001determine we can Levy which again some of that relates to the voter approved portion we we didn't break that out but most of those schools have a larger voter approved operating referendum which in increases uh obviously the portion um increases their overall collection now this is a little bit broader we're taking into consideration here now four other schools we'll call them peer schools but two of them are a little bit larger two of them are smaller and you'll see where Rochester fits again in comparison much of this is related once again to voter approved operating referendum or capital projects referendum that these districts have in place and you'll see once again where Rochester's at the bottom in this particular case in this peer group this is the same peer group we used last year and
002we're exactly in the same place as we were last year so at this particular Point what if you're you're I I would say what if you're unhappy happy or what if you're disappointed with the value of your your home in terms of its assessed value unfortunately there's not much you can do right now except um you can um file with a tax court but as I mentioned previously home values are determined in the spring and so in the spring homeowners will receive a statement saying here is your estimated home value your assessed value that is your opportunity and that's the time when you have an opportunity then to dispute that home value after that it's just the Minnesota tax Court there's very few options available and that is it so uh any questions so annually
003before adoption of the property tax levy the public must be given a reasonable amount of time to comment and ask questions related to the proposed property tax levy and budget tonight's public hearing meets that requirement members of the community who have questions or comments on the the 2024 property tax levy will be recognized at this time please limit your questions and comments to topics related to the 2024 property tax levy a reminder that policy 207 governs governs public hearings and only those speakers recognized will be allowed to speak comments by others are out of order individuals who interfere with or interrupt speakers the school board or the proceedings may be directed to leave personal attacks by anyone addressing the school board are unacceptable persistence in such remarks by an individual shall terminate that person's privilege
004to address the school board our assistant board clerk will come into the audience please raise your hand if you'd like to make a comment and when she has recognized you please come forward to these tables in the front of the room be seated and speak into one of the microphones state your name your connection to Rochester Public Schools and direct your question or comment to the board you will have three minutes to speak and the timer is displayed right here in front of me so if you're interested in making a comment on the property tax levy please raise your hand do a second call if you're interested in commenting on the property tax levy please raise your hand and a final call if you're interested in speaking on the property tax levy please raise your
005hand so I'll now close the public hearing item 3.3 is announcement of 2023 Levy certification date and time the property tax levy for for school district property taxes payable in 2024 will be certified by the school board at its regular meeting scheduled on December 12th 2023 immediately following this special session and hearing no other business this meeting is adjourned at 6:19 [Music] p.m. this regular meeting of the Independent School District 535 School Board is called to order at 6:20 p.m. on Tuesday December 12th 2023 in room 137 of the Edison building the board acknowledges this site and all RPS sites are situated on the ancestral land of the Dakota people and we honor the Dakota Nations and the sacred land of all indigenous peoples this meeting is being live streamed and interested members of the
006public are welcome and encouraged to view this meeting remotely at youtube.com isd535 tonight's meeting is also being recorded and will be posted on our YouTube channel following completion of the meeting if you are speaking or presenting at tonight's meeting please speak directly into or close to the microphone provided so that the recording can capture clear audio and the audience present can hear what's being said the agenda and documents for this meeting are available online at Rochester schools.org assmbly present at this meeting are school board members superintendent Kent pel a non voting ex officio member and assistant school board clerk Miss Lori Sam Miss Sam would you please call the role here here here here here at this time we offer the opportunity to say the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge alance to the flag of
007the United States of America and to the republ for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with li Justice for All item 2.1 is approval of the agenda are there any changes to the agenda move approval second it has been moved and seconded to approve the agenda all those in favor say I I any opposed the agenda has been approved a note uh to everyone here if we're still meeting in a few hours from now we may be taking a recess based on the will of the board item 3.1 comments to the board it is important for the school board to hear from our stakeholders regarding issues that impact our student staff families and schools we welcome communication via email phone call at our community engagement listening sessions and he during comments to the
008board members of the community who would like to make comments to the board must email the assistant school board clerk by 5:00 p.m. on a Monday before a regular meeting at ASB at Rochester school schools.org the purpose of comments to the board is to give community members an opportunity to provide input directly to the school board about issues that fall within our Authority the board and superintendent do not respond directly to the speaker's comments during the meeting but may follow up with the speaker if requested and appropriate a reminder that policy 206 and procedure 206a set the time place and manner procedures and restrictions on comments to the board these ensure privacy protections for students and staff and prohibit comments that are threatening profane lugue vulgar obscene harassing abusive or constitute a personal attack on
009others speakers when your name is called please come to this table choose a microphone to speak into and be seated you will have three minutes to speak and the timer is displayed in front of me please begin your remarks by stating your name if you have written materials for the board please provide them to our assistant school board clerk prior to your remarks and she will distribute them to board members speaker number one this evening is Sharon and fonts next speaker is Sarah [Applause] our next agenda item is 4.1 information and Outreach recognition of High School athletics superintendent P thank you chair Nathan I want to I know I've seen a number of athletes who probably have some parents who are here we want to be uh very mindful of the fact that I know
010a lot of you are already involved in different activities you've been here uh waiting and so we want to get to the opportunity to recognize you I want to ask Jackie Peterson our chief of schools to come up we know that our activities directors all three of them I believe are triple booked tonight and so are not with us and many of our coaches are as well but I know the board likes to be sure we acknowledge the amazing uh athletes um who have finished their season and so Jackie is going to have the opportunity to recognize folks and then we'll ask you to come up uh so we can applaud your incredible efforts and so Jackie thank you very much thank you guess we have a cross Town Event between century and John Marshall
011our principals are there two of our ads are there to make sure everyone has a good and safe time um and I know we have a lot of other contests going on in the district so we'll recognize all who could be here tonight we're starting with mayo high school so if any of the coaches that are here from Mayo could come on up to the front uh we'll go head and get started I know that we have boys and girls cross country and uh coach kindberg was unable to be here so um are there any students from the girls and boys cross country teams that are here tonight to be recognized if you are come on up I think we have some people in the hall so hopefully they're hearing this boys and girls cross
012country your flight is leaving while they're making their way up I'll just say that girls and boys both the boys and girls team earned um awards for academic um the boys team academic silver the girls team academic gold and if Ryan galtney is here he was a 19th Place he placed 19th at the state meet and was all state Lucas Olsen was in 97th place at State and All State academic and wilan L loner was all State academic and I hope if any of those folks are in the hallway they heard their voices and can come on up next we have girls tennis with uh head coach Jeff demy who can't be here but we have assistant coach Brett Paulie to introduce the members of the team that were able to be here all right
013thank you for the opportunity to brag about these girls in the season that they had um um yeah I'm here for Coach Jeff demy who unfortunately can't be here tonight uh he just completed his 66th season of coaching tennis at Mayo High School between the boys and the girls I had the privilege of being one of the assistants this year along with uh Tristan Bryant atake uh a lot of first for these girls this year uh this season it was the first time that the the male girls tennis team was ranked number one in the state for the entire season uh they entered the state tournament for the 26th time but the first time as the number one seed uh the first male girls tennis team to win the State team championship the first outstate
014team to ever win the girls State tennis title and the first girls team from Mayo High School to finish with an undefeated season of 26 and0 uh they held off the number two uh seated Edina three times this year um twice during the regular season and then once during the uh the finals of State they I with a A Team like ours that had been so dominant throughout the year I was curious how they were going to respond when they were pushed uh to several long matches in that third set but you'll be all happy to know they did not blink um and they answered the challenge and won that final uh if that were not enough uh there were more titles to be handed out at the state tournament and uh we had Malad
015Dean and Kei Ryder won the state doubles Championship uh CLA Loftus won the state singles championship and not to be outd done eal lus was a semi-finalist in the state singles singles tournament and I'm sure if there were more titles to give out she would have won that one too so without further Ado I'd like to introduce our top 10 here uh these were the members of the team that were present and in the lineup for the State Championship uh we have our two seniors uh Captain Audrey ay and nandini a also a captain uh Juniors on the team we have Captain and state champion CLA Loftus key Ryder and Charlotte [Music] Colby our lone representative of the sophomore class Anna [Applause] Medina and then representing a very strong freshman class we have eilus Malad
016Dean Bergen Jacob and Diane munier [Applause] I think I see some parents wanting to take pictures in the audience girls so why don't you come up line up and let them take their photo up yep right in front perfect they didn't know that winning all these titles would mean all these public appearances oh thank you and while they're doing this I have two more things to mention about this team that was uh quite remarkable uh one is that at the state tournament one of the um the tban organizers officials came up and wanted to pulled me aside to let me know to make sure to pass along to the girls how much class and dignity that they showed uh they're really impressed with The Way They Carried themselves at the tournament and then this team
017before you also uh received a a gold recognition for having a grade point average of 4.0 across the board so this is a it's a great [Applause] team thank you coach Paulie um next we have uh coach dub Frederick here I I know I saw her girls volleyball another team academic gold and any of the volleyball players that are here tonight come on [Laughter] up shy don't face me face the crowd hi this is Jaden Lester and Alexa carlstrom they're here to represent the six to 10 girls that are in the gold academic for volleyball um as seniors have to have a 3.80 or higher we have six from our Squad of the varsity and the rest of us are 3.74 or higher Jaden Lester got the honor this year of being an Allstate player
018um in the state of Minnesota so that's that's [Applause] us and finally from Mayo we have the Mayo girls swim team who who are currently having their banquet tonight and they chose food over the Schoolboard I'm sorry to say but we want to recognize them for their outstanding uh accomplishments which you will see in the board packet um tonight uh then we have John Marshall High School with the girls swim team and I don't know if anyone's here from excellent come on up yeah uh good evening my name is Dale Magnuson I'm actually the uh you can see right there I'm actually the Century Girl swimming and Diving coach but I'll represent JM right now um this is Julia ogren Julia finished a third in both of her events at state had a fantastic state
019meet also set a new section record this year in the 200 freestyle and JM also finished with academic silver this year so congratulations to [Applause] JM sorry I'm scrolling around on my computer and thank thankfully we I was just corrected we have a few other Mayo Awards we have Mayo uh boys soccer and Mayo uh football so let's have soccer come on up if thank you yeah come on up guys I have the pleasure of introducing to you Mr kamani chulan who is uh one of the remarkable players from our team this year who was honored with an Allstate uh nomination not just an Allstate nomination but was one of the five Mr soccer candidates uh for the state in class tripa this year he was also recently named to the United Soccer Coaches all
020Great Lakes Regional team uh to give you an idea of Comm play this year kamani is a striker he scores goals that's what he does he has a quote about that in the paper uh over the past two seasons our captain uh scored 34 goals 16 assists sounds about right this season he had a three-game stretch where he scored in the first game three goals uh in the second game he scored three goals and then in the final game he scored four goals so that's 10 goals over the course of three games to give you an idea of how remarkable that is uh our opponents over those three games scored fewer than 10 goals combined so this is a remarkable player remarkable athlete and a remarkable young man a great representative for ISD 535 so
021congratulations [Applause] kamani I know I saw Donnie Donnie hok um in the hallway so U Mayo boys football Mayo football all right thank you very much for having us here and the honor to be able to represent Mayo football and these two fine young men with me um the shorter of the two is Carter hul he's a receiver uh receiver for us and then the taller better looking guy is Reese gomso our quarterback um we have a couple different things just to recognize them with uh the first thing they're they're captains and they're representing our team on behalf of the gold academic uh All State award for the program and then Rees was selected as academic all state which is one of eight sorry one of 19 athletes that were selected from the 6A class
022and as far as our our team academic um gold standard we were one of eight to to achieve that award so very proud of the guys for that and then Carter here was selected um backtack All State as a wide receiver he was selected by the Minnesota Vikings All State team and then he also represented us at the um all state or all uh allstar game um a couple weekends ago so he also finished up as as the number two alltime in the the history of Minnesota receiver so proud that we have a Rochester guy that's in the the awards there so thank you very much for having us and did you guys want to say anything I told you you didn't have to okay sure Jord sweet just like me thank [Applause] you thank
023you and now back to John Marshall we have one more recognition from John Marshall and that is boy soccer is there anyone here from John Marshall boy soccer okay then on to Century oh I spoke too soon y yes come on up I'm sorry I didn't see you standing up thank you thank you for having us tonight my name is coach Abdul nor representing for JM boys soccer program just wanted to let you know that JM soccer program is growing and getting better honestly we have achieved something that we haven't achieved for the last 27 years we were en Joy co- Champions with mayo this year with the big n conference and we also have Abu Bakr Muhammad that who's not here tonight all state in am as well too so thank you for inviting
024us [Applause] tonight thank you now we really are onto Century Century High School I know coach Vic was not able to be here are there any members of the football team in the audience to come up to be recognized uh the century boys football team uh earn team academic gold and so we want to recognize them for that um then girls cross country also team academic gold and we may have some folks here thank you um I'm my name is Brent mcru and I'm here um I have a co-head coach Joy Keeler but I'm representing us um the team for tonight as Joy could make it um I have Addie Crow and Sophia confair um that um made it to state for cross country there are also both All Conference um in Cross Country um
025so both had a a fabulous year um couple highlights I'd say for for Addie Crow showed a tremendous amount of improvement this year and focus and um just really kind of came into her own this year um I was kind of looking from last year to this year at our section meet she finished 36th place last year and got all the way up to sixth place to qualify for State um and then had a a good solid state meet placing 65th Place at the state meet um and then she was also academic All State um yeah and just had a fabulous uh senior year for her in Cross Country um sopia confair had more of a kind of a a steady methodical approach as she came up to this season um the last two seasons
026she missed going to State individually by one place and so this year I think she was kind of like okay enough of that finished third place in the suction meet uh you know solidly um go to state um then had a a fabulous state meet as well finishing 32nd in the state um she was also academic All State and then um she also made it to State last spring in the 400 meters so she has quite the range of running distances from 400 to 5K which is not an easy feat um and then also our team which I believe she mentioned was um Team academic gold um with a a perfect 4.0 so [Applause] [Music] [Applause] congratulations we have adaptive soccer coach do hi I'm uh Michael dusel the head coach for the Rochester Raiders
027adaptive soccer also assistant coach for our hockey team up here we went to State this year we ended up taking fourth um in state lost by one point for third so that was a little heartbreaking my two captains that are up here are Samantha Mory and Andrew Westerman um both made it to the all tournament team at State um so that's the nice little trophies that they're holding up right there um Samantha is a senior so this is her last year with us um but luckily with Samantha being on the team she's been the only um female for the last three years now we're up to four females on the team um which it helps with Samantha because she kind of guides them and helps them out um and with Andrew he's a junior I
028think he's been playing since seventh eth grade somewhere in that ballpark there um and he is um recruited a bunch of players for us now um we are always still looking for players thank [Applause] you next we have girl swim thank you again this time I am representing Sentry um I'd like to introduce uh Sophia Blick uh sophomore Sentry High School for us fantastic swimmer for us she's been swimming since her seventh grade year this this year she finished third at state meet in the H 100 breaststroke earning All State honors uh her H 100 breaststroke is also a century School record as well as a new pool record at the Lakeville Middle School um she finished Ninth Place at state in the 200 IM which is also one of our school records uh she
029also holds the century pool record in this event overall she holds seven school records and four pool records at Century High School she helped her team qualify for state in two relays the 200 medley relay which finished 11th and the 200 freestyle relay which finished 13th in the state we also this year were big nine conference champions True Team section Champions and also Runners up for the section onea Championship we finished 18th out of 64 teams at the state meet this year um she also contributed to our team earning academic gold with a 3.8 overall GPA and we are very proud of her accomplishment finally just as a quick note this was our first ever season in our brand new pool and we continue to be so grateful for this space thank you thank you
030very much two final recognitions we have girls soccer and boys soccer so we'll Karen [Music] Leo thank you I'm Karen Leo and I've brought uh to represent girls soccer an torbenson here um as girls soccer we earned a 3.86 GPA which is good for the gold and that's a combination of 22 uh GPA and then anuka um is also here um as a Defender who was named all state which um often is a hard task to do simply because they do not have the statistics and the um goals that a lot of people look for um and Not only was she named as an Allstate player she was one of five players chosen to represent uh Miss soccer in class triaa so ANUK torbenson Mr hton and the boy scker um I'm gonna just use
031my coaching voice this the mic is not working so anyway uh this is Hussein Muhammad I have the pleasure of introducing him he was a second Team all state this year he scored 25 goals for us um he's done a number of great things he's by far the most positive upbeat player I have ever coached um and and I've coached for a while um he uh he always came to practice positive it didn't matter what was going on he just plays for the love of playing he did a couple things this year that I've never had a player do he scored 25 goals um and he's the first player I've ever had who scored we won a game five to nothing he had all five goals um or five to three five to three he
032had all five goals and then now the other thing that he did is he had a tendency to play other players spots early in the year and I would I would tell him you know you can't you can't play the whole field you've got to pass to somebody and so I said you can't pass yourself and later he went into a game and he was being covered by a guy and he passed the ball over his head and the guy behind him and then ran around and grabbed the ball and then ran back down the field proving that you could pass yourself but it wasn't the way we wanted to do things so anyway I'm going to miss Hussein I'm still trying to figure out a way to have him come back next year uh
033but this is Hussein we could take a moment to thank the parents who are in the room and the coaches and all the other adults that help make this possible for our wonderful [Applause] student thank you our next information and Outreach item is attendance options redesign this is an information item superintendent pel thank you chair Nathan this is just a brief update on some of the opportunities that people will have for feedback on the proposal that has um deservedly generated a lot of attention and conversation in the community um we are of course here at the Schoolboard meeting tonight on the 12th um a frequently asked questions document was released today that outlines the responses to a number of the most pressing questions that we have received in the weeks since the proposal was announced
034we will continue to update that that's available on our website it went out through social media and so I hope people will take a look at that it is our effort to come up with the most concise uh and yet sufficiently detailed responses to this proposal we then have got uh information sessions that also begin this week there will be two virtual ones and there will be two uh inperson ones um well I should say four four virtual four iners two this week two next week that will include a brief overview of the proposal and then the opportunity to ask questions and provide feedback um also this week we'll release an online feedback form which will be available in multiple languages that will provide an opportunity for various stakeholders to comment on every aspect of
035The Proposal with both questions and observations um on the 9th of January we will have a Schoolboard meeting at which I'll present an updated version of The Proposal and then Lori if you can click through please then on the 16th we will dig deep into the proposal and the 23rd is currently scheduled for a vote um the final point that I would make uh board members is one of the first questions or the first question on the frequently asked questions that we released today was is are changes in the attendance options redesigned really possible through further analysis analysis and feedback from stakeholders or is the plan really set in stone and the answer that readers will see in the uh document released today and that I'm giving now is that the uh request for feedback
036and the commitment to additional analysis is authentic it's uh serious we are benefiting from the questions that are being asked and the ideas that are being shared and we are cataloging every single one of them and uh we'll be sharing a synthesis of that feedback as I consider uh an updated version of The Proposal to prepare share with you early in the new year so wanted to highlight those opportunities that we very much hope people will take advantage of as we continue this admittedly very complex and uh difficult work which is driven by some financial and Geographic realities that we're grappling with so thank you our next item in information and Outreach is the board member committee updates does any board member have updates from committees or their activities to share director Workman the deleg
037assembly um met last actually December 1st and 2nd and we approved 15 of 23 resolutions and um Karen mclin and I have were have been elected to the delegate assembly this is the first year of a two-year term so you will see us again a year from now um so I'll let her continue um and just to clarify this is for the Minesota State Schoolboard Association that uh director Workman and I are were uh elected to the delegate assembly the first category that we addressed at the assembly was school Finance there were five resolutions in this category that were approved by the delegate assembly the first is a long-term Financial I forgot what the m stands for apologize um maintenance I believe y facility maintenance ex expand allowable uses this eliminates the per pupil cap
038in so these are proposals that are going to go now to the msba legislative committee um legislative um uh group and will be presented to our state legislature um throughout the session that's coming up so what they're proposing is to eliminate the per pupil cap on the long-term facilities maintenance Revenue which will allow all school districts to expand the allowable use to include repair and replacement of entire roofs boilers s sidewalks and parking lots the allowable uses are in Minnesota statute 123b 595 subdivision 10 in 2015 the legislature folded the health and safety information into the long-term facilities maintenance to address the maintenance needs of facilities the current allowance is $380 and has been frozen since this occurred if the allowance has kept paced with inflation it would be $489 per pupil and increase of
039$100 per people in all districts the second resolution was uh to expand the definition of type three vehicles and allow 12 passenger or even 15 passenger vans to be classified as type three vehicles what we learned at the delegate assembly is that there is a shortage of 10 passenger vans in the country is what I understood resulting in the purchase of more seven passenger vans and more vans means more routes due to fewer passengers in each van so we want to change the statute to allow larger vans in these type three vehicles um the third resolution involves the read act funding of teachers funding for teachers um in the training effective date we want to provide a permanent ongoing funding for Minnesota Department of Education approved science of reading training programs beginning January 1st 2022
040the most recent legislative session mandated structured literacy training for all teachers responsible for teaching ready by July 1st of 2024 the funds are being withheld from districts that immediately complied with the state requirements the districts that complied proactively are being penalized which creates Financial hardships for districts that choose to immediately comply so the idea would be to backdate that funding option um if they can change the statute um pushing that back to January 1st 2022 for the districts that are already um complying with the statute statutory change the fourth resolution involves unemployment insurance funding for non-licensed staff the resolution that was passed creates an ongoing and permanent funding stream for school district costs associated with unemployment insurance by hourly employees during between terms breaks in the school calendar the 2023 legislature created a one-time appropriate
041appropriation of funds for approximately $135 million and first access during the summer of 2023 there is no permanent funding stream identified for when these funds are depleted this will require individual districts to use General funds to subsidize unemployment insurance if this issue is not resolved the reimbursement Provisions are administered by Minnesota Department of Education and the unemployment insurance program is not involved with this process so even so districts May P May pay their full unemployment insurance bill on a quarterly basis the final School Finance resolution involveed funding to improve student attendance and the res resolution that was passed uh provides funding to expand student and Family Outreach and engagement focused on improving student attendance when it is regularly below 70% for school year 20 23 24 recipients would be required to share their outcomes with
042the Minnesota Department of Education and other districts director Workman the next category is school Finance for Charter Schools three of six resolutions that were presented to us were approved by the delegate assembly number six increasing and enforcing accountability standards for Charter Schools revisit the 2008 Office of the legislator auditor report and strengthen the current method of oversight holding Charter Schools accountable for perform performance relative to student outcomes and Charter commitments resolution number eight compensatory funding for Charter School students this would allow compensatory funding to follow students who leave a charter school after the October 1st deadline and reenroll in the public school system resolution number 11 bus opt in date for Charter Schools this was changed the opt-in date for consideration of public school transportation for a new Charter School from July 1st to May
0431st this would um enable districts to figure out their their transportation routes for these additional schools next category is taxation one of one resolutions in this category was approved by the delegate assembly which was eliminate sales tax on construction projects for schools in the category of Schoolboard employee employer relations four of the four res resolutions in this category were approved by the delegate assembly number 13 was pelra expansion exclude temporary and seasonal employees from the definition of a public employee in the Public Employee Labor Relations Act or pelra number 14 teacher internships explore a pathway to a comprehensive model for a teacher apprenticeship program to help increase the number of teachers in Minnesota number 15 deal of public employees Relations Act which would remove the language the 2023 job and labor bill that requires adult
044to student ratios in classrooms student testing and student to Personnel ratios as terms and conditions in collective bargaining and reinstate the number of personnel from the man manners of inherent managerial policy resolution number 16 SRO student resource officer clarification of new legislation to ensure school districts their staff and partners in School Safety and Security have clear guidelines for when and how they intervene to deescalate the conflicts between students and others and protect students and others from harm amend sections of the statute to improve definitions and guidelines related to the use of force and to resolve dual and conflicting standards for First Responders the next section was governance one of the four resolutions was approved by the da and that was resolution number 20 School Bus discipline the status of school provided transportation is a student
045privilege and not a student right therefore do not adopt any act that restricts the school district to provide a safe transportation service for students and drivers and maintains the school district's ability to discipline students in accordance with school district policies um one of three resolutions under the education program section was approved by the delegate assembly this was number 23 parental opt out of MCAS discontinue the current practice and this was something I wasn't terribly familiar with but it's it's important discontinue the current practice of including scores of students whose parents and caregivers choose to opt out of MCAS which count as a zero in the calculation for school accountability and change that practice to only include scores of students who actually take the assessment in that calculation and finally in conclusion the uh legislative session
046that's coming up starting in February is going to be a shorter section session and we'll focus mainly on bonding but the Minnesota School Board Association will also ask the legislature to approve a supplemental budget that would increase the basic education funding formula by an additional 2% for the 2024 25 school year the cost to the state would be approximately $160 million here at the local level at RPS the legislative committee which is myself director Workman Treasurer Garcia and superintendent pel will recommend several legislative priorities to the district um for RPS to the Schoolboard one priority will be uh for RPS is that is unique to us is the funding of our ptech program and we will be addressing the funding stream that has been significantly reduced the legislative committee will be presenting the recommendations to
047the board in late January once these been have been approved by the board we will meet with our local legislators so we can continue their strong advocacy for RPS and public education here in Rochester thank you ladies board members any other reports from any other committee pleas all right we'll move on to the consent agenda items 5.1 through 5.14 um are on the consent agenda would any board member like to remove any item for separate consideration I would like to remove item 5.9 5.9 is approval of non-continuation agreement any others do I have a motion to approve the consent agenda with the exception of item 5.9 so moved second it has been moved and seconded to approve the consent agenda except for item 5.9 all in favor say I I I any opposed we'll now
048take up item 5.9 director cook um yeah no I I I wanted to uh just take a moment to um consider the non-continuation agreement and I'm I am um very glad that RPS provides opportunities for other school communities in our district um in our district boundaries namely uh Rochester Central Lutheran School Rochester monor Resurrection Lutheran School and the Rochester Academy or the Rochester Arts and Sciences Academy excuse me um for seventh and eth grade students to participate in high school sports I think it is a great illustration of the the ways that um Rochester Public Schools enables opportunities for students that reside in our district whether they attend Rochester Public Schools or not um and uh I the the one point of clarification I just wanted to um briefly address is whether there are any
049differences either in the um uh the amounts paid in order to participate in athletics for students from those schools or anything else about the conditions under which they participate in athletics in Rochester Public Schools that differs for the students from those um uh schools versus Rochester Public Schools enrolled student I I was assuming the answer was no that there was no difference but I just wanted to clarify that uh to my knowledge there's no difference I believe you're correct this is not something I've dealt with in depth in terms of that but I believe I would have heard if there as a different fee structure um so I think you're correct uh Dr Cook okay thanks uh then I would move approval of item 5.9 second it's been moved and seconded to approve item 5.9
050approval of non-continuation agreement all those in favor say I I opposed item 5.9 has been approved moving on to our Focus topic tonight item six 6.1 is a panorama survey data overview this is an information item superintendent pel thank you chair Nathan um as board members know the Panorama survey is a um validated self-report instrument that every year for the last several years we have um asked students and staff to complete we use it as one of the measures of progress in our strategic plan um the goals that are measured through the survey are ones that the school board has approved as part of our larger Improvement framework in Rochester Public Schools and so we readministered the survey uh this fall and Dr Ruck is going to give some general highlights board members have had
051the opportunity to do some initial digging into the survey we have shared it with leadership and we'll be sharing the results more broadly both internally um and then uh the summary that Dr Ruck is sharing now of a few key points um highlights is probably a better phrase than summary um uh are also we think relevant to share with the group tonight but this is something that we will return to as the board begins to dig into some of the issues that are measured both from the student and staff perspective on the survey should also add through a separate survey that we are just now um collecting data on we have a separate parent and caregiver survey that we're using that is not based in Panorama but that we have developed through our own work
052around multi-tiered systems of support so we'll find an opportunity to share the results of our parent and caregiver survey with the board and the community at a later time so Dr Ruck thank you all right good evening back before you for the third time in a month discuss data all right so Panorama is a set of surveys that we have licensed as a district since 2019 they survey both staff and students covers a whole bunch of topics um what we have asked on the surveys has varied slightly over time but we have consistently delivered it since 2019 uh the other overview item just to lay out right at the beginning uh this year there wasn't any real systematic variation among student demographic groups when it came to overall responses for the most part so what
053are the components that we ask about the questions are phrased slightly differently if you're an elementary versus secondary school that's to account for the difference in age but the topics all center around uh the same Concepts they're just phrased differently or maybe ask fewer questions so as you can see on the slide it's largely items around school and classroom belonging learning envir enironment um some student ratings of pedagogical Effectiveness and so forth so our team our employees at Rochester Public Schools as well as board members have access to the Panorama platform to dig around in the results themselves and that includes our staff when they do so they're presented with a screen that looks very much like this after logging in on the left are the topics that the survey covered in the center which
054I'll come back to in a second is the percent of respondents answering favorably I'll explain that in a moment how we compare to other schools nationally this is a national survey that's done all over the place so it situates Us in context and then what movement we may have had since the prior survey wave as I mentioned the topics are averages so there's a bunch of individual survey questions behind each of those survey topics so when you're looking at that overall bar score there it's giving you the average of students answering favorably across all of the survey questions in that topic on the right is what it looks like when you drill down into individual questions to see how people responded to the individual uh topic the advantage of looking at the lower level questions
055is they tend to be more actionable Concepts because they tend to be geared around one idea rather than sort of a catchall percent favorable can be a little mislead leading depending on the circumstances so when Panorama calls something favorable what they're saying is they take the top two option choices add it together and that's your favorability percentage there are times though where that can get a little confusing so for example uh 60% of students responded favorably at the secondary level to the question how often do you worry about violence in school if you read that including me who does this for a living the first thing I thought was 60% of our students are concerned about violence in school it's actually the opposite Panorama SE reports data as the percent responding the way you would
056hope them to and we would hope that students are not concerned about violence in school and so that 60% is the combination of those first two options the last thing that I'll point out and this is why we dig down into the questions themselves is that there are times where the answer options May overlap a bit on student perception so what counts as sometimes worrying versus is once in a while worrying among students is going to vary widely and there's going to be a lot of overlap there so how many of those sometimes students maybe should have been counted in um percent responded favorably or perhaps vice versa so that's why we don't just look at the overall uh totals we look at the details one of the interesting findings in this year's data in
057particular and this is replicated in Prior years as well but it's particularly obvious with color coding this year um ratings of the learning environment overall and I'm I'm combining those five sort of broad topics into this idea of a learning environment uh but the basic idea in that gray bar at the top is the average uh students responding favorably and then you have grades six seven and eight each of those boxes tells you how much the grade level deviated from the average so for example 40% in the top left for for sixth grade they answered 49% because it's 40 + 9 for 8th grade they answered 35% because it's 40 -5 does that make sense how that graphic is set up so as you can see students come into sixth grade and then lose some
058of that rating of uh environment over time this is something we've talked about before as well unfortunately it's not new and it's not unique uh this is a big study from Gallup in 2013 that shows Nationwide engagement over time in our schools at least in the United States uh and the two reasons are the same types of reasons that we hear from students uh in the Panorama survey as well which is I don't have an adult that I know cares about me directly at school um or I don't see the relevance of these classes to what I'm eventually going to do with my life another highlight in this year's data was a 5 percentage Point drop in secondary students uh self-reported perceptions of safety at school um two things important to note about the trend
059data however you'll notice that it's 54% this fall and back in Spring of 2019 it was also 54% the years when it was higher were years when secondary schools were largely in remote learning so while it's obviously not something that we would want to see a decrease year-over-year it's important to note that this is sort of within the same neighborhood of where things have been for RPS for a while and it's not until you dig into to the data behind it that you start to see which items are really at work so there are six items in the secondary student uh sense of safety scale and they're listed there four the top four items aren't driving the lower uh ratings of safety but the bottom two are particularly number six number five to a slight
060extent number six to a great extent a fair amount of the percentage of students who aren't responding favorably to a sense of safety it's because they are rating number six very low on the survey so what's next it's probably best to think of Panorama like a screener it gives us an idea of where to dig deeper kind of like fastbridge does we have topics contained within all of those questions that give us some concrete ideas of where we can investigate to look for the underlying mechanisms a great example of that is taking uh next steps with some of those Middle School findings especially given that we know how important that transition from 8th to 9th grade is to predict a student's ultimate success in high school um I love the Albert Einstein quote I actually
061don't like John Dewey all that much but this is a good quote from John Dey so you know you can have that one too but it's really true um in the in the realm of evidence and Innovation we spend way more time thinking and dissecting and modeling what a problem is before we jump to Solutions and that's some of what you're seeing at work here as well so with that I don't know that's the next slide I'll just leave it there board members thoughts questions okay I'll start um this is a good slide to be on because you said you dig deeper look for underlying mechanisms where do you look is there another set of data focus groups this is when you get into school and start talking to people about individual perceptions experiences trajectories
062and so forth we could do additional targeted surveying at the middle school level that actually wouldn't be a bad idea if we had an idea of topics that we wanted to ask about but when you consider sort of the the cycle of research with Theory testing and Theory formulation now we need some qualitative data to do some more Theory formulation and then we can test it again once we have a better idea of where where we are and I think that's the logical Next Step in addition to really digging into the individual questions how they were answered uh especially by school because there is variation between sites Dr M and to add on that I guess with with the focus groups um give you more data information about um about why students are answering the
063way they they do for and can you get at answers to questions like do you feel safe at school and if students are saying I don't is it because of what's happening in that school in this District or because of the Nationwide exactly news right and that's exactly the kind of thing that we would you know in a structured focus group it's a conversation yeah the a big mistake people make with focus groups is treating it like it's an in-person survey um it's not right and so part of what we would want to do is ask about that exact type of back Dr mclin um I just want to comment overall in your work that this is extremely helpful information to have um not only in this format but also the information that we have
064for our closed session um having the Baseline data and then talking about what's happening in future years I think U gives the board a lot um stronger information to help us make our decisions so I just want to thank you for that work that I think that um developing you and your department has been one of the best decisions we've had since we've had a new superintendent so thank you Dr Barlo U certainly u i Echo director mclin's views as well um I see Great Value um in the notion of uh digging deeper especially um as we in the past have um considered our SRO program and often times the Panorama view information was presented as a well the students feel this way or they think that way and perhaps we weren't really able well
065it was oftentimes used to perhaps portray that well the majority of our students don't really feel this way uh and I hope that um do do you see I I guess here's the question um when it may relate to um an issue since I raise the SRO um or police in school um do you foresee a need or a future opportunity to mine a little deeper in terms of that question uh wellbeing or how students perceive uh police in our schools and or weapons on their hips I'm just curious yeah absolutely so in addition to the qualitative work that we could do in that respect we don't ask about those topics on Panorama but we do in the Minnesota student survey so uh spring of 2022 was the last time we conducted that survey there
066are individual questions in there specifically about um sro's and perceptions and feelings in school among the students that gets done every three years so it would be updated again in Spring of 25 okay thank you Dr Garcia maybe you said this earlier and I was taking copious notes um might you remind us how this information is used for the staff in our district like you're obviously presenting it to us now but I I imagine if I were a teacher watching this tonight and I would think oh my gosh I'm an eighth grade teacher how do I get my kids to feel like they more belong in the classroom are you like meeting with like skip teams and going over this or like how is this shared with them in a meaningful way Panorama data is
067included in skip goals depending on the school so yes that's a part of the uh the idea for sure um last year as a part of uh rolling out the Panorama results after we presented it to the board we also uh set the expectation for building leaders to share it with their staff staff have the ability to look in at uh their school and other schools at this time um about student data they can look at their own school about staff data so um if there are teachers watching and they want to log in and look they can and if they have access problems they can email me okay yeah thank you Dr Garcia it's actually the key question because just just collecting this data and not acting on it doesn't do anything so in
068addition to what Peter mentioned and that you highlighted our school improvement process Panorama also calls what the survey provider calls A playbook and it includes classroom activities that are tied to each of these scales so your example is actually what that's intended for and I will say the qual having created not a small amount of things like that in a previous life not for Panorama the quality is pretty solid um one of the challenges we face with any one of these platforms that we purchase is giving our teachers our counselors social workers enough understanding of what those resources are and the time to discover them so they actually use them um the other thing that uh I know you'll remember we did last year that um I am eager not only to repeat at the
069district-wide level but but to encourage School sites to do is a student Summit and that in this room in partnership with our Cradle to career collaborative we took a look at our data on belonging which last year uh and this year in our secondary schools is much lower than our national comparisons we have a deep issue in our secondary schools around belonging in culture and we've named that and we brought the kids together to hypothesize causes and solutions and then uh at the building level they have been taking a look at those data and um it has actually led to a number of the things that you know Dr barvin could talk about the student school board has taken on and so uh these data give voice to student perceptions and far too often the
070data never make it back to the students so that they can look at it it was fascinating as the students were looking at that data on belonging of course it's an aggregate from all the kids across their schools and so some of them looked at it and said yep that is exactly how I feel and others looked at it and said what what school do they go to that's not but it was a tremendous uh jumping off point to student discussion um and in fact I know about a month ago at Century they are still following up on that and had a student Summit where they brought kids together to say okay A year later where are we with thinking about those issues of belonging and culture so that's something I think we want to
071do uh more and more of as we go forward thank you Dr Workman yeah I just want to say I really appreciate the opportunity that the board has this time to actually see the same information that the teachers and everybody else gets I found it fascinating to look at some of the questions and the responses and you know things are CH churning in my my my mind and I'm really glad I don't have your job and everybody else is very glad I don't have your job but it was you know those those guide books or whatever that teachers could tap into playbooks thank you I haven't looked at those yet but I'm going to when I have some free time I had the related question will that link be active for a while that we
072it won't be deactivated you as far as I know you could look at 2019 data if you really wanted to okay thank you Dr Cook so um there were there were two things I wanted to just chat about a little bit um and and I guess I would put these in the category of at least the way I'm seeing them these are things that jump out as areas where we're doing well and you know the danger when you're always striving to improve is to not lose tracked the things you're already doing well at so the the two categories that I noted and and and you noted as well is that there's no systematic variation among demographic groups and I I did do a few spot checks and try to get a feel for this data
073and um like on the on the importance of an adult relationship in the school they're really along racial or socioeconomic um factors there aren't significant discrepancies which is of a surprising finding in my eyes and then the other thing is that our district seems to stand out um and many of our schools have are standing out on a national percentile basis and in terms of recent progress in really firm classroom teacher student relationships and I know that's certainly a priority there been a few schools where that has been a double digigit in Improvement year over year and what are do we have any perspective on what we think might be driving I don't know which school is on top my head so I probably can't I'm not districtwide I do we know what we're doing
074well skipping we're skipping well um skip I guess I'm not entirely sure how to answer that question um I or maybe I'm not understanding the question no well I I I I think the first thing is that actually we've focused on it and we've named it as a critical priority and we're actually collecting data on it and when we have talked about for instance discipline disparities relationships have been a key explicit part of every conversation if you remember the discussion we had about the cares program they've created at Kellogg where they've dramatically reduced repeat disciplinary infractions relationship building is an explicit component to that along with student self-reflection and restorative practice around how can I not have this happen again and so we've tried to have relationship building be an explicit element when we have
075even talked about things like cell phone use and a way for the day that's happening there we've again said wait a minute how are you actually going to make sure that you are also connecting with that kid not just saying put your darn phone away but there is a relational connection to it and so I think part of it is um uh being intentional about relationships as a continual through line in all of those various things that we're doing um one of the things about just naming some something and then collecting some data on it is that nobody needed us to tell them that relationships matter they got into the field inarguably but you can begin to create situations in which people are um doing it with kids they might not otherwise have connected with
076and so that I think you see within a class within a school people saying we've got to be sure that we don't have kids that are um disconnected and not experiencing those relationships and so I think that's a piece of it and there are uh coming out of some of our skip implementation groups some next steps that I think are pretty exciting we have some of our schools talking about being very intentional about relationship mapping being sure every single kid is directly connected again especially those kids who are most struggling but all kids uh through um not just kind of an exercise where you put the names on the wall but actually through an ongoing sort of um uh continual review process to make sure somebody's connected with each kid and so that's in its
077early stages but it's a I'm not going to name the sites that are thinking about it because they haven't sort of debuted it but they're saying okay how do we get even more systematic about connecting with kids probably not necessarily starting on a schoolwide basis but more at those key transition points like ninth grade like sixth grade like Peter was saying where we know that relational connection can sort of set a kid up for later success like a positive snowball so I think some those are some of those things things I think that um my this is totally unsustainable but I think the significant uh not unsustainable un unsupportable with evidence but I think it's a solid hypothesis I think the pretty dramatic progress we made in high school graduation rates from over the last
078two years I would I would posit probably the number one factor is that relational emphasis when you see an 8.63 increase in your African-American graduation rate that's not an accident that's it's way statistically significant and and so there's probably a lot going on there but I think the relational connection that our high schools were working to make and that happened for every student group uh students with disabilities and students who receive special education services across the board on our grad rates and that's why you're seeing some of that weaving of that disaggregated data showing similar patterns like you were talking about with the item showing no real big differences between groups this is the exact same concept work things are systematically improving that are resulting in that so I was I was thinking about that
079first quotation up there if I had an hour to solve a problem I'd spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and five minutes thinking about Solutions and I remember when I was teaching High School orchestra when one day one of my students said to me Miss Workman do we ever do anything right and I realized I had been so focused on here's the problem you identify what's the problem how can we fix the problem okay let's move on on and I had assumed that because I didn't say anything to them about what they were actually doing well that they knew what it was so I had to really counter the problem solving let's fix it thing with also um an acknowledgement of the things that they were doing well and I think it's good for
080the district to be focused on the things that we're not doing well but in answer to your question uh director cook I think that it's also very important that we celebrate the things that we're doing well um because we're doing a lot of things well that a lot of people don't know about Dr bar uh well I'm not sure that we necessarily need to um reinvent the will um we each heard uh a student earlier um Elementary age um share what works in terms of belonging relationships and um I I think we just should maybe uh listen to the voices of our children and see how we can um make that more of reality in all of our schools and that is reflected in our elementary school data in particular if you look at the
081grade three to five data our elementary schools have pretty high ratings of developing relationships with students um so that's an area of success for sure some of those metrics are pretty high compared nationally director Garcia I was just going to offer the example and of course I'm forgetting the name of it but the equity and engagement staff that went in and like actually talked to the kids about what needs to change and some of that was very powerful and I think just asking them is you know that's helpful and also because in these skips we are putting in ttention of recognizing the thing I think that's also helpful like as a psychologist all my clients like well we need to know what it is that we need to work on and so you need to
082be able to observe that and yourself in order for us to make some of the change and so I think that us doing that on multiple systems level like we are identifying it the schools are identifying it the educators are identifying it now the kids are identifying it and someone's actually asking the questions so that they feel heard I think that also um is contributing to some of the data change for sure Dr mclin um it occurred to me as I'm listening to the my colleagues questions here that do the students receive any basic education on those relationship building um processes I kind of think about you know our high school students do they recogniz so that it factors into their thinking when they're answering these questions and and maybe it's a question of if
083kids didn't have that um exposure in elementary school school that they might not recognize that their teachers and staff are building those relationships intentionally to in improve things like belonging can you speak a little bit about that I yeah Dr mofin that's a great question I know we have um uh I don't want to say Pockets we have places uh certain classes uh certain advisory structures where that's being operationalized where the kids are being essentially educated and empowered around relationships but I think your point is very well taken I don't think we're doing any anything systematically around being sure kids understand the um the role of relationships in their own lives and in their development of course relationships of all kinds uh pure relationships are off the charts influential for kids but also helping students
084understand the value of those adult relationships in their lives um it's something that uh I did in doing research on relationships for 10 years and when you make explicit the role of relationships for young people it's often completely shocking the the notion that a parent or a teacher would care what the kid thinks of them is shocking to the student you mean my teacher cares what I think of them or my parent we did study after study but what was interesting was that was a factor that was actually highly we would call malleable you could shift it where the parent or the teacher said no I I really do like being with you I care what you think it would significantly shift the perspect perspective of the student on the nature of the relationship because
085they saw it as unidirectional they saw it as I'm the kid I I I might care I might like I might have to do the work for you but you must not actually have a uh want a age appropriate professional setting appropriate relationship with me but when teachers made That explicit which some teachers do like sub like automatically when they made That explicit it was highly influential uh with the students and it gave the students kind of a language and a vocabulary so I think we've done a lot with staff I'm not sure we've done nearly as much with students and sort of thinking about how we have them uh seeing the relationship um as that active ingredient that that somebody was talking about earlier like like fluoride and toothpaste and based on your earlier
086research are there certain grades or ages that are ideal for that before they get to be cynical older teens actually the hard reality is it's not like actually I'm not even sure that there was a period where people sort of thought early childhood education was this magic intervention and then it was sustained up through the years and what we're seeing is there are some benefits but you need it through the through the life spectrum and so um strong relationships early provide the foundation but kids need them through those critical Transitions and so uh it really matters at every level of course they're different at every level I mean a high school kid and a and a third grader it is pretty clear though that if you had to prioritize it is a cross Transitions and
087one of the biggest transitions of course we see is from either the home to you know kindergarten or preschool um or um Elementary where you're with the same teacher generally all day to Middle School where you're moving from teachers it's usually bigger that's huge and then of course the Middle School to high school um is is also really gigantic and when you have that relational through line um it's pretty amazing one of my favorite projects we ever did is we had uh kids in a sixth grade do uh videos on what we called their spark the thing that they loved and then we sent the video to their um uh let's see no I said that wrong kids in the fifth grade who were going to middle school they did the video on what I
088love and then we sent them to their sixth grade teacher and we gave the teachers a stud so they didn't have to do this on their free time they watched every video and so the minute they met the kid they were like oh Jean I know horses are your spark and you so the kids walked into the classroom and of course they were fifth graders so the videos were super funny um and it was a really wonderful simple device that had those those new Middle School teachers meeting these kids with a level of sort of to director workman's Point not seeing them for their deficits but seeing them for their strength um so that was a fun project that I haven't thought about for years till now so maybe we got to bring that Out
089of the Dust bin thank you so I know that the Panorama data is an important component of our overall grid of um how we're managing our outcomes and the grid also has the academic data um obviously we know that all of this data on climate and belonging matters to Student Success but is there I don't know I might be absolutely Ely wrong here but is there any way to connect or correlate any of these specific findings with what we're seeing in the academic outcomes like is there is there a component of this that really drives math success or or reading success and how would we even connect that's the next level of statistical analysis that we have to invest some time in doing but is it doable yeah absolutely um there's a few different methods
090we could use uh we we showed I can give you the citations that um it depends on the outcome it's highly connected to grades graduation grade to grade promotion and postsecondary enrollment it is not connected or not statistically significantly connected to test scores with a couple crazy exceptions that I've seen that were quite surprising where it even suggested a relational connection actually improve the test score but those were such small samples I thought something else was probably going on there so I think the way maybe chair Nathan to put it is if the outcome is one that is tightly connected to student motivation student effort student problem solving resilience relationships and culture are probably quite influential in it if it's one that is primarily what we might call Co cognitive like I've L that is
091that I mean you know if the kids not coming to school they can't learn the math but we know that that is about an academic you know instruction or do they have conceptual knowledge do they have a skill set so not so much when we're using a standardized achievement measure but definitely when we're using a lot of those measures that are very important you know outcomes and that are that are on the grid um so U which is not to say we don't value test scores but that they they are a Less Direct connection to these measures any other questions or comments board members thank you Dr R thank you very much thank you all right let's power through these action items shall we um first action item is 7.1 2024 2026 Community Education work
092guide this is an action item do we have a presentation very brief we have a couple of colleagues I want to ask Amy Ike who is our executive director of Community Education Community Partnerships and nature R who is our able leadership able leader of our school age child care um board members this is a a frequent item that you approve um and there's a zillion things in there that you are approving as the matter of a work guide I asked Amy and Nate to be here because as uh as you know as part of our attendance option redesign we they are leading a major effort to expand participation in our school age Child Care Program and that is touched on in this so you can ask about anything that is in this very long guide
093that you have in draft but my thought was in particular to uh have them give you a glimpse of that effort that is underway right now that I think is very important and exciting and anything else that they think is of particular importance to highlight but that's something that I know is very much on people's minds as we're looking at this proposal that is out there so Amy and N thank you so much unroll our whole list yes all right about all right thank you board members drel uh t typically we bring you this work guide for update in the spring usually in May in anticipation of an effective date of July one but as Dr pel said as part of the sac expansion which we would like to get rolling on as soon as
094possible uh we're bringing you the whole guide with the sac changes that we would have brought you in the spring it does mean there are a couple of things that are still in development for example the earn sick and safe time language is quite finalized yet with the new law so you saw a note in there about that um you also saw some heavy deletion of specific insurance language uh now that the district has standardized much of the insurance procedures instead of listing it out here and potentially having an inconsistency we've decided just to point back to the district information on insurance the board item has the major language and Financial changes but we thought we'd give you a little bit of highlight in the sac area so a little background um as you know
095sack is school age child care is offered before and after school at all 17 of our sites we currently have 1547 students um enrolled in Sac um we fall under a Minnesota administrative rule I can give the number if you'd like it but it says that we need a staff to student ratio of 1 to 15 for school age students and so as we staff up for the number of students that attend each day in the morning in afternoon I should say as Nate staff's up for that he's keeping that ratio in mind and that has been what has limited Us in certain locations so we do have a wait list at seven of our sites we we have currently 183 students on the weight list across those seven sites uh Gibbs Jefferson Bamber and
096Franklin are the largest and then we've also got fwell gagee and Riverside um as is typical in a school Age Care environment um really all of child care environment uh Workforce turnover is common both from the um the workforce finding additional work in other fields or in other places um where the wage could make a difference moving from one job to another we also have quite a few students that begin with us maybe in high school or college and then matriculate out and so they're headed out to their future career and we lose them for good reason but um nonetheless they need to be replaced so Nate is on a constant hiring process I believe you hired 80 people and we passed 80 people on to their next adventure as well so it's a constant
097um replacement cycle um I've asked Nate to talk to you a little bit about the expansion particularly and what he's been working on for um supporting that effort so uh with the bell time change being a complex uh situation right now our biggest need is in the mornings um because school doesn't start till about that 9:15 920 range next year with out early that's what the big change will be we'll need more staff in the afternoon than in the morning uh so a couple things that we are looking at for expanding um which you've kind of heard about um in the last couple weeks is the wages that we're going to hopefully today take care of um that will help retain the staff that uh are working for school age childcare right now um we
098do have a lot of turnover a lot of turnover for good reasons but we want to keep and retain them for as long as possible I've been working with uh Jackie Peterson um chief of schools to uh have high school students get credit for school um I think we have a very good plan uh to make that happen so that they will get out of school a little early uh to be able to come work for us at sack um to make that happen um and then also working with uh HR and uh Carl ban uh to increase a uh position that would be an ESP position uh it would be an eight hour position giving part of that time at the end of the day for them to come directly to us um to
099help us out right away because our need will be so great in the afternoon as all the kids will be coming to us um immediately after school uh currently and I I want to jump to summer as well um summer expansion even though we're talking school year summer expansion is also on my mind I'm looking at taking about 300 more students uh this summer um um up back to about five 500 per site we're open at three sites for the summer so it be 500 uh students per site for summer uh currently I'm working on clearing the weight list Amy talked about that there is uh weight list like the number of weight list kids right now is 183 however we have taken 166 kids off the weight list since the beginning of the school
100year uh so what remains is um almost 50% we've taken off we moved into the program moved into the program yes sorry just mve into program so um uh continuing to do that uh working on hiring more staff um over the past two weeks I have um hired somewhere in the range of five to six staff which has been huge on creating more spots um I think we've taken more kids off the weit list in the last couple weeks than we have in about a month and a half off of that um and then sack it's it's an ongoing effort to hire staff um as we have staff that are going in and out uh this will be an ongoing effort uh starting now until uh school year and continuing on from there thank you
101board members any oh director cook um do we anticipate any changes in the um the fees related to amilies that want to participate in Sac in connection with um changing compensation for the employees of Sac yes proportionate change is okay typically we'll be able to use some Community ad fund balance you saw tonight in the financial document we've got some room there um but the fees do typically follow the um the expenses yeah Dr mclock um I just have a practical question that kind of comes from my daytime job are you able to take uh County daycare assistance um is that promoted to families is that something we need to promote more to more families uh we we promote it uh to the families that call so we've talk to families um and some families
102that um haven't necessarily called that we've kind of seen as we've been working through our financial assistance mention do you think that that's something as we roll out potentially needing more spots for more kids next year that that might be something we can promote again for or for new families coming in that AR to wear that'd be great thank you I think we have about 120 children currently on um child care assistance yes that'd be great how many high school students do you usually employ um currently um I think I'm somewhere in the range of uh 20 to 25 high school students um I probably have somewhere in the range of 12 to 15 that are looking for positions at this time right now so I do have a lot of that are coming up
103and that probably that number is actually low that I have right now working because I do have a lot that are work are um in sports right now any other questions board members I think I'll read the resolution be it resolved that the school board of Independent School District 535 does approve the 2024 26 Community Education work guides as presented move approval second it has been moved and seconded if there's no further discussion all in favor of the resolution I I opposed resolution has been approved thank you thank you both item 7.2 approval of school district property tax levy payable in 2024 this is an action item I'll read read the resolution ask for Mo motion and second and if received we will open the floor for discussion be it resolved that the school board
104of Independent School District 535 Rochester Minnesota being a school district in Olstead County Minnesota that there be and is hereby proposed a levy upon all taxable property in said School District a new calendar year 2023 School tax for fiscal year 2024 in the amount of 76 m348 18 98 as follows general fund 48,4 3,657 Community Services fund 3,874 74014 General Debt Service fund 24,43 5736 for total certified Levy of76 m348 move approval second it has been moved and seconded any questions or discussion hearing none all in favor of the resolution say I I opposed the resolution has been approved board members just a few housekeeping items uh item 8.1 is our ABCD updated um there is usually an ABCD calendar here but we have reached the end of our calendar year and we have completed
105all of our meetings and our agenda items so the annual Board calendar draft for 2024 will be approved by the board early next year and we will have the same setup as we've had in the past where uh board members and the community will be able to see uh months ahead of time what we have scheduled uh for our board meeting agendas um un under other business uh board questions and responses there are no questions submitted by board members before the meeting our upcoming board meeting dates are for 2024 and uh note to the audience that all of our study sessions and regular meetings in 2024 will begin at 5:30 p.m. we will no longer have a diff a different starting time for study sessions and regular meetings that first meeting will be January 9th
106uh regular meeting January 16th is a study session and January 23rd is another regular meeting item 10.1 closed session for superintendent evaluation 2022 23 outcomes component the next item on the agenda is a closed session pursuant to Minnesota statute section 13d do5 subdivision 3B which allows the board to go into Clos session to evaluate the performance of an individual who is subject to its Authority while in closed session the board will engage in a confidential discussion of the outcomes component of the 2022 23 performance evaluation of superintendent Kent bcel in addition pursuant to Minnesota statutes 13d do5 the board will summarize our conclusions regarding the evaluation at the January 9th 2024 meeting pursuant to the law I have cited will someone make a motion to go into Clos session can I wait hold on I
107wanted to add something about a future agenda item can I do that before we do this real quick or do you want me to wait until after the Clos session and we come back let's do when we come back okay uh second her motion okay it has been moved and seconded to go into close session all those in favor say I I any opposed the board moves into close session at 8:16 p.m. have [Music] okay Karen she [Music] list the board returned to the regular meeting at 9:38 p.m. Clark mclin will you please read the list of people present in the closed session uh we had chair Nathan director Barlo uh superintendent pel director cook clerk mlin treasur Garcia director Marvin and vice chair Workman you I believe there's one other item of a business
108yes just very quickly so I was inspired by Dr rucks Panorama uh data presentation and my hope is that we can add perhaps a study session in the new year um or sooner I suppose um to direct the creation of a survey on how the community consumes if at all Schoolboard Communications particularly around our decisions and how they're made in the district um because I am feeling like the district my communication staff myself like there's content creation and communication fatigue like we are consistently putting out information and yet we keep hearing from community members that they feel quote blindsided betrayed misled about information and we've been talking about these things for weeks and months on end and so I feel like if we knew how they were consuming in whatever way then we could have
109that sort of Panorama type screener and then have a deeper discussion about like how do we just narrow our Communications into the way that people are actually receiving them because there's clearly a disconnect here really good idea thank you thank you all right so hearing know other business this meeting is adjourned at 9:40 p.m T I left my bag in the other room