School Board Meeting, January 17, 2023

001board clerk Miss Laurie Sam Ms Sam would you please call the roll director Barlow here director cook here Treasurer Garcia here clerk McLaughlin here director Marvin here chair Nathan here Vice chair Workman here we now offer the opportunity to say the Pledge of Allegiance [Music] allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all foreign item 2.01 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 aye aye any opposed the agenda has been approved next item on the agenda is 3.01 comments to the board it is important for the school board to hear from our stakeholders

002regarding issues that impact our students staff families and schools we welcome communication via email phone call at our community engagement listening sessions and hear during comments to the board a reminder that policy 206 and procedure 206-a in accordance with Minnesota statute set the time place and manner procedures and restrictions on comments to the board the policy and procedure focus on privacy protections for students and staff and prohibit comments that are threatening profane lewd vulgar obscene harassing abusive or constitute a personal attack on an individual we welcome two speakers this evening when your name is called please come to the table choose a microphone to speak into and be seated you'll be heard more clearly by the board and those in the room if you are seated and speak directly into the microphone you will have

003three minutes to speak and the timer will be displayed on the screens in the room please begin your remarks by stating your name our first speaker round of requests that were granted so I we thought that was very interesting um and so our funds to support these grants come from personal and business donations including School District payroll deductions we also have an honor of staff member fundraiser we have fundraisers which include Boo Fest and movie nights and others that we're looking at and we have established Memorial funds and here's a list of our funds I won't go through that but there was our first one was established in 1989 and our last one was just established last year so we're still trying to raise funds to provide more and more grants and at any point

004we can also add to these funds and I'll introduce Grace hello um so our this Grand cycle fall winter 2022-2023 we awarded 10 302.63 to fund five Innovative projects um in RPS School District um and two of those will benefit all elementary students district-wide we've received a record number of applications this year 22 so that was pretty exciting and we selected the five winning projects using a diverse group of volunteer Grant scores our high scoring applications proposed projects that are not currently available in the district and that offer unique and Innovative learning experiences with long-term impact we also ask our grant recipients to follow up with a brief report to indicate how their project went and include photos and in February we'll actually be having a um a former Grant recipient common discussed their project

005with you at the the next school board meeting so we'd like to give our first award to Donna brunskill in recognition of her project tool shed and Outdoor Classroom anchor for the John Adams World Garden well thank you very much we appreciate this greatly at John Adams we are building a world garden and incorporating gardening practices from around the world it's a large garden and this grant in conjunction with a grant from the people's food co-op is going to allow us to build a tool shed and what's kind of neat about this is we're going to partner with Community Ed and the students are going to be learning trade skills and the students will be building it with teacher support So this Tool Shed will go with our world Garden it'll anchor an outdoor classroom

006area for us and I think it'll be a valuable part of the school so thank you very much foreign [Applause] recipient is Jennifer brunger and her project is learning in the making reimagining the Longfellow maker space for 2023. um then we'd like to recognize Julie McLaren for her project at Gage Elementary dual reset rooms I have Amy Hughes with me as well which is our assistant principal at Gage um we have a few notes we'd like to share okay mental health has been identified as a public health need in Olmsted County the need is exacerbated at Gage Elementary due to stressors on students families where many students are at risk because of economic hardship and of high prevalence of adverse childhood experiences or Aces during the past year our care team spent 26 000 44

007minutes about 72 full school days worth of time supporting students who are dysregulated so Gage's dual reset rooms will help provide a space and the necessary tools to coach students on strategies to self-regulate their emotions and responses to difficult situations the refocus room one half of the Dual reset rooms will help students organize Tangled Bots while the re-energized room will help students to burn excess energy productively with strategic coaching with our care team and our dual reset rooms students will return to a learning State sooner more regularly and more independently with this intervention we will see a reduction in the number of minutes the care team is responding to dysregulation calls and an increase in academic achievement as students are able to stay more focused on learning thank you [Music] all right and lastly we'd

008like to recognize Laura Ealing for her two projects Edison robots and Bebop robots which will benefit all elementary schools in the district thank you so computer science promotes system thinking problem solving testing debugging coding with robots teaches computer literacy and digital citizenship promotes creators of technology and not just consumers of Technology the more students that we have that understand computer science the more Innovations and new technology we can produce as a society all this starts with coding with robots in the elementary school so these two robotic progress grants that I got will be used by all elementary school students through the library system so thank you very much [Music] [Applause] something else that we have started is to honor an RPS staff member and we will accept donations to specifically honor our PS staff members

009and a lot of times we'll set it up like with an end of the year or holiday season gift and so if you're interested you can check our psf.org to honor an RPS staff member and our next opportunity will be in late May our next Grand cycle is also coming up we end one and then we start planning for the next one and so that will be for projects taking place during the 2023-24 school year application dates will be announced in March by email to staff so start thinking about good ideas for next year we're always looking for help with scoring these Grant submissions and we particularly need RPS staff to be on there so get in touch with us if you're interested and we are very grateful to the district for its support and

010cooperation in bringing these Innovative proposals to life for more information on us how to volunteer join our board of directors or donate to support the mission so we can give more grants check our website rpsf.org and at this point are there any questions okay thank you so much thank you thank you I think I would be remiss if I didn't thank both Jenny and Grace but also recognize that returning to our boardroom for the first time since the end of her term is former School Board Dr Edmondson who I know works very intently on on these RPF rpsf grants every year so welcome back agenda item 4.02 board member committee updates does anyone have any updates uh from their committee since the last meeting I'll begin go ahead I'm a um I attended my first

011family and Community engagement uh new assignment meeting and how exciting it was we have the opportunity in terms of this particular agenda to speak with individuals who were presenting and sharing information as it relates to Broad term uh Hispanic Latin communities and in doing so I realized that unless there's a intentional intentional effort to hear and understand where other people are coming from you can waste a lot of time thinking that you know where they are and and so this particular time was spent allowing uh individuals to share their Journey to share their uh challenges one particular person through a community ed was able to accomplish a number of goals and uh one final comment I'd like to make regarding family and Community engagement is uh I was unaware that the I only hesitate because

012the question was raised to Hispanics prefer to be called Hispanics Latino and so I don't watch and the question was said the statement was made well to avoid offending anyone you should probably ask them and so I'm not trying to offend I'm actually going the opposite direction trying not to offend but I discovered that there's a Saturday school uh that occurs where students who have uh origin or Roots within and identify such are able to go spend a number of hours culture language and then the basics of Education I thought what a wonderful thing and how I will do my due diligence to become more supportive of that particular Community sometimes we only focus on community as we may Define it or we may be a part of and I realize the importance of a

013broadening if you will of that view and then if I may also comment regarding this past week's experience at the Statewide School Board conference I know my colleagues will I want to comment quite a bit themselves so I'll be brief time well spent uh one of the keynote speakers uh shared the importance of whether we are aware of the weight of the backs that we may carry and lug around they are indeed nonetheless still there and may potentially affect our view of self and others and I thought that was so important because sometimes we are wondering well what the problem or what the deal is in terms of why is this person acting that way or wanting to be more responsive to certain things and it could very well be because of the weight that's

014occurring and and so I'll afford my colleagues the opportunity to expound further director Marvin um as uh Mr Barlow said at the Minnesota school boards Association conference in Minneapolis there are uh representatives from all over the state and some wonderful workshops that help board members become better board members one thing that particularly struck me though was the Serendipity of how virtually every District in the state is involved in deeper learning the notion that we want kids to really connect with what they're learning to learn how to do something with that and I was particularly taken by these uh it works they weren't workshops they were they called the round table things with with students from different schools demonstrating what they'd learned and it was all about I learned this in school and I'm using it

015to do something meaningful it was Project based it was Hands-On and the kids were so jazzed about it the one that I loved the most were these middle school kids who had learned how to refurbish old laptops fix them and then provide them for free to students who didn't have who didn't have a device so the kids are learning all these Tech issues they're also learning about communication they're learning about giving back about service and they have never had so much fun these are middle school kids so I'm thinking um we're doing we're doing a lot of things well here and I think we're going in the right direction preparing our students for the future um our education that we're providing is not what it was 30 years ago and and I'm really really hopeful

016about um especially about this deeper learning initiative as well as many of the programs we're already doing well okay okay I attended a session at the same conference that was entitled The advocacy roadmap for you and your District putting passion for public education into action I really appreciated the focus on public education and the passion for that because I think not only this table but I'm hoping everyone in the audience also shares that same passion and it literally gave participants a road map for that advocacy with the current legislative session so I'm excited to take a deeper look at that and share it with the other members of the legislative committee that I think it'll give us some idea gaps of some things that we hadn't thought about yet that we can definitely do here

017at RPS oops all right thanks for those comments next item on our agenda is 4.03 strategic plan summary superintendent um thank you director Nathan and board members and I particularly have to thank director Nathan not only for that introduction but for this amazing visual which I know took you hours and hours together actually finding the Legos they have done that but as Miss Sam is bringing up a graphic we want to make that kind of big and for Kirk in there with their millions and millions of people on YouTube show the graphic you don't need to show me um we have got 130 page strategic plan that is in the research report that Wilder research prepared and since the board approved that in July we have been working to try and get clearer and clearer

018and clearer what the future director of Rochester Public School future direction of Rochester Public Schools really is and some out there who are tracking things like this will know we tried a a a series of concentric circles that started with the student and moved it out and there were a number of people who really loved it and a number of people for whom that level of complexity made their heads hurt and so this is our final representation of our strategic plan and I will be going out to meet with every school and program faculty in the district to share this and discuss it and also with a wide array of Community Partners and we settled ultimately on building blocks which uh uh Alex and our Communications office uh kind of updated to Lake goes with

019the idea that we really are building a fundamentally different School District here I think a school district that is going to look extraordinarily different three years from now and especially five years from now so as we looked at the initiatives that are in that 130 page document we tried to come up with a series of themes that run across those initiatives and you can see them on the side of the building blocks graphic the first involves shifting some of the fundamental systems that enable teaching and learning in our district the second is empowering people who make all the difference in making those systems effective the third is creating authentic communities at the school district and Community level the fourth level is strengthening some critical supports for our students and then at the top as director

020Marvin was just mentioning is a commitment to deeper learning so very briefly because the test of this is keeping it simple enough to follow but not losing the complexity of the very ambitious agenda that this board has approved so if you look at the shifting systems piece it starts with changing the way we fund and staff our schools that is work we will begin designing next year and implementing the in the 2024-2025 school year the reason that begins next year is because this year we're getting the academic agenda right but that is really critical work that will kick in next year we've already begun the second building block which is restructuring School Improvement the board has gotten updates from many of our schools and we're going to hear from another one tonight about how we

021are really rethinking the way we help our schools get better at getting better in having clear and actionable goals and using data and evidence to make decisions and having really effective collaborative processes to achieve the ambitious outcomes that we have for our students the third building block is one that will also begin next year and that is a systematic review of school board policy to ensure that they are advancing equity and there's some definitional work there to decide what exactly that means but it grew strongly out of the community process that led to our strategic plan and in essence I think of it as saying do our policies serve the students from marginalized communities and for whom we know the status quo won't hold the fourth building block there which will be before this board

022in some form this spring is redesigning aspects of our transportation system we know we have a number of issues starting with addressing our school start times and I got some emails from teachers elementary teachers on that this week and no we haven't dropped that but it's broader than that it's also ensuring that we are offering the highest quality set of options to all Rochester students in every part of the city and so stay tuned on that one and then finally it's appropriate when we had the Rochester Public Schools Foundation here today next year we'll also kick off a major effort to increase philanthropic support for the district later on the board's agenda tonight will be receipt requests for you to approve us accepting a 1.2 million dollar Grant from a national Foundation to support our

023work on deeper learning I think it's just the beginning of what we can achieve in terms of philanthropic support second County category there is empowering people the first building block there is strengthening our recruitment induction and support of staff that is going to be critical it's soon critical for all staff and especially for staff who are underrepresented in our school district when compared to our student demographics the next building block in the empowerment category is developing leadership capacity and we have got a strong start this year in providing coaching for our principals but we are going to be defining what it means to be a high quality leader at the school district and also teacher leader levels and rolling out a series of supports to help our leaders continuously more effectively guide this strategy uh

024throughout our district also kicking off next year will be a major strategy to uplift youth voice and Leadership and youth voice and leadership are two terms that are related but distinct use voice meaning do our students have a way to have their perspectives their ideas heard and acted upon and listened to in our schools but youth leader ownership is developing our kids as Leaders can they run a meeting can they meet with someone in authority and present some options can they organize their peers to actually bring change in their schools and in their communities and then finally in the empowerment category building Pathways for every student to be sure that they are ready when they walk across that stage at high school graduation with a post-secondary institution or a career option that reflects their interests

025their passions their talents that is not work that can start as we all know in 11th grade it literally needs to begin in kindergarten as kids are thinking about what they love who they are progressing through middle school as they decide where their passions are in terms of learning our third level is that creating Community this board has talked often about the work that we are doing around belonging ensuring that all kids can be uh there and become their best selves in our schools it's also where we are setting high expectations for students and dealing with some of the issues that uh not only Rochester has encountered but schools all over the country have encountered with students coming back from the pandemic and as we heard a number of meetings ago we've seen a very

026significant improvement in our disciplinary rates this year as opposed to last year but that that building block is about much more than discipline it's about school culture and it's about inclusion next one in the community category is parent and family engagement and I have just received from the working group working on that a really exciting proposal for our family engagement framework that I look forward to sharing with the board so this year's priority is deciding on the big strategy for family engagement next year we'll kick off creating a program that will provide some of our parents for whom School in general may not have been the most positive experience or perhaps they're entirely new to the country and helping our families who want additional support understand how to make education and the education system work

027better for their children and then the third building block in that Community category is a new approach to Community Partnerships really making sure that Rochester Public Schools is an authentic partner for Community organizations that are also working to serve our students and our families and that we are not only asking them whether it's volunteer tutoring at the school level or system change at the district level to help us meet our goals but that we're also working to help them meet theirs then that fourth category of strengthening support we will be in March receiving the results of our implementation review from the University by the University of Minnesota of our multi-tiered systems of support academically socially emotionally behaviorally in the district where are we ensuring that all kids at that first tier are experiencing a solid

028Core Curriculum but that students who need additional support are receiving it in a tier two that doesn't pull them out of that classroom but that provides them with that additional assistance in reading and math in whatever subject area and then at the top of the pyramid are intentional supports for students for whom the traditional learning environment may not be effective but it also can be with additional support and we'll be looking to Dr Obama in the office of academics to be leading that really critical work going forward finally in the strength and support category is the work that we've decided we need to do with mental health not just for students but also for staff and so we have a study session coming up on that we know Dr Garcia is a practitioner and leader

029in that area and her day job and so that will actually be really exciting to begin that work in Earnest we know it's a societal crisis right now and we need to step up our work in RPS and then finally at the Pinnacle the the green Lego is that work around deeper learning which has the board discussed at its last study session uh in our framework is a combination of three things Mastery identity and creativity Mastery of course being that students actually truly Master a Core Body of Core Concepts and foundational skills a less is more approach second that they form identities as Learners as scientists as artists as writers that are connected to that learning and finally creativity as Dr Marvin was just saying they actually use that knowledge College to solve problems and

030create things that are meaningful to them so when I when people ask me about what's really Innovative about what we're trying to do in Rochester Public Schools I think there are actually lots of answers to that there are a lot of places where people talk about youth voice youth leadership and it never really gets operationalized there's a lot of places where people talk about diversifying the teaching core and others and we don't see the numbers change so I think within a lot of the building blocks there are Innovative new ideas but if I had to say the single most Innovative thing that we're undertaking it's that we're trying to do it all and we're trying to do it all in a coherent way that many districts bite off a piece of this and they're we're

031going to do we're the family engagement District or where the literacy District or where the leadership District or where the funding you know the student-weighted formula funding district and I think we appropriately are trying to put all those pieces together in a coherent way it's challenging it's complex but I hope this graphic it takes us at least one step closer to being able to identify there's 15 things there's 15 Big Ideas that we're going to be pursuing for the next at least two and a half years I don't think it'll be done then but that's when the Strategic plan ends and the school board at that time can consider next steps so you didn't have a timer on chair Nathan I don't know how I did but I think it's better than the concentric circles

032so we're getting a little bit closer and we look forward to continually sharpening this there will be a new page on our website that will debut with an initial version of this in the near future you will then be able to click on each one and find the specific definitions by what we mean who's working on it and ultimately by the end of this school year timelines milestones and ultimately a data dashboard that shows where our outcomes are against this ambitious agenda and that's my report thank you board members any questions Dr Workman um this is just a comment on what you said about building blocks and concentric circles and as I'm looking at this model here I'm thinking how would we have built concentric circles with these building blocks so I really really like

033um this and once again thank you chair Nathan for chasing down the Legos not hard at my house all right moving on to our consent agenda would any board member like to remove any item from the consent agenda for separate consideration approval second it has been moved and second seconded to approve the consent agenda all in favor of approving the consent agenda say aye aye any opposed the consent agenda is approved yes so um unfortunately um once again on the consent agenda board members is the passing of a member of the Rochester schools family and in this case it's Lori and Mack who died at age 60 of ovarian cancer she died peacefully she fought courageously for more than two years I was fortunate to have overlapped with her in the district though she was

034not always here in the Edison building she was always incredibly connected to the work that we were doing um Lori was born in Austin so not far away she graduated from high school there in the early 80s she went on to get her English degree at UW Lacrosse and then her master's degree at St Mary's and she was a teacher she taught for many years and then ultimately felt that she wanted to work with teachers to enhance their capacity to serve students and so she became a literacy coach and I heard again and again about her passion and her commitment for that work and coaching and I know she left a really lasting imprint on the teachers she worked with and the students she worked with she loved going for weekend cruises with her husband

035making cards for her family and friends and spending time with her for grandchildren and so we are thinking of her husband Sean Mack here in Rochester and um are grateful for the work that she did in our district for many years thank you superintendent the next section of our agenda are Focus topics we have two tonight and our first is item 6.01 extracurricular activities like you see people moving that's good come on down um chair Nathan and directors this is a subject that board members asked for an update on and so we're pleased to provide that for you it's really a pulse check on where we are with the opportunities for Youth Development and learning that happen outside the school day so Jackie Peterson our chief of schools and Mark Weasley who is our activities

036director at Century High School and coordinates the work of our activity directors are going to give us an overview of this I will just say that when we had the school board study session the other night about deeper learning I was struck by how many of us including how many board members shared a learning experience that occurred in an extracurricular activity and I was reflecting on the fact that a number of years ago they did a study of people who won Nobel prizes in science and when they asked where where did your love of science originate 90 of the Nobel laureates did not name the classroom they named something like an extracurricular activity or a family connection now the classroom was critical but the spark often happens outside that classroom so thank you Jackie and

037Mark for an overview of this and we'll be really eager for the issues that you as board members would like us to continue pursuing as we work to strengthen the extracurricular work so while this presentation kind of summarizes where we are we're eager for your thoughts about where we should go in this area thank you I'm uh Mark's sidekick tonight but I'm gonna first acknowledge that you will note in the data and we did provide a supporting document with some deeper data than what we have in the PowerPoint an absence of the robust data we have about student participation in sports and as the mom of two girls who are now adults graduates of RPS who spent more of their time in activities academic activities they were on the golf team I don't know how

038much they helped the century Panthers Excel there but they didn't like missing school they didn't like being away from school but to play in a day-long golf tournament but they you know first they spent their time on buses at five in the morning going up to the cities for to participate in debate uh my one daughter was in the orchestra pit a number of times under the stage playing and supporting other youth who were participating in activities that are not athletic and I commit to you that we will do a better job of keeping track of the number of students who are participating in activities that are non-competitive in the future so we can report on that they are just as important as of the athletes who hear about regularly so I'm going to turn

039it over to Mark to go through the PowerPoint with you good evening everyone and again thank you for the opportunity to come and chat with you this evening first of all our Middle School opportunities we have a plethora of items that our students can get involved in and theirs is based on the quarter system and through the community at office and again this changes from year to year for our students and their opportunities there is one item there that's not listed and there is a seventh grade football that we offer through Community Education but that one is in limbo and if you want me to go into detail on that I could at a later time currently in our high school programs we offer 30 competitive programs over 70 levels of participation those are squads

040teams in the fall we have nine athletic teams winter we have 11 and spring we have 10 programs and again our programs are driven by numbers most of them are eight seven through twelve some are 8 through 12 summer 9 through 12 an example of a 9 through 12 program as our boys basketball just because we have such high numbers there we want to offer that opportunity to high school age students first therefore we don't if we're going to cut we want to try and keep our ninth grade students or as many of them as we can because that is their first experience in our high school programming and across the board I would say in our ninth grade teams we really try to do that is to keep as many ninth graders as possible

041because that is their first opportunity then we go from the Athletics to the activities and as Jackie said this is truly an important part of our programming I had two daughters also yearbook advisor the chair of the yearbook Drumline and um variety of things that my daughters were involved in at the high school level and Paul and I are very proud of what they did in our school community at Century High School but these are competitive activities that travel they have a paid advisor and I separated that group because these students normally pay a fee to participate in that programming and that goes to offset our costs for the paid advisors and for some of the transportation costs this is the group that we're continuing to focus on and try and get better participation numbers

042now that we're registering them for the activity and they're paying a fee and that type of thing the non-competitive still have a paid advisor but I consider these more of a loose group except for there's a couple in there that are pretty well defined for us but kids come and go in some of these activities or they're in for a semester and then they're out or they're in for just a certain active and then they're back out and then the last part there is the clubs and organizations we have in our schools anywhere from 20 to 40 clubs and organizations that run one year don't run the next and this group is basically an Open Door those are advisors that open their door after school for students to come in it could be quilting it

043could be card playing it could be um just a variety of non-traditional activities that the students want to do or to get together and talk about Foursquare and bread baking yeah a couple I remember yeah yeah um the next um participation data that we do have available for you is this is a duplicated participation and these are the students that are on our roster three times a year fall winter and spring so I wanted to give you a five-year summary of our boys participation numbers and then also our girls participation numbers so as an example last year for Century High School we had 1200 students participating in our athletic programs John Marshall we had 930 and mail we had 1287 students participating big numbers for one person and a support staff of an office manager

044to help us get those kids registered each time so you think about that there's 1200 kids we registered from beginning a school year to the end of the school you're just at Century alone that's kudos to our support staff those three ladies do an awesome job for us the other is the unduplicated and I have to keep a close eye on this unduplicated number because of our Title IX compliance and we try to make sure that we're offering as many competitive voice programs as we do girls programs and currently we have more girls programs than boys programs in Rochester Public Schools I petitioned in 1997 to add competitive girls dance to the Department of Education and got it approved so that one is a competitive activity for us but those numbers help us cheerleading does

045not help us in Title IX compliance when it comes to participation numbers because it's a non-competitive activity so and then the high school league we have to stay within those parameters so I can't use non-high School league sports for Title IX I can only use those that are titled listed as competitive activities so um in a summary for you pre-covered district-wide we had a variation of 2.9 percent post covid we were up to 3.81 percent girls are participating less than boys um as I teach this course on a yearly basis for athletic directors all over Minnesota our Benchmark is three to five percent in the building level last year mail was at 6.6 John Marshall actually had more girls participating than boys in century was at 4.75 percent in boys versus girls participation I'll talk

046a little bit down the road here about the impact of adding programs again this goes up and down so I try to look at it over a five-year period are we still offering the right programs for our students we I want to start this by saying we have outstanding coaches and advisors at John Marshall High School right now our number of students participating in John Marshall is significantly this this last year lower than the other two schools um I do believe that is attendance boundaries I do believe it's social economics and uh the availability of programmings for students at the Youth Level coming into the high school level we are very aware of this uh Brian urkey and I have had many conversations about how we can change this and what our next steps are

047within our programming but again just because you see the numbers down in that school it's not the coaches or the advisors they're working really hard on participation in their programming can I interject just one thing I know my colleague will Ruffin is working with John Marshall to remove barriers if it's transportation to get students to practice at John Marshall but that is a focus in his office as well participation our most popular still continue to be a football volleyball boys and girls soccer the basketball track and field our track and field numbers are expounding greatly and that's awesome again extracurricular interests that we need to see grow I know it's um a strategic plan but our Middle School programming has to change we are getting such a huge gap between the Haves and the have-nots

048of what is offered in our athletic programming for our students I would say right now if you don't come in with years of experience you're not going to make some of our teams and that's a that's a shame from where we were 5 10 15 years ago with some of our programming if we're really going to look at this Middle School experience it really needs to be focused on the educational part of it the skill development the practice times that ratio of practice times and then a well-balanced schedule sometimes our non-school programs are are more worried about playing more games and less practice and they're running these kids all over Rochester Metro Upper Midwest all of those types of things um as we look at possible offerings in the future boys volleyball it continues to

049push to the front we had another meeting again the other day with the High School league about this activity I do believe it's going to be well it has been labeled as an emerging sport so they now have a couple of years to get everything in place for themselves with their feeder program and their stability um but this sport if we choose to add it will significantly change our boy girl racial numbers as I talked about several slides ago um this one will jump um if I were to categorize girls for us to go up three percent and girls is 15 to 20 girls this will jump our boys eight to ten percent because there'll be 50 to 60 boys that'll do this sport right away um so that's the complexity as we look down

050the road at adding this and I just want to be honest I think it's a great activity it's a great activity because some of the kids that are involved are not our traditional students [Music] um there are more black and brown students that are doing this so we just have to figure out a way of balancing that to make sure that our girl what can we do for girls to increase that number as well um and another great activity that I'm very proud of is the yes I'm very proud of this uh is the girls wrestling uh that's been coming on my daughters would not have been allowed to wrestle but this is another great activity where we have uh seven to nine girls now wrestling and that is growing in the state of Minnesota

051we went from 250 to well over 590 girls participating in one calendar year so our numbers are great clay targets another support activity but it's not a competitive activity under the high school league another example of a support activity is robotics I can't use robotics yet with our participation numbers even though it's a competitive activity it's a support activity for us um and then the other thing is is I think we just we're trying within the department to take our current offerings how can we enhance them how can we have a better experience to get more kids involved and to remove those barriers and um some of the barriers that we continue to talk about is the elimination are we currently probably 18 20 years ago I sat in front of the school board and

052we talked about free and reduced lunches and how do we get kids involved and it was very very straightforward conversation at that time that we did not want to have that barrier so um we offer if a student is on free or reduced lunch irregardless of whether they can afford it or not we waive their fee for participation in athletics or activities so we take that barrier away right away and we've never been asked to offset that loss with those participation numbers or with that loss of Revenue and that's been a great thing that the school board has allowed us to do so I don't have to go to a foundation or go someplace else to find that funding source um Team fundraisers are continuing to go more and more off the rail but it's

053a part of what we're doing donations are a part of what we have Minnesota State High School league Foundation helps a little bit it was nice to see that there was a recognition for the Rochester Public Schools Foundation I did start an athletic fund when I was on the board back 10 12 years ago and that fund is growing a little bit there other barriers are transportation for kids to and from practice we try to encourage our coaches and advisors to get the van training but there still is a little resistance with the liability piece and their comfort level with doing that and then there's a lot of pros and cons with on-site versus off-site practices and and the like with that some facilities like Century I have 107 Acres which offers me the opportunity

054to have more practices on site at one time but John Marshall at 39 Acres can offer the same number of on-site practices at the same time um our co-ed adaptive Athletics is another one that's been growing and it's been great support through the board's help we have soccer floor hockey and softball our programs again it's an inclusion of kids in our programming Minnesota State High School league is as in the process of rewriting the bylaw to change how that is supported currently our wording as an example for soccer is it's a 16-week season and um our our adapted students cannot do a 16-week season like our able-bodied students and so I've been working with the coaches association and we rewrote this and it it should pass but anyway um the any other pieces United Sports

055was another component that keeps on coming up and and talking with us about opportunities there and also some Special Olympics items too some challenges of course our facilities I'm very hundred dollars a student we charge 205 at the high school level for 18 weeks and it's six hundred dollars for and they don't pay for the coach they don't Supply Transportation they don't pay for the officials and um so I think some of our facility costs are driving kids out of that programming because the fees are going so High um knowledge of Sport the Staffing piece the knowledge of sport and finding advisors who have that knowledge or even want to apply we continually are looking for bypoc coaches and advisors to apply officials Transportation our transportation costs are up 50 percent this year for us

056and that's an alarming change within the department we've added um we also have some eligibility concerns that are always there with us and our student athletes as they come and go from District to District um I also need to say since 19 years since 24 slow down Mark since 2004 our department is smaller and we offer nine more programs and we added activities so we go from a couple hundred kids to a thousand kids with one administrator and and the support staff and as we said earlier adding more is not always the best thing because we're burning people out and I'm very concerned about that as a fellow administrator like I said eligibility concerns parent Guardian concerns student concerns the adding of our activities our kids want to be involved they really want to be

057involved in anything and it's like Jackie says it's amazing what they come up with for ideas to be creative for 10 12 students to get together and we want to make sure that we're supporting that and mentoring our coaches and and as I was talking to Dr Marvin beforehand these are part-time jobs with full-time expectations and that's really overwhelming when these coaches want to come in work for a couple hours you can go to McDonald's and work for 15 go home and never have a phone call or an email to respond to and that's really becoming a hard hard item for some of our coaches and advisors um some other things that we we want to continue to work on is actually promoting our educational Focus not only their strategic plan for Rochester Public Schools

058but the high school league promote the equity and inclusion of why this programming as Dr Patel said there are so many things learned in our activities programs that are not in a textbook and it is rubbing shoulders it is that teamwork that collaboration that pushes our students to be better and I also think that it true it teaches them that discipline and that adversity and how to fail and fail gracefully and sometimes we don't want to let this next Generation fail it's okay to fall on her face skin or knee and and get up again and help support them as to what they did wrong and move on but those are just some of the things sorry got on a little bit of a tangent there and then again we want to make sure that

059our organizations are feeder programs for all three of our schools I think you hear that from time to time in the media that some of our feeder programs do not promote programming in all three schools so questions board members Dr Workman yes I have a question on your possible future offerings um specifically boys volleyball with Title IX implications you said you thought it would probably be an eight or ten percent increase among boys so I think we are required to report our participation numbers to the state of Minnesota correct correct every fall in a mea week so are we also required to report to the federal government or is that done through does the state handle that and what what might be the ramifications if our um differences between participation grow beyond that three to

060five percent that you try to keep it in I mean what would be the solution and quite candidly is that actually enforced yes good and bad it's been enforced um Rochester Public Schools has had that enforced we were on an improvement plan with um uh the office of civil rights out of Chicago I got to know the person very well over the five years so we had a full-scale investigation into our athletic and activities programs I still have the box of all the information um so it is there I don't like to say that it's a dark cloud over us but I think if we don't do our due diligence with watching it and um being creative I think it could be a problem for us so we report to Minnesota Department of Education Minnesota

061Department of Education reports to Chicago those numbers and then it goes to the federal government so our state funding under that law is tied to that more so at the Collegiate level than at the high school level but there are school districts like Rochester that were observed and back one century opened even though it was a brand new building we had um our baseball teams were playing at mail field with irrigation lights PA systems scoreboard and our softball fields did not have PA light scoreboard irrigation fencing so we spent years putting those permanent fixtures in we um practice time for ice we really make sure that we're balancing the ice time so that the girls have the same amount of ice as the boys same I even Balance gym time of who gets the center

062gym at Century High School boys and girls varsity programs to try and make sure that we're balancing that as well as we can on a yearly basis so it's always there I I try to keep it in the front of my brain as I work in programming of that but it's important I hope I answered some of that but not yeah sure um you did but I mean would you envision a situation where a possible future opportunity City would not be offered because it would create this kind of an in of an imbalance I think we would have to have that conversation Miss Workman of what boys programs might we not offer anymore if we're going to bring boys volleyball on correct but I don't see any girls programming that is out there other than

063the wrestling that we could add even though I have we have two more girls programs currently than boys is still higher thank you that helps a lot if Canada more you know if you offered the boys volleyball can you increase the numbers of some of the girls current programs and the ones I think are like LaCrosse or girls hockey that we need getting more girls on those teams would then offset in a similar way is that an option as well I like your thinking because we would truly have to do that right in an example of that right now we have two ninth grade volleyball teams um we might end up going to three ninth grade volleyball teams which would be a difference in our staffing but you know there are some creative ways to

064try and increase those girl numbers um right now we try to offer more levels in girls basketball but the the numbers just aren't there we're seeing a large number of girls playing volleyball year round being great basketball players but they're choosing not to and so our girls winter numbers are smaller um than girls basketball then boys basketball so yeah that would be a creative way for us to do that um a track and cross-country numbers help us immensely because we don't cut there on the girls side so when um I was working with parents when my kids were at Century one of the parents frustrations was it was hard for them to know what was being offered at the school especially in activities and this list of activities that we have is is a remarkable

065Testament to what RPS is about beyond our academics I think of people who are looking at RPS or considering moving to Rochester and I'm wondering if there's a way to have that information more visible uh to our parents to our community to people who might be looking at Rochester because I think side by side with our academic offerings it really needs to be clear what our our school Community offers outside of the classroom so I don't know if there's anything we can do to improve that but I know there's a lot of work that you do in the school to let the kids know what they can what they can participate in but I think the message needs to be seen by more people and I also um Dr Brickell and I met with some

066community members about our facilities and some of our facilities are in great shape and others our surrounding communities are blowing the doors off us um turf fields are coming and they're all around us now schools that Byron will have one stirfield almost had one Triton doveryota Saint Charles all these little bedroom communities have them which is creating kids to open and roll Auto Rochester Public Schools to go there for their athletic experience I'm not saying that's right but it's happening one of the other things that I want to make our board aware of is from time to time we have people that want to co-op back to Rochester Public Schools and Dr Marvin and I have had conversations about this part we have people who open and roll out of Rochester Public Schools but want

067to come back for a hockey experience or want to come back for a lacrosse experience well those dollars per pupil are going to a different District is it right to say we're going to co-op with them and bring those students back and um that's a wrestle that we're going to continue to have as we talk about co-ops right now I'm asking those schools when they call me I'll say I want to know the names of your parents and where they live and then it becomes crickets because they don't want to tell us that they open and rolled out so and I also just I I think uh chair Nathan the point you make is a really important one we are in the midst of launching a fundamental redesign of our website which really is the

068front door to any organization right now and we don't do a particularly good job I think of telling our story as a system uh I think we're getting better and I think we have a superb new director of communications leading Network um but I think we need to do what you're suggesting not just with our activities but across all of what we do in terms of our academic programming our Athletics programming um because exactly like Mark is saying we're in a competitive environment for enrollment and we need to actually be able to tell we need to do it in a cultural responsive way so we're reaching communities so websites are not the only way to do it so and we know people choose schools often for activities and Athletics along with academics so a big

069priority for the future going forward one other Focus of this presentation of course was middle school and high school I know that what is available in our elementary schools in terms of after school activities varies a lot of times because you have parent volunteers who are willing to be those coaches or their or those mentors and um I I often hear well why doesn't Rochester have this and because they know there's another District that offers these opportunities who if there's a parent with an idea or a Community member with an idea for an elementary a middle or a high school activity that they'd like to see brought to Rochester where's their first point of contact at the high school level I would say they should be contacting the activities office because we can give them

070the information that they need to process a background check get into the building get some room usage or whatever they need to get them up and running and then we also can bet it pretty quickly about whether it meets what we're all about with Rochester Public Schools and then middle school and Elementary I would say it's the building principle that would be a key person to contact great thank you any other questions um I appreciate you talking about the fees and waiving the fees for the free and reduced lunch and I think that's you know very commendable has there been thought or are there things that either um you know the community or anyone else can do to address that same issue in terms of equipment that the students may need whether it be you

071know tennis shoes for track or you know hockey pads or whatever and I don't not only think about at the high school level and you know the organized teams but at the feeder level as well in the community yeah um I'll speak for a century because that's the coaching staff that I continually work with when they do their fundraising I ask to make sure that they fundraise above and beyond so that if there is a student that needs a pair of shoes or a specialized piece of equipment that we are able to offer that quietly to that student we also have some great Community Partners that will come in and fit students for shoes whether it's tracker cross country and then all of a sudden those shoes show up um so there are some pretty

072neat things that are happening specialized equipment when you're talking safety equipment there's more of a liability that's attached to that for the safety of the students and so we're a little bit more cautious we still fund all of the safety equipment how much shoulder pads that type of thing through our department so we can regulate and keep track of that sometimes we do a go to our booster club and say hey this program has this need can you help us fund that and they're very supportive too thank you very much thanks so much we thank Mark who is off to a Crosstown meme I believe it should be Halftime by now and we won't be choosing signs from the board table um item 6.02 our school-wide continuous Improvement Plan update tonight is from Churchill Hoover

073Elementary School come on down um sure Nathan board members as you know we have the amazing opportunity to hear from our schools about their Improvement efforts and so it's fun to recognize our lead principle for our presentation tonight at the great work that's happening at Churchill Hoover Emily Pearson we have Charlene Haas our assistant principal Doreen Christensen who's a social worker in Deb Olson fourth grade teacher thank you for taking the time I know some of us when it's one of these board meetings and you wait an hour until you get on there I feel a little guilty because I know how busy you are but hopefully that was interesting and in any event we really appreciate it because it's a really unique opportunity for us to get a glimpse of the work that you're

074doing and so we'll turn it over to you and then I'm sure board members and I will have some questions and and comments beautiful well thank you for having us I think we're all excited to be here and it was definitely worth the wait um we'll just start with a little snapshot of Churchill Hoover Elementary School so I think the important thing to remember is that we are two sites about one school so our Churchill building serves students in K1 and 2 and then when they're in third grade they go to Hoover so we have 448 approximately elementary students and then you can't forget about our littlest Huskies we have the Hoover early learning school there so almost 200 students more and you can see a snapshot here of what our population is made of

075it'd be nice if they could actually have little faces attached so you could see our students rather than just see the numbers but it gives you an idea of who we are so 11 of our students are multilingual and can bring that gift with them to school every day 20 of our students receive special ed services we are lucky to have two setting three ABD home rooms at our site so we serve those students we are 61 White 18 black 13 Hispanic Latino five percent Asian and one percent American Indian Alaska native native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander and about 38 free and reduced lunch today we're going to focus on both of our goals we have two skip goals and we couldn't just share one we needed to share about both of them today so

076our first goal is an academic achievement goal and that is about students needing to score proficiently or we're hoping to improve our proficiency on for reading in the area of literacy and we're going to measure it on the MCAS for students in grades through five and then we will also dig into our skip goal number two which is about students being able to empathize we call it our social awareness uh goal and that's going to be measured by the Panorama survey those are such well-written goals I want to cry I'm not kidding really yes they're measurable they're clear they're important I'm sorry to interrupt but I had to what was the compliment you can yeah so this is just a breakdown of our academic achievement goal and this our team here with me tonight this

077is just a little bit of who they are we have we had a great team this summer come together to work on these goals so our goal is 60 in 2023. uh you can see that it's interesting having the two sites because we have 50.7 percent Proficiency in literacy last year on the MCAS which does not feel good to anybody to have one out of two of our students being proficient in grades three through five interestingly enough that also tied into our 49.5 so that top figure is on the fast Bridge assessment because our little friends at Churchill don't take the MCA but it's interesting that they are still in line um sometimes the fast bridge and MCA aren't quite that much so we're going to do this by focusing on some levers I could

078talk about them all day but I decided to save you the time and just pick on three of them so the curriculum lever is a really big piece this year and we are working I mean this is as a district working on implementing really great reading and hegarty through the literacy lab so Elton Hills I know they were here earlier this year they probably shared about the literacy lab we had our second grade teacher go today over to Overland to take part in it and then she'll bring back that great learning that she had to her to her plc so our K2 teachers are really working on just kind of learning as much as they can during those times and implementing those curriculums um not with Fidelity but you know as as well as they

079can one of the exciting things that I wanted to mention was the Aspire curriculum for our students receiving special ed services we've just seen this really big you know Improvement in the services that they're receiving and some growth already our teachers are thrilled with it so it's fun to have something rather than just either a repeat of what they had gotten in their gen ed class now they have something that's measurable and outlined so that's been something that our special ed teachers have really enjoyed our second lever for this goal is our plc's so we are dedicating um PLC time to the literacy lab and then for our teachers in grades three four and five we're working on small group instruction and interventions our skip team is is our leadership team in the building and

080we're reading a book together kind of doing a book study uh it's called PLC plus and it's trying to bring in equity lens into our PLC work so that's something that then they bring back to their plc's as well so we're just trying to make those a little bit more uh data driven and focused on small group instruction and the work that they're doing in the literacy lab and the third lover for this area is the targeted interventions and this is another thing that I just need to give the teachers credit for because they are working really really hard to implement and give the students what they need at their level we definitely have a ways to go but it's fun to see progress on that so um we're using our fast bridge and then

081our K1 screen first or k12 screeners and trying to make individualized instruction our teachers have found success using the fast Bridge interventions we have a few in particular that have really dove into that and are trying hard to give the kids what they need and then we have an amazing instructional coach Lori who's been helping them figure out exactly what the kids need there so those are our three kind of big area focuses for our academic goal so miss Christian is our social worker so she and I are going to talk a little bit about our social emotional goal and we um with our skip team in the fall looked at our data across social or Panorama data last year we had a sense of belonging goal which we still continue to focus on um

082as most of us do within the district as well we did hone down into our social awareness this year and our our current data we looked at in the fall was 58 and so what we were looking for for this year was trying to move that to 68 percent and I'll let Doreen go ahead and talk about some of those lovers that we've put in place our school has school has awareness and sense of belonging the first one I'll discuss is Husky time um husky time is a great program that's helping to build connections between staff and students that otherwise may not have much of an opportunity to interact so be briefly I'll describe how it's organized staff and teachers are assigned to lead a pack in a specific location and some staff are partnered

083to make sure that everyone can participate classroom teachers stay where they are and other staff who do not have a classroom use other areas such as specials or Library areas each pack consists of about 12 students with three to four from each grade so we're mixing all the grades third fourth and fifth and we make sure that they're not with any classmates so it's really kind of stretching them out of their comfort zone making sure they're associating with all different students um they meet once a cycle sorry I don't feel like I'm talking loud enough um baby it wants to cycle and when it's time to begin husky time the front office staff will do a fun announcement and they'll walk to their husky time location and a short 20-minute lesson is provided by the

084Husky time committee ahead of time so the teachers don't have to do any planning and we set that up for them and the plan the lessons focus on various goals within the schools such as friendship respect kindness and safety so it's a great opportunity to really connect with them on things we're working on that we're noticing in the school that we feel like we can improve uh for example a lesson on friendship we watched a video about um a reading of the book how to fill your bucket we did an activity on what fills buckets what dips buckets and how other people feel when we dip their bucket how that hurts us too so um and then we can discuss and after the lesson students are notified by another announcement and they walk back to

085class so just a quick 20 minute time for connection back has been very positive with this program from staff and students alike they all get very excited they and students I wouldn't have met before because as a social worker I tend to meet with kids with IEPs or who need me in the moment and it's the general education population I may not get to meet but I do get a better opportunity to meet other children and when they see me they're so excited like what are we having husky time so it just provides this really great environment builds more connections with staff more friendly faces more safe networks for our kids the next one I'd like to share briefly is our Junior coach program if I can um and I'll just read for you what

086we give our ESP when they do a little informational session with the classes and this is I like visuals this is our staff handbook for the junior coach ESP or cheat she helps facilitate it and so basically what we would read to the classroom is there's a great opportunity to be a leader at Hoover with our Junior Coach position students who are interested must be meeting all expectations in class and at home and need to complete an application and we've got a very thick application here it's only one page to complete but there's a lot of expectations there's how to be responsible how to be safe um what's our other goal respectful yeah if you felt the application we will talk with your teacher to see if they feel you are ready to be a

087junior coach so there's accountability here they need references they need two their teacher and their parent if not we can talk to you about why and see how we can help you meet all expectations in class this is actually a very important piece of this because there are students who just quite aren't ready for leadership and we get to have that conversation of hey talk to your teacher thanks for applying but these are some things we need to work on and it gives students an incentive to improve and to do better in school things like that if you're selected I will let you know when we will have a meeting about how to be a junior coach junior coaches are hired for a three-week round and help at recess by making sure kids are being

088safe having fun and feel like they belong they are required to wear a vest and they have these cute little to have the pictures they love the best so students and staff can easily find you if they need help help some responsibilities include helping kids make Fair decisions noticing if someone is sitting alone and asking them if they need a friend and collecting balls and trash on the playground and we've had a lot of success with rock paper scissors it seems like a simple thing for problem solving but it's been huge on the playground and it's so rewarding to see a junior coach leading their peers in rock paper scissors over an argument it's just the best feeling staff may also ask you to complete other activities to help your school so we want to

089do things like our buddy benches could use a paint code we would like our our junior coaches to do that or a peace path where they can make their own decisions the peace pack will have like different steps in solving conflict taking turns while speaking making sure everyone voices how they're feeling and what they need and the junior coach can lead them to the peace path and they can walk down it on their own so we're really trying to empower students to solve their own problems and not rely so much on adults to be the fixers um if you would like an application raise your hand and then we can give them all the applications some of them are shy so they'll ask us later but um yeah so basically once we choose the junior

090coaches we have three meetings with them it's a three week round and in the first meeting we basically describe what a junior coach is the second one is follow-up we ask them how they're doing we do some self-reflection we go through the expectations are you mingling with people are you making sure you're branching out of your comfort zone are you picking up trash or are you just playing at recess you're hired right now this is your job this is the expectation so giving them some of that accountability and then the last meeting is super fun because they get this really cute certificate signed by their principal and um oh I forgot to mention that parents get an email when the teachers approve that their student was selected to be junior coach and they're so excited

091about it it's the best and I love sending parents positive emails about their kids it really helps build community with parents too who are super important so so you know some of the things that you see there are those relationship building opportunities that we have within for all of our staff and our students and time in the Husky time which we've had in the past but haven't for the past few years so a lot of the kids have never experienced that and those lessons are happening at both sites like during shared a little bit and the leadership the junior coaches is something new in that helping kids and grow in that leadership opportunities and uh show that social awareness too so I think yeah all right so moving on I just have a few other

092numbers so when you look at our data for our SEL here for our Panorama we celebrate here that we reached our 68 percent of what we were looking at and when we think about last year we noticed at 58 that that really put Churchill Hoover and that zero to 19th percentile Nationwide for social awareness and and our school was um under District was 64 favorable for that at that time and as we celebrate now this year this 68 you know that 10 raising of that does put us in that 40th to a 59th percentile and we're more even with what the district-wide is for social awareness which is a 70 67 I believe right now so we're focusing and you heard Doreen say some of that too with that social awareness um describing our own

093feelings that's part of what when we really dug further down into the questions we only had 33 percent of our kids that felt like they could describe their feelings at the end of last year and so really working on that how are we feeling so that we can push that forward to being able to empathize with other people so if we can describe our own now let's move that to how they may be feeling as well and that has increased to 45 percent in this last Panorama survey surveyed that portion itself with being able to describe our own feelings and then we work in those empathy lessons as well during our husky time individual lessons that we have assemblies as we have enjoyed getting those back and together again so we do know as we

094look through those numbers that we can see the the further action that we can be looking at um as we move forward from our our social awareness steps and still focusing sensible learning as well right so we do want to just take this uh opportunity so Debbie teaches fourth grade and she's a wonderful example of our shout out to our husky teachers and staff because um on our Panorama survey you can see here 82 percent of our students and three through five reported they had really strong classroom teacher relationships and that's been something we've been working on Doreen and Debbie are just great leaders and so are the rest of the staff but to be in the 80th the 99th percentile was just really exciting so I just wanted to be able to brag about

095the staff for a minute um we still do have some areas for improvement so we're thinking ahead to our future skip goals we will have more um especially about something country you're Charlene Charlene and I work on is sense of belonging and you can see it just all of the sites you heard from our Hoover Early Learning or early childhood a few months ago and they talked about belonging to and that's something that carries over into Churchill and Hoover so you can see just quickly I'll show you the staff belonging is something to work on so this is Hoover staff and Hoover teachers both around 60 percent have a sense of belonging which is in that kind of Red Zone um and then Churchill staff so non-licensed staff there sixty percent too um responded favorably

096um Churchill teachers feel a little bit better so that was kind of an area that we celebrated but just some thinking ahead those are things we're going to be working on to make sure all the staff feel like it's a great place to to work too um so our goal for that would be about probably five percent that's what Charlene and I are working on this it's nice to have data to go along with our our goals and to see how we're improving we'd love to answer questions if you haven't had it boy members director Marlin well first the disclosure uh I have a granddaughter who's a little husky and then secondly um the junior coach program I mean wow that that is such a great idea and um those key elements of leadership uh

097potential in elementary and then just imagining them continuing through middle and high school and then the community at large so just really want to commend you on on the and this is the first year of it is it of the program and uh it'll be interesting to see who these students become later and uh so thank you I just really want to thank you for that Dr Cook um well first on the the goal around empathy I I think it's phenomenal that you were able to uh uh achieved your goal already and so important that that uh that skill was taught in an intentional way I mean certainly can't remember anything in my past where empathy was deliberately taught and um as part of sort of a coherent effort but it really is the the

098building block to leadership and teamwork and being successful you know beyond the school years and certainly in future grades as well so um awesome results there very exciting and then on the reading proficiency goal um I guess I was I I'm wondering if you could say anything about your line of sight to being able to achieve 60 in grades three through five next year um when it seemed to me like most of the interventions or most of the levers were focused on the K through two which is critically important and um seems like a great place to deploy resources but for the kids that are already in fourth and fifth grade like what what are we doing for them or what could we do yeah that is a good question um I think Debbie is

099as a fourth grade teacher can talk about you know trying to dig into the data the fast bridge data there and try to align the kids that aren't meeting with the interventions so that's why we're focusing on interventions and small groups for our third fourth and fifth grade but it is something that we talk a lot about is like so we are focusing a lot on K12 but our measure is on the MCA so that's why we tied in the fast bridge I think our teachers are excited about kind of the work the district's doing around we have a literacy leader in fourth grade that's working on some curriculum and that sort of thing with the district because I do think that hopefully these kids with their strong like phonemic awareness and phonics background will

100be coming up to us but it is a challenging kind of area so a lot of what we use is we base our data or our we collect the data from Fast Bridge we help the students that are falling below those proficiency levels and we've been grouping them into different groups giving them different opportunities to increase their phonemic awareness even though we don't specifically teach that at the upper grades so we're giving them other opportunities to kind of get caught up to where their other classmates are we have different interventions that they work through and then we progress monitor all of the interventions that they're doing in the class so are are those oh sorry go ahead are those are those interventions responsive to the fast bridge data or those small groups part of sort

101of a sequential explicit structured sequence that we base who is in those groups on the fast bridge data okay and then we um we do further testing to see where their deficiencies are and then we group them that way so they're grouped based on what it is that they're that they actually need and then we have paraprofessional esps inherent volunteers and other staff that support them that way and most of our students are being progress monitored by the classroom teacher so we can see their increases as they happen thanks Dr Garcia oh yes just to take you back to your second skip goal um for the empathy um I I appreciate the goal obviously and I'm wondering if you if there are like Churchill and Hoover specific reasons for the goal we've had a number

102of other you know schools come forward and say these are the things we were struggling with which sort of led to the development of the school and I'm just wondering if you can speak to that because the numbers are great you're obviously improving but where did this come from and where do you sort of anticipate this going yeah that's a great question too um I think last year was an interesting year you know I heard I think it was Dr Patel say about we've seen an improvement in discipline and with an improvement in climate and I think that our school climate has really um worrisome but wasn't the best last year and I think the data just kind of like showed that like what we're feeling is real and so staff and kids were kind

103of reporting that I think there's an area that we could improve on and so we were already kind of thinking about the belonging and thinking about trying to encourage students to be proud of being a Husky and to support each other and then when we went to the data and saw that oh belonging's important but really we have this whole area of students not being able to identify how they're feeling and not being some of the questions when you dig into them and things that we see too where they can't handle conflict or can't you know if they disagree with someone they can't like respond respectfully and we saw that with the kind of our Behavior things and students not getting along and some of the talking back to adults and things like that that

104we wanted to fix so it was kind of a lot of conversation and then looking at the data kind of led us to those goals Dr McLaughlin um this might have been covered by the question that director cook asked but I just want to make sure that I had forgotten we had a second separate from the PowerPoint we had another worksheet here to look at the second worksheet references a second step implementing second step with Fidelity all staff will use the language of second step with students can you talk a little bit more about what that means second step is our social emotional of our teachers use in the classroom and we were trying to think of ways to bring in our esps and our support staff and try to use kind of they have

105like a step problem solving model and so for example like Charlene led up ESP meeting just the other week and we had our school counselor come and talk to the esps about how they can use the problem-solving model from second step when they are out in the playground and talking with kids and is that something specific to Churchill Hoover or is that that's Universal Universal yep thank you I can just say director McLaughlin it's a it's a very timely question it's a program that's used nationally with pretty solid research um we've had good results with it in the early grades in Rochester and we were using it at middle school and we were not getting those results and so we said this year stop using at middle school and keep using it there um just

106sort of illustrates the fact that when we do purchase curricula and programs we need to be um very responsive to the degree to which our teachers are feeling like it fits the developmental needs of their students because we were getting a very different message from middle school teachers about second step whereas we've heard some good things from where you are and so we pivoted partly thank you and thank you for doing that and recognizing that some flexibility is needed with the large number of students we serve hearing no other comments thank you very much for coming tonight and thank you fantastic you know we'll move on to our monitoring section of the agenda item 7.01 school resource officer contract 2022-23 implementation update superintendent Patel chair Nathan and directors as you know the board directed and

107largely thanks to some board members did the heavy lifting on a rewriting of our contract with Rochester Police Department to have school resource officers in our schools all the way out here and that's okay I I'm not distracted at all um uh once we figure out the technology and Lori comes to the rescue um uh we want to give the board an update on how the implementation of the contract is going this year and so I've asked Jackie Peterson our chief of schools and Julie Clayman who's our coordinator of Safety and Security to give the board a process update there is not a decision before the board right now about the contract but obviously as we get to the end of the school year there will be and so this is really an implementation update

108and so thanks for coming up hopefully we can get that video uh figured out because it's really great all right that's great and we do have a presentation as well I think I can hear sir are we showing that first um so I want to start just by I know our team this the SRO update we want to do is um really important but we also want to point out that the sros are one I don't like to refer to people as Tools in a toolbox because it doesn't feel right people aren't tools but it's a strategy it's a Spoke it's a leg of the stool it's so important to remember that sros are one part of what makes our schools safe and a good place for students to learn um our social worker who

109was sitting here talked about um Doreen talked about husky time and making connections with even our littlest students um Doug Olson who is one of the finest teachers we have in the district remains connected to her students Beyond fourth grade in fact into high school and Beyond and I can attest to that my niece who's a senior Junior at in college still gets emails from her words of encouragement um it's about those connections it's our esps as JM spoke about a few weeks ago they're calling their their esps their security people relationship coaches it's about the counselors and people like Dorian who are making connections with students every day teachers who know their students it's all of us knowing our students and therefore knowing the culture and climate of the building and when things don't

110feel right and that is the most important strategy we can have in terms of keeping our schools safe sros are one piece of that whole system to be aware and make sure that we know what's happening in our schools so um with that you do have a three slide PowerPoint I you know what I was a tech educator once upon a time I couldn't believe it I know I'm so sorry but things have changed things sometimes have changed I can't even find the air server in here what is it called it's not boardroom uh ed137a so now I'm going to show off my skills we do have a brief very brief PowerPoint and comments to make we're going to let um of it pieces of a video from officer L speak for um the majority

111of what um sros mean to the schools because it's not just the words he says but it's um how he says that and how he connects with students in this video I took a few just a few parts sorry you're going to see all my tabs and now you know that I'm not a tech educator um but that video that we have to share with you I think is one of the best illustrations of how sros are connecting with our students so you want to talk a little bit about our first slide which talks about uh uh the first part of the mou um Civic and engagement and and education yeah so with the sros we wanted them to sure that they got out there and not just walk the Halls we want them to

112make connections in and I've with not students but staff as well and they made a point to really really focus in on that this year and they've not only just met with um with certain students but they've been meeting with all students and that means going to some of their clubs talking with the students there they've gone into the classrooms they've done educational classes they've gone into even the cooking class gone into cook they've gone into even with our security esps they make sure that they're in on their some I don't know about weekly but at least monthly they check in with them they talk about what they feel is working what is not working where's our safety where maybe our breaches are so they're they're doing their part to to make sure that everybody

113they're connecting with all students and some of the some of the sros actually will go to like you know Al goes to two different schools Tim Condon goes to to the middle school and so does officer Gilbertson he'll go to John Adams too so they're busy trying to connect and making those connections with with kids and everybody okay so I'm going to play the video and officer Al this is an old video you can tell because he's wearing a mask but he's still giving this presentation um in in the middle schools but also we're sharing the videos out into the other schools so this particular video is about um social media I think it's called social media sends and um I have two clips that I want to play for you and I want you

114to see what he says but also how he's interacting and um with the kids that you see each other almost every day all right school right you're gonna come to school so mad that you're gonna throw hands in the hallway out here somebody might get hurt and it might turn into a criminal investigation please don't do that your life will be much better if you don't follow someone that you don't like trust me all right uh try not to be the messenger any of you ever played the phone game you know what phone game is I call it the broken phone game because it doesn't work if I come to a student at this at the front of the classroom whisper something into their ear tell them to pass it on until it reaches the

115end of the classroom you ever play that game what happens to that message by the time it goes from that student to that student s it's different right it's it's not even the same message when it gets the end right you know why that happens because people interpret things differently and when they retell it they add their own perspective on it okay social media is the same way almost every fight that I've gotten involved with an investigation I pull the students into my office and I asked them why were you fighting the most common answers I hear are somebody told me I heard somebody sent me a snapshot of their conversation with someone else all right if it doesn't come directly from that person to your ears directly just like the phone gang stop and

116ask yourself what was added to that message or taken away from it before it got to me make sense because everybody interprets things differently and they add their own perspective when they retell it and believe it or not we have students here at Willow Creek and at John Adams that will play this game and you gotta get a laugh because you know what happens you know what they said about you over there oh just a little mad stuff about you oh you should hear what they said now right everybody knows somebody like that back and forth back and forth delivering the message until these two get so mad at each other because of what I said not what they said what I said that they end up throwing hands in the hallway and I get

117stand back and do this I just made a fight this is the coolest thing ever all right if it if it doesn't come from that person's mouth to your ear stop and think about it before you get so mad that you want to throw hands over it all right know who your friends are online so did you want to say something yeah I did um so this is about a 30 40 minute presentation that he gives and we currently have this on our board or I mean not a board docs but in our Google so it is available for all all teachers if they want to refer to it or see it themselves amongst yourselves but it is a really wonderful presentation um and he gives it every year and he's going to continue to

118give it and he's hoping to reach out to the families of the Middle School families to maybe actually get them to all come into like we would probably pick a school for maybe probably Dakota he goes to the sound system's amazing there so why not go to Dakota and do it but he'd like to to get the parents in so they the parents are understanding the refrigerations of of social media also and we've talked about why stop it just there but why not the fifth graders that are going to be coming into our our middle schools because we need to get them ready too and that's another thing the sros do is they about probably next couple months they're going to start heading out to the elementary schools and talk to the fifth graders and

119get to know them and let them ask them any question they want so it's just getting those connections early so that when they do come into Middle School they know that there is a police officer in the building um I remember when I did that myself going into the fifth graders no I I actually asked how many of you know that there's a school resource officer in the school I think maybe about five kids raised their hand and that was probably the average and I think those kids who had older and the reason they knew was because they had siblings that were in the school so I think it's really important to make those connections as early as we can and educational and Al's going to start doing one also on disorderly conduct and behavior

120issues and what is considered crime and what isn't um and we did set in on this last one at um this one at Dakota and he's he's a fantastic presenter but not just Al they're all doing it um they're all going into the classrooms and doing presentations like this vaping um Tick Tock challenges they're they're all grading into the classroom we just happen to have a video of Officer Al I'm going to show just the end of this presentation this presentation is in one classroom but we have watched him do this in an auditorium at Dakota with a full grade level and kids are very wrapped and interested in what he's saying so this is the conclusion I just wanted you to see how he wraps this all up for the students the last one

121down there don't share anything over social media online text message whatever it is don't share anything that you don't want the world or your loved ones to see okay once if you get in trouble and you get involved in the criminal investigation if I wrote a Snapchat warrant Federal search warrant to your Snapchat or your Instagram or your Twitter or for your phone right you go to trial who gets to see that report your parents are Guardians right because they decide what happens to you legally would you be comfortable if your parents or Guardians got to see one month of your social media conversations and photographs and videos that you sent would you be comfortable with that those of you shaking your head yes outstanding rest yeah I want to think about what you're sending

122what I mean all right and the last one remember that once you hit the send button whether it's insults mean hurtful things whether it's threats hey I'm going to beat your butt when you show up school tomorrow or worse I mean I'm using life's language right um if it's a naked picture naked video once you hit that send button it's gone you have given control to somebody else you can't take it back now it's stored somewhere for someone else to see think about what you guys are sending all right last slide and then I'll tell you a Horror Story all right remember you have your loved ones you have your family your your uh brothers parents Guardians at home you have your friends here at school your friends are the ones that have your back

123and look keep an eye out for you have trusted School staff some of you get along great with your teachers some of you get along great with your parents something you get along great with your counselors and you have a school police officer that for the most part I'm pretty bored walking around here most of the time all right I truly want to keep you out of trouble if you ever have questions or need advice come find one of us so we can help you out okay that's the end of the slideshow there so now you have a little bit more knowledge all right all done you good with the knowledge you got all right sounds good I will just say the horror story I uh really is um has to do with a student

124who came through an a nude picture um to one person in her school and that picture ended up uh spread throughout the whole student body in another state and it was so difficult for the family that they moved to Rochester to get away from that situation and our talks to the students about it took about three weeks for that picture to show up here in Rochester where that student was going to school so that one picture really changed this person's life and so well some of what he's talking about with um you know Snapchat and investigations sounds like it could be trying to scare kids it is not we have kids every day who are sending things that they regret later so for them to hear the real um you know ramifications of of doing

125something on their phone which all of our kids are carrying is really important to protect their safety um so he tells the story of this girl who share names but that it can really be life-changing so those messages are really important we have done some parent um information sessions on vaping back when parents really needed to see what a vape looked like I don't know if you remember those presentations and it wasn't that long ago um we've had some sessions on social media one area that we're seeing way more prevalent is pornography and while we kind of want to shy away from talking about that we can't because the percentage of kids that see pornography even by accident is staggering and it's real and something that we need to help our students in order to

126stay safe so I could see that being a future topic for parents in fact I know um Angie McAndrews who's a tremendous Communicator with parents she has a great newsletter her last Edition had a piece in in there about protecting your students from seeing inappropriate content I think it's important also to know that the sros do keep their doors open for families whether they give them their cell phone numbers their their office numbers there they'll even do Google meets with them and I know that they've reached out multiple times and families feel comfortable reaching out and who can they contact and they know exactly who to contact in their school I know the SRS have met with families for restorative practices they've done some de-escalation situations and these are things that are not court ordered

127but things out of the schools or the families have come together and done it together so I think that is a that's something new that they've started doing and I think they really it's been very helpful we have some things in the works that we're hoping to do during covid which was last year we try to do an online meet and greet with the sros and I just don't know if families just weren't aware or just weren't able to get on but they would be willing to do a panel um to have bring families in and and and give any be open for any questions and answers they're also getting ready to um go to the conference meetings or having their own table so that they can answer questions for family members because they want

128to be available to families so that they can answer any of those questions um briefly about the summer camp and some of the students yeah that they're doing some of the things that um are on the rise is um they're hoping to well they are planning on doing a youth leadership academy camp this summer this is going to this is their what they say their goal the Rochester Police youth leadership academy is to promote positive relationships coach and Mentor Youth and provide support with illustrating the Department's core's values of Integrity service compassion respect and innovation so it's going to be students throughout the district and how they're going to go about getting those students I'm not sure yet but I'm guessing they're going to leave that up to the administration and for them to pick

129their kids and it's going to be a week-long camp and they're going to bring in mentors they're going to bring in people to talk and then they're going to do some um team building I believe they're going to go do the ropes down in is that in Lanesboro where they do that I don't know there's some I'm hoping to go along with them so I'll let you know but um that's one thing that's going to be that I know we we're trying to get that started before covid and now that we are kind of where we're at we can actually try to get this going and that we're all excited about that happening another thing that um uh edif one of our Equity Specialists has put together he's formed a black student union of the

130BSU group and officer Condon was telling me all about that they're excited about getting those meetings um going and they're actually going to try to reach out to all the other schools and have them all meet if they can at Century where the officers then will connect with them and if they want them there and when they want them there that they will be available for those um the officers for the group for the group um let's see what else do we have on the plan we are going oh the equity Specialists we're going to do something with the officers again we're going to do like a hold a regular pizza ice cream meeting with maybe five or six students and I don't know they even decide if it's going to be monthly or quarterly

131but something that just kind of let the kids sit around and ask officers in the equity Specialists things and and talk about current events so those are the kind of the things that are in the works currently and are being planned I'm going to talk briefly then on our last slide about the the difference in response when we have an SRO versus maybe a patrol officer well I think first of all the sros are chosen not by just the RPD but we have a we get our say too so it isn't somebody just like who can fill the spot it's important that we that we interview and get the right individual for that spot someone with what we talked about high empathy because that's uh it's a huge characteristic to have when you're an SRO

132but the thing is I think whenever you're talking about a street officer versus an SRO coming in to handle a call Street officers are about getting in getting out and moving on because that's kind of way and they're coming in with their resolution they're gonna and they're going to handle it the way they want and it's going to be done and we got to go I think as an SRO you can slow things down you can actually and the kids actually know the SRO so a friendly phase to a crisis moment is huge versus somebody coming in in full uniform and the student doesn't know who these officers are that can create a little bit added adrenaline and crisis in addition where the sros we know are in our in a more of a softer

133uniform so that plays a role and like I said they can slow it down families we can the students will then help with the resolution they can come up together and talk about it and so I think things get it's just easier for the students it's a much better I feel um resolution than having a street officer come in who needs to come in take care of it it needs to go because they got to get to the next call I think slowing it down and that's what we all know because the other thing is us all of our sros are CIT train and that's a crisis intervention um trained where I don't believe all of the street officers are I mean they are they will eventually get there but you don't necessarily know that

134they're trained not saying they can't handle the situation because I know they all can they're all um very professional but I think um having that SRO in the school handling those types of situations is an added bonus Julie has been taking an inventory of some of the things that are working really well in each of the schools so that we can replicate for example officer condom no officer Smith at Mayo has gone into some classrooms to address student concerns like the parking lot so how do we get our officers into classrooms where there's topics that really matter to kids where they can have that conversation and mutually support one another so we're collecting those ideas so that we can replicate them across the and that's what we have prepared to share with you what members

135any questions could you describe the change in the uniform yes so it I would say it's more of a a khaki style um pant is what they wear and then they wear um a navy blue from what I've seen them all wear navy blue or they can wear black polo shirt and they are I don't even think they're wearing the tasers no so they they just have their yeah they very no no no belt of all the tools on it just a few things that they need so I know I heard officer Al introducing himself and talking about the uniform and saying that he he's had kids ask if he's uh Best Buy security guy or something um they they don't mind wearing that step down uniform and I think they're still recognizable if you

136were meeting someone you can still recognize them as an officer but it definitely is a softer look I have a follow-up to that just because I know it's a community concern um they're still they still have their firearm they do a lot of them are wearing their kind of a jacket over it or like their pullovers they'll wear once they leave their office um so I know they do kind of try to be discreet about that appreciate that character Garcia I just had more of a um feedback so I wanted to say it's very clear that they're doing a lot of repair work and that they've listened to not just RPD themselves but specifically the sros in schools the feedback from the community and I've I've Heard lots of positive feedback from families I did

137just want to offer because I do continue to hear the concern about some of the hallway interactions I know that the purpose is to create a sense of community but one of the things that I'm hearing from students is that they feel targeted because they are a student of color and so they're acknowledging to me like sometimes I will ignore or just be Curt with the SRO when they approach me in the halls trying to be casual because it feels like or I'm uncomfortable because I'm perceiving that it feels like a forced interaction and because I'm a person of color and the other people standing me with her person of color that it it feels like we're being singled out so why that while that may not be the intention that is still present in

138the schools really good feedback thank you um can you talk a little bit more about the youth leadership academy how many students I think there's going to be about 15 20 students and I I really don't know a lot about it but yeah that's all I know is that they're gonna it's gonna be boys and girls and they're going to have like all of the sros are going to be on that the Sergeant's going to be doing that I'm hoping to jump on with them and go with them as well um and that's as far as I know what they're going to be doing is team building Mentor mentoring and I don't know because it's it's just going to be kicking off here soon so I can get you more information and get you more

139details on that I think that would be helpful if you can update us on that guy I guess I'm specifically interested in what's the ultimate goal is it something about student belonging or is it something about RPD recruiting their next class of officers yeah we'll get more information we are in uh preliminary talks they were more looking at Logistics like if we were to do this how do we get kids there um how would we chaperone um those kinds of questions so we'll get more information about the intent and I'd also be interested in how the administrators are going to select the students yes so we can get something about that we like to work with um piggybacking on on what director McLaughlin just said maybe I missed it what age group I believe it

140is I believe it's going to be middle school and high school okay that age hello Dr Cook um yeah well thanks so much for the video because uh that that really provided a great illustration of what the classroom interaction an example of what the classroom interactions um look like for our sros I was wondering if you could characterize a little bit the um I I speak with a lot of people in the or I get feedback from people in the community that imagine that those types of interactions are more ad hoc and um they just sort of happen when there happens to be an availability because there wasn't a crisis that day or for whatever reason the SRO had some extra time and so sure let's stop into a classroom and talk about whatever um

141could you characterize kind of how that's how those presentations are sequenced or how they're organized or what scope of students are having a classroom interaction like that so I know over the course of a year so with Al um talking about him he actually is bringing the kids now into the auditorium and he's doing the sixth graders making sure the sixth graders all get that exact what you just saw that presentation and again he will be bringing them all in again and they're doing they're doing 15-minute presentations he's going to keep so it's not just one 45 minute one they're going to bring in he's going to cut them into smaller presentations but where they're going to be happening monthly or when they can get them in but that is the sixth graders for for

142that as for the other students I believe the teachers do reach out to the sros and say can you come in um I know the um they they send out an email to the teacher saying I'm available let me know what works for you we don't want to impede on any of your educational teachings that you're doing so let us know what works for you and they do what they can certainly more efficient to bring a whole grade level into an auditorium than to like you saw was probably an advisory where it was 30 or 40 students Al is a very gifted speaker and that's why we've recorded his presentations because then they can be in fact I'd be happy to share the link with all of you so you can watch the full half

143hour I was tuning in for to find a couple segments and listening at home and someone in my household was really intrigued and we ended up watching the whole thing even though our parents our children are 29 and 31 and well beyond us worrying about their social media but it was very timely and you might all find it an interesting presentation I think I might just to correct uh connect um Dr Cook's Point um to Dr Garcia's I think uh you're raising something we should pursue which is that if you have a systematic approach for all kids getting to know the SRO and understand the role you're partly mitigating the idea that only certain kids are being uh stopped in the hallway which again may be a good intent but has that so if everybody

144in sixth grade is meeting officer L then if officer Al is coming over to you potentially you have some context for it everybody has a sense so that sentence that's something I think we should pursue this idea that there's a universal interaction as you say our first job is education so that has to fit but the idea that we're not um leaving it to an an incident to enter to introduce an SRO to a student we're introducing them helping them understand the role and what it is before an incident happens or even before an informal hallway conversation happens is something I think we should think about pursuing because then you have you don't have quite the same sense that this is only the interactions only happening with certain kids or in certain situations um and

145so we can pursue that I appreciate that yeah and I would say I guess to connect what you're saying about director Cook's comment and the one about the leadership is that there's also a felt difference in the purpose of like law enforcement for certain groups and so I think like for those who are of lower socioeconomic status and our persons of color we routinely got the impression growing up that the only way out of where we are is to become a professional athlete to become military to become a you know local law enforcement and so then I wouldn't want the opposite thing to happen in which the way that we're you know accepting applications for this leadership program is that like well let's choose the group of students who might have the biggest issue or

146contention with or discomfort with officers in the in in our community and so I just that also I caution because it it I I worried the same thing that I guess director McLaughlin was was suggesting like is this a recruitment tool is it they're trying to engage to in their mind to deal with some of these you know tensions between groups or is this just a we're just gonna have this open to whomever is interested in the community I think with our new Chief that's in office now I think he really pushed pushes the community engagement with the community and um I think that is kind of followed through with all the officers and so I think more so in in recruitment I know that it isn't a recruitment it's more that just giving back

147and and making the connections and I also think in in light of what has happened in the last year or two I think it's even more in important to try to make those connections with kids because now they've had that that shade that was thrown on the officers and now it's more important to let them see hey we're we can we're just hanging out a lot like you two we we're human just like you and we want to connect with you on that level and like you said the important thing comes down to who do we pick for the camp yeah and I'll say doctor said this is the first time I'm hearing about the camp and so we'll certainly subject that to some scrutiny yeah absolutely for sure and I know we're ready to

148move forward but uh so this was a mou update correct okay uh not really looking for any um it's not an audience we're going to vote on informational um so I was curious and that you'd mentioned it training for those who are or happen to be sros are they also um certified based on the National Association School resource offices or do you know or is that something a certification uh RPD looks to have their uh sros qualified to there's not a certification for an SRO but I know there's a training that they do go to so they they get a you know paper that says yes you've attended the class and you you know they do do that it's called nazro and um right yeah yeah in fact that's what I looked at earlier uh

149and uh I thought no reason for me to question whether there is or isn't but uh it is good to know though that well have they attended than the training or the certificate you're reference yeah and so um so they there was a conference that they would always go to in January I I was on the board at the time and I said before I left the board I was going to try to push it to June so that everybody could come to it it was the one and I and so yes it got moved to June this year so all of our hopefully our sros will be able to attend that but in the meantime they've also attended some other SRO um trained courses when they've had when we've had days off school or

150so and I know they've done some stuff in the summertime so yeah they're staying up on top of things and yeah okay thank you you're welcome and a lot of these questions that everyone's asking makes me think when we were talking about the mou and our original intent I think was to bring some consistency um to the performance expectations of the sros across all of our buildings and also to think about how we can collect some data to talk about what the sros are doing as we move forward and we are going to have a discussion about approving a contract later on in 2023 is there a way for us to think about a more structured data report about the outcomes if there are data points that are in the mou performance expectations so how

151many presentations were done in what building both to see if there's consistency across the buildings that each SRO is sort of carrying the same amount of weight and things like I know the mou or the contract has a piece about training to talk about document you know what trainings have been completed those kinds of things we will give that every consideration I think it it should be possible to do I want to be sure we have laid the groundwork for doing that kind of tracking accurately across schools so that we could bring you really good data on it uh I'm positive going forward should we continue with our current strategy we could do it for future years for sure mid-year this year my only I don't promise something I think it's a very good idea

152and we should have that kind of tracking framework in place but as we've learned with our school Improvement plans coming up with measurable indicators of the work you're implementing is easier said than done but we do need to do it so we'll take a look at what we could do for you this spring and I think going forward uh it's a great idea anything else I'm over on that topic if we're going to look at things potentially for the future I would like to consider input from students and parents and Guardians as well if there's a way to implement that do we know thank you thank you all right the next item in our monitoring section is 7.02 the superintendent mid-year conversation on Golds uh just to root this in our past work in November

153of 2022 we approved the superintendent's goals for this school year and we agreed that we would have a mid-year conversation and have a informal update from the superintendent on progress so I will turn this off to you thank you chair Nathan and board members it's late in the meeting and you've heard a lot from me and I'm going to try and keep this conversational and concise um because it's an update on a work in progress there are four goals that the board approved for me this year the first is to statistically significant Improvement on performance indicators the second is implementing our strategic plan the third is our district finances and the fourth is the caliber of leadership that I'm providing I want to report all of them are done everything's perfect seriously briefly on the

154I know on the first one the statistically significant Improvement on performance indicators as you know there's a grid of 30 performance indicators that this board has approved to measure our work two of which were on the presentation from Churchill Hoover tonight the uh the tension I have about this goal is that as board members may remember the first formulation when the board in the summer was looking at my goals was that this would be measured by the percent of schools that achieve their own school-based goals we evolved to what's in the goals now which is Improvement on district-wide goals three of the 30 on the grid so that's still very much what I'm thinking about as you have probably gathered as we've gotten these updates from our schools on this their skip plans our schools

155are selecting quite different goals from each other and I think there's a lot of positive in that they are as you heard having a discussion about the climate that they experienced at Churchill Hoover last year and deciding to focus on empathy so I have some concern about for this year our capacity to demonstrate Improvement on a limited number of district-wide goals given that our buildings are I think increasingly effectively focusing on school-based goals so I think this is still a really good goal ultimately over time it does we we are aiming at system-wide Improvement but I have some concern about the way we formulated this one given that our schools are focusing on some pretty different priorities our previous approach to this was more rooted in that saying what percent of our goals achieve the

156schools achieve the goals they set for themselves and for reasons that board members will recall we pivoted to this approach um but but it's a work in progress and so um either way we're focused on Improvement and I think I hope board members are hearing what I'm hearing in these presentations which is our schools getting better and better about being clear about their objectives and the strategies are what we call levers that they have in place second is implementation of the Strategic plan you've also been getting updates on the the district-wide initiatives for systems change or disks and the measure of my performance is do we have very clear goals for each of the nine change efforts we have underway this year that the board can look at in July and say yep those are

157measurable clear and realistic all of those groups are very actively underway I would say some are reaching very clear and current conclusions the family engagement group has given me their initial recommendations for our approach to family engagement others frankly are struggling a bit more because some of the issues that they're dealing with are are pretty complex I think we're on track to have good plans for you to review in the summer my biggest concern about this goal is actually not going to be the quality of the plan it's the human and financial capacity to implement them I think we're going to have very clear strategies for change whether it's deeper learning or multi-tiered systems of support or family engagement the thing that gets in the back of my head is I think all of us

158are committed not to have those be implementation plans that we don't have the people or the dollars to actually bring to life my goal doesn't actually focus on that piece which is my goal is more do we have good plans for remote for system change the capacity piece is the thing that I'm most thinking about which leads us to my third goal District finances I submitted to the board and the community can find a 10-page recommendation that was posted to board docs today for the next round of our budget stabilization strategy which does involve additional budget recommendations this year I did not put in the memo that you got today but I'll I'll share now and we'll talk about it the study session next week if you approve that strategy uh which we're asking you

159to approve in February to guide our budget development process and if we execute it um effectively uh before June when we ask you to vote on the budget The Proposal I shared with you today would come up about two hundred thousand dollars short of a balanced budget but in a 250 million dollar plus organization that's very close to balance and so the recommendation that we shared with you today I think very realistically puts us on path to achieve that objective by June um even without major new investments in state funding beyond what we already have in the budget though the governor today released a proposal that would have some significant benefits for Rochester Public Schools if it is approved at the legislature so definitely on track with the finance goal but some very difficult decisions

160ahead of us in getting there and then the final goal is how the board evaluates the caliber of my leadership and as I agreed with our previous chair and vice chair and then as the board discussed we need a framework for defining high quality leadership in order to do that so it's not just sort of everybody thinking what you know good leadership constitutes and the working group that has been focusing on leadership the disc group has I think come identified and come close to a very promising framework for leadership that comes out of the University of Washington and the idea is this would apply to leaders at every level of the organization from school principals to me and in this framework that we will obviously share with the board when we come to update you

161on that work there are four core components creating Equitable Community is number one two learning and teaching environment is number two three resource management is number three and four Collective leadership uh is the fourth and in the equity Equitable community peace our vision and Mission and culture and climate in the learning and teaching environment our vision for learning curriculum pedagogy and assessment and Improvement of teaching practice in the resource management our identifying priorities aligning resources and developing talent and in the collective leadership of personal development and collaborative culture so I'm pretty enthused about that framework that they've found and so what we would do is we'll be bringing that to you anyway as part of our vision of high quality leadership and RPS and then the board could use that lens to be in dialogue

162with me and ultimately evaluating the leadership that I'm providing so I'm I'm pretty enthused about that frame um there's some good measures of that framework at the principal level that exists that the university has developed but I think we could adapt that for system level leadership as well um so those are the four goals that's the where we are mid-year in progress toward them if I sort of had to flag an area of concern based on where we added it's that goal number one as I mentioned where there's a tension between seeking district-wide Improvement in outcomes and acknowledging that each of our buildings is different and working to address different student needs and that's showing up in the goals and strategies that they're putting in place and I think that's a productive tension but it's

163one that I think ultimately we will have to resolve not just for evaluating my performance but also the measuring progress on our strategic plan what should be building level what should be system-wide it's kind of the Eternal question for school districts and it's one that we'll be grappling with I think when we get to my evaluation next fall so Madam chair thank you some empty board members any questions or comments at this point I just said yeah a quick comment so I appreciate the update too on goal four because I also was thinking like how do you operationalize leadership awesomeness but one of the things that I think I appreciate I feel like a little bit of a celebrity when we go to msba conference because when people figure out that we're from Rochester they're

164like oh you're from Rochester Public Schools and one of I think the things that um we often get identified by is our shiny new superintendent so I appreciate you others are recognizing the work that you're doing in the district um and it certainly makes our job easier when things are running effectively and smoothly thank you Dr Marvin and I I don't think of you as shiny I don't know actually Kurt the video guy I'm not kidding he brings a pad for me when we do those videos [Laughter] I'm looking at this uh we discussed these all the time I mean virtually every meeting we're talking about this and I think for the first time in a long time your goals are absolutely the work of this District so I know this is a discussion but

165the thing is it's it's what these building these meetings are built around so thank you and shiny or not we're still glad you're here any other comments great thank you all right we move on to the action um area of our agenda item 9.01 acceptance of Grant funds now this is an action item but it's a little different um than other action items that we've had because we looked it up in our policy and confirmed it with msba but in the case of Grants like this we have to approve it by a two-thirds vote so what we're going to do is I'll read the resolution I'll ask for a motion to approve in a second we'll have information presented in a discussion and then when we take the vote it has to be a two-thirds

166vote so be it resolved that the school board of Independent School District 535 does hereby accept the grant funds from the Chan Zuckerberg initiative foundation in the amount of 1 million two hundred and twenty two thousand four hundred and twenty dollars to support the district's deeper learning initiative from December 14 2022 through October 31st 2025. move approval second great superintendent account information um board members as you know the Chan Zuckerberg initiative is the philanthropic uh arm of uh Mark Zuckerberg who's the founder and CEO of Facebook and Priscilla Chan who is a pediatrician who also started a school care steeply about education they have supported our work through a smaller Grant last year around teacher student relationships and are very enthused about our strategic plan this grant will focus on two components of our strategic

167plan deeper learning and then building belonging and it will provide us with resources to participate in the deeper learning dozen that we had uh join us at the study session last week as well as to do some deeper research and Analysis and community building around both deeper learning and belonging that will happen this year and then each of the next two years every middle and high school in the school district including our area Learning Center and Phoenix Academy will get a mini Grant of forty thousand dollars a year to help them operationalize their plans around belonging in deeper learning I will say to any elementary schools that are out there listening we know that you're not included in this grant but we are seeking resources to provide the same kind of support to them this

168grant will also have a rigorous applied research component that Dr Peter Ruck will be leading so that we will hopefully two years from now be able to say did this investment produce deeper learning and better belonging so I would recommend approval of this I think this is just the first of a growing number of philanthropic investments in our work that can support the hard work of change that's happening across the school district board members any questions director cook the uh um are the the purpose that has been identified for these Grant funds I'm just assuming that it's permissible under the the grant award but in particular I get the sense that the Forty thousand dollar mini grants as you described them to the individual schools will be allowed to be spent with some discretion at

169both sites and that level of discretion is permissible and there's that was all part of the Grant application yeah director hook this is this is a strategy I've used with some success in previous change initiatives where yes you are giving that site some flexibility how are you going to use this it's intentionally not enough even to buy a single position sure it's enough to support professional development collaboration research go take some trips travel learn um youth engagement family engagement you know buying food things like that it will it will have that flexibility but they'll be very clear objectives for what the goals around deeper learning and belonging will need to be um and so that's a challenge insofar as we have to make sure that the dollars are used in ways that are aligned with

170our strategic plan and funder intent but I'm pretty confident that we can make that happen and if this works it's fun because Suddenly at Kellogg middle school they're sitting down to say okay we have some resources some scarce resources that are more flexible than like what we get from the state of Minnesota how are we going to light a fire under our efforts to you know increase deeper learning and build belonging in ways that that um aren't going to replace the core work they're already doing but can it can enhance it I think so that that's the threat the strategy and other than yourself are there are there others that contributed to the Grant application that we should all be uh celebrating for their successful application for 1.2 million dollars uh Peter Ruck helped me

171put together the research uh component and um Denise Moody as as always was really helpful in pulling it together at the last minute as Grant proposals often are so those folks in particular were really really critical um Dr akbamu will have the key leadership role in actually bringing this to life so I gave you a million dollars fa now you're good you're gonna make it all happen so you'll get more thank you thank you Dr Martin and I just want to underline because we we had uh one question about this this is not taking money away from any other program I mean it's pretty obvious this is an incredible award to Rochester from an outside highly respected organization so that we can do additional work no child is going to suffer because of this so

172yay any other comments or questions hearing none all those in favor of the resolution signify by saying aye aye all those opposed how do you measure two-thirds we're not hearing any opposition I'm going to say it was unanimous thank you motion passes the next item in our action section is 9.02 approval of additional school resource officer we had a preparation for action item at our last meeting so this is an action item I will again read the resolution and we'll ask for a motion in a second and then we will have our discussion be it resolved that the school board of Independent School District 535 does hereby authorize the administration to amend proportionately the school resource officer Services agreement with the city of Rochester to include six full-time licensed peace officers from the time the

173city of Rochester is able to assign the additional officer through the remainder of the agreement that is currently in effect through June 30th 2023. we're moving seconded information we had a good discussion of this in prep for action but I want to thank board members for pushing for some greater Clarity of how this additional SRO would be assigned and so it's in the um the background on the resolution but um the answer is each of the three Comprehensive High School buildings and Phoenix Academy would be served by an SRO while the four comprehensive middle schools would share an SRO between two sites the addition of the 6sro would allow for more consistent coverage at the alc with the high school sro's rotating coverage one day per week if board members have questions we certainly could

174handle them but we are always continuously looking at how that that scarce resource is allocated to meet the needs of our schools and so at this point we're really just asking for the authority to add that additional SRO and as we discussed previously nothing in this resolution impacts the board's authority to make decisions about the future role of sros in our district um when it is time to consider the contract this spring Dr Garcia I just said a clarifying question and I I guess I didn't really articulate this well in our last meeting so if we tell families or the district that the sros are not like Frontline defense of disciplinary issues yet that was kind of how it was couched during our discussion um and you're but you're asking us for money for another

175SRO and not Mental Health Services or other supports that we could be providing students that are needed in these other schools I think I need to hear what options we exercised prior to this that would justify an additional person and why an increase in these other services isn't before us right now like why is this the thing that we're getting and not the other in terms of the um let's call it student supports work the broadly stated those Investments um in the current budget are all underway and we will be thinking very hard about the needs when we bring you the budget for the future year there was not a specific change in the Staffing model in opening the new schools that caused us to deviate from the way we usually allocate those resources so

176the new schools were assigned counseling Social Work based on the formula we've historically used so those allocations have been made what we didn't do was change the SRO assignment to reflect the new schools because it's in the contract that you can only have five so there were new social workers um counselors mental health professionals I want to use the term relationship coach because I like what John Marshall has said better than um security ESP all of those were allocated to the new schools per the Staffing model when we opened those new schools we didn't change the SRO piece and as we got into this year we did discover that there were times where incidents occurred and we had sros moving across the city more frequently than is optimal and so this modest increase of half

177an FTE would also not cover a full counselor social worker or other support because the Rochester City Rochester covers the other half of the SRO so that's essentially the the rationale for why this this increases before you now where you you approved those staff for the new schools when you approved the budget last year thank you Dr Barlow um for me as I have a given consideration to this the use of the term proportionality um kind of runs a foul in my mind what's the additional research information I have conducted regarding what the national standards though there be none in terms of how SRO should be allocated or provided in a for districts who may be so inclined to provide them and and so apps and a policy or a administrative plan that would suggest

178uh be it based on x amount of students or in this instance x amount of additional schools you know if the thought is with the accretion of x amount of additional schools we will automatically probably recommend an additional SRO uh I don't necessarily see the need just based on the numbers alone uh and and especially and we had research presented this past fall that there really isn't a national Norm in terms of what districts do what uh you know the bottom line should be what the threshold should be and I guess I'll just share that to say you know even though uh the funding is not going to impact our operating budget uh for me it's still just a a principle of rationale okay proportionality that's rationale but it's really tied to a plan or

179a vision when again of the Premier organization for sros and Astro suggests different parameters in consideration and that's all I'll say regarding that I I appreciate that director Barlow I would say we didn't I didn't propose it with the budget this past year because I didn't want to propose it until I knew there was reason to need it and what I have heard from people like Miss Clayman who has a background in this and from our principles is that there's a need for this additional resource and so that's why I'm bringing it Forward at this time uh certainly you're correct there's no ratio that is driving this recommendation that is that I'm aware of but I there definitely isn't that it's the conditions on the ground in Rochester that are leading uh leading to this

180recommendation and you know candidly given that um I know the sport has had a robust and still is having a robust discussion about the role of police in our schools it's not one that I made lightly um and so it's the recommendation that said it is also not one that I believe is the single most important issue facing this board either uh certainly um and so I I understand the board's need to balance uh different priorities at different times um could we continue to move forward with the Safety and Security work that um was described earlier in this meeting absent this additional uh officer yes do I think that the Safety and Security work would be enhanced with this additional officer yes Dr McLaughlin um and I kind of you know thinking and reflecting on

181knowing this topic was coming up tonight um I reflected somewhat on the what Dr Barlow was talking about or director Brown was talking about about you know what's what's best for this role in our district when um he and Dr Garcia and I were very involved in modifying the mou and getting it modified so that we could recommend it to the board with some significant changes about how this role was being used in our district but then also what Dr McKell is talking about um that the principals are clearly asking for it that they're doing this in the best interest of their students in their Safety and Security but they also look at it in the sense that um it's an equitable way to disperse this role amongst what is now more buildings and I

182want to make sure that all the students are served um in the way that both the principals and others believe they need to be across the district so not leaving out a middle school that perhaps is new and too far north and doesn't get the services that they need or the alc that has a little bit of a different population but principles are consistent with some level of need there that's kind of the question I'm not really super clear as to what is needed at the alc but we're being asked to a stretch our resources there in a way that our current five officers can't meet and that concerns me as well so overall I I think I look at this in the sense that we're doing this just for the rest of the year

183um and with more consideration in the future and and for that reason I believe that I can support this because of how it's been presented to us of equity disbursing this resource and that there's a strong support of this from the principles who are closest to the students and see that need on a daily basis any other board members have any comments oh Dr Cook um yeah just just quickly I I just wanted to um I'm pretty sure I already understood this but if I'm incorrect I'm hoping that you could correct me or or someone can um that even though the the funds for the the district's half of the school resource officer would be coming from the safe schools levy they're I mean since money is fungible and there are um uses of the

184safe schools levy that are currently paid out of the general fund whether it's the licensed School nurses or social workers or chemical dependency Specialists and so on that just we could just as well pay for some of those other services out of the safe schools levy and in effect it's still seventy thousand dollars a year for the district's share um that would be otherwise available in the general fund I mean is that is that an accurate way to think about this or yeah um the state schools levy is not um entirely flexible so for instance paying for a classroom teacher providing general education was funding would not be an appropriate use of those but some of the roles that Dr Garcia was asking about certainly can be born from that we have a surplus that

185our calculation suggests would go about two years that takes us through the redesign of our funding formulas that we know is the big work of next year I think this is one example among many uh that we ultimately need to bring you options for how we fund critical functions in The District in an adequate and sustainable way I would I would say the the other student support positions that you mentioned earlier are also needing the same kind of clarity of funding stream and so this Surplus allows us to take the funding for the sros across our funding redesign and we this board then you already have the opportunity to make different decisions about the contract when it's renewal time we also can and I think need to include the issue of funding for sros in

186the finance redesign that we're going to do across general fund combat ell special ed achievement and integration all of those will be bringing important decisions for you this is a relatively small but a very important high profile function that we need to Resource going forward so the recommendation I'm making to you now is related to the fact frankly that we have a surplus and we can do this this doesn't require cutting something in the general fund that is more but yes we could we could fund some things in the general fund with the 60 plus thousand dollars that I'm recommending we allocate although because the year is half over it won't be that amount of money under the remainder of this year I think also just I know it's not a question that um any

187of you have raised and I think it's something that is foundational in the board's direction to me on sros but to um amplify something that Julie Clayman said earlier the character and background and habits of the person that would occupy this sixth position is of Paramount importance that we and that I'm confident that RPD understands the kind of people like officer ozola that we want in our schools but we have veto power like they're not sending a cop off the street who's going to throw kids up against lockers into our schools nor do I think they want to but we we have very clear um authority to approve whoever this officer might be and I think we have a good profile for the kind of person we'd be looking for should you choose to approve

188this recommendation Dr McLaughlin I just have one mother comment and maybe it's something that can be looked at moving forward when we do need to look at the contract at the end of the year I think officer Al's a rock star I've known this for a while but I want to hear more about the other officers because I know some of them are newer and I want to make sure that they have buy-in to the changes that we made to the contract and that I know the leadership does and I know officer Al does I don't know as much about the others and I would really like to see more of that if it's available to us I appreciate that I think we can marry that with director nason's request for some common metrics across

189you know what's happening and it may also look at in the sense that we have to you know look ahead that we know officer Al's not going to be there forever they do rotate but I want to make sure that this is ingrained in their culture particularly for the sros that are coming to our district so before we take a vote um if we didn't have a sixth SRO is there a way to summarize what you think the impacts would be the biggest impacts on the other sites in terms specifically on SRO services I think that where we've landed on the um current plan to assign the 6sro as it says in the background in the resolution it's in particular enhancing support for our area Learning Center that I'll be able to that that would

190be the biggest step we couldn't take if we didn't do this for some reasons partly also geography just wear the alc at so that would be the biggest one and as I've said I understand this is a tough decision if the board chose to want to either not move in this direction at this time or to table this at this time that certainly uh is an option um I can't tell you that if you don't approve this nor would I tell you there's going to be a crisis that is not going to happen for sure if we add this additional SRO but it would be the support for the alc that would be the main thing so there would still be some sort of re-organization of SRO times to serve Dakota they would just have

191to take away from the and there has been it's just we have to keep looking at the stretch because a lot of the stuff that we've talked about is not and nor do we want it to be it's not crisis response it's the relationship building it's the presentation it's the family engagement piece and that's the kind of thing where if you don't have enough uh engagement in the building time in the building that stuff Falls to investigating what was found in a locker you know any other questions before we take a vote okay all those in favor of the resolution say aye aye all those opposed because I heard it four to three motion passes all right so next item our agenda is 10.01 our annual Board calendar update um a copy of the annual

192Board calendar draft is available on board docs anybody can search it or look at it to see when upcoming topics are happening does anybody have any items that they would like to put on a future agenda for consideration okay item 11.01 board questions and responses for this meeting there were no questions submitted so that item will not have a document on board Docs 11.02 upcoming board meeting dates um our next study session is January 24th at five o'clock our next regular meeting is February 7th at 5 30. another regular meeting on February 21st at 5 30 in a study session on February 28th at five o'clock it should be noted that we had recently announced a potential special session on February 7th to discuss field trip fees and we have no field trip fee requests

193so we will not need the special session and our regular meeting will start at 5 30 on the 7th of February and hearing no other business this meeting is adjourned at 8 24 pm