001okay thank you e e e [Music] the study session of the Independent School District 535 School Board is called to order at 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday June 11th 2024 in room 137 of the Edison bill the board acknowledges this 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 Schoolboard members superintendent Kent pel a non-voting ex officio member and assistant Schoolboard clerk Miss Lorie Sam Miss Sam would you please call the role here here here here at this time we offer the opportunity to say the Pledge of Allegiance the United States of America to the for it stands indivisible andice all item 2.1 is approval of the agenda are there any changes
002to the agenda approval it has been moved and seconded to approve the agenda all those in favor say I I I any opposed the agenda has been approved the agenda and documents for this meeting are available online at Rochester schools.org assembly the meeting is being live streamed on youtube.com isd535 the recording of the meeting will also be posted following completion of the meeting our first item is 3.1 prep for Action policy committee recommendations procedure 4133a supporting transgender and or gender expansive students this is a prep for action item the board is scheduled to take action on this item at the July 16th regular meeting our legal council our legal council is present via zoom in the event we have any questions related to the procedure superintendent pqu uh thank you chair Nathan and board members
003um we are are living through a time of profound change in society's understanding of gender identity and gender expansive identities um and the issue before us tonight uh is squarely in that space I will um just share that I was recently not in an RPS school but walking through our community and uh a woman stopped me and actually got quite emotional and had tears in her eyes and she said I have no doubt that my child would not be alive had my child not been allowed to live true to their gender identity and I'm proud to say that her child who is no longer a student went to a Rochester high school and she credited that school's uh careful support for her child with um the fact that uh that RPS grad is out thriving
004in the world today um but she stopped me because she knew that this subject uh was very much a topic of discussion in our community and would soon be before this board and so to briefly uh recap some of the background and the draft procedure that is before you uh I'll remind the board as you know that I issued administrative guidelines on September 9th 2023 that were based on a Model policy from the Minnesota school boards Association and that were developed with advice from our own legal council who is Mick waldburger with us tonight and Miss Sam is working to make sure that we can get input from Mick uh in the discussion session should the board uh request it the guidelines were developed in response to requests from our staff who were seeing issues
005of gender identity coming into our schools and in our classrooms and they were being handled I'm confident in saying well but they were asking for clarity and so we issued those guidelines shared them with all of our administrators I do have to add for the first time talking about this publicly they were never secret they were shared with more than 120 uh administrators it's not strange in Organization for a leader to give direction to managers Delta Airlines does not post for all staff and all customers the guidelines it gives to Pilots um and so these were administrative guidelines but the intent was always for this board to take up the development of what is now before you which is a procedure it states very clearly on the guidelines I issued that the board would take
006this up during the 2023 2024 school year the board's policy committee was waiting to do that until new federal title n guidelines which were developed over many years with thousands and thousands of uh sources of input and expert committees were issued and those issues the 2024 Title 9 final rule came out on April 19th 2024 and the board's policy committee began its work shortly thereafter the result of that work and I want to thank the committee for their efforts um is the draft of the procedure that is before for you now it includes review and revisions based upon the advice of our legal councel the legal council uh who Mick waldburger who's with us um assures us that the draft meets all applicable state and federal laws um we also uh were very attentive to
007Schoolboard policy and that the draft procedure also is aligned with RPS policies and the relevant statutes and policies are noted in the draft and so as I believe chair Nathan is going to uh guide the discussion in a moment through the primary sections of this um procedure which Focus initially on privacy and access to information uh then move on to parent access to information the procedure deals with names pronouns gender markers uh and School District records uh IT addresses gender segregated facilities and gender segregated activities classes rules policies and practices IT addresses dress codes school trips Sports and extracurricular activities discrimination harassment and bullying let me briefly uh conclude by touching on one subject that I know has also been a subject of uh significant discussion which is Parental access to uh information um and
008and candidly concerns about this have very much been raised um from multiple perspectives uh some people very strongly wanting to see parents having access to all information others uh concerned about it um as we have uh worked with legal councel and reviewed the title 9 uh guidelines from the federal government and our own State uh laws um the draft before you has two key elements that I want to highlight um before our discussion first if a parent or Guardian asks for information on their students experience of gender identity in school staff must provide that information if they possess it at the time of the request in addition the procedure says nothing prohibiting staff from sharing information with parents and Guardians as they believe is appropriate and in the interest of the student to do so
009now the procedure does not require that notification but we do not do that in any area of our work where we would require teachers counselors principles to be informing parents of something that they actually the the teacher the the staff member might have limited imperfect or incomplete information about um or the expertise to judge um but that doesn't mean it cannot happen that is an important uh point to make as we go into the conversation to require some type of notification would actually bring these issues into the classroom into work outside the expertise and the focus of our academic work with students We Trust our staff to make uh good decisions about the information that they share with parents and families they do that in issues of academic Readiness they do that in issues of
010disabilities they do that in issues of potential use of substance abuse they do that in issues of mental health um and I'm confident that they would do that in these areas as well that said as I mentioned at the outset we are in a as a society learning about these very complex issues and so so after the board's approval of a final draft of this procedure we will roll up our sleeves and develop extensive professional development and information for staff so that we are reflective of best practices in how all aspects of this procedure as it is finally approved by the board are implemented because we know that the procedure is critical and yet the ways that we support our staff and implementing that procedure are equally critical and a final Point Madam chair that
011I would make is that this is as you and the brother members of the policy committee know a procedure for a reason um the board policies that are referenced in this procedure already provide very clear Direction I believe for uh the the broad sweep of our approach to this issue the logic of having this be a procedure is that it will allow us to refine that procedure as we learn more and as best practices emerge um it is a uh more efficient and quicker process for the board to revise procedure than it is policy and that's why the policy committee chose to recommend the development of procedure um which implements uh the board policies that are noted in the draft so thank you madam chair for the chance to give that background and an overview
012and we look forward to uh the conversation it looks like we do have Mick up there U Mick you are on a very large screen um and so it's further amplifying your expertise there visually so thank you thank you superintendent um we thought the best way to go through this would be to do it section by section um the draft uh procedures are on the screen for those of you who may not have them in front of you um and we'll just start with a purpose section and I'll ask board members if they have any questions or comments um obviously we won't be able to resolve whatever issues come up tonight unless it's a you know a language um item we can agree on um so I'm going to commit and and I'll commit the
013policy committee too sorry guys um that we are going to document every um piece of feedback we get whether it's from the board members or whether it comes from the community and you'll be able to see how we resolve each one of them um in the final draft that you'll be asked to approve so uh bear with me if I take some time to take notes of what you all are saying so any comments on the purpose section uh yes Madam chair yes uh under purpose um line six uh beginning with these procedures and before I um read and inquire regarding um this particular these two lines or sentences um is it possible to to share or uh give some indication as to the uh um severity of this problem uh and if I might
014uh address it this way often when we have in times past reported out our discipline data it's been shared that uh 95% or more of our students don't have any problems with discipline it's a small percentage of our students that uh do so and I'm curious this is a rather substantial policy and uh all students are important uh I am however curious as to the magnitude of uh the the problem not really uh thinking that you might have that information available tonight uh and I don't mean to refer to uh transgender and or gender expansive students students as a problem it's more so just an inquiry regarding uh the effort which has gone into the establishment uh of this um uh draft procedure specifically I'm curious um the statement states that these procedures do not
015and cannot anticipate every situation that may occur as every student is unique I I fully accept that Embrace that true statement okay the the support for each student must be assessed and addressed individually based upon the student specific requests and needs um I'm curious as to what that might look like uh that's a broad uh statement and is it only statement that applies to transgender and or gender expansive students that two line sentence uh I I realiz the procedure is in reference to transgender and gender expanses but it's the same level of care uh compassion and thoroughness uh in existence for the other 177,000 900 plus students just so I'm clear director Barlo you're asking when you use the word severity of the problem um is this a situation that by its prevalence in our
016district we're writing the procedure or are there other reasons that the procedure might be necessary actually how prevalent is it in our district okay okay superintendent um Dr Barlo I don't have um an exact number for you nor I think nor did you ask for one um this is a relatively small number of students who are um uh would be the direct Focus of this policy but what uh caused me to issue the guidelines last year was very clear feedback from staff not just administrators but also teachers that they needed Clarity in how to respond to that relatively small number of instances and so I I hope that gets it part of your question numerically we're not talking about a lot of students but that wanting to be sure that those students are being served
017appropriately was a very big issue which led me to uh develop those guidelines that would be replaced by this by this procedure and and thank you for that explanation and just for means of of U helping me um align what is written and what is said um is it your belief that all students then um benefit from the um significant statements that conclude uh item one purpose that uh um the support for each student must be assessed and addressed individually based upon the student specific requests and needs do you believe that to be true with all of our students uh I I I do director bow I think all students benefit from inclusive and welcoming schools um this policy also does commit and we have made alternative Provisions if parents or Guardians are concerned about
018certain environments and so we would do that we're a parent or Guardian wanting uh to have their student for instance not in a uh locker room uh where there were uh students who were expressing a gender identity other than the one they were born with that uh to my knowledge has not happened but that would be something that obviously would be have to be handled skill y but our administrators and this procedure would make uh provision for that requirement and so I think director Baro that is one way that this procedure does reflect that diverse needs of students if a family felt uh strong about that they would let their principal know and they would um this procedure would direct them to make an accommodation okay thank you and this would be my first question
019for Mick I believe it's also fair to say that because because of the new title 9 rule um which goes into effect August one there's a requirement for districts to develop a response to the requirements in the federal law so we there's there's a federal law that guides all of this the districts have to create a response whether it's a policy or procedure or guidelines and this is the way that we are also responding to that requirement in federal law right is that right restrictive and more directive and these procedures not only Implement your policy but implement the requirements of Minnesota human right act as well did everybody hear that can you say it one more time yes I saying these procedures not only Implement your policy General policy statement but also implement the requirements
020of the Minnesota human rights act as well as Title 9 so I think that these are certainly consistent with all aspects of the law so both Title 9 and the Minnesota Human Rights Act gu implementation of this I'm sorry I can't hear you both uh this implements both Title 9 and the Minnesota Human Rights Act yes okay in case everybody didn't hear uh director mlin um Dr beel I I appreciate what you just said and the way I looked at this sentence in the purpose and the purpose in general the support of each student must be assessed and addressed individually based on all the student specific on the student specific requests and needs I see that as uh something that empowers both the students and families to ra their concerns both with Administration and with
021you if necessary to get their requests and needs met is that another way to look at this yeah I think it is I wish I had been a little more succinct as you were in responding to direct director B's point I think I think that's the way I would see that purpose statement as well and it maybe not just on this topic but on topics in general that that's that's our goal is to empower students and families to advocate for themselves and their needs because they know the best yes there's there's a a a a cliche that gets said often but I really do believe it's what we strive for we meet students where they are and we meet their families where they are and we respond to them um and I think that's that
022the core of this this purpose statement thank you anything else on the purpose statement hearing none we will move on to the definitions I should look to see anybody um okay then how about um privacy I do have a direct brother under um item e uh third line down it says District staff should work closely with the student parent guardian and other staff members on a plan to inform and educate the students peers and shall document the plan um and I understand that's within the context of the uh fact that some transgender or gender expansive students may feel more supported if they're if other students were aware of their situation uh we do have culture clubs correct and they probably have a parent or teacher advisor is that correct as well an advisor some sort
023certainly staff yeah okay okay and um if if the goal is to create well what's the goal here is it to create awareness support um because um I don't believe this is simply unique to uh transgender or gender expansive students okay and I'm not aware that we have other policies that are as clear in communicating uh the care that is being demonstrated here and uh the um compassion uh for instance I I have a grandson enrolled in RPS who's on the Spectrum uh I'm not aware that his peers are necessarily made aware of and or uh invited to show support for though I am aware of uh the great support that our educational support professionals uh provide and and staff as well and and so I guess I'm just trying to understand what we're trying
024to do as a district and trying to um and when I use this term normalize um are we moving from what has been historically viewed as normal to a new normal I think your opening statement uh a uded to we are living at times much different now than previously before and and so I I I um of course um want to be respectful and supportive of of all students and I'm somewhat just thrown by the fact that uh this high level of effort is being expended uh uh which will result in uh significant accommodations were asked for and will be provided and um probably most important and I don't want to get ahead of the flow of how things are laid out within the procedure but uh as a Christian Pastor uh I have received
025a number of phone calls uh and been a part of a number of conversations where um the the shared belief or view is that uh people are being asked to forego what uh they have uh believed accepted and have known to be true based on medical fact uh uh and to uh for go that u in light of uh What uh a student may uh sense I think when we looked at the definitions that was a key word if a student senses that they are this or that then they must be supported and I I'm I just um want to officially communicate the fact that uh while we have had public testimony which has occurred over the last couple months where where parents have I'm not saying anything new we have each heard it before
026and and certainly um uh as a Christian Pastor I also believe in you know the male female okay uh and but I also recognize that what I believe does not uh shape policy and even if I strongly in held to to the core that is my belief uh the the board operates on a majority not on what one thinks fills and or believes but I I do think it is important to at least um Express that uh because in the same way that we are acknowledging uh the the reality of the times and they have changed we must also I think uh acknowledge the reality uh of things that have not ch changed and and that by implementing this procedure we are basically uh saying what a significant portion of the community believes and or
027accepts as uh truth and or what is normal is being ignored not considered overlooked and so uh I'm curious Mick if the law ever delved into this aspect or if there have been instances where uh Faith was factored in or out or if that were ever raised to the level of it's an nonissue or it's something that should be considered well many courts have considered what are known as privacy claims where parents assert that for a variety of reasons including religious reasons and allowing transgender individuals to use locker room and restroom facilities violates their priv y rights and all of those lawsuits have been rejected and the rights of the transgender students have been found to be greater than any rights along the lines of privacy or religion and to keep in mind the way
028the courts have ruled in terms of the rights of transgender students really there there are three keys here one there's state law which we have in Minnesota very clear law two there's a federal law law uh Title 9 which you're quite familiar with and three there's the US Constitution and the equal protection clause and the majority of the federal courts that have considered this have found that transgender students have an equal protection right under the US Constitution and so that to this point in time U director has been the way that the courts have looked at it that those rights exceed if you will any right to individual accommodation for sincerely held religious beliefs and um again I I I recognize that people have a lot of personal views and strong feelings and part of
029that comes from the fact that we've seen some pretty rapid change in the law in this area compared to the way that the law usually works however the law is clear at this point in time and so personal views are not really the policy or the procedures are meant to implement the lawp thank you director Marvin director Barlo I I appreciate your um your statement there I'm coming at it from a different perspective though one one better yeah okay I I'm coming at this from a different perspective and that is what is normal um when I was in in elementary school if you were left-handed that was weird and they tried to teach you how to be right-handed cuz most people were right-handed um before that if you had uh learning disabilities I mean you
030couldn't couldn't learn to read you were considered really really abnormal because kids should be able to read when they're in elementary school now we know special education it was weird if you where I had green eyes um it wasn't normal um and I want to believe that we have come a long way since then in accepting the fact that people are different that kids are different and that doesn't make them any less human and any less deserving of respect and a a joyful childhood and a wonderful education um I don't know that this procedure is going to change anybody's beliefs in terms of what their faith is um but it should change the way that all of us understand we are expected to treat every single child including and especially if there is even a
031very small minority of kids um the way we we are required to treat them and I hope that we learn that we should treat them is with the kind of respect and with the kind of accommodation that they deserve so that they can enjoy the same joy that every other child can um this isn't new I mean I I started teaching 50 years ago and I we had lgbtq kids then I was the adviser for the gay straight Alliance GSA they used to have at every High School um and it was wonderful because the kids who identified as being straight got it that every kid regardless of their gender identity had a place in that building and deserved to be there and that they may not understand them but they accepted respected that these kids
032deserve the same chances the same opportunities the same experience that everybody else did so I see this simply as a way that our school district and our state our nation I think is getting better and saying doesn't matter if it's a few or a whole Bunch um nobody should be discriminated against and we all know that kids who identify as transgender or gender fluid or some some place else in the lgbtq community um they have an inordinate um they experience Way Beyond what they should bullying and depression and suicide attempts they're kids and they deserve the right to grow up to be who they are and I guess in my faith tradition we just say judge not lest you be judged not our job to judge or maybe even to understand but it is our
033job to do everything we can to ensure that these kids at school at least are safe so for me it's it's a no-brainer I offer some comments from the school perspective oh sorry eight years ago when I assumed the role of principal at Fel Middle School I feel I was given the gift of understanding um the summer before the school year started I had staff members and students come to me and ask would I support um a lgbtq club at fedell and I I said yes I had a few staff members say you shouldn't do that because people aren't going to like it you might get people who don't agree it could draw attention to our building other element other middle schools had clubs we had a number of kids who wanted to participate in
034the club I had a staff member who wanted to um provide the support for the for the club I learned a lot from the kids at Fel that I I served um who were struggling to come to school because they were unable to use a restroom that they felt comfortable in that they felt forced to change for fiad in a locker room um in a space they didn't identify with and I without guidance but very carefully supported the needs of each of those kids and it was I will say three or four I can't quite remember exactly uh it was a handful and um I couldn't have lived with myself if I knew those kids were coming to school every day so uncomfortable they couldn't participate and um I think our staff have been doing
035what's right for kids without guidance but with care and providing uh a a comfortable place for kids to be I um think that the lgbtq club that I got to know uh the kids I got to know at Fel sought to educate their peers not to change their minds not to indoctrinate but to educate and seek compassion and um that year for me at Fel was a gift that I carry with me all the time of knowing kids who were not doing something to call attention to themselves or be different but but sought to feel comfortable just like any other kid at school uh thank you for that perspective Miss Peterson and and director Barlo um not for the first time I I am so pleased to have your perspective on this board and I
036I value your U your insights a great deal and I I never have any doubt whatsoever that your uh perspective is tuned very much toward what is best for children um and I'm so glad I took a moment to reflect uh because I do think that the the item that you raised um is an important one and one that this board should reflect on on whether explicitly in procedure identifying as an example one way to create a supportive environment might include um members of the staff working to inform and educate students peers I think that's that's the type of item that um some would view as having the potential for indoctrination um or or you use the word uh normalizing and I'm glad that I reflected on that because my students attend Jefferson where neur
037neurodiversity is very much celebrated um the there are a number of autism uh classroom rooms there and there are weeks during the school year where every student in the building has an opportunity to become educated on what autism um is and what the students with uh that are part of those autism classrooms experience how things are different for them um I also um have students with specific learning disabilities and they have been very skillfully supported in their class rooms to have those differences explained to their peers in a way that was transformatively supportive and so I do think that this is a I don't think there's anything that I'm reading here that that dictates uh captive audience has given a specific lesson on any particular ideology but I do think that this is a powerful
038way for students to be supportive and to create an inclusive environment um um and that it to your other point ought to be the model for the way that we support students in um from a neurodiversity background or a a learning diversity background really all all manners of diversity because what we gain as a school Community as a society by accepting and being inclusive is all of the potential of those kids that are no longer ostracized that feel that they have a place and that they aren't you know I mean the upside is so great here um that I uh I just I really think it's I I think this is in the right lane I think it's the model going forward for all forms of diversity and I'm glad that you raised it very
039specifically and Madam Sher if I just may offer a clarifying statement okay uh certainly um Dr Marvin um all students are of Great Value I am not intimating on any level nor did you suggest that I was I I just want to be sure that everyone is clear in the purpose of my comments it was not to suggest that some students um are undeserving of the uh highest level of Educational Service is that seemingly is being called out and procedurally stated uh that's what I was really speaking to that all this should be the model and uh maybe unbeknownst to me is the model uh but I can say that uh uh even as recently with the uh Bridge incident with the Youth Forum we heard voices of students of color say they don't necessarily
040feel a part of they and and so I I raise it for that uh reason to say while there are some good elements associated with uh this procedure uh let's not only allow to exist for uh transgender gender expansive students but let's uh expand it and make it our uh practice for all students good um before we move on to the next section direct Barlo thank you for um bringing the perspective of our uh Community into the conversation I think in um responding to both your comments on the um purpose section and in in this section um we also heard from members of the community um who were um allies or parents or family members of transgender and gender expansive students who spoke in favor of needing this kind of guidance explicitly uh to address
041the needs of their students and in terms of the information um that's out there about students um the introduction to the title 9 final rule states simply and clearly many lgbtqi plus students face bullying and harassment just because of who who they are and that sentence is backed by research and data and studies and anecdotes um that support some of the the things that we've heard from other people and that's why it was felt by many people that they needed to advocate for a law meaning changes to the title 9 rules to codify the kinds of supports that are best based on best practices um for serving the lgbtq students in our schools so I just wanted to bring to the table the perspective that we've heard from individuals and other uh sources of information
042that this is rooted in students being harmed and uncomfortable and I really like the way you put it director cook um they're not able to be their best selves their best members of our communities and their best contributors to um being part of our Learning Community um and for me um when the questions asked why are we doing this it's because we have a history and we have data whether it's here or whether it's elsewhere that has led to people to develop these uh state and federal laws um that we're doing our best to implement um based on the structure of our communities the relationships that we have in our schools and the skills of our staff I just wanted to make sure that was in the conversation any other comments on privacy director I
043have one um I'm kind of reflecting on what everyone's saying here and also did some a little bit Digger deeping into the changes to Title 9 because that seemed what pre precipitated um this change in this addition to our procedure and I first want to point out that I think Dr or director bro that a lot of the concerns and it's not something that um I think our agenda item gives us quotes from the various different policies that we're looking at here but they are all cross reference at the end of this procedure honestly I didn't read them all in detail but I think if we look at those collectively the whole point of I think personally this discussion and I hope that it it it corresponds with what everyone else is thinking as well
044is that looking at Title 9 talks about and and the Deep dive went into a fact sheet that that I was able to access that the promise of Title 9 an education free from sex discrimination remains as vital now as it was when it was first signed into law I look at that from the school district perspective it's not just sex discrimination it's all forms of discrimination and I believe that all of these policies that are cross reference at the bottom of this document in various ways address address all forms of discrimination and the goal here is to eliminate that discrimination in all forms so that our students all of our students can feel safe in their school environment regardless of what people's personal beliefs may be we want them to be safe we want
045them to feel empowered that their parents are empowered to address the situation um the other thing about these um the fact sheet that I found particularly interesting and really helped me support um the language in this procedure is it talks about the Department of Education the reason this took so much time to put together is that the department received and reviewed more than 240,000 comments from the public to inform this roeming and I would expect that those comments relate to all types of concerns in terms of parent privacy religious convictions religious beliefs all kinds of topics on all aspects of the spectrum of public comment I would expect that that would that's why there were 240,000 of them and that the Department of Education and putting through the guidance about how to create a procedure
046like we did here um Incorporated all of those thoughts and came to the conclusion based on what our legal council is telling us it's the state of our state law our federal law and our US Constitution to um to do what we're doing here and having this discussion here and um ideally adopting a policy that's going to uh meet the needs of all of our students director mclin that 240,000 comments was reflected in the 1500 pages of the final rule where they took and broke down every section with every type of comment and had a discussion of the comments and then a formal response as to whether it changed or did not change the final rule so if you really want to read 1500 page I probably will it's all in there right anything else
047on the Privacy section all right let's move on to section four parent access to information okay hearing none uh sorry oh sorry Dr um I do I gave this uh particular section careful thought and I I do feel strongly that uh parents should always have access to information about their children I don't ever want to see the school district get into a situation where um for one reason or another absent a court order as the procedure identifies um information about a parent's children was not made available to them um at the same time I spend a lot of time implementing policy in a corporate environment and I'm sensitive to the ramifications of uh policy and procedure choices and um to Echo Dr pel your introductory remarks the way that I was thinking about this very
048early on on was well what other types of instances would trigger a mandatory reporting event um you think about report cards um and beyond that we're pretty much I don't know maybe there are some like random regulatory things but um we're pretty much relying on the discretion and the professional judgment and the sensitivity of our Educators and our administrators to keep parents informed about issues that arise throughout the school day and I certainly get those messages all the time whether it's by email or phone calls home or um through the app about you know such and such happened during the day thought you should know want to follow up um but I don't think because I'm sensitive to how this would be implemented this would be the one exception where we would instead create some
049kind of a mandatory reporting event Where Oh I thought I heard a different pronoun before let's like flag this and make it into a big thing because that's the exact that will lead to the precise type of stigmatization that we're trying to avoid so I I think this is just the right balance and um I'm pleased to see it superintendent um I I appreciate that and director cook just since you used the term mandatory reporting um mandatory reporting does exist but it it doesn't go to the parent it goes to law enforcement if we think there is um abuse and so our staff do take mandatory reporting very seriously this is exactly aligned with what you're saying but it it is mandatory reporting to law enforcement or to child welfare um or both and so
050uh but it doesn't exist in this direct sense but but we we believe in parent engagement we also know there are people who have have concerns about that and and there's a tension here this procedure clearly puts its uh marker down in the way you just described it but but we also know we have professional development and capacity building to do to be sure that that is done uh carefully and appropriately and following the board's action on this procedure we as I mentioned would turn to that uh task Dr M um and I want to tag on that because as I was thinking about this particularly the the parent information parent access to information it also reminded me about the mandatory report in laws because that is something I have experienced with in my prior
051life uh where I hope the training would go is you're correct that reporting to law enforcement reporting to child protection that's the mandatory report but I would hope the training would also in a couple ways include something that I'm hoping is already and our educators are and staff are trained in doing this already is having a conversation with the young person in the mandatory reporter context already we're going to need to tell your parents and then that ties in here that I'm hoping that the education that we can provide to our staff then would be the second piece of if we need to tell parents something about these conversations that's not the first time the child is learning about it that that's part of that relationship building and that confidentiality and this is confidential this
052isn't this is how this works is something that um a staff person would have experience in the the mandatory reporter world can apply those same skills and that same sensitivity to this conversation I just worry about a student learning that for the first time right before that parent notice and I would also hope that it includes how I think about it is um staff person student parent all sitting down together and having that kind ation uh yeah director mff I appreciate that and director Bar's Point earlier about other other types of difference as I have talked to our um counselor so social workers administrators about the issue of kids and parents what you just described is almost always how they approach the circumstance how can we tell your parent how can we do that and
053especially our veterans are very skillful at that because they help the student get to that point um not just in the area of gender identity but across many forms of differ uh it's a skill they learn quickly because often they are that bridge cor so okay I I think I absolutely know the answer to this question but I'm going to ask it anyway so um I think in Rochester Public Schools we have instances where um there might be custody issues of a child and who gets to pick their child up after school which could very well be court ordered so the district is already in the habit of informing teachers who work with this child what that court order is so that they don't violate it so if there were a court order which which
054is referenced here that would deny access to the data those teachers would have that information as well as any other court orders that you might more routinely deal with yes director Workman that is a very formalized process as I know you know from your years in the classroom the administrator has the direct responsibility to inform a clearly identified set of Staff about the court order and to uh ensure that any new staff who are interacting are updated and so it's a very clear procedure unfortunately we deal with it fairly regularly um and so it's something that uh we're unfortunately good at because it's a difficult situation of course for a kid to be in uh but we would be applying should the board approve this procedure those same processes to uh to this issue that
055we that we have with parental custody and and related issues Dr brother I appreciate uh part of your opening uh comments Dr pel where you uh clarified that uh staff uh indeed would have opportunity as they currently do to inform parents of uh concerns relative to the safety well-being and educational progress of their uh child or student uh because that was some something which as we all have sat through heard um uh many believe the opposite and I'm I'm glad we're able to clearly communicate now at this point that um uh School Personnel uh will have the opportunity to communicate uh to parents I was curious however though if the concern is a is parent notification worthy I note that uh the procedure offers the exception if the student is 18 years of age or
056older uh I realize that may be a factor associated with are they is a student considered an adult at age 18 as relates to this but not to drinking yes okay and director Barlo if you talk to our wonderful high school students uh in Rochester they are very aware of that tension they they can also go uh fight in a war and can't legally have alcohol so yes that's a that's directly related I I'll just also say direct Baro I appreciate you uh catching my comment earlier this was also true of the administrative guidelines I issued last year um it was a point that um meaning that staff could inform parents um it it was a point I'm glad to have the opportunity now to make uh more publicly and reassure that that that was
057true in those guidelines that remains true they did not prohibit it and these this draft procedure that's before you does not prohibit anything else on this section all right let's move on to section five names pronouns gender markers and District records any comments or questions so I can give a little update um so uh Jack Peterson and M and I from um registration and Records um have been developing what I think is going to be an attachment to this procedure that will um document the actual process for example um in section 5e where parents and Guardians have a right to request the student change the name gender identity and pronouns in our school's um student information system which is Skyward um we've gotten some questions from um parents um who want to ensure that their
058student is being referred to appropriately in the in the classroom with their name and their gender identity and pronouns and so we went through the internal um filling out the form for procedures then where does the form go to then how is the change made online then where communication of the change goes to and then what documents that affects in our system um official records versus what we're referring to as all other school records so we've got a draft of that that we just finished today and that will be part of the final um procedure that you'll get a chance to review oh Dr welc um I had one comment from the community that raised a question about um a term that I think is used in I just quickly looked here three different it's
059not a term it's a phrase three different places in this section and it's the first place it is seen is in um section A where it references in the second line pronouns that correspond to the students's gender identity it was pointed out to me that that might not be the most sensitive way way to phrase that content in and out because pronouns don't necessarily correspond with the student's gender identity a better way to say it may be pronouns that the student requests and it's in section A it's in section e and it's in section g those are the three places I quickly found it it might be elsewhere in the document but that's where I found it in the section A G Y A and G and I'm not sure if if I guess my
060question would be is was there a specific reason it was worded that way or is that open to conversation it was part of the original guidance um yeah go Ahad the origin of IT director mclin when we did the guidance was to make clear that staff need to use the pronouns that reflect the gender identity the student is expressing um and so the intent was say you can't not use the pronouns um I know from my own students my own kids who are college students that there are peers of theirs who have chosen pronouns that are not he she they are they're you know they're neutral so you're right the language in some ways would not allow for breaking from gender based pronouns uh in general so certainly I think the policy committee could take
061a look at that the logic was if if if someone says I'm he then he him then you use he him but uh you're right that wouldn't conclude for a student asking for an alternative which I haven't necessarily heard is happened in RPS but I know that is a it's a thing um out there and I would say maybe we want to look at pronouns that correspond to the to what this the student is expressing and requests okay certain can take a look at that thank you um and and I I like the idea of having a procedure here that won't need future changes as future changes in our world happen and that this is one way we can accomplish that director so since we have our legal council up here near the ceiling in
062the corner um do you have anything you'd like to say about director mclin's point and if that is something that you think policy committee should address in this document I think you can certainly use just the phrase preferred pronouns to address that concern it also looks like it's in item d as in dog and perhaps it's the um been when we talked about the the details but we've been using that word preferred um to distinguish from legal um so that might be a way to refer to it in all places to have more sense of use of the word preferred director M thank you and I I know that the issue of pronouns has gotten to be a really big issue um and I hope that the community recognizes that teachers don't spend most of
063their class time talking to kids about pronouns and about names they they teach stuff and very seldom when a teacher is speaking to another kid to a kid will will the teacher use that kid's pronouns I mean you would be Dr pel not they them or he whatever um the name thing is nothing new we've been asking kids at first day of school forever you have a nickname you want me to call you and you write it down and then if they say bubba or whatever some kids change their names twice a year kids now may change their PR rounds every year you know they're on a journey to discover who they are but this is not how people how teachers spend their time in the classrooms our gender affirming care is let me know
064what pronouns you want which is what increasingly a big number of organizations and companies do for all their employees what are your preferred pronouns I don't know if they ask them what nickname you want um but this is what the world is doing and it doesn't seem to affect the kids in the class at all one way it doesn't take anything away from anybody else's learning experience to have kids say this is what my preferred pronouns are any other comments on Section Five no I'll just say when Mick comes up with a way to express something in two words you realize that I need to strive for his level of brevity as anyone who's read one of my emails knows I I I that's impressive Mick I'm aiming to I if if two words will
065do I find eight so also impressive from an attorney's perspective yeah okay all right uh the next section is is section six gender segregated facilities any questions or comments on this the key change from the um um the guidance document is simply to cite the U Minnesota statute and um Court finding that drives um these requirements in our schools and then um to add a section at the end specifically to call out um while it was in the guidance we wanted to have a specific section for those students or parent um Guardians who were concerned about um this area of our procedure and then how they could address their concerns with uh building Administration uh Madam chair um just to clarify so under six um B1 uh the language is any student who has a
066need or desire for increased privacy does any student actually mean any student or again is this specific to transgender or gender affirming students uh no director Barlo you've read it that is intended to be any student so uh as I mentioned a student whose parent had some a concern um uh could request that alternative under that part of the policy a separate changing space for instance but now you raise a if parents are unaware and the student themselves request uh are can you clarify in the statement uh it's it's a great point I I was thinking about parents based on our earlier conversation but the direct reading here is that the student uh could request it and parental involvement wouldn't be required to find an alternative changing space okay thank you thank you nothing more
067in this section okay oh sorry Dr I guess I just sort of like to make um a comment with some of the experiences or um comments from students and parents when our new schools were built and we had the individual Florida ceiling stalls and there were a lot of middle school girls who said we are so happy to see this you know they felt they could have the Privacy that they needed so you know I think that in this section that B1 very clearly states any student who has a need or desire for increased uh privacy I mean there have been horror stories to us now about how um students back in the days when they were showering in gym class had to be inspected by the teacher to make sure that you had gotten
068wet all over and I can't imagine such a thing happening in in today's world I mean and there were let me tell you a whole lot of kids who were really really uncomfortable with that but that was the norm for the time and I thank God it's not the norm now it is definitely not no all right uh section seven gender segregated activities classes rules policies and practices any comments on that section okay section eight dress codes section nine school trips okay section 10 intramural sports extracurricular activities and Inter Scholastic Sports teams and activities okay uh section 11 compliance section 12 discrimination harassment and bullying any other closing questions comments ments I do have a question Madam chair um this is at this point scheduled to be uh presented as an action item during the
069July 16th board meeting is that correct yes will there be any opportunity for the public prior to that to offer comment and or um input well thank you for bringing that up because that's how it's going to wrap us up um so with all of our policies and procedures um the members of the community can email us or uh call board members with their comments and we do have two comment to the board periods coming up at our two upcoming regular meetings that would be the June 18th meeting and July 16th meeting that members of the public could sign up to give their feedback all right thank you very much board member superintendent and um thanks for giving you the time to write down all your notes thank you Mick thank you all right the
070next item on our agenda is a focus topic item 4.1 literacy update superintendent M thank you let me invite our folks who are going to be presenting on literacy to come on down and take a seat please fill in we're going to as you've seen we're all getting Miss Sam is getting her exercise moving the mic around here um not that she needs it I do but we will uh ask you to come I know that we are a somewhat larger group but chair I think in the interest of time Madam chair I'm just G I know you know these folks well but I'll just make sure I ask folks to uh to identify themselves as they get to their uh point in the presentation um just so that we're all sure people know who
071they are um as uh board members are very well aware we are embarked on an ambitious strategy to strengthen the reading skills of our students from Early Childhood through actually uh post-secondary education and that is a complex effort that the state of Minnesota is also engaged in and so school districts are required to submit a much more detailed literacy plan with a much more prescribed red format than was the case in the past and as I talked with the executive committee uh this this plan does not require board approval in this instance um but we thought that given this board's uh Keen interest in the literacy work we would schedule an update for you concurrent with our submission of the plan which is due at the state on June 15th we also have another update
072for you in the fall on our literacy work so as you know this will be an ongoing subject um we did not uh we will not in this presentation ATT attempt to cover the Waterfront and be encyclopedic so for instance this board recently heard from Eric K Schumacher on our literacy work with early childhood and Natalia Benjamin on our literacy work with multilanguage learning neither I didn't ask Eric and Nataly to be here and their work is mentioned in the plan but we're not going to dig back into it uh tonight because you recently had the chance to dialogue with both of those key leaders so we're looking forward to giving you an overview I did uh there's a ton of information in this PowerPoint I know we have a board that reads and so
073I did ask the team to move at a fairly good clip so that we have time for questions um should should you have some and I'm sure you will so looks like uh Heather Wilman our director got the clicker has the clicker so you have the power let's make sure we give you one of these um mics so that you are really fully audible so I will do that all right so good evening I'm Peter Rock director of research and Improvement here for Rochester Public Schools I have the first two two slides of our presentation tonight about our fast bridge data from G grades K through 12 up on the screen here you see our a reading screener results from uh this school year uh grades 2 through 12 a reading is given to all
074students in those grades three times a year on the left side of the screen you see colored bar chart with a black line through it the black line represents above that line students in the lowrisk and on track categories which meets the definition of grade level and below that black line you have pink and red blocks which represent students in the Su risk or high-risk categories on the right side of the screen is more of a rainbow colored chart and that shows the amount of growth over the course of the Year red represents flat growth yellow is modest green is typical and blue is aggressive the reason it's important to continue to consider both side by side as a student may have plenty of growth during the year but still stay within the same risk
075category that's still a win for that student for the year they experienced a tremendous amount of growth but it may not necessarily be reflected in the two-color bar chart with the black line through it for grades K K and one uh it's a different assessment within the fastbridge platform called early reading the difference is early reading is done paper and pencil oneon-one with a teacher or n ESP whereas a reading is done on a device the color breakdowns are are the same here you see the black line showing students above in the lowrisk category on track is not a term used in that assessment and then you see the same growth chart to the side these are fairly representative of all of our schools experiences across the board this year uh there were of course
076with 27 schools you have some very between sites but this represents a pretty uh standard distribution of data across our district for the last year Dr can you go through those colors again just to sure so um The Purple colors on the top if with a reading there's two colors on this slide there's only one purple color that's lowrisk and on track which meets the definition of at grade level on track is a little bit of a unfortunately misleading term students that are in the lowrisk category are also considered at grade level below the black line is some risk and highrisk and those are students that fastbridge has identified some sort of significant Gap in their skills uh that would need addressing in order to help that student get their reading skills up to what
077we would expect for grade level and then can you do the colors on the other one too sure so red is uh flat growth means the student actually still grew over the course of the year but not at a rate that we would necessarily want or expect based on the instruction orange is some growth just below what we would hope for green is typical that student grew with the instruction in the way that we would expect over the course of the year and blue is aggressive meaning they actually exceeded what we would have expected uh based on the instruction over the course of the year I'm Melissa stank I'm the director of special education I support children families and staff birth through fifth grade elementary um we presented last year and talked about our work
078and tonight I'd like to talk to you about year four where we are with this process as well with our work in literacy so in the fall we met with uh the sites our special education instructional coaches to take a look at how our strategic plan and literacy and how is aligning with the site and their skip goals we know that all Sites were focused on that work and so we dedicated our work with the principles they joined us we are in year two of using a specific curriculum for students with disabilities that have a reading goal the many principles joined and learned more about it so they did systematic observations and learned about how we are doing explicitly designed instruction for students with disabilities our teams then really started to problem solve what about
079students with flat and modest growth and how do we continue progress monitoring for students that are in that risk or high risk category so the next slide is an example of a problem solving guide that they had this comes directly out of our fastbridge problem solving facilitators guide and so many sites use this and I snipped this as an example so that you could see a teacher that brought it to this is an example of how they brought it to their PLC and so this particular uh teacher said we are really our problem identification on the left is that we have students that have trouble with blending they are coming the problem analysis is that they can actually do the CBC words but when it comes to four sound it really throws them off the
080blending throws them off can you justy blending sure we're going to get there okay going to get there so one of the things that they talked about was with the plan development um is that how are we going to put Blend or put these sounds together and how are we going to explicitly teach that for students that chart on the bottom is um difficult to read but it states cumulative blending so when when in this particular case they had two ideas we're talking about pheic awareness putting those sounds and then the letters together how how do we combine that and then the second part is this is an example of cumulative blending so if you see the first the first word it's really difficult to see is the word can eventually on the bottom so
081it starts with C then the second part would be c a c and the third part would be c a n can and that's how the students are practicing that they did the same thing on the bottom example too f f f fan and they got that what we were seeing at the beginning was that the students could identify all of the sounds individually so if they had a four sound word um such as cast as they would say cats or Stat so they couldn't put it together so this helped them to really break it down and do what's called that cumulative blending so Amanda the teacher said okay I'm I'm really going to try that cumulative blending I think this is going to help us to break it down into practice so on the
082right hand side or that light blue that's when the teachers would go back they would practice and then they would come back into their PLC with other teachers to report back on either a specific small group of students or on a particular student so sites really then determined how are they going to do that problem solving so that was one of the action she came back and said it helps we saw success with the entire group when it came to um when it came came to the four sounds when they were working on that so that was a strategy an example of how the plcs were working at the site level can ask a question sure when the cumulative blending is being implemented in the classroom is that a whole classroom exercise is it a
083small group exercise is it oneon-one it's a great question so it depends in a special education classroom we can have small groups as small as two and they can have groups as large as six so so there might be some independent work that's happening and with the progress monitoring that's occurring if all of the other students have gotten that skill they could be practicing with an ESP they could be practicing one-on-one with their special education teacher at that time it really just depends if it's kind of like that tier one right if we have all of the students that are missing it or most of the students that are missing and it's a whole group instruction so that's where they would do that progress monitoring to determine who requires that level right thanks you're welcome
084so as we took a look at our year and again this is our summary we engaged this year in some ESP or PA professional training in the science of reading we did that twice this year we had many people that were taking advantage as they grow their confidence and understanding how to how to use the curriculum and experience this explicitly designed instruction they're they're going to say I want to observe my peer year one they really didn't want anyone to come in because they were a little un sure and now we're seeing their confidence grow and them saying I want to observe you do you want to observe me and so that that's really great for teachers to increase their confidence at that level and we did have a special education um literacy leadership team
085that continued this year in full in full force and now they're looking at boy as we use a curriculum we don't just want to rely on that but what else do we need in writing was a big thing so they created some enhancements for the entire Elementary uh all the elementary teams to use this year and then we exper erien some literacy nights where we brought families in to learn some of these strategies that that I just shared with you and how they could use that we also did it with our incoming kindergarten families students with disabilities so the families could come in and you know getting into kindergarten is a big deal so and the everybody's talking about literacy right now so it was a really nice time for families to come in and
086and even ask questions about what does kindergarten look like so we do love our our our time with our family so we exper the literacy those evenings again this year we took a look at fast Bridge as Peter talked about before but this fast bridge data is specific to students that are from Fall to Spring that took uh fast bridge and they had a goal on their IEP that was specific to literacy so those with aggressive growth were 37% typical growth 177% modest growth 19 and flat growth 27 as we look toward the that 25 the 2425 school year we will continue to monitor that growth but we really want to take a look at how are we getting all of our students into that top half of typical and aggressive in order to close
087that G and now what comes next we know as Dr pel stated that we are all in this work together with react early childhood and early childood slps and we even offered it to some of our esps because our grant money allowed that for this summer for Early Childhood which Erica talked about um and that's where we are right now is just getting everyone else on board thanks Melissa I'm Nicole Miller and I am the special education director for our secondary schools and as Melissa said where are we headed next well with uh the phase one being due by July 1st of 2025 all of our special education teachers at elementary and secondary are currently being trained in core and will be trained by the end of September so secondary special education is really just
088beginning our journey um in literacy with the training that's uh being done uh right now our plan then is that during the 2425 school year we will um conduct and convene a curriculum task force to take a look at materials uh that would be appropriate for our students with disabilities within literacy all right so I'm Heather Wilman I'm the director of secondary AC academics I get to tell you a little bit about middle school and high school students um some people call this the Forgotten conversation because as you know we've spent a lot of time talking about K through 5 and then I think as we've been here earlier we've talked to you about how we know we have a lot of growth to make in middle school and high school so I'm happy to
089report that um next year at all of our middle schools we'll have either success coaches or an interventionist working with students who need tailored more diagnostic support so as a student that might look like um I have that fast Bridge intervention screening it tells me that I might need some more support and then that teacher might use some Diagnostics to figure out what else does that student need and then they'll have either small group or individualized support so that will be at all of our comprehensive middle schools we've had that happening um but not at all of the the middle schools and next year that will be in place at high school we've talked to you a little bit about some various mod models one thing that we have seen success with at Century is
090um students having a study hall and then getting that targeted um reading support so instead of being in study hall they go and work with a teacher who has English training and also um reading training or reading a reading license so we've seen really good gains for those students in both fluency and comprehension but we want to be able to expand that to more students because we know there are more students that have that need um than they're getting support so that's something we'll be working on next year for secondary students and then Nicole's going to talk a little bit about C teaching yeah all that figures so the office of academics is working really hard to increase our collaboration between general education um ML and special education and one way that we can do
091this is through the co- teing model uh co- teing partners are currently getting training in um the models of co- teing in best practices for instructional strategies and then of course planning time together and to kind of give um an idea in special education at the secondary we have approximately 40 co- teing um Partnerships that will be happening for this upcoming year so we're really excited about that in this slide um these are the six different co- teing Partnerships that we provide training to our staff on and in a classroom um I'm just going to give you a couple examples of what this might look like so um you might see a general education teacher delivering the content and then special education teacher supporting with things like organization or learning strategies and that would be
092an example of one teach one assist whereas um in a station teaching model you might see each teacher has a particular station and then they provide direct instruction with an independent station and in that particular model the co-teachers really can support an mtss system because they're reteaching they're pre-teaching or they are enhancing the lesson all right the last thing that we wanted to talk about with the older readers and you've heard seen this kind of on our docket is we wanted to create literacy resource Maps so that our teachers didn't have to figure out how to find all the resources themselves and then we really wanted them to know that um the resources they were using were evidence-based and beded so we worked on a map for each of the five pillars of reading and
093we'll roll those out in the fall and we wanted to show you what they look like um so as as a teacher you'll be able to click into each of those pillars if you need it and then once you get in I just kind of took a snip of the fluency one um you can see what's the skill why would we work on this um what are the sub skills underneath that that main skill what are some assessments that I could use to find out more information about that reader and then what are the strategies that I could use um so we feel like this is going to be very helpful for teachers so that they don't have to try and figure out is this worthwhile um we wanted to make sure that that we
094spent some really good time thinking about these Maps so we had Natalia um from the multilanguage learner um aspect we had our special education coaches um we had our humanities uh and our science uh specialist and then myself and um just a really good collaboration in trying to make this simple um but also usable it did take us almost a year to get to this place and we had many many meetings where we had way too much information and I think we've gotten to a good place now but we'll field test it and find out um how useful it is to the teachers and the students and I'm Heather clet um Elementary director of academics I've been with you talking about elementary um prior to tonight and I just get to bring it home with
095those highlights as Dr pel had talked about you were given the literacy plan that we plan to submit very soon to the state and these are really uh the main areas I think there are a few missing pieces there but just for you to to kind of review that um those are all the components and the details the specifics about various reading goals in the different areas like we have talked about ml special education you'll find that in that plan along with specific details about our Universal screening and the data that Peter had shared as well um our parent involvement all of our work with multi-tiered systems of support um is within that as well along with the new curriculum for Elementry that we are excitedly um rolling out and then of course all of
096those next steps that um we have planned for for Rochester Public Schools so with that we will go ahead and open it up to questions can I ask one first Heather when you talk about the um targeted support for the middle and high school students and then it starts with the diagnostic assessment to identify where their skills Gap are um what and then you've got your literacy uh map the resource Maps what's the gap between how much work does the teacher have to do to go from I know that this kid has these gaps and these skills does fastbridge give any direction to say you know work on the work on these activities to help them not have to dig through that resource yeah it does um the F fast brid gives um interventions or
097suggested interventions and what we found is that they work pretty well for K through 6 and then once you get above sixth grade we have to think a little bit differently about how it might work so for example one of the interventions that they suggest is repeated reading and so the protocols that they use um at the elementary might look a little bit different at secondary so we might still do a repeated reading um but we might have the more skilled reader first and then we might have the student um and we might just vary that a little bit because the students's older um but there is always an intervention plan for the student as long as you do the um fast trck um and that's what we do for the screener then you get
098an intervention plan and then you can really look at that and Target that for the individual student we also purchased um a curriculum called rewards um which we've used for our tier 2 um interventions so middle school and high school all of those middle schools and high schools will have access to rewards and that's a lot of multi cabic reading um and then also some practice with fluency repeated reading so that the teachers have that to draw from and again that would be like a success coacher an interventionist supporting the student but then the teacher in the classroom might also use that same strategy to support them in the English language arts classroom so it sounds very individualized and very targeted to each student which is wonderful to see sorry director Marvin got me first
099thank you I'm I'm not sure who this is a question for but um microphone but who has the microphone that's the first question the second question and this is a two-parter how with the new literacy approach and strategies how will success and growth be measured is it mainly through F Bridge or MCAS and I know they're very different tests with very different uses but and that's a second question do they correlate with each other yes they do good answer yes they do there's a microphone and and is do you use I mean you're looking at fast bridge and MC scores but you you expect if one Rises the other one will also yeah so fast um I was reading this last week conveniently um with a pretty high degree of confidence it correlates to the
100MCA at about like 82 to 86 like 082 which is astronomical for a correlation um each grade level varies slightly but not a lot um the other thing that we are looking at is um how well our cutoffs match the mca's cutof offs that's just a mathematical question more than anything but that's another part of it but yeah they're actually highly predicted of one another thank you and when you say cut offs you mean being a grade level yeah so not being but like what which of those four areas would you where would you fit in correct I think um we'd also be looking at progress monitoring because we don't want to wait until okay let's wait and see how they did at the winter fast Bridge so if we put an intervention in place
101then we'd be progress monitoring that either weekly or every other week depending on what tier they're in and then we'd be looking that at that data to see if we need to make it more intense or the student needs more time um or a different strategy the MCA is always after the fact too right we don't get those results uh in a usable format until the August following the school year in which they were administered so we wouldn't be making decisions about individual students from those anyway [Music] so this is a little bit future futur looking but um what if any consideration has been given to the use of AI and helping to um figure out where students are and what they need I know that there have been some really interesting articles in education
102about this but I'm wondering maybe this is a better question for you Dr pel at what point might the Rochester Public Schools start to use some things like Ai and or maybe it's already been been done maybe it's already done now we we need to develop an AI strategy which will be one of the things that we'll be pulling together next year we don't right now have any of these interventions that are powered by what we' call large language models we did have last year in our summer of Discovery the hope of piloting an AI driven reading uh tool called DreamBox reading and we had a little more work with DreamBox math um and so it the the experience was positive but it was a very small pilot um I think that that is clearly
103part of the future and my personal take is that AI in literacy and in math is going to be much more useful for individual and small group tutoring than it is going to be for whole class instruction but it's going to be incredibly powerful for individual and small group tutoring but it's not going to replace the teacher with the full class and if you want to read a really good book about it the exact title escapes me but Sal KH who founded Khan Academy which teaches kids over YouTube has a a very positive book out right now about Ai and the future of Education um and it's a pretty good read so that's and he's very focused on that someday will it be useful for whole class instruction almost certainly but that's quite a ways
104off can give maybe um one example I'm thinking about it's not AI um but it's instructional technology it's called defit so you can put in a text and it will give you um the level that you want for that text so if you know that you're reading about a particular topic but you want it at the fourth grade level it can differentiate that text for the teacher so our success coaches have used that a lot um just as a support um and then we did use chat GPT last week just to try and see what would come um if we were thinking about a text set and trying to build like what does it look like to build that knowledge around a particular topic so we asked for um can you provide me with titles
105around a text set um that might build background knowledge and I think you have to be thinking of it with a critical eye we had to think about you know which of these suggestions are helpful um but a couple of examples of things that we've been kind of trying out um as we worked on curriculum development I would also add at the elementary level there are tools being used for example Lexia and even our really good really great reading curriculum that can adapt to the students needs um I think always when using those resources there's so much complexity in the Learners in front of us so although I'm sure AI will provide lots of lots of interesting tools for us I find that a lot of times the teachers know the kids better than what
106the technology tells them when they're when they're planning for those interventions so I'm not in any way suggesting that machines replace teachers at all because I recognize the importance of the value to to students in the classroom to have a live human being in front of them thank you I love this topic and I'm so glad that we're talking about it um and I am going to make an Earnest effort to refine my comments but I I am um I'm deeply passionate about the importance of this work the impact of it um the Strategic value of it and just to briefly um take a tangent um so often the the shift to literacy the recent importance of literacy is cast as some kind of a returned to uh Years Gone by when phonic was at
107the center of reading instruction in in contrast to the last several decades of full language balanced literacy all these other um kind of approaches and I just want to say that I I very much do not align with that framing what we are doing in Rochester Public Schools and I hope broadly in Minnesota and elsewhere is something that has never been done before we are honestly trying to achieve proficient Literacy for 95% plus of our students never has that been done ever we have been happy for decades and decades in the 70s and and before at hovering around 60% sometimes maybe slightly more but always comfortable or at least accepting of a good 30% that were identified as dyslexic or not cognitively able to achieve literacy and that has been the norm for so long
108and I want to emphasize that because what we are doing now truly is Cutting Edge this is rocket science and education and I I want to I want to remind people of that I want to set that that um that marker down because I think it informs our expectations going forward and hopefully um allows us to stay inquisitive to stay humble the goal is not to implement the read act I mean we're going to do that we follow the law um we're certainly going to do that but but that's that's necessary it's not even close to sufficient the goal is reading proficiency and so I love that our our updated literacy plan has specific identification of curriculum down to the minutes that they are provided in the classroom each day it's got a specific set
109of evidence-based targeted interventions for tier 2 and tier three supports at the K through uh at the elementary level secondary level that's that's coming along so that we can have a coherent common language for how we do this in Rochester Public Schools but I love the idea that you presented uh Miss stanky and the um professional learning communities where teachers are asking themselves these questions because I every teacher that I have interacted with on this topic wants desperately to meet the needs of their students they want to be providing evidence-based best practices they want to be supported they want the professional development to be able to do this thing at at a worldclass level and so that is my expectation for this district for this Administration for this leadership team for every single teacher that
110I interact with we don't have very much time with these students it's precious we cannot afford to do anything but the very best um instructional methodologies that we have access to provided by teachers with the very best professional developments the prepared and able to um offer that curriculum and I'm so glad that we're doing it but I just I I want to emphasize this isn't just flipping a switch back to the way it used to be this is this is grounded in decades of research that is not that old the reading panel was in 2000 it was followed by similar reading panels in other English-speaking countries in Canada and Australia and in the UK but all of this stuff is basically in the last decade that it's TR being moved into practice so our our
111focus is on the students if they're getting this stuff great and I I I hope that our focus is keenly on those students that we're not seeing much growth in the 27% in really all three categories that we looked at we got to we got to we got to meet them where they are um find out what those needs are and so I love the progress I love where we're going no one should be happy with where we're at yet we have a long ways to go expectations are high and they should be because the impact of not getting this right is profound the thing that's so bizarre about all this is our our human brains have been adapted over Millennia to be really good at acquiring and using oral language we're phenomenal at it
112but it's only been like 4 or 500 years that widescale literacy has even been attempted and I say widescale it's it's actually a very small percentage and only in the last 100 years that broad public education has even been a thing and what we find out now is that the way that our brains have adapted we've been good for the most part at oral language development and it turns out that by random chance around 50% are pretty good at Translating that into written language at decoding the oral language defining the orthographic mapping or inferring it themselves and figuring out how to convert oral language into something with permanence and then read it back off the page but another 50% require this very specific evidence-based explicit instruction so if we don't don't meet those students needs
113if we don't provide the very best those students conclude that they are not bright that they are not good at school and that they might never be and they reach that conclusion themselves and they do it early on so that's why the focus is in the early years and that's that's why we're trying to continue to meet these secondary students the lifelong trajectory of the students that reach that conclusion for themselves is severe it's not just about the ability to read it's about these students and how they feel about themselves so my question as I invite you to stay inquisitive to stay humble to think about how we get from where we are to where we all want to be what are the pain points what are the challenges what are the resource needs what
114is currently an obstacle that this board could help with and I really like a response from each of you that because I share your passion and when we look at our data as good as our data we're excited about it it's not good enough and I share it with you I think that I had a couple of quotes that I I failed to read before I'm trying to bre their presentation but the teachers that the special education at the elementary level that are participating in this we're often seeking your feedback what do you need how are you feeling what what more can we do and the the two that I wrote down was I feel very confident in teaching reading especially after our plcs with problem solving um and the other one that I worked
115on was that collaboration increases confidence so for um those I think resonate with me about they're feeling with it as we go forward it is your support within mtss and understanding that for me because we need time for our teachers to be together to continue the work in what is tier one and then how do we layer on supports um we we have been doing this work in elementary but not to the high level that we have this year and as our teachers increase confidence we have to be able to provide the resources we're in a good place right now in elementary special our early childhood special education and early childhood teachers are being trained they're getting it too but I would I would say it's time to move on and provide those resources at
116other levels as well and and thank you for your support thanks Melissa I will add um I think that it's equipping our secondary special education teachers with the knowledge on how to teach reading and then implementing it um so right now I think that that is our biggest that's where we're we're at and our teachers need to have that that foundational knowledge before we look at the resources because you can give a teacher any resource but if they don't know how to actually implement it at that diagnostic level then it's it's not worthwhile so that's where I feel like our barrier is right now that we're um we're addressing but it's going to take some time I'll reiterate that um at the elementary level we continue to um of course prioritize Y and really prioritize
117the professional development um and we've appreciated your support with that too but just like providing the time for teachers to grow and collaborate and use the materials and when I say grow it's growing in understanding the design now of our new knowledge building curriculum for example and functional ponics just how to navigate it and our teachers are amazing and they also need time to focus on developing skills with these new curriculums um the other thing I would add to the fastbridge conversation about interventions we have had our literacy team um in the office of academics really dig deeply into the interventions that fastbridge offers and have lifted up lifted up a few of those that are more um helpful than others more evidence-based and so we have more work to do to grow those resources
118I know we've worked with Peter's Department as well in all that are out there so just like continuing to support us digging into those resources um and developing and just the professional learning along the way too um I think at the secondary level the idea of flexible intervention time we don't really have that consistently where we can say no matter what we've got this flexible time and this is when we can pull students and um we can flow in and out so I think that's a piece teacher retention because we're training everyone right now but we have to keep them and we have to continue to support them so that they stay um and so I think that's a big piece of of collaboration support giving them the resources they need and then I think
119just giving teachers time to think about how to build in Reading Writing and speaking in every classroom because at the secondary level it's not going to be enough reading if they're only doing it in English language arts and with that intervention time they need to have that experience in all of their classes and that takes time and planning so I'm excited about the curriculum adjustment days next year because teachers will have some more time to collaborate um but I think those are three keys I think the curriculum adjustment days will be big you know as I was sitting here trying to come up with a concise answer because I'm known for being long-winded um it's professional development time for teachers but also principles um at least from the assessment perspective uh there's a lot of
120professional learning to go on among all of our uh groups not just our teachers about what is the assessment actually doing what is it not doing what are the limits of its utility um are we putting too much emphasis on them in many cases yes um and then once I have a real really good strategy that's consistent like how do I administer an assessment that's consistent across different settings to get consistent data um then the second piece and everyone's hit on it is what do I do with those results after they come out the other side um and that just takes time for learning um and you know fast Bridge itself you could spend six months doing nothing but learning fast Bridge you'll still find new stuff that it does um and for many teachers
121and especially administrators they may only touch it two or three times a year um during the screening window others would be in there daily so uh ongoing and Heather you hit on it ongoing job embedded robust professional development is an extremely strong predictor of employee retention um so we're addressing more than one need by investing in it thank you director cook you stole the question that I always ask that I appreciate I appreciate your passion and you're asking it um I guess I want to ask maybe the superintendent to um help us with uh just a time frame in terms of resources we're going to next be talking about 2425 budget where it U as we've learned so far about it we are maintaining the resources that we have now the 24 25 years when
122we're going to get money from the state to help us with the implementation of a lot of this um but we know we're also having a conversation of putting a referendum on the ballot in November that will begin to impact um the deficit that we'll have for the 25 year is it too much to ask to you to speak to what not passing the referendum could mean for our ability to continue to implement our literacy work uh thank you madam chair we have used uh our federal covid funding in Rochester Public Schools to jump start this work um I think that was the right decision uh because we didn't have other resources to do it with we would have had to make major cuts to purchase the curriculum for instance that you just approved fastbridge
123we funded with Federal Co dollars a lot of the professional development that Peter was just talking about with the co dollars all of those as this board knows well must be spent by September of 202 24 and so uh as chair Nathan suggested continuing this progress is deeply dependent upon passing a referendum in the fall because those resources will no longer be available to us um and uh as I'm regularly reminded by Math teachers and others we have equally important work to do in other subject areas as well and so for example we were able to use that last tranch of uh Federal and State uh funding to purchase these new literacy curricular resources we are not able to purchase the new science curriculum for elementary that an equally dedicated team of teachers spent months
124and months looking at because we candidly right now do not have a revenue stream for it now I'm hopeful that uh the approval of the referendum will allow us to move forward on that front and others um but that's the stakes as they exist for us at this point any other comments or questions good to see you all again and thank you look for for our next up thank [Music] you more members at 7:30 we have one more item on the agenda break or go forward now your chance to request one if you need move on to the next agenda item which is 4 um sorry prep for Action 5 2024 2025 budget proposal review this is a prep for action item and we're scheduled to take action at the June 18th regular meeting super
125thank you chair Nathan um the board members know uh well John Carlson our chief administrative officer and Andy kronstad our Director of Finance John and Andy this the uh the literacy team did an admirable job of keeping a lot of information concise and so I know the same extraordinary accomplishment is about to happen with a lot of really important Finance information so um as we talked about at the board meeting last um week uh or your last board meeting this is not a year when the board is facing the kind of difficult cuts that you've made the last two years um and and yet the stewarding the resources carefully I know is a huge priority for the board and so we scheduled this study session um where we can dig into the data that you
126might want to dig into um I'm pleased to say that that will not not have the level of uh challenge that I anticipated when we put together the board calendar thanks to Mayo Clinic and thanks to the board's approval of the use of reserves so let's enjoy it and let's get going thanks Andy all right Andy you take it away okay I I hope I can bring the same level of enthus well I know I can't bring the same level of enthusiasm to this as director cook brought to literacy um because you know numbers are numbers they're not a lot of fun depending on your perspective uh but I I am excited to uh have our our our session here today as you know we've been here several times let me repeat you know all
127of the uh opportunities that we've had to come before the board before we finalize this next week I did want to take an opportunity to express my gratitude to everyone in this District that has provided input into this budget it's not my job alone it's not John's job alone it's not our team's job alone it's the entire District that has input into this budget and it's an incredible group of people that work hard um to to bring this together each and every year it's important that we also remember and I think Dr pel touched on it this is essentially I I think I've mentioned before a status quo year not a lot of changes uh M most most of what is different has already previously been discussed and so as I work through this presentation
128tonight it's really about bringing all the pieces together you're not going to see a lot of anything new um but I did want to just make sure that everyone understood that this is an opportunity o our opportunity to um to to wrap up essentially uh before the vote next week so I'm first going to focus on general fund because of course as you all know is our our basic operating fund where the majority of our activities occur you seen a slide similar to this before uh the numbers are just slightly different not on the revenue the revenue is exactly the same we have not adjusted our Revenue projections at all since I came before the board in May so these numbers uh stand true again pointing out that the male clinic donation is a sizable
129and measurable uh component of this year's or I should say next year's Revenue there have been some slight very slight modifications to the expense budget buget I believe it's gone up about $200,000 and that has to do with some added um some added costs um in some of the areas that we've talked about previously some of the literacy areas but again you know in in the scheme of things it's a very modest amount and so uh what we've done though is we've essentially funded that with some reductions in some other areas and with our contingency so overall um we still have about the same level of um uh fund balance deficit that we had previously uh considered and so you'll see it and it again it goes without saying uh our our teammates our our
130employees here are are a number one expense and uh that will never change but it is important to note that um you know there are there are many other costs associated with operating in the district this is not a slide that that we've presented before but here is essentially the bottom line that we are projecting for the general fund this year and so you'll see uh these numbers will hold true unless there are any discussions tonight that would change them or if Dr pel were to bring forward anything that would change them before next week otherwise these are exactly the numbers that we plan to bring forward next week for the final approval uh there is the $6.7 million deficit that we are expecting uh that is relatively unchanged since our first uh expense uh
131um our first expense review did we do that last week or the week before I'm starting to lose track of the days now but uh that is relatively unchanged and that amounts to essentially the uh health insurance contributions that the board uh has agreed to fund with our deficit our unassigned fund balance that we're projecting at the end of this current fisal year is about $44 million and it I I need to reiterate that's a projection so we don't know know exactly uh where it will be but our projection based on budget and current spending is is that amount when we reduce that by the um by the deficit that we plan to spend uh that leaves us with a $37 million unassigned fund balance which is still 12.6% of our overall spending in the
132general fund and our Target by board policy is 8% so we are still doing very well as it relates to our fund balance which gets us to the next slide you'll see that obviously over time it's been up and down and up and down um last year we finished the year with a 16.1% unassigned fund balance the 14.6 is again where we project it to be this year uh dropping to 12.6 next year should we continue on this trajectory it will obviously drop below the 8% rather quickly and even further than that without some uh additional revenues I want to take an opportunity to mention that we talk a lot about enrollment enrollment clearly is the main driver of our state funding however enrollment isn't necessarily the only driver of the fund balance decline I
133did a little bit of research today and we are estimating I need to put my glasses on I apologize um um our projection is approximately 270 less students next year than this year now let me let me make sure to qualify that that is based on a study that was done three years ago and it's based on one of the four models that they provided they provided a low a moderate a high and a recommended they called it a recommended model it's the recommended model that we've been following for the last three years so essentially it is something in the middle and so it is just that it is just a model because we know that historically the last three years that our actuals have been about 6% higher than projections so our actuals have
134been coming in each and every year higher than our projections with that being said let's assume that same Trend continues our enrollment would only decrease by 168 students next year as opposed to what being uh what's in the projection model is 271 so the next thing I wanted to point out to you though is and I need to pull up my my um went to sleep on me I want to also take a moment to point out our expenses and and you'll see it on the next slide just slightly but I took a look at oh actually I don't have it there yet our employee costs year-over-year went up 6.4% our Revenue went up 4.8% so right there you can see that's creating a Delta that is unsustainable included in that 6.4% though of course
135is the the insurance cost it's all employee costs um we had some we had our settlement with our teachers which would be included in that and so therefore we had a year where we likely had uh and and we see moving forward some larger than perhaps normal increases I I can't project that that would continue but we can tell you that the Delta between those two is not just or the difference is not just enrollment and so uh there are a lot of other factors that are going into uh into the deficit or the decline in the fund balance let me say it differently the decline in the fund balance and enrollment is a very very very very small part of it it's really our Rising expenses more quickly than our revenue revenue is not
136keeping Pace let's take a couple of minutes now to just go through our FTE count this uh I've presented the total number previously but not broken It Out by contract group previously we presented this and I forgot to mention we presented this to our uh our community last week we had two Community uh input sessions or I would call them review sessions but there was input as well in the form of questions um if I if I um chair Nathan was so gracious to be in both of those sessions um in addition to chair Nathan we had I think over the course of both uh the noon meeting and the evening meeting I think we had about 15 attendees so not really a large group however there were questions that came out of both sessions
137uh and and it was great to see the level of Engagement from those that were present but we did present this to them uh and just Again full transparency this is the uh comparison of our FTE that we're proposing this year as compared to the original budget that you approved last year so is if we move forward then and continue to show the rest of the contract groups you'll see uh that there is an overall increase of about 22 FTE this is broken down further in a an attachment that I provided previously because again the FTE has remained um fixed at 20 262.50 FTE since I originally came to you uh in May so that number has not changed so the FTE break down that you have previously seen is unchanged so here now is
138the the more of the rollup this is all of our employee cost not just general fund but all of our employee costs and again um I think because of rounding that went up to 6.5 6.4 I think it was 6.49 or something like that but you'll see that our original budget called for $238 million of employee costs last year this year it's rising to 253 that's a $15 million increase the largest share of course of that is in the benefits that it would be for your health insurance we we spent a fair amount of time the last few weeks on general fund but of course the district has several other funds that it operates including Food Service Community Education construction we have several internal service account uh funds they're not mandated by mde but we
139use them for tracking purposes uh including our dental and health trusts I am happy to say that we are projecting in our Health Trust to increase the fund balance if all of our projections uh remain true or come become are true uh we expect to increase that fund balance by about $1.6 million that's a a a fund that has continually decreased year-over-year due to our Rising Health costs some of that increase is due to the fact that there are greater premium contributions not only by the district but by the employees going into that fund we also through our work with health easy we are beginning to see a bending of the curve downward we believe and we do think that there are some um practices that they are implementing that we believe will show us
140greater cost Savings in the future it's pretty early to tell yet we're only 5 months months in we have data through the first quarter uh but we do believe it's promising and I do believe that it would be important for us to provide uh perhaps a greater update for you that in in that as we get uh close to our open enrollment period again but uh but that's a a very promising change again very early to tell but we're hoping that uh the trend continues as you take a look at the rest of the fund balances though you'll see that uh in all cases um we we are Contin to show a positive fund balance at the end of the year certain funds are losing of course are reducing The Debt Service fund going down
141is actually a good thing of course we're paying off some debt uh the dental trust um we are projecting a we haven't we haven't the the um what is it the insurance group The Insurance employee Insurance Ben insurance benefit group hasn't weighed in yet on premium increases but in the budget I am proposing a modest increase in the dental premiums um to hopefully offset some of that loss we can even see perhaps it would be greater if we didn't have that increase um we also see a fair number of our PE our employees are um are taking that Dental uh insurance coverage because it is very very reasonable even for a family it's very reasonable and so therefore um it is a it is a very active account obviously our dental costs are less than
142our healthcare costs but um still one of those that we want to keep an eye on I want to also just take one moment in touch on our construction fund as you can see um we have a fund balance that we project to end with this year uh that fund balance is a result of um previously issued debt that is paying for those construction projects that have been approved as part of our long-term facility maintenance plan and some of those projects that we have um issued purchase orders will not actually come they're in process but we will of course not have all of that expense this particular year much of it will roll over so the re the revenue will follow or I should say the the expenses will follow and reduce the fund bound
143so uh think of it as you have a savings account and when you pay your bill you will transfer money from that savings account to fund your purchase we're doing the same thing where we have the savings the money already for those construction projects have been approved and we will then draw from that so A negative uh use in that fund balance is not is okay because we have the money we have the cash in that account or in that fund I should say to accommodate those expenses final two slides we're going to pull it all together now so from a District's perspective this is looking at all of our funds and all of our Revenue across all the those uh funds I once again wanted to continue to point out maale Clinic even at
144a district level it is a measurable share it is um it rounds up it's a little less than 3% but I I kept it at 3% because it does round up as i i u use rounding in this particular instance just to have whole numbers but again it's still a measurable amount of money our tax levy um that's a number that you maybe have seen previous it would have been on our certification previously 76 million we have uh other local revenues our state monies and of course our federal monies that rounds out our $389 million of Revenue then on the expenses again District as a whole uh salaries wages uh combined for uh salaries wages and benefits combined for 59% of our overall District spend you'll see purchase Services we've talked about that previously again
145that would be contracts for our construction that's going to be um some of those contracts uh it's going to be insurance it's going to be utilities things of that nature and ultimately um that rounds out then the total expenses of $429 million and again there is an there is a difference between our revenues and our expenses but that has to do with our fund balances that exist that allow for essentially those um those uh non-matching revenues and expenses so with that I would open it up to any additional questions but I'm hoping that um we've been able to tie it together uh this information uh will also be uh uploaded to sbly tomorrow for next week along with a couple of other um there's a there's a memo that details some of the information but
146there's also um some attachments that will be provided similar to what you've already seen so I I don't expect you to see really anything new before next week but I am happy to answer any questions or provide any other information that you may you may need Dr Barlo uh excellent presentation Andy quick question regarding uh general fund total expense I uh noticed um salary and wages employee benefits on slide four to close to 79% and then on your uh towards the end it is only representative of 59 I was just kind of curious for the difference in the all funds that takes into account then the construction projects and stuff that are out of sight of the general fund so you put it all together then the employee shares just a little bit less thank
147you because none of those other funds a couple of them have some employees but the vast major 99% of employees are all in the general fund so there are no really no added employee costs when we bring in those other funds Dr Cook um well I I wanted to First emphasize how grateful um I am as a board member and I think the entire District should be at the efforts that were taken to increase revenue for the next year that were outlined at the last meeting by um appropriately uh receiving compensation in the district for the services that are being provided and are reimbursable uh via Insurance because as I look at the fiveyear forecast um that was prepared um at the end of last year um that additional Revenue um puts us in a
148situation where we aren't looking at reducing some other services elsewhere in the budget um and so that that I just I think that was uh that effort uh provided tremendous value to us so um thanks for that and then the the thing I wanted to clarify is on the Health Trust Fund um with the balance that it has um and recognizing the projected expenses which is necessarily going to be sort of a probabilistic estimate or forecast or something but with a balance of a little over half a million and projected expenses of 32 million what what happens operationally if we get into a situation where you know the the first quarter of the next fiscal year there's a larger than expected set of expenses and that balance goes negative like what is the outcome what
149happens well the fund can go negative during the fiscal year it can actually be negative at the end of the year but in in the long term what would happen is the general fund would need to cover sure whatever that deficit amount is so as we project contributions through premiums and then obviously the work we're doing to try to lower costs it's our hope that we never get there and I would just point out that the $2 million that we would be projecting at again at the end of the next fiscal year that only that accounts for for uh that's that's not even one month's worth of uh actual health care costs because we're factoring in you know again for health care about 35 million ion dollar thir well we're going to be a little
150bit less next year because we've we've uh seen a trend but again we're in that 32 33 million range depending on on the given year so um having a balance there is important if we go negative though that's okay we have to understand that we have to make some strategic decisions about how to fund that then whether um we would raise premium contributions um from sources outside of the general fund or if we would just have the general fund cover whatever that deficit amount is but then that's the way I'm thinking about it then is that that's yet another rationale for the importance of maintaining appropriate reserves in the general fund in excess of that 8% or at a minimum at the 8% correct so that there is that liquidity there to make sure that
151Health expenses are paid when there's among other things absolutely okay yeah thanks mman um you're mentioned in the community review sessions reminded me of the tech PR I had last week were those recorded and if if I or others want to review them did we I think we did record I think we recorded the no actually I don't think we recorded them because we we fully intended to give basically the same presentation tonight and he cover substantially exactly the same material as we did at that session and I did document the questions that were asked at that at that sessions thank you John I don't remember if we did or not could you um add those um questions to to the content tonight yes I have them I can certainly share them with with you
152if you want them that' be great so um in slides three and 11 you have um several different C five different categories um mentioned for uh the total revenue sources could you elaborate a little bit on what other local might entail I see a tax and then State and then Federal um other local is going to be um what comes to mind uh immediately would be for example the um the third party reimbursements that we discussed a couple of weeks ago uh it's going to include uh Patron admission fees for activities it's going to include activity fees for um students that participate that's going to be um some of those items that are in other local I mean that seemed especially in the in the U total revenue for all funds that 16% seemed like
153a really large part of the budget so I was just wondering so how did we get there absolutely the other local in because we operate the internal service funds One Fund the general fund is paying the other fund the internal service fund for our health care that money is shown in that fund as Revenue okay so essentially it looks like there's 6 $2 million of new Revenue but but in on the books it's really Revenue expense in one and a revenue in another so we add that all together okay thank you and I think as in as is the case with every time we talk about the budget it's important to go back and look at that um chart of all of the other funds besides the general fund and remind people that we cannot
154take from those funds to help uh the balance in another fund or to cover the expenses in another fund that designated restricted I'll let you say no they are restricted so the food service is restricted to that particular function as is Community Education so um that would be a true statement and I oh did you not okay and then um when we look at the FTE U the employee FTE by the different contract groups um I know that one of the concerns from our community um in conversation during the last referendum and and conversation annually when we talked about the budget is uh our overabundance of administration and uh compared to you know the classroom versus Administration and I think that this chart able demonstrates um and we have had reduction C in previous years
155indeed um in some of the uh District administration um that relative to um our teachers and our education support professionals our student nutrition services uh mental and physical health professionals um our cleric our clerical our maintenance these people who are in the buildings in the classrooms the vast majority of our FTE go to that and do not go to Administration and I don't expect you to know off the top of your head what the percentage was um believe it was 83% we calculated and shared with you last time right that is direct student facing each and every day so 83% board members any other questions well then conversely speaking to Andy the percentage represented by uh Administration um cabinet superintend cabinet administrators that I thought that was the direction you're going in Cathy but and
156you may not know the percentage off hand uh I'm just kind of curious because sometimes uh the statement is made well we have so many um and we can look at the number but I I would be curious regarding the percentage of the total bu or the percentage of the total employees well it' be you know it' be the it' be the the difference so 177% is going to be made up of the board superintendent cabinet administrators would be included in that group as would uh the Community Education um that's not just think traditionation that's much larger many of the Community Education employees would be included in other groups this particular group line item right here would be just the um Early Childhood assistance otherwise if they're a teacher community they'd be part of the
157teacher group if they're in the op if they're in operations type position they'd be included in the operations and so but but another big one that we did not include in 83% is maintenance for example or clerical those those folks are in the schools each and every day supporting the efforts to go on in the schools we didn't include them in the student facing 83% for example but there's a fair number of obviously of FTE there as well I think Dr bar it's actually a very timely question and we will there's a definitional task there because I think when people think of administration they people who actually administer things and then there's people who process payroll and things like that so we'll take a look at that and I think that's a good point for
158us to board members any other questions besides our gratitude for all the work virtual sessions were excellent I'm sorry more people didn't come because it every time we explain it I understand it more and I I welcome our community to try to understand it more because you are providing a lot of transparency in this process great was I as enthusiastic as director cook did I did I get as enthusiastic as can be well I This Is How We Do the literacy yes right it's all Rel thank you our next item under other business are board questions and responses there were questions submitted uh by board members before the meeting and you can find it that in our agenda our annual Board calendar ABCD update would any U are there any other items a board member
159would like to bring for consideration on a future board meeting agenda hearing none our next board meeting is June 18th a regular meeting then a regular meeting on July 16th then a study session on July 23rd and a regular meeting on August 6th and a reminder that that is a change in time from 4 to 6 p.m to National Night Out All the Other meetings are at 5:30 p.m. and hearing no other business we are adjourned at 7:56 p.m. okay e e for