices within their skip PL so I we had nine of them so this year would be kind of a baseline year for them when they use restorative practice pieces okay and really the reason for that particular question and I do have three uh was to uh point back to the new position you're in and where you'll have opportunity to perhaps assist uh individual buildings uh to help overcome address the uh student needs that may be inexistent so I look forward to what you'll be able to accomplish second uh the infraction infraction type specifically sexual assault misconduct and weapons um I always kind of Wonder
067so are these the type of referrals that occur to Rochester Police Department or is there any correlation between or data that we could maybe look to see oh well we have the numbers in terms of sexual assaults uh and weapons but of that number how many were referred do you know I don't have that information but sexual assaults would be sexualist conduct may not be um weapons yes would be um if a kid a pocket knife first forgot a pocket knife it may not be reported of the police I may just pull the administrator but we've got a weapon yes it's GNA go that way um I think you had another one I missed you say drugs also no I just want to say Dr bar largely prompted by your previous questions this past year
068when you considered renewal of the school resource officer contract we did match that data for the first time and I was pleased that it it did match up that if it was an assault it showed up in the RPD data as assault but you pushed us on that uh for instance the infractions that didn't Merit involving an SRO were in our aggregate data and so in our first pass at it last year our data for essentially potentially criminal actions which are different than discipline disciplin actions did match up with rpd's records but we as I told you when you reviewed that we will make that an annual exercise and your point about the timing of this is actually critical in Dr rucks department they have begun planning for the next generation of our school improvement
069process which needs to be much more front-loaded with data analysis and then School setting priorities with District support um we're we're we're much better than than we were I mean every school has a very clear skip before the start of the school year now and it's known we want to frontload A needs assessment that is much more rigorous starting next year so that there is that kind of data digging at the site level with District support before they're setting those priorities because you're right it's hard to remember from July what you're talking about when you're setting up your skip in March so we need to keep pushing on the timelines yeah and timelines are a big part of what uh we're working on on the redesign as well just to make sure that it's all
070aligned in terms of when data products are released when we look at them on our cycle and also budget so we're trying to make all those pieces fit together in the in a revamp timeline for skip okay and then final question deals with slide 34 uh or I'm sorry yeah 34 I should probably get there myself then um and obstacle suspensions by race ethnicity what uh and it may be difficult c um it may have a lot to do with um what school um these uh things Merit out of school suspension but um what can be done or what is being being done we we see dis a disproportionate representation I'm looking primarily at the uh category black if you will and uh uh I can you know 2021 2022 23 24 uh while there
071are sign there are uh there are decreases in play uh what things are occurring that has resulted in decreases and ultimately is there a goal um director cook it's more than just uh presenting information but what's the desired goal in effect deeper learning most definitely so how can we we know if they're not in school they're not learning uh so and I I I would be surprised though not really if you guys were able to say well what we're doing is this or that but but I would like to uh at least be reassured that uh this is on the radar s to speak in terms of the the awareness associated with disproportionality and a intentionality of practice and policy I I see that intentionality clearly in uh procedure 413a uh and I'm curious it
072would be nice to see a similar intentionality as it may relate to issues such as this thank you sir I will just say that's the best uh summary of the reason for this new position on this new strategy that I've heard yet it's being proactive and not reactive on precisely this issue I could also offer a glimpse so when we uh probably I think it was maybe partway through third quarter we had to discontinue using our our alternative to suspension program at KAG because we had uh no more security is like we just did not have the uh staff capacity to be able to maintain it which was a huge disappointment and and then in the latter part of the year of course we saw um significant increases in suspensions but prior to that point
073I think that the level of the level of um students uh reoffending was considerably lower for our students of color especially I think because in our CARE program they spent two days working intensely with a um a social worker and or counselor and administrators to make sure that they had um adults who were connecting with them and offering considerable amount of time to reflect on behavior and think about um not just what the behavior looks like in school but the impact of it on other um other people around them their family their uh teachers their the their classmates um and in many cases when it was appropriate restoring those relationships and I think it is it's night and day different uh when a kid comes out of a two-day program like that having had really
074really intensive of uh reflection on the behavior they learn instead of going home for a day and coming back so I think any opportunity we have to restore and repair relationships and give students support and reflecting on the behavior is a win for for all kids but particularly our students of color who um you know I just think that we have not had the time that we've needed to dig into uh those behaviors then we see kids have you know repeat offenses over and over and that has been uh it was challenging that to have that program the second part of the year because we saw such good results of it in the first part thank you Dr Workman um so I I appreciated the um observation from Dr Ruck that if you've been around
075middle school students you kind of get this I think we all do um what was particularly encouraging to me is to see that those levels have significantly decreased at the high school level so I'm wondering how this ties together I think I know the answer with all of the social emotional learning that we're focusing on starting an elementary school um because there are a lot of kids who come to school who are very disregulated and before they can learn they have to learn how to control themselves and to control others so if if my reaction is well well this is hypothe hypothetical so if I decided that I didn't like something that doctor pel said at the board table if I were truly 100% disregulated my first reaction might be to just C him but
076at my age fortunately I've gotten that under control you know so you you see that but then you also ex see kids who are experiencing that kind of reaction in the home situation where that is the first response from the parents so I'm wondering how can we further involve parents in helping their students to become more regulated um so that our incidents continue to go down so um you Mr lingan you gave the the a wonderful anecdote about the kid without breakfast and I thought that was probably where you were going exactly with when we talked Andy talked about being having a prescription for those students you know and all the things we do part of that is the parents some of that investigation with the parents the parents Things Are going on within the
077home and how they are able to help with some of those things so then that gives us some of those tools and vice versa we give them some of the tools that they're able to help at the same time but the parents become a key role in this if you don't have the parent it makes it more difficult so is there any disaggregation of the data between the kinds of um events that occur at school because of something that happened at school versus something that kid brought from the outside into the school day so if they come in with okay I just had this horrible thing happen on social media that generates outside of school they bring that into the school and of course you know you have to deal with it but in terms
078of how many of these incidents are caused by um in school um provocations versus something they brought in for the from the outside maybe that's not really going be a great answer a lot and you know and and like like director cook mentioned a minute to go you know some things you can't it's it's difficult to measure we think I mean if you talk to our principles I would say they think that are are fighting things that happening because of something that happened outside social media or something happened within the community and it comes into our school so I wouldn't say all of them but I would say that's a well and I would say our the lack of access to phones during the day is probably a very good indicator of why our number
079of fights dropped over the last year too because there was not that there wasn't the provoking it happening during the school hour so I mean I haven't looked at dat like the uh day of uh the week data but I would imagine I mean I would say we had more conflicts happening with kids on Mondays and Tuesdays than we did other days during the week I think because a lot of stuff got drummed up over the weekend and our social workers and counselors could help try to settle it down but um yeah I mean I think that that that's very that's part of the relationship piece when kids come in and schools are able the counselors or the social workers or the the prince the administrative team SRO who member can help with some of
080that peace within that that's part of what the goal is within that to try and stop some of those things from happening that's part of that relationship piece that we talked to that sense of belonging piece that we've talked to and the part of the legislation was that we needed to have uh we needed to ensure that kids are having re-entry meetings and they're coming back from suspensions and those connections with families are just invaluable use of our time so I I think from my perspective it would be fair to say that this really is a community effort that it can't be the schools alone that fix problems because it's widespread and there are so many variables that are brought into it that we all have to work really well together and I appreciate the
081work that you all are doing in helping us to understand what's happening in our schools and um you know how we can base further decisions on this kind of information so thank you director mclin um I want to go back to something drel said at the beginning um when you talked about um we didn't succeed with the goal of reduce reducing level twos is that it was one of my goals for the year so do you feel though that the the other things you talked about the level twoos being better defined and more equitably um distributed is that part of the success can you measure it that way rather than measuring it by numbers we we're measuring I think it's not the solution to the point director Barlo raised about disparities but at least I'm
082confident we're measuring accurately but that doesn't get the data headed in the right direction so yes I think we've done a lot over the last two years in this space but but we we have to start we have to we have to have what happened at Willow Creek happening at at more schools and it it is but that was a particularly dramatic turnaround so it's it's possible to to highlight that and it was it was a um it was a result of many of the things we've been talking about here and we've already highlighted the good work at Kellogg and other schools too I do have one question kind of about that experience at will Creek that when I was hearing about that happening at the time I was worried it was going to carry
083over into likely Mayo given the geography of where it's at it seems like you didn't see that can you help us is there any Rhyme or Reason to that um I think the best definition I've I've ever heard from about of culture is the way we do things here and school culture matters tremendously or School climate is the title we used term we used in Angie um the Norms get established and kids are wildly sophisticated Norm readers and at Willow Creek we uh collectively um lost control of positive learning norms and so what that staff did and I was just walking out of a meeting last night with a teacher at another middle school and we were talking about this um that staff got on the same page and Leadership played a key role with
084clear and unflinching enforcement of positive behavioral expectations and it took a number of months but the kids and you could talk to them they' say wait they're they're all doing it now the consequence was the same and it was followed through and teachers during the most difficult year at Willow Creek that staff was split some were like I want to be in the halls and be a part of it and some I'm closing my door to teach and I understood both instincts and the only way to create that culture is to be on the exact same page uh around these kinds of issues you cannot leave it to the administrators to do administrators have an indispensable role to play but I know I mean I was a high school teacher there's a certain I have
085enough to do in my classroom all of that is the administrator's job um it doesn't work that way you you you know you you got to give to get and there's that strategy so I would say it was structures and processes but it was also about um hit in culture and so yes when they went one of the things I will say their Mayo high school has many many challenges every school does one of the things that Mayo has going really well for it right now and I credit that whole school Community is culture they have a very positive cohesive culture in that high school right now so I think your your perception is is is is accurate and it's because when you got to Mayo High School in nth grade even if you had
086come from a school where there weren't those positive uh systems in place you had to flip the switch now what we want is the positive systems in middle school that feed up in to high school but um you're right there there there could have been that and I think by we certainly don't see that in the data um and doing things like having a day in our high schools where just the nth graders come before the big kids are there it's an investment I struggled with that a little bit because that's a day of learning loss but boy is it proving worth it to addressing things like that um and I kind of want to go back to the Equitable piece too I know that um director Barlo asked that question but one of the
087things that and I apologize for not thinking of this before the meeting it just kind of came to me as we've been talking about this but would it be helpful to see the in school suspension data uh broken down by race and ethnicity as well to see to show the differences between out of that maybe for next year yeah we can certainly do that I did in my creating nine billion charts and then picking the ones to use I did do that and the I don't recall it being different okay but I would have to to update that for next year for sure okay and then I just have to dig into one thing Mr lingren I think this is going to be for you and I always ask these kind of questions I didn't
088realize I could make my slides bigger and then I could read things until I got here um but one of the question I have to go back to those um that bigger slide you pointed out for us um what is the difference between illegal conduct drugs possession use and alcohol drugs tobacco paraphernalia those seem similar to me are they say or what's very similar we have we have lots of things that are very similar that maybe at one site they're call like this we spent a lot of because there's no longer a vaping piece within there remember remember dur we talked about that before dur set that thing there they were like where do we put vaping do we put it under illegal drugs do we put it under to Tobacco do we put it
089under um you know other P I'm not I'm losing my train of thought on on the other piece we could put in there but we we had a long conversation with our high schools of where we put this and they're all putting it different spots and it was probably January February before we were like wait a second we need to all be kind of the same on where these are going so yes um that the codes can be very similar and can be used in different spots or different ideas so are the titles on the graph then are those dur or are those RPS specific dur but RPS okay yeah we take everything from dur because that's the report you told us that last time yeah um would it make sense then that that's something
090that needs to be better defined then moving forward as to which of these categories we're going to use to be consistent with that okay there's little things that come up as like wait what are you guys calling it and we're not calling the same thing you okay that would be helpful I think to look at this over time to make to understand that and to know um what's in those categories and that we're being consistent with across the buildings um oh and I did have one more question I think this is for you Angie um can you give us just an example you've talked about the readmission plans can you give us an example of a typical one what types of things would be in something like that sure we actually um Craig Schneider uh
091one of the assistant principles at Kell actually made a checklist of um a list of non-exclusionary discipline types of things that we had maybe attempted before we sent a student home so we could review those pieces with a parent to say here are all the things that we've attempted before we sent your child home um and then what we talked about specifically are who are your trusted adults in the building uh what was the precipitating factor of the events that took place um you know where are you going to turn for support going forward um and then making sure um on the back side of our Forum specific things we would always ask what do you need for support and list those things out and then an agreement between parent and student um and then
092they would sign the agreement we'd send a cop you home with them um I think it's kind of a formality but I think that it was uh good I think parents understood the seriousness of it going through a process um like that and I think we had much greater participation in re-entry meetings this year than we have in the past um and then for our students at Kell who were participating in The CARE program um parents were invited to their exit meetings where they would share um uh you know a slide presentation where they would share the reflection on their behavior and their plans going forward also so those weren't re-entry meetings but they were invited to their uh exit meeting where our counselor social worker admin and impacted staff would be able to attend
093awesome thank you not sure how Universal but in my experience I would always take time to make sure that the students student uh understood that doesn't need that behavior doesn't Define who they are and when I see them I don't think you're the person that did this I think of you as one of my students one of my kids so that that there's they're not left with a feeling of I'm I'm less than now or you think poorly of me but that we all make mistakes and now we start again thank you um I want to go back to the out of school suspensions um disaggregated data by race and ethnicity I mean we look at this chart every year and um I appreciate Dr Barlo um raising the the directionality of where we'd like
094to see this data go and given that it's going to be a focus in the future um and we've looked at this data different ways we looked at it by school we is there a different and we're this chart is going to have to appear every year but is there additional data or different way to share with us what's ort to get to director Bar's questions what's working and what's not working in terms of number of students location of students age of students even um NE when we think of our presentations in the future because I think the numbers I don't know that they're one suddenly one you're going to go to zero we can't expect that but I think we really have to start telling the story of all the work that you're doing
095in the buildings and and what we're seeing um move the numbers as they change from year to year if that makes any sense can I from um jump from the suggestion maybe breaking this down for us by Elementary Middle High School um so that we can see that more detail and see what it if if it makes any difference in what these graphs look like yeah let's let me just commit to uh put that in our plans uh for next year and thinking about it one of the things we are uh in the near future going to launch a data dashboard on our website that will provide aggregate data on um key uh measures of student performance and other things um we also have built the capacity of school staff to dig into our data
096using a platform called Edge climber and maybe we need to bring dashboards to the board meeting as well so that actually it's not just the slides that we happen to show you but it could be the findings that board members identify and digging into some of that data that shape some of the discussion um because of course there's only so many slic of the data that we can we can provide but I think yeah at minimum looking at it elementary middle and high school because there are profound Developmental and structural differences between those levels and certainly to your point shair Nathan finding ways to bring to the board and the community what we are doing to address those disparities is is really essential the the det tension with suspensions is there was a period where
097no one was suspending around the country because we don't want to suspend you don't want to take that tool from an administrator if a kid is disrupting the learning environment we want to change the behavior that is leading to the need to suspend so that's why I'm thinking more and more suspensions are a very important focus of our work going forward they've always been a a focus but I I there was a a school of policing for a long time that was called the broken windows school and if you if you if you police broken windows murder rates will go down and I think to some extent there's there's some in the criminal justice world that has questioned the correctness of that theory I think there may have been some notion that in reducing level
098twos the suspensions which again are the most disruptive uh misbehaviors that occur in a school environment would also go down I think suspensions often are not the product of a bunch of level twos there are serious incident that happens in and of itself that we need to focus on and to the point that Angie made uh go into diagn IC mode and find out what the behavior is telling us anything else board members all right thank you very much thank you everybody our next item is 7.1 prep for Action approval of the 2025 26 District calendar this is a prep for action item that we'll take action on at our next meeting superintendent pel thank you chair Nathan I want to ask Carl bachan who has done a Yan's job of facilitating this give a
099very brief um overview of what's in the calendar and but as he comes up to join us I want to thank both the Rochester Education Association and the Rochester principes Association for their partnership again this year in designing this calendar they are invaluable and helping us make the math uh work and uh you have the results of that before you thank you Dr Mel good evening board members I'm here to present the 2526 calendar school calendar for your review what you see in board dos is um the proposed 2526 calendar is very similar to recent calendars it is typical over the last few years that the school year start the last week of August and end in the first week in June I did a little uh review of that except for 2223 since 2021
100we have used that option of starting before Labor Day um we sought input from teachers and principes as we developed this calendar for 2526 and just uh some of the highlights there um back to school week will be that August 18th 2025 it's hard hard to talk in 25 26 terms right now I guess I gotta get used to that um like we've done the last couple of years August 25th and 26 would be step into learning days at the elementary school um August 25th would also be meet me in the middle for sixth grade and orientation for 9th grade August 26th would be the first day for secondary students August 27th would be the first day for elementary students last day of school will be June 3 2526 would be the second year that
101the entire District would be on the semester schedule and with that we have some days that are called curriculum adjustment days for teaching staff that are would be scheduled for the 24th of September November 4th March 3rd and May 6th these days would be approximately 50% professional development and approximately 50% for teachers to review data and make adjustments to their instruction and instructional plans um and these would replace those end of quarter trimester work days under previous calendars there would be still be an end of the semester work day and the end of the school year work day for teachers on 6424 and our professional development day for all staff would be February 16th 2026 with that I'll see if there are any questions well if there are no questions I want to extend my
102my gratitude to the team for doing this we heard from parents a number of years ago that the more advanced planning we can give them because vacations are almost being selected a year ahead of time so um the fact that we'll be able to provide this to parents by the beginning of August the year before the school year is uh we're very grateful for the ability to do that so thank you any other questions board members all right we'll be back for action on August 6th our next prep fraction item is the first briefing of policies and procedures uh recommended to the board by the policy committee um from our May through July meetings um and we have some recommendations to read yeah we have um 10 items to brief tonight I'll start employee assistance
103policy employee assistance so the policy committee recommends that this policy be retired the policy committee recommends the changes in tutoring policy 4231 R which clarify the circumstances under which teachers May tutor students including restrictions on tutoring their current students and the steps teachers must take in notifying the building administrator that they are providing tutoring services on their own to time without using School District resources this is also another policy that was developed in Rochester Public Schools procedure 701a establishment and Adoption of the School District budget has minor language adjustments for clarity and precision terms are updated to reflect current use the policy committee recommends these changes the policy committee recommends a few minor language changes to procedure 71.1 a modifications of the School District budget this procedure is a broad timeline for updating analyzing and
104the reporting of annual revenue and expenditure budgets procedure 704a development and maintenance of an inventory of fixed assets and a fixed asset account system is updated in the sections on definitions and stewardship and accountability an extensive description on tracking items that are purchased with federal funds is added the previous outdated section about tracking and accounting is deleted items included in District inventory include the removal of outdated technology equipment and District equipment currently in use was added the policy committee recommends these changes for policy 77.1 R there are a few minor changes bus contractor duties and responsibilities these changes include the duration of the contract and requires a process to elicit as many bids as possible when a transportation contract is expiring the policy committee recommends these changes the policy committee recommends two minor language changes
105in policy 74.1 are indemnification of district and employees against legal action this is also a Rochester Public Schools only policy debt management policy 75.1 R is a Rochester Public Schools policy only and titles are edited to reflect current leadership titles the policy committee recommends these updates for procedure 75.1 ra debt management um it's the companion to policy 75.1 R and is part of the three-year review process the policy committee recommends the updates to current leadership titles there is one small msba edit to policy 807 health and safety policy which changes the abbreviation used to refer to Minnesota statutes the policy committee recommends this msba edit thank you policy committee members we will um revisit this for a second briefing at the August 6th meeting uh before we move into the action items on our agenda
106board members would you like to continue or take a recess prior to diving into that section of the agenda no go we'll move on action item 8.1 is approval of the 2024 25 student handbook this is an action item but I believe we have a brief presentation extraordinarily brief so we'll have that before we introduce the resolution start talking you tell you can tell I'm sending a subtle messages I'm read yeah there are really two changes I would just highlight and F the first is on page 77 we have a a change to the furpa an update to the furpa statement which really addresses um what the school district uses to to constitute a school official and what constitutes a legitimate educational interest and those are referring to the parents uh the parent right to
107um request written permission for um for uh personally identifiable information when we're sharing um and then page 24 we put a very enticing placeholder for the upcoming cell phone uh strategies or policy practices that we're planning to put in place you'll be seeing those August 6th but I can tell you that today we um built consensus with the high school on how they will address cell phones we're going to present that to Dr pel in in a very uh in a few weeks I think it is and um very excited uh we just tomorrow will'll be working with middle school principls and you know Middle School principles that's going to be a lift to get um consensus but that was a better Cliffhanger than who shot Jr that was it'll be fine those are the
108those are the two changes that I'd highlight given that I'm going to read the resolution and then we can have discussion um be it resolved that the school board of Independent School District 535 does hereby approve the 20242 student handbook with the provision that policies referenced within which are currently under review by the policy committee will be updated in the handbook upon approval of the policies by the school board and the section of the school board handbook regarding student use of cell phones during the school day will be updated upon final recommendation of a standard District practice is made to and approved by the superintendent and approved by the school board prior to the start of the 20242 school year need a motion move approval second second moved and seconded discussion director Mar thank you
109two very quick questions first one is when this is sent to students and to uh families will it be translatable yes it it is electronic and there's a way to translate okay and then the second one is that the expectation is that students and parents sign the form at the end if and then turn it in that they they've read it they've looked at it um if they don't turn it in my assumption is that ignorance is not an excuse I mean if they say I didn't know it was a rule that whether they turn it in or not there's still I think that's a fair assessment okay thank you so may s um how will families SL students be made aware of the existence of the the schoool schools will highlight the handbook with
110the student body um typically at the high school by grade level in a in a school assembly we might also highlight uh really important sections of the handbook in um advisories and um small group um sessions and of course Elementary will get a little different U flavor than high school we would make that um age appropriate but we will make sure the students all hear um the the um highlights of the handbook and then with parents when we um do newsletters and um and any kind of uh bulletin or any kind of um social Outreach we would include that link for parents and direct Barlo I think Communications has always also agreed that once we approve it they'll add the handbook to the back to school page on our website so it'll be part of
111the toolkit that parents get any other questions hearing none um all in favor of the resolution say I I opposed the resolution has been approved our next action item is approval of a long-term facilities maintenance plan I will read the resolution and ask for a motion and second and if received we can have discussion be it resolved that the school board of Independent School District 535 does hereby approve the 10-year long-term facilities maintenance plan for the school year 2025 2026 move approval second it has been moved and seconded any questions to discuss hearing none all those in favor of the resolution say I I I opposed the resolution has been approved our next uh our next action item is the amplify science curriculum quote um be it resolved the school board of Independent School District
112535 approves the purchase of the amplify science curriculum for grades kindergarten through five in the total amount of $841,000 your order extending until summer 2031 Mo approv approval second it has been moved and seconded any questions or discussion hearing none all those in favor of the resolution say I I all those opposed the resolution has been approved thank you board members our next agenda item is the policy committee recommendations on procedure 413a supporting transgender and or gender expansive students this is an action item I will read the resolution ask for a motion in second and then we can continue with uh discussion on the resolution we have resolved that the school board of Independent School District 535 accept the recommendations of the policy commiss committee as listed for procedure 4133a supporting transgender and gender expansive
113students move approval second it has been moved and seconded uh and now is our time to ask questions and disc discussion but before we start I'd just like to ground us again with um some of the how we got here so um just to remind everybody the superintendent issued the administrative guidelines in September of 2023 and when those guidelines were issued um it was stated that the school board would wait on a final rule from um the Department of Education on Title Nine of the education Amendments of 1972 before we considered making a policy or procedure related to this topic on April 19th of 2024 that final rule was issued and on May 2nd the policy committee met to discuss the general direction of the process and decided to move forward with drafting a procedure
114on May 7th at the school board meeting I announced during board committee reports that the procedure was under development and would be discussed at the June 11th study session and the July 16th regular meeting on May 29th the committee met to review a draft of the procedure and recommended presenting the draft to the board for consideration on June 7th the draft procedure was available to the public for review on June 11th the board reviewed the draft procedure at the study session on June 25th the policy committee met again on June 25th to review and update the draft the policy committee recommended presenting the updated draft to the board for approval that draft was available to the public for review on July 12th and we are here tonight with an action item on procedure 413a board
115members any questions comments or discussion director Garcia yes minor comments um and I say these things as a queer woman of color so I I recognize intersectionality the importance of um what we're doing and with this procedure I also speak as a psychologist I also speak as a Schoolboard member and somebody who um has deep passion for our district um I appreciate the birth and the iterations of this procedure um I can hold that while it's not exactly a perfect document I recognize that it is a living document that can go live today and it can be updated as needed um and I trust or and trust that I am still nitpicking the procedure and driving the chair to the edge um as a member of the policy committee and I also want to make
116clear what happens when kids do not have this safe and inclusive space to be um in in my professional work outside of this I receive a lot of uh what I would call a DBT referral so referrals for children who come to me for um dialectical behavior therapy and I recognize that also because of the nature of my work this may be a little bit inflated but I would say nearly 100% of the children that I that are referred to me for that particular service are part of the lgbtq iia2 plus uh community and most often they're coming to me because they are living in or subjected to one or more invalidating environments and it is almost immediate that some level of the symptomology or um some of the the suicidality in particular reduces once
117they're in services and are able to have somebody sort of affirm who they are um and I want to Quil the fears that that of people who are concerned about this that P providers are just making impulsive recommendations to engage children in lifechanging gendering care without consulting with other medical professionals without their family that it's like some sort you know shrouded in secrecy that those those things are not happening um that for those of us who do this work there's much assessment involved and we are asking lots of questions we are receiving lots of documentations uh lots of documentation and we are having conversations sometimes even with school district professionals um and even when I am a a therapist or a provider for a child yes there are times where I will tell the parent
118you know you got to you got to trust in me just a little bit because if your kid thinks I'm going to turn around and tell you everything you tell me in therapy there's almost no reason for them to be here because they're not going to trust and I would say most parents are like you do what you got to do you're a professional just let me know when I need to get involved and I tell the kid this is what I may have to end up telling your parent um or when there are things that are concerning that aren't necessarily a man data reporter issue but that maybe Mom and Dad need to know um we talk about what's going to happen when those things need to be shared and I would like to
119believe having had conversations with our Educators that they are also in that same space um that it is not like they're going to be taking information from students and again shrouding that in secrecy and not sharing information with parents that they are legally allowed to have access to and so I think that there are a lot of assumptions about what this procedure means or what it will what will happen if it is um put in place or if my colleagues vote um to implement it this evening um I also want to just remind a lot of our community members that your emotions are not fact and just because you are afraid of this thing doesn't mean that it's bad for children um and just because you are uncomfortable does not mean you or your children
120are unsafe um so I appreciate those who came and had all the courage especially Ash if you're still here here um to speak with us and I appreciate those of you who are willing to take a stand for our gender expansive transgender students because it also sends a message to our trans staff um and their parents or parents in the district so for us to be able to show that this is who we are I think it also goes a long way with um Recruitment and Retention for people who want to be here I know we had somebody speak about a a pending m Exodus I don't think that that is the case um I have had people personally reach out to me from other states who are trying to come here where there are
121legislation either already enacted or about to be voted on where they feel like this is a refuge state for them and that they want their kids to come to this District because of the things that they're hearing about us in even places like Colorado so I am proud of what we're doing again I know that this is an imperfect document and I am committed to making sure that it is consistently and continuously updated to reflect what what we need to do and I think it's also helpful to our staff to have something concrete uh to lean on when they have questions about where to go with this so I would like to vote um in the affirmative for this procedure for our district director Marvin I don't have nearly the um the expertise that that
122Dr Garcia does who's a psychologist but as a a longtime educator um I'm hoping it's clear to the community and to the staff is that this policy does not encourage students to be trans what it says is you you'll be safe here we'll do what we can do to make sure that like every other student you have the right to be in this place that's it that's it we will not it's it's like during the women's suffrage movement that's poor analogy but during the women's suffrage movement and women were demanding their rights they weren't encouraging people to become women they were just saying we deserve to be here and we deserve to be treated with respect that's what this policy does we we protect many different classes of kids in our schools and and I
123I'm concerned that if we say no to trans kids who's going to be the next group that we say no to to say well there aren't very many of you so we really don't want to bother every single child should be respected and welcomed in this school district and that's what this policy does director Workman I guess it looks like we're kind of going down the line here um Dr Garcia thank you so much for your lengthy explanation of the work that you do its importance and how we can help students here in Rochester Public Schools I think it can be extremely traumatic from uh my own experience to have a child who is not welcomed at school for whatever reason or is made fun of or taunted or any other thing like that it's
124really really hard but when that student has supportive adults at school it makes the parents job so much easier it really helps to know that the school is going to support our kids like parents want them supported so um Dr Marvin thank you for your perspective as a former teacher I appreciate that right back at you m I'll go next next um so in thinking about this and and reading all the input that we've gotten from our community it prompted me to think about some things that Dr K said earlier about um the only way that students can be successful is if they feel a sense of belonging at their schools and I take that to heart in terms of safety inclusiveness and being welcoming those are the cornerstones of our district and of this
125board that we may have different views about various things but that is a core principle of why we're here um one of the reasons that I got involved in this community and in the school board is to ensure the safety of students and I firmly believe that this policy is a safe for students it's best for students families and the community um in reading some of the information that we received um in both board comments and in um things that he were either sent in public comments or sent To Us by email it and just some general reading in the about the nature of our society and our community these days it gets me to think about the and this kind of goes back to you know similar to what Dr Marvin was saying about
126how our society has changed in terms of women's rights but thinking back to around the time period of 1965 in our history that moving forward from the time of 1965 there was more recognition in our community of basic human rights and basic civil rights I firmly believe that those changes in our society were critical to our community's thriving and um working together rather than working apart and I equate these this policy this procedure that we're looking at as providing those basic human rights and civil rights to all students it also from my work perspective like Dr Garcia it also follows the law and our constitution in my perspective this procedure is critical to the inclusiveness that we want to see in our district um I also want to give the perspective I was the meeting
127greeter tonight and was out in the hallway looking at the um there's a um presentation out there about the Seven Grandfather teachings it's from the Native American culture and the message that I got from that critical to tonight's discussion is the following it said love like a river will cut A New Path whenever it meets an obstacle that just really resonated with me that I want the community to understand that that regardless of what your views are what your religion is what your moral values are we can all have differences about that but that message I think speaks to families who are in in a crisis or facing an obstacle on this topic that there is a path forward and I think that's important to keep in perspective here I am very much um planning
128to vote in favor of this procedure Dr Barlo it's um I appreciate the phone calls and questions of a concerned parents Educators and champions of the Rochester Public Schools regarding procedure uh 413a um the stated purpose of this procedure is to ensure that all students are welcomed valued included and respected to help schools ensure safe learning environments of free of discrimination harassment and bullying and to promote the education on social integration of transgender and or gender expansive students I believe the purpose is a noble and appropriate um purpose um my concern however uh goes beyond the the purpose and uh comes in the form of uh the important role that parents play uh for anyone to suggest that uh parents are not foundational uh to the success of uh a child's well-being uh not every
129parent is a good parent uh I believe most are uh and uh I don't think we should uh uh demean the important role of what it is to be a parent or to suggest that parents do not have the capacity or the wherewithal uh the love uh and or the willingness to uh support their children um across the board um the one or two times I uh was suspended from school for uh level two offenses uh my dad would always say as he would um discipline me son I do this because I love you and um I think sometimes we don't fully understand the the role and the shape and the form that Love Takes uh and and so to that end uh what I've come to realize is that uh uh parents and champions
130of our district uh desire to be heard and their opinions to be valued and actively considered um for parents to believe that um they actually know what's best for their kids versus we know what's best for their kids and and so in in light of that I um would like to offer uh now I do support uh the um policy but with the following um two amendments I do recognize that while I can propose an amendment without a second uh it it fails but my first um Amendment would be in reference to section 4B I would like to see that rep placed in its entirety with the following language parents Guardians will be notified when or if their child who's under the age of 18 either asked to use a name pronoun a name pronoun
131change restroom or locker room because a child begins to believe that they're either transgender or gender expansive uh this amendment varies from the current language um and for those that are familiar with um uh section 4B you can see the differences uh Dr Barlo can you be a little slower in reading that language please sure parents Guardians will be notified when or if their child who's under the age of 18 either ask to use hold on parents Guardians will be notified when or if when or if their child who is under the age of 18 either asked to to use a name pronoun restroom or locker room because the child begins to believe they're either transgender or gender expansive restroom or locker room because they believe well the language of our policies think and or
132believe um that they are either transgender or gender expansive okay we're going to take uh you said you had two we're going to take them one at a time right right all right I want to make sure that the board members um are you are you making a motion to amend the policy committee recommendation to change the language in section 4B yes I am okay so I'm going to read so everybody knows knows what the motion is before I ask for a second parent parents Guardians will be notified when or if their child who is under the age of 18 either asked to use a name pronoun restroom or locker room because they believe they are either transgender or gender expansive did I get it right think or believe uh or believe okay well do
133you want to pass it actually as I if we look at um the actual proposal yep um all I'm asking to see changed is um rather than if a parent a guardian requests I'm actually the gist of this amendment is that parents should be notified okay so it sounds like you want to change the language too parents Guardians will be notified about their child who is under the age of 18 including information about whether their child identifies as transgender gender expansive or whether their child has asked to use a name pronoun restrooms or locker rooms based on the child's gender identity rather than their legal name or sex assigned at Birth period correct correct okay so that is the motion to change that language do we have a second okay so that motion fails for
134lack of a second okay and then 5B if I may okay that section currently reads in order for a student to be addressed by the preferred name and pronouns that reflect the students gender expression by members of the school Community parent Guardian consent is not required um and what i' like to propose as an amendment is um parent guardan consent is required okay so remove the word not right so that is a motion to change the policy committee recommendation by changing the language in section 5B to delete the word not um that's your motion uh yes it is okay is there a second I just want to be clear there's multiple knots okay so we want to make sure we have the right knot yes uh our lawyer so it will read in order for
135a student to be addressed by the preferred name and pronoun that reflect the students gender expression by members of the school Community parent Guardian consent is not required a court ordered name change or official gender change is not required and the student is likewise not required to change the school's official records or the school's student information system yeah the only not I'm uh referencing is that in regards to parent or Guardian consent consent okay so that is the motion do we have a second I'll second for the sake of discussion okay so we have a second for the sake of discussion um director Barlo you made the motion so you can discuss sure for me this is more than just a um point of discussion it is a um point of concern uh especially as
136we as a district uh speak of uh parent Partnerships uh I think this policy and the exclusion of parents runs contrary to the messaging that we uh Market ourselves by and if truly we are endeavoring to engage in a significant pral uh involvement and parental um uh support then parents should certainly be at the Forefront of um being with those trusted adults and I struggle with the belief that uh a uh that anyone can be more trusted um than a mom or dad and and maybe I come from the point of view of my own life experience I realize we all have different life experiences I know some people have not experienced the the blessings of family as I have or to be blessed to be a a father of six kids and 20 grandchildren
137and I see the importance of parenting and will uh always stand in support of alongside of and take one for the parents who I believe are crucial uh to what we as a district are saying we're endeavoring to do uh for our uh students um uh through the schools and through the uh budgets that we approve and that really is the rationale behind uh uh this amendment yes please uh thank you Dr B I'm going to leave the discussion of your Amendment obviously appropriately to board members I do appreciate your highlighting our commitment to family engagement and I feel it's urgent to note that there's nothing in this Pro procedure that prohibits a staff member from talking to a parent and there is the unambiguous requirement that a parent inquiring about their child must be
138given all information we possess which as I know you know some have criticized uh both the guidelines I wrote and this draft for so I I I you are urging in a way that I certainly respect different type of family engagement but there is no prohibition of information for parents anywhere in this and there is a mandatory providing of information to parents that request it and further Madam chair uh while that is true and the language is only permissive if indeed a parent happens to catch wind of and or somehow becomes aware of and it's conditioned upon uh when they inquire if the staff member at that particular Moment In Time say 303 pm on this particular day whether they know it or not but at 3005 they later come into knowledge of it but
139are under no obligation to inform the parent because they didn't have the knowledge at the time of the initial request and and so I'm simply suggesting parents should not be out of the loophole and um I accept also the the the um reality that my view is not necessarily a shared view of my uh peers and I believe we all uh have the same concern for uh our communities I without needing to justify uh the reason or rationale I personally and many people who look like me have benefited from uh necessary uh uh legislation being uh passed from the Civil Rights Act of 64 to the Voting Rights Act of ' 67 and or to the fair housing act of 68 I mean there are um I understand the value benefit necessity and um but
140to that same thing I believe it is necessary it is a benefit to always include our parents to never um if you will make them have to find out through whatever means they happen to find out uh I think just as the school will call or Skyward the parental notifications occur when our students skip school when they're suspended from school when they get sick at school um no problem there's no fear that exists uh on the part of of uh individuals that parents are going parents might be inconvenience when they're maybe asked to come pick their kid up from school but I think we just have to give our parents more credit than what some may be suggesting uh and and again I'm not naive to think that they our individual parents who may go
141to the extreme of overreacting to the information I'm not discounting that or being dismissive of that but I just strongly believe that we shouldn't uh we should Empower parents rather than uh require them to um ask the right question at the right time that's my final comment regarding the thing that you're suggesting though is that you know the school include the parents when academic progress is being impeded the kid is sick the kid did something they were supposed to do they're not showing up to class we are removing a barrier for students to access the education that they would like like simply by saying that we will do this thing by calling you the name that you're asking for by the pronouns that you're asking for so that you can show up to class because
142not everybody has parents that will understand those things not everybody maybe even recognizes where they fall on this like gender expansive uh Continuum so it's not a let's keep the parents out of the loop or let's not share with them important information about their kid because they are allowed to know and if an educator shares that information it's not like they're going to get in trouble for that necessarily in any particular way it's we are not requiring the student to have different levels of approval by people outside of themselves when they're asking for a thing so nobody asked my grandmother her parents whether it was okay for them to start calling her Helen instead of Maria nobody asked my my grandparents if it was okay that people start calling my father Henry instead of andri
143both of them were okay with that decision when it happened it did not impede their academic process at the time or progress and everyone continued and so every time my father went home he was Enrique when he was at school he was Henry and so there are a lot of kids that do that even if they're not trans or gender expansive they show up here and put on a person that they know that they can be or accepted in school and so all we're doing is protecting that ability and if the parents are asking for the information they're allowed to have it but it's not requiring me as the educator to turn around and be like oh my gosh Jeanie did you know that your kid is now asking me to call them excuse me
144X Y or Z it's not putting the onus on me as the educator to in over involve myself in that situation and they are able to have that information should it be asked of them and if their kid ask of them and I can say also as as a mental health provider sometimes I'll have kids come in and tell me when I'm doing an assessment uh this is the name and these are my pronouns but I don't want my parents to understand and I have to explain to them your parents will have access to these documents and so if I write in here that your name is this on your insurance but you are asking to be called this and these are your pronouns how would you like me to handle a conversation with them
145when they ask me why did you do this and then we have a conversation about that so again that's not me trying to tell the kid like we're going to snow your parents it's me being very clear with them like these are the expectations of me and these are the things that your parents are allowed to have access to how should we manage this that's what this is director Marvin you know I think a narrative has developed that somehow the school board wants to get between the relationship of a a child and their parents that we want to do the parenting and I don't think that could be farther from the truth the reality is that most staff don't have expertise in this area and what they can do is say here's the nickname you
146want I can do that that's it that's it we don't say and you need to get medication and you we don't give advice we don't push um not their role and I would I don't know this for a fact but it's been my experience that when it when a student provides a staff member some information that's really important to them first question the staff person asks is have you talked to your folks about this you know this seems really important to you have you talked to your family now if that kid says no I think the next question is do you want to do do you think it would be good and then if the the kid says no that's going to put that staff person in the position of I've had this young person
147come in and say I can't talk to my mom or dad about this or at least I don't want to right now then it's my job to do that and and and as Dr Garcia said you know we see all the time especially in secondary kids students trying on different personas trying on different ways of being and as they grow they change and eventually they land on this is who I authentically am but it seems to me it's not our business as staff people to get between that kid and the relationship with their parents just I think it's a very personal decision that kids and families make schools don't about who you are Dr Workman um director Baro I think you you touched on something that's really important to emphasize is that we all have
148different life experiences and just because a person has grown up with a family where their parents are nurturing and wonderful and the child feels that they can go and talk to them about whatever is on their mind is great um but in my years of teaching and having been on the board for for a while I realized that not all parents and all students share those same life experiences so if a parent gets a whiff of something why would they go to the staff member first would they ask their child I just heard something at school and it doesn't even have to be about this I just heard that there was a problem in your classroom would you like to talk to me about it and if the kid says I don't know I'm going
149to get in trouble I mean there's an an opening right there to discuss it but if the child says no okay you let it go at least for a while so I think I would love to be able to make it possible that all parents were opening and accepting and supportive of their kids um in these kinds of situations um without immediately throwing them out of the house or jumping to some awful conclusion about their kid is that's just not the reality of of of Life today it's just not and I don't know how we could possibly make all parents um you know to be as open to their kids as their kids would like them to be but I mean I also know that you know there are times when um I was growing
150up and I I think yeah I was really glad my parents didn't know about that at the time because I didn't know what was going to happen as a result while it was not something that was necessarily um super lifechanging but that it was important to um recognize that that kids do have different thoughts different things from their parents that are sometimes more easily discussed with a mental health professional um that's probably the wrong word word for you Dr Garcia I know in your profession where they feel that because that person isn't as close to them as their parent that they have some freedom to explore some of these questions with that person and um as as Dr Marvin said you know the first thing that a staff member is likely to say to a
151kid is hey this is a big deal have you have you talked to your parents about this you know this seems like I don't think we can handle this here because we can't and if the child then says I'd really like to but I don't know how then there can be a discussion with the child with somebody else who is capable of guiding them in the house versus if I say this to my parents I know how my parents feel they will hate me forever and so if the child does not have a space at school where they feel safe um they're not going to be able to accomplish academically what they need to and I think we're we are talking about a very small percentage of students but we are here to Ed educate
152and keep all of our students safe I'm also not a proponent of saying I want to withhold information from a parent if the parent comes and asks me as a as a former teacher you know is this occurring my first response would be what has your child said to you about this what kind of discussion have you had at home and I don't think I'm equipped necessarily to have this discussion here and now with the kid I mean there's so many possibilities but this um procedure I think helps to clarify what the staff has to do or not do that the staff does have the ability to discuss with the parent using their best judgment but that they are not required to and frankly if a if a teacher has to keep track of every
153single student of what they said every single minute it as to gosh that I call the parent and talk to them about this um there wouldn't be any teaching going on whatsoever so I realized that this was um very long-winded and I apologize for that direct mclin um Dr Baro I appreciate your emphasis on our parents and our families that I think that's important and I I firmly believe that this policy acknowledges that and what I want to you to know from my life experience primarily from the work that I did in the past is that there are great great parent child relationships in our community but there are a lot of them that parents and children do not have good relationships and I think about that a lot in thinking about this policy because
154I think that's the reality um you know it' be wonderful if all parents and children had perfect relationships but as we know and you know we talk about in various forms here they don't and I think a lot about about those kids and and how they struggle and I put that in the perspective of this procedure and also what Dr Garcia was talking about that in this particular issue there's a lot of um flexibility in people thinking over a period of time it's not just that you wake up one day and you're going to be this way it's fluid across time and across um gender expression um but what I'm concerned about and I think this um ties into what Dr Marvin was saying and and and director Workman as well is that I think
155what it's it's taking out one word but I think it really flips this whole procedure on its head because I'm kind of thinking about some of the letters we've received too is that taking that word out then puts that staff member or counselor whoever it is into that parent child relationship and that what we're hearing is the parents don't want the school in their parent child relationship but if you take that word out that's what's happening is that it would there's a parent child relationship that isn't great at the time and taking that word out would require the school to get into that relationship when it's not invited by either parent or child and I don't see how that could be good or safe or in inclusive or welcoming to either to any of those
156three entities the parent the child or the staff that I think it it's just it's one word but I think it really flips us around into a place where I don't think any of those um or anyone would want to be director cook uh director Barlo I continue to appreciate your perspective and the clarity with which you bring um both your the concerns that are formed by your life experience and from our broader Community um I I have given these particular Provisions quite a bit of thought um and primarily from the perspective of a parent um and I I just do not see the conflict in the current draft language and in any way engaging parents I routinely received dozens of messages through skylert and talking points between my four kids spread across next year
157three different schools about lots and lots of things that in the discretion and at the initiative of individual School staff are things that that my wife and I might want to know about because we might want to follow up on um and I I have every confidence that putting a student's gender expansive or transgendered uh identity status in that same category of information um will not in any way harm the ability of our schools to involve our student or our our our parents and our students families what I when I consider the implications of this policy what I think about is what it does to our school culture from the perspective of students and I think that most parents with concerns about the potential stigmatization or marginalization of their students their children who are transgendered
158or gender expansive think quite a bit about what that moment is like on the first day of school when uh their child might be expressing a gender expression um that is different than what it has been in the past or indicating a pref reference for a use of pronouns that is an immensely vulnerable and sensitive time for them and so I think about the implications of our policy on what happens in that moment to a child that's just like my child or to a child that I've coached on soccer teams and baseball teams and I want to be I want them to feel um validated um valued like they belong there and if the next question is well we need to have a call home or I'm going to have to talk to your parents
159about that or oh we can't do that because um that's going to require that you know we have a little meeting and which would be different than any other type of information um I just I just think that's not what we want for our kids and as a I think that our parents with those concerns would not want that for their children but I I do think that in nearly all cases our parents know their children much better than our school staff they just do um and they will under this policy explicitly have every piece of information that school staff has access to it to the extent that there's something that they want to investigate or collaborate on further I I do think that that's the right way to strike the balance I am very
160grateful for your perspective and thank you direct if I may um I also appreciate your your focus on parents but I really think there has been a misinterpretation of the power of parents as it comes to this procedure at any time for whatever reason a parent can pick up the phone and call their teacher and ask whether their child has been asked to be uh referred to by name and pronoun that doesn't identify with their gender identity or if there is any Behavior related to gender identity that they are expressing there is no barrier to that phone call being made by a parent maybe just because a child decides to wear a different color than they normally wear I mean it could be a they ate a different breakfast it could be whatever indicates to
161a parent they make that phone call if they're primarily concerned about this they could literally call their teacher every day even with no indication if it's something that's that important to them to know the minute that it happens they can establish that line of communication with teacher there is no barrier to that and I agree with everything that's been said about the professionalism of our teachers recognizing when that communication needs to be initiated on the part of the teacher for the wellness of the child that that happens in a number of circumstances and the superintendent has made clear that there is nothing in this procedure that would prevent that phone call from a teacher in a circumstance of a child where gender identity is a related issue that a teacher could pick up a phone
162and call a parent I also worry about the other parts of this policy that would conflict because what taking the knot out of this paragraph does is remove the preferred name and pronoun option for students but by federal state and case law we would still have to accommodate that student's bathroom and locker room preference so in one piece of their life they're allowed to identify with their gender identity based on the facilities they use but in another part they may not be able to use the name and pronouns they choose and that's a disconnect in the fullness of their identity that this procedure is intended to prevent so you had so response for me the purpose um was more than just an an expression of uh it was much larger than I think I feel
163in terms of my own personal viewpoints it was a culmination of um uh parental input that I'm sure each of us have received and yet I'm glad that um and I believe uh as a board we were more deliberate concise tonight in communicating the actual um sense of what this policy is about what it is and what it isn't uh and potentially May uh alleviate some um concerns on the part of some parents and or uh tamped down to some degree the fear that parents are being excluded entirely and so I I feel uh that and appreciate the fact that uh my job was not to try to convince anyone uh to think any differently than perhaps you did initially in your opening statements uh that each of you provided uh but to Simply reiterate
164the importance of um rental uh voice engagement in Partnership that uh I I've heard reiterated and and emphasized here so um I'm as I'm sure the rest of you prepared to vote any other questions before we vote on this amendment to strike the word not in section 5B all those in favor of the amendment say I I all all those opposed say Nay n n the motion fails so we are now back to the original motion which is to approve the policy recommendations of 413a as they appear in the draft um that appears in the assembly agenda item this evening any other comments or questions I'm not sure I said this earlier um I appreciate the edits that have been made since the June 11th study session and I appreciate having laid out so clearly
165for me you are welcome um any other questions or comments are we ready to take a vote all those in favor of the resolution say I I all those opposed n resolution passes with a vter six to one thank you board members item 9.1 board questions and responses the questions submitted by board members before the meeting and related answers are available in this agenda item the updated version of the ABCD is also available in this agenda item superintendent uh Madam chair and board members I uh it's a terrible time to do it um but I want to acknowledge our new Chief academic officer Mona Perkins who is here um joining us for her first meeting she will be the feature uh discuss it uh at your next study session um but I wanted to make
166make sure and I must say it is not a coincidence that Mona has the last name Perkins from our new activities director at centy high school though those two hires were totally separate and unrelated uh it is very excited to have both Mona and David here in Rochester and I didn't want to go to the end of your first meeting without welcoming you and I know the board is excited to have the chance to meet you uh starting at the next study session thank you madam [Applause] chair so speak thinking of a highlight of our next meeting which is our study session on July 23rd that starts at 5:30 p.m. our next regular meeting is August 6th please note the different time it is from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m to accommodate the National Night Out
167we have a regular meeting on August 20th at 5:30 and another regular meeting on September 10th at 530 and hearing no other business this meeting is adjourned at 8:13 p.m. not realize for