School Board Meeting , August 23, 2022

001called order at 5 30 pm tuesday august 23 2022 in room 137 of the edison building the board acknowledges this site and all rps sites are situated on the ancestral lands of the dakota people and we honor the dakota nations and the sacred land of all indigenous peoples interested members of the public are encouraged to view this meeting remotely at youtube.com isd 535 where the live stream video may be found present at this meeting our school board members superintendent kent pacquel a non-voting ex official member and assistant school board clerk ms michelle severson ms severson would you please call the role thank you director amundsen here clerk barlow here director garcia here treasurer mclaughlin here happy birthday thank you marvin now everyone knows 29 once again here yes vice chair nathan here director workman eric

002shall we sing no no we will not sing we now offer the opportunity to say the pledge of allegiance i pledge 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 2.01 approval of the agenda are there any changes to the agenda move approval second it's been moved and seconded to approve the agenda all in favor say aye aye opposed agenda is approved 3.0 comments to the board we really do appreciate all community members who are invested in ensuring that all children receive an equitable quality education and we offer this time for those who want to speak to the board about issues specific to education you have access to the guidelines for speakers and know that

003among other things personal attacks are neither appropriate nor allowed we ask that when your name is called please have a seat at this table and provide your name and whether you are a resident of the school district in order for the microphones in this room to be effective and the sound consistent we ask you to remain seated and speak directly into the microphone the same way that we need to do at the board table our first speaker for the evening is mr weston lund mr london dr marvin and directors of the board we have a lot of partners in rochester public schools some of them are parents and others who never collect a check from rochester public schools some of them are non-profits and volunteers and others are business partners who become much more than

004the financial relationships through which we purchase various services one of our most important business partners is first student who operates most of our school buses and transportation and we have got a really critical leader uh retiring from that critical partner john gates and we want to take a moment to acknowledge him and thank him for really extraordinary leadership i had the chance to be out with john and jeff kepper's at the bus bar and a couple weeks ago and i could see the the only word is passion with which he has approached keeping those buses running and safe and effective and efficient for our students and so it's my honor to ask scott sheridan our executive director of operations and jeff kapper is our transportation services manager to come up uh and help us embarrass

005john and thank him for his service so scott and jeff please and john i'm going to try um tonight we're here to recognize john gates as you know that superintendent pickel was mentioned he is the manager of first student who was our primary transportation carrier for our students so he's responsible for routing organizing hiring the drivers the equipment of getting students to our bill 12 000 students a day about 12 000 to our sites safely and back home on time all of course in a safe manner it's really been truly my pleasure to work with him over these years the past eight years uh since i've been in charge of transportation he's always found a way to get it done even when the hiring issues with the bus drivers and the lack of qualified drivers

006he still found a way to get it done numerous times you saw him out there driving a bus himself until 5 30 6 o'clock at night he's up at 4 o'clock checking weather driving streets to make sure and particularly in the winter of course to make sure that the streets are clear enough i don't think he's out in the spring doing it but certainly in the winter driving the routes to make sure that it's safe to to have school and uh so he's going to be hanging up his little fluorescent vest after 29 years of service that first student i don't know if you knew this but he is a john marshall rocket graduate born and raised here in rochester is that correct and he was also an employee here in the district for about

007five years working kind of in jeff's area in transportation for five years before he then went to laidlaw which was absorbed by first student so the past 29 am i right 29 years that correct yeah not 30 couldn't make it to 30. it's not too late so many people have asked me i don't know if you knew this he as well he is a huge minnesota gopher basketball fan so he got him season tickets for the next 10 years the gophers i'm kidding it was in our hearts yeah [Music] one of the most remarkable stories uh john and jeff and i actually have a little saying that we use because of there's certain events that happen during in transportation that cause us just to go oh my goodness we should write a book and so

008we have many many chapters that we could be writing one of the most significant which really proves his leadership what happened in february of 2017. for those of you were here this was a very unfortunate accident that happened in the shop area first student in the shop where a propane bus tank exploded injuring an employee and starting a huge fire in their building significant damage to the building i thought my time was up sounds but i was talking about the this huge fire that occurred and this was in february we still had three months more of school to go and through john's leadership he had contingencies in place instantly he even worked out of a construction trailer for the rest of the year while the building was being rebuilt never missed a beat still provided

009all the transportation necessary to get the job done and that's a testament to his character and his ability like the superintendent said his passion so as we close this chapter of the book i hope that you and the board the superintendent and cabinet and the parents and staff join me in thanking john for all his years of service that first student [Applause] [Music] now jeff's the funny guy i'll let him talk so i've had the pleasure working with john since 1997 that's when i went to transportation and we've uh like like kent said this this is more than a business deal this this is a true partnership and it's very special there's very few districts in the state that have the relationship that we did i don't know if you know but john's dad was

010an administrator at the school in the district a pretty high up one he was like director of elementary and secondary when he retired he's a brother that's a principal so he's he's steeped in this he he's that relationship that just that he's bought into the district as well not just as as a first student location manager so that's that that's just just been a valuable asset to us over the years you know we've had our disagreements at times we agreed to disagree there's a couple times i'd like to hit him in the shin with a seven iron vice versa but uh no at the end of the day we we work things out and and i i'm gonna truly miss you man we've had uh it's been a good run [Applause] i'm gonna keep it

011brief i'm really looking forward to my first labor day in 34 years when my wife and i made this decision it's like she made a she made a airline and we're going to nashville for that saturday of labor day really she i guess she didn't want me to back out they painted my office this week because i kind of gave the new manager you know you can move in he's been named mike pierce he's gonna do a great job but all of a sudden i'm sitting there my last day in the office was yesterday in that office and i said wow this is you panned it maybe i'll stay [Laughter] some of the things i won't miss getting up early you know staying late getting calls from like mark weasley at six in the morning

012all those things happen but i enjoy the people i mean jeff and i have a and we we had a great ride you said you said it very well and i'm going to miss everyone and rumor has it that i may be considering sub teaching at a certain middle school that's what we've heard so we'll see he's got us i'm going to make him sign a contract with that thank you all for for your support over the years and thank my staff our first student okay john you [Music] so [Music] [Applause] mr gates has done an outstanding job of keeping our kids safe and keeping our buses running and i i guess that all of us just wish you were taking a bus to nashville but we wish you we thank you deeply and we

013wish you well okay uh 4.02 mobile health unit dr pikel dr marvin the board members i mentioned before we have lots of partners in rochester public schools none uh more important than mayo clinic and this summer we were really excited to pilot something that i know folks who've been working on these issues in rochester much longer than i have have wanted to do for a long time which was a mobile health unit to go where our families are and provide them with critical support like immunizations it was a pilot it was a new experience but it was one that was i think on the whole successful though some lessons were learned so it's my honor to ask leah bancroft who's our health services coordinator and caitlin norris who is the male health clinic health program

014coordinator to join us to give an overview of what we did this summer and what we learned so thank you i think we're ready for the powerpoint in the booth there we go well i'm going to introduce myself so good evening dr pical on board i am leah baycroft i'm our coordinator of health services and this is caitlin norris we have become fast and furious friends um through our community partnership that we have with mayo clinic this brings me so much joy because as dr raquel mentioned one of my passions has been breaking down barriers for health care for our students and our families and i've shared with some of you over the years that i began student nursing in the community health realm with migrant health and putting in mobile units and clinics for

015migrant health and their diabetes farm workers i had no idea it would translate into my career 20 some years down the road but i've been with rochester public schools for the last 19 years and one of the things that we've seen as a gap is how do we get our students immunized before the start of school and so what some may not realize is we do have minnesota state laws immunization laws in place that require our students who are in our early childhood programs and in our schools to be immunized or shown an exemption and so pre-covid we had several students that would land on those lists and on the first day of school we'd have to make those calls and have their parents come and pick them up those are tough calls to make

016we want our kids in school we've thought out of the box over several years whether we would help them with transportation and we've looked at the different barriers and my passion has been we need to go to them how do we break down those barriers whether it's transportation whether it's language whether it's you know not having a medical insurance and part of it is maybe not understanding even western medicine the preventative medicine side of things where immunizations would even be required to attend school and so through our community partnership with mayo clinic i've continued to float out this dream and say how do we do it and we've hit roadblocks along the way and in this last year it has been so exciting to be able to put together kind of like dr pickel said

017a pilot that is a dream that i think we've learned some things will open up in the future to expand so i'm going to give a little bit about the background caitlyn's going to talk about the logistics from an operational standpoint so mayo clinic was a very strong partner in this they put a lot of their own um staffing into it um and and the logistics that she'll talk about were very complex from working with city rochester city lines the city the park and rec department because this unit is large but it's so exciting so rps usually communicates with our families we do send out letters to our families to let them know what immunizations their child is needing if they're arraigning on the non-compliant list we do have our sites working with those families

018even now and historically like i mentioned we do have and i'm not going to quote a number because i'm probably going to misquote it but several hundred students to begin and we work hard in those weeks leading up to the first day of school to try to minimize those that remain on the list and so this summer we were able to put together four clinics and this is what we affectionately call big blue i actually think the driver calls it pearl but our goals really were to remove those barriers to health care what were those barriers we had an idea we were hypothesizing what those might be and we wanted to reduce the number of exclusions on that first day of school especially through the pandemic we know our students weren't getting the immunizations because

019we weren't going to the clinics like we had been pre-covered and now we're looking at our numbers of students that are not compliant and we're really trying to work with the clinic to get them up to date and so this big blue hit the streets and we were able to have four clinics and like i said we were staffed with mayo clinic nurses we had their desk staff on site so if they didn't have insurance or they were looking with their insurance working with their insurance providers they did all of that on site and caleb caleb caitlin will talk through logistics we had some pickups so like any pilot the first one i'm glad there were a few we i think vaccinated seven five which were students and then we grew to where we were

020saturating a capacity by our last clinic which was great and so we did learn along the way we had one of the pictures that you'll see on the slides is a community school site facilitator so we wanted to bring in our school resources so our community site facilitators were there they had backpacks for families they had stuffed animals especially for our little ones who were going to get a shot that maybe they weren't so excited about we had hand sanitizer and wipes and they had crayons they had flyers about the school themselves and one of the neat things i saw was some families who had never experienced public school because their parents chose to keep them home during the pandemic were coming for the first time so this was a first time event where they

021got to meet a school resource and on the bottom of this slide we have our student nutrition services were there as well and they were filling out free and reduced lunch forms if you have not met cynthia armstrong you need to meet her she is phenomenal and i think she greeted every single family that came with a smile helped them fill out paperwork she was kind of the life of the party when we got together as a team and so this was really a great group coming together we had medical interpreters through mayo clinic so we did have somali and we did have spanish interpreters available for our families that came they were they helped us write our welcome signs we would use chalk and things to try to make it a welcoming environment for

022families and it really was just a blast sure so we ultimately ended up deciding to do four clinics so we would be able to pick a variety of locations across rochester for requirements that plus is very large so we needed a large paved area that was flat we looked at going into neighborhoods that are served by one of rps's full service community schools and so working then with with julie rusek and those schools we identified four areas that we thought could most benefit from this service i think picking the locations was one of the hardest parts of planning this and so since we were going back and forth we kind of informally consulted with a couple of researchers at mayo that work with something called the houses index which is a housing-based socioeconomic measure that

023they use kind of in studies relating to epidemiology we sent them kind of the map of the areas we were thinking of going to and they overlaid that with some of their data and agreed that we were going into areas that were more likely to be underserved and could most benefit from this service so for communication and outreach to families we did a variety of things there were americorps staff that helped us with door knocking in some of those community school neighborhoods they also placed phone calls to families of students that were on the immunization exclusion list we did some promotion on social media mostly through rps's facebook page the medical director of our school health program dr christiani did an interview with one of the local tv stations in town and then rps created

024this flyer that's on the screen that we wanted to identify need we thought by going into the residential neighborhoods people would walk to the clinics maybe transportation was a barrier what we found is transportation wasn't necessarily the barrier they were coming we were hitting the right demographic but they were coming from across the district that they were driving so we started to think about what does that mean maybe this is a not as an intimidating environment and most families were saying yes that is true my child doesn't necessarily want to go into the clinic setting this was a less intimidating environment we we were pulling in people so the capacity of the unit we have two lab rooms or exam rooms within the unit itself so we can do two patients every 15 minutes so

025when you think about that with a four hour window that we're there we're at 32 is kind of a max and we were actually thinking outside of the box and families who were willing to have their child vaccinated outside when it was nice we were finding private areas even just to have the nurses outside with the families to vaccinate because they were here we wanted to provide the service but what we found when we were on the northwest side we were by the watson soccer fields we not only saturated our appointments we were at 32 we probably turned away 15 or more students and we had scheduled them then for the clinic that was going to be held on the 19th which unfortunately was cancelled what we were learning though is by word of mouth

026it was spreading and people wanted to come and so we were limited and because i'm a dreamer and i get really excited about meeting these needs for our families i've already thought maybe we've all grown the unit maybe next year it's something to look at a larger capacity is there someplace else we could go and we have some ideas of where we could go where we could vaccinate upwards of of a hundred or more students in an event so instead of just maxing out at 32 we're seeing that there's a need and so some of the things that we were looking at some of the things we're thinking about is community partners so we had our community facilitators with us we're thinking could we have the public library come and join us could we have

027our parkinson rec department come and join us and make it almost like a block party event where we're providing resources to our families we also provide the immunizations we still to date i did ask for our numbers today we still have several students on our exclusion list had we not canceled that last clinic i think we would have been close to 90 if not a little over that as far as vaccinated with these four clinics which i think is great but it gives us room to dream for what next year could be i think what we have learned overall is there is a need and and whatever that barrier is they our families seem to want to come to a community event like this and they're willing to have their child vaccinated through something like

028a mobile unit or maybe in a different space that's just not the clinic and so we're really excited about the work that we did through the summer and we look forward to continuing the partnership and growing that into what we can do next summer thank you questions board members ms nathan well since we're talking about immunizations are there flu immunization clinics planned in the schools this fall yes there are and i so we have just like we have in all years in all of our sites they'll be doing the school-based influenza clinics our registration forms so within our meet the teacher formats our step into learning and schedule pickups mayo clinic will have nurses at those events that have the registration forms and the information for that we are not i don't believe with a

029vaccine that covet vaccine will be available for any of that during that time so that's not going to be a combined if that's the next question that you have but we are excited to have them back into our schools for flu and it seems like this mobile health unit is just a great expansion of that partnership we've already had with the immunization clinics that we really appreciate yeah thank you one more quick question i think i know the answer but just for clarification parents or guardians have to give their consent to have their child immunized so you don't just grab a kid and say come in here yes yeah they had to be there yes all right thank you so much really interesting and thank you for your service thank you so much oh i

030said we had to run spell check on our presentation because you were my ninth grade english so it's nice to see you again oh thank you the spelling was awesome all right um it's almost time for school to be opening again back to school 2022 2023 dr pikel thank you dr marvin and board members i will wait till miss severson can bring up our slides and jump in i'm going to move at a pretty quick clip here because we have got a lot going on we are on the cusp of another school year and i would like to give the board and the community a very fast update on a number of points and a somewhat deeper update on a couple points so if the technology will work let me just flip through some of

031these key uh points of course first always in all of our work is the academic preparation and readiness of our students i have to take this opportunity here at the board meeting to welcome our new chief academic officer dr effey akbamo who is joining us actually relatively new in rochester public schools but having had a slight detour with a fractured leg that she is now refusing to take time off to heal so fa joining us is one of the critical things that is in that academic sphere we also have launched a completely redesigned school improvement planning process we brought teams from all of our schools together two weeks ago to begin focusing on a set of goals that are aligned with our strategic plan and an improvement process that is deeply rooted in the research

032on school improvement and then finally this morning i had the opportunity to welcome 127 new teachers who are out at century high school and i will tell you the energy was awesome unfortunately i killed it by the end of my presentation but i know they pulled it out of the ditch um seriously it was a uh it was a great a great conversation and a lot of great energy so we are on track for a really good uh year academically enrollment is looking solid to our budgeted enrollment with 17 642 students and we are at 17 647 students um and so we are slightly ahead we also know that over the course of the remainder of august and into september we will have some fluctuation both up and down it's been great to see families

033out in the hallway but at a time when many school districts nationally are struggling with dramatically declining enrollment the fact that we are right now at our budget projection is something that we should take heart in but that we can never stop uh working very very hard to make sure that we're the provider of choice in rochester for rochester families we are opening as board members know we had the opportunity uh the other day to celebrate the opening of longfellow we're going to be opening dakota and bishop we opened another school last year all three new buildings are on track to be ready there's still some nail biters with a roundabout in front of dakota and some other issues that we need to pull together but scott sheridan tells me things are are looking good

034we have had major internal work done at john marshall high school this summer and that has been a race against the clock but it is also looking like we're going to be ready for students there so on track on the facility side staffing is as anybody in any organization in the state with the lowest unemployment in american history which minnesota is right now a struggle um it's one that we continue to work on aggressively there are some bright spots i wish john and jeff were here because things are looking good with bus drivers and van drivers right now so that is as board members know very different from where we were last year there are some areas though where we really have some heavy lifting to do we have 89 education support professional positions what

035we previously called paraprofessionals that are open right now in the district 5.6 licensed school nurses we have 13 elementary special education teachers and related service providers and nine special secondary special education teachers and related service providers in a district of 3000 employees those are not gigantic numbers but they are very significant numbers and we're going to continue to be very very aggressive in trying to fill those slots before the start of the school year we have made some big changes over the summer in some of our technology platforms in particular we have switched from the microsoft office suite to the google suite there's some colleagues including some board members who are still adjusting to that and maybe mourning the loss of microsoft outlook i'll tell you it's going to be better in the long run

036but that's a huge change and i will just say i know we're going to have a lot of staff who have not been logging on to their district emails or calendars who are going to log on and experience that shift over the coming weeks the reason we needed to make that shift and i see dramatically want to jump in the reason we needed to make that shift is all of our students were on the google suite and all of our staff was on the outlook suite and no organization would continue to maintain those two separate architectures especially of our size and we simply had to choose one or the other in order to have integration because as we know we're an increasingly technology infused school district so we've made that transition it has happened mostly

037successfully but we know there have been some bumps we are getting out to staff uh some tips and tricks for using gmail and google calendar and by the way people are not losing stuff like microsoft word and powerpoint that we are retaining and will still fully be available so if i may have is this a good time to jump in and just say that there may have been a period of time in early july where school board members weren't getting their email addresses in case we weren't getting their emails to the group email address in case there was somebody out there who emailed us the first part of july we weren't trying to ignore anybody it's just that that technology piece didn't carry over of the forwarding email address is this a good time to

038mention that because i don't want anyone to think that we were ignoring their emails yeah thank you director robinson the good news was and this was a big worry all of the actual messages that people had in their inboxes and the items on their calendars that transferred over what we lost were some of the groups so school board at rochester public schools we didn't have that immediately that happened with several other groups we're repopulating those right now but you're right and it's a good point if your emails were not answered that was not a sign of disengagement thank you um after school care we know that the school-aged child care program provides an invaluable service for many of our families we currently have a wait list of 208 families on that what we call the

039sac waiting list or school aged child care i want folks who are on that waiting list to know that we are we understand how concerning that is it's a question of hiring staff again in this economy where people have those options we are working very very hard to fill those slots and we are um we are we understand the difficulty that that puts families in who would like to register their child for child care we also of course can't serve more kids than we have staff to take care of effectively so yet another area in which the tight labor market is creating some challenges for us in communications we are on the verge over the next week or 10 days of having each of our schools send out a comprehensive uh letter and electronic communication

040and printed communication to families outlining start of school information those may be going out even sooner um one thing we've discussed especially with our new communications director mom sue knutson is standardizing the content and the timing of that communication more uh tightly across the district next year it happens very much site by site right now and we think there's some utility to make sure that happens a bit more court in a bit more coordinated fashion but those communications are going out in addition uh communication on something that i'll talk about in a moment which is um our new guidelines for cell phone use in middle and secondary schools will also be going out uh very broadly to parents and families in the near future and then with transportation as i mentioned things are looking pretty

041good with drivers very importantly the entire map of the school district has been redrawn this fall with the new boundary changes and so that has meant redrawing all of the transportation routes for those 12 000 students that scott mentioned a moment ago there's always some issues to work out but on the whole we are confident that we're going to be able to get the kids from their homes to our schools within the board's parameters for offering transportation service and looking pretty good on the staffing side and then finally with food service as we've shared with the board previously but it's good to share with the community the pandemic support the support during the pandemic that the federal government provided for food service has been ended has ended and so we don't have the ability to

042provide without restriction free lunches and breakfast to everybody so one thing that's meant is we have had to hire people to check kids numbers again because we didn't have to do that for a couple years we're pleased that we're going to be able to continue to provide free breakfast the federal government has authorized that and thanks to the skillful management of our transportation of our food service we have the funds to cover the cost of breakfast we're not at this present time authorized or able to do that for lunches and so we will be returning to the standard for free and reduced priced lunch as leah just shared we were always trying creative ways to get families to fill those forms out in order to qualify for free and reduced price lunch but it's important

043for families to know that if you don't qualify you will need to have money in your students account to cover the cost of lunch this fall it's a very reasonable cost i will add and then finally for the school year we are going to be gathering all of our staff who choose to attend if someone is concerned about proximity to others during the continuing pandemic we we authorize them not to join us but i'm hopeful that all of our staff will be out with us on the morning of august 30th at rochester community technical college in the field house for a kickoff event when we will really be trying to begin this school year with a lot of energy and optimism so i mentioned i'd like to briefly go into two other points in in

044somewhat greater detail and the first is regarding covid as we all know we're not out of the pandemic but we're moving into a new phase of that pandemic broadly stated we have revised the safe and open schools plan that the board approved last year and that we continually updated to align with the most recent guidance that the centers for disease control released a couple of weeks ago and there's a link to that that is on the slide and will be on our website in brief here's what the key changes in the cdc guidance were they are no longer recommending that we need to cohort students or physically distance those students we can return to sitting the way we would would have before the pandemic in classrooms and in lunch rooms and in other areas they've

045changed the recommendation to conduct screening testing to focus on high risk activities like sports during high periods when community level spread is high and so some uh dialing down of the advice to for aggressive testing they've removed the recommendation to quarantine except in very high risk you know settings where we know there's a very significant spread of the virus they've removed the emphasis on test to stay programs to keep students in school we know that we were one of the first and only districts in rochester to pilot a test to say program last year and they have updated the information significantly which we will be sharing with families on when to wear a mask how to wear a mask managing cases and exposures and responding to those outbreaks so the first big point is we're

046aligning with cdc guidance we are continuing our building by building and at the elementary level classroom by classroom approach to masks which we know are an issue that uh gets a lot of attention deservedly so that threshold is five percent of students and staff have tested positive at the building level and when that happens they wear masks for two weeks and we assess the level of infection in the school to see if we can discontinue it two weeks in elementary classrooms where kids are mostly self-contained all day unlike middle schools and high schools 15 percent of the students is the sign to move to masking at that point so we found that that building by building approach that we evolved to over the last school year has been quite effective and so we'll be maintaining

047it and then a final point on this score is just the mentality as i think back on my first year in rochester and first year as a superintendent i'm not sure how often i said it explicitly but in the back of my mind at this time last year we were out of code we were happy we're done we're out of masks and i think that set us up at least it set me up for kind of a feeling of loss and disappointment when it became clear that we're not out of covid we're in a good place again broadly stated but we're not out of it and so one of the things i've been saying to our principals and others is let's approach this with the mentality that this is ongoing but we know how to

048manage it we know how to keep our students and our staff safe and we're going to continue to pay attention to expert guidance and learn so there's a brief overview of where we are with covid second and final point that i want to dive into a little bit more deeply is the work that the board has been very very uh supportive of and engaged in around strengthening behavior and belonging in all of our schools especially our secondary schools where at times last year we did see disruptive behavior disrupt disrespectful behavior and sometimes violent behavior become an issue not equally across all schools but it's something that we took very very seriously and we'll continue to do that this year the first thing that we have done is we've reviewed all of the consequences for disciplinary

049disrespectful or violent behavior that are in our student handbook which the board recently approved and we have re-affirmed those and clarified those with all of our administrators so we really are very clear that what constitutes a disciplinary infraction and what the consequences for those infractions should be we have fully implemented a software platform that we purchased last year called pbis or positive behavioral interventions and supports which has got one part that is about providing kids with incentives points for good behavior but the piece we didn't use fully last year that we're going to be using fully this year is a function that greatly enhances communications between teachers and administrators about disciplinary incidents in the school allowing in particular a teacher to understand what action has been taken by an assistant principal by a principal which

050otherwise would require a walk down to the office and a long conversation which is difficult when you've got a classroom full of students we are providing uh both support and accountability for our schools in being very accurate and consistent in coding disciplinary data we've made some strides toward that end over the past year and it's something that we're going to get even tighter about so that we're very sure that disciplinary incidents are being treated similarly not just across our schools but across students from all backgrounds in our schools we have had every school put together a comprehensive belonging and behavior plan at the secondary schools and those leaders our principals and others will be sharing those plans with their school communities in ways that work for them over the course of the the opening weeks

051of school we have moved towards something we're going to pilot around cell phones and unlike some of the worst fears of some of our students that i spent time with last year we're not banning cell phones though that's something that was often discussed we also are not going to remain where we were last year as regards to cell phones we are going to and i won't go into this in in great detail we're going to pilot this fall what we're calling a red zone green zone approach red zones as you can guess are zones in which use of a cell phone by a student is not appropriate in any context and green zones are spaces and times where use of a cell phone is appropriate we know that frankly for all of us and especially

052for our students that phone has become almost an all-purpose resource in life but it's also one that can be distractful from learning and can create some other problems and tensions when kids are posting things that are happening in schools so phones must be out of sight in a red zone earbuds air pods and headphones must be put away and out of sight in a red zone students can however use their phone in a greed zone they must always follow directions from staff in either red or green zones regarding their phone if they feel they must use their phone in a red zone for some urgent reason they must get permission from a staff member first we're going to have posted red zone green zone signs in our schools to create this visually we're going to

053be clearly creating the expectation that students are not taking pictures of v or videos of others in either red zones or green zones without explicit approval from staff and so what are some examples of green zones cafeterias outside at lunch hallways during passing time and in classrooms when a teacher posts the green zone sign red zones will always be bathrooms and locker rooms classrooms when the red zone is posted and anytime a staff member asks a student to put away we're going to launch this in the fall and we'll be seeking feedback from staff students and parents on its effectiveness and of course we'll refine it as necessary over the course of the fall this is an important issue and i want to say we have had really striking collaboration and agreement across all of

054our secondary schools and coming up with this these new guidelines and our secondary schools are very different from each other and have different student populations and so the fact that we reached really strong agreement on this i think indicates um a consensus that this is this is a direction we need to pursue our high schools are going to beginning their first day only with just ninth graders to uh inculcate them into the school culture and they're going to have upper people in the upper grades there to introduce them to the building and begin building relationships and this is something i think we really lost during the pandemic begin building that school culture i'll show you a graphic of this in just a moment but we are launching a new resource called speak up for safety

055that will be a one-stop shop that students can reach out to for additional support not just in areas of safety but also in areas of harassment and other concerns so i'll come to that in just a second and then on august 30th we will be in every one of our schools that's the same day we'll be at rctc conducting professional development for all staff around uh strengthening the sense that all students have that they belong in our schools that they're safe they can be themselves and that they can work hard academically on that critical part of why they're in school so what is speak up for safety i wish this was coming across a little safer than clearer than it was actually and i want to make sure that i actually get it right so

056i'm going to pull it up this is a new resource that people in our schools are going to and this will be on the back of every student id it will be posted elsewhere in our schools and this resource will be for texting or calling by phone it will also be for email and it will allow a student to anonymously report bullying or cyber bullying harassment or discrimination threats of violence or fights weapons at school students in crisis or other urgent situations it will go immediately to one of our staff to a real person it will be continually monitored and it's something that i think can fill a real need in our schools going forward i know this is a ton so i'm actually not going to go through some of the remaining slides here

057i'm just going to do a teaser and if board members are interested in the community are interested we can come back to this at a later time but we are also encouraging our schools to invest in five broad themes that really emerge from the research on student motivation there are also themes that have been a part of the work that i did on the research side of my career over the last 10 years they you know i like acronyms and they flow along the acronym reach the first is relationships connecting with those kids so they feel seen cared about and validated individually and creating school communities in which every student feels they belong effort making the case that effort produces intelligence and success in our school teaching kids that their brains are like muscles and

058when they actually challenge their brains they create new neural connections and they actually become meaningfully in a practical sense more intelligent that's something that for a lot of our kids in the pandemic has fallen away and the idea that effort produces learning and success is something we can't take for granted aspirations is understanding and helping kids develop powerful and positive visions for their futures and critically connecting school to their aspirations for the future so that school becomes a means to realizing those aspirations cognition is helping kids think about their thinking teaching them that we actually have what we might call a fast brain and a slow brain a brain that's designed to help us fight or flight and keep us safe from saber-toothed tigers on savannahs or brains that are designed to help us balance

059challenging questions and decide things that are complex and for which the fast decision is often not the right decision and so helping students understand that they aren't at the mercy of their emotions and that they can think about their thinking and then finally heart knowing what students love knowing knowing the activities and the interests that matter and finding ways to bring those into the curriculum and in the rest of the presentation that i'm going to skip right now there are quotes from rochester students that illustrate how these five things are already happening in many of our schools and how we can lean into them more effectively for all students starting this fall we're also providing all staff with activities summaries of the research questions for discussion and reflection video resources to help them integrate these

060five themes into their work with students this fall all with an eye toward understanding that we can't approach school assuming that it's just like it always has been we're living in a new era a new paradigm and we need to start from the first minute or the first day of the school year uh engaging kids along those lines so i know that was a lot we covered the waterfront i'm glad to open it up for any questions or comments but if i had to summarize it's that i think we're on track for a really good year but we're realistic about the challenges ahead you said it all thank you i actually did something i'm sorry i didn't question it i was going to be faster i was waiting for brothers and it's your birthday but

061still i know i'm sorry um so dr pacquiao i'm very interested in the behavior and belonging item number three that you give us very good language to talk about this topic enhanced attention to accurate and uniform coding discipline data can you provide the board in the community with more detail about that at some point absolutely we're going to be redesigning the board calendar director barlow has asked for some of that data as well as we redesign the board um calendar for the fall we will schedule a discussion of that data um for the fall definitely and we'll make sure that we can go beneath that data to help the board and the community also understand some of the factors we think that are producing those outcomes and i have two other really minor things the

062new cell phone policy you didn't mention any sort of discipline action with that i haven't studied the student handbook so i don't know the details of that is that something that's included in that policy as well it is but i don't want to put jackie peterson our chief of schools who of course was just talking about something else on the on the dot but jackie are there i guess i wasn't necessarily asking for the details but is is discipline part of that policy so have we started articulate disciplinary consequences for like when red zone violations with the cell phones are occur not that they ever will i can't imagine that but yeah the important one of the important pieces is for to make it clear what happens if we can't follow those guidelines and it's

063very progressive it starts with just making a phone call to the parent or asking the child to park their phone on the teacher's desk for that class period so there are multiple steps that administrators will take starting with just a very simple call or put your phone here thank you and we'd be uh glad director mclaughlin to get you more detail on that sure that was just the kind of basics that i was looking for and then finally i'm hoping that the students can hear directly from you on the reach project um because i think that you speaking to it is something the students really need to hear awesome thank you so um one of my points and i kind of mentioned this already in the study session about the red zone green zone is

064just to help for students clarify like should they have either a 504 iep medical reads something medical or mental health reason why they would need their phone in a red zone in particular like how they can get an exemption for those things or at least not be put on the spot as like this kid is able to use their phone in the space when we are not and sort of helping them navigate that and i guess for for me for the speak up for safety is just a curiosity point because i can imagine if i want to report having observed someone else discriminating against someone else it's not necessarily just me i can put that information in but if i'm reporting it about me is there a distinction that you offer for the students about

065which one of these uh reports would get follow-up directly versus ones that wouldn't so i do understand i think so yeah dr garcia thank you both will get follow-up right now the technology doesn't differentiate between whatever the kid wants to tell us we need to look at that and then explore it but the pathway would be there for both the student to report something they saw and then also something they experienced and then we would have to decide on the appropriate step based on the what we hear or what we read i mean for that individual so like i wouldn't you know if i'm going to say something about another student or a teacher that i'm not necessarily directly involved in you wouldn't necessarily give me an update on how you followed through but if

066i'm reporting it because it's something that happened to me and i do want follow-up or i want to be able to talk with someone about it when will i get that and in which instances would that be appropriate because i think a lot of times what happens is i'm going to go tell my teacher that this thing happened then the teacher does what the teacher needs to do and then i don't hear about it i'm like well the school's not doing anything but they are it's just not something that i'm privy to know necessarily in my space yeah let me take talk to garcia let's take that under consideration and get back to you we we did learn through the perspectives project and through the other uh discussions we had last year that we need

067to tell students who report something that we may not be able to tell them what is done about it because when we don't tell them that they understandably assume nothing is done but if it's something that is a human resource issue we can't tell them so we are working to build that into all of the student reporting processes and then you're also right when the student reports something that happened to them similarly we do need to make sure there's follow-up with that this is a new effort and we'll be really putting we will be learning as we go and i'll look forward to having um staff provide the board with an update probably early in the fall and how it's going thank you miss workman i really um this is what you didn't cover i

068really liked the insights that you provided um and i'm thinking particularly when we have a discussion about red zone green zones that the i really like what the middle school student said about effort just teachers should step back and not assuming that we're wanting to disrespect and then on the cognition one it was wow middle school we're kids we're not always responsible mature we're very impulsive so sometimes we just want to do what we want to do even if we know it's wrong so i think there's going to be some work in trying to get a balance between just bringing the hammer down versus what's actually happening with that student and as we build we meaning all of our community as we build relationships with each other i think that will get easier and easier

069to do as time go goes on so um i think this is just a marvelous beginning and i really wait with anticipation to see how everything works out yeah thank you director and i'll say maybe if the board is interested after we launched the school year we could come back on reach and give you a deeper dive because i just felt this was enough of my voice tonight that i cut off about 10 slides that are there and maybe we can come back to that so i think two more comments mr barlow and then miss nathan uh yes mine is also related to the speak up for safety i'm just curious a great concept uh this does not preclude a student from speaking and reaching out directly to a teacher counselor administrator to report their

070concern does it not at all okay we would encourage that and miss nathan um i appreciate that the buildings are going to be um communicating their behavior and belonging plans um as i look at all of these pieces you know like director mclaughlin i think parents would really benefit to be able to access or read about some of these because i think it gives parents a little bit more comfort to know how teachers and staff are thinking about their students and and to see that they're thinking about their students with those five themes or for the speak up to safety that their students have this resource i think the and i know you said the self the cell phone policy is going to be communicated but i think the more that we can share with

071parents what we're trying to do in the buildings i don't know that parents and students always have the conversations but if a parent does want to have the conversation to be able to have them have the nomenclature the the terminology the you know be on the same page however we can make that available to parents i think will help our efforts thank you we will then move on to 4.04 board member committee updates board members especially in the last month or so i've been going to a number of community events as well as working on their community work any reports on any of those events or many work is nathan um i was able to attend the um career uh college and career fair that was organized as part of the back to school parade

072and block party uh last friday night you know superintendent paquel was there too we had some representatives um hosting a table to talk about employment opportunities and it was really a great event it was spearheaded by a community member who really had a passion about bringing this information to students and brought in a lot of higher education partners and some community partners i met with some students who were an alumni of john marshall who are now part of a national youth mentoring organization that was actually founded by a mayo clinic physician that didn't know about but would be great to try to you know figure out how to connect them to more of our students so i know there's been conversations of where this goes in the future but the more opportunities that we can

073give our kids to talk and to think about they also did one of those um the game of life um sort of scenarios where they went through and they had to make a budget for all the different components and they had financial aid workshop and uh how to think about college workshop so it was just a really great opportunity i think that we should do whatever we can to support in the future thank you and just a quick note the uh student school board group has been working on re-envisioning what the student school board will look like and how they will function on during this next school year and i think they're going to be some really positive important changes one is that they will be acting more like this school board including sitting at

074this table and having a gavel so um it's going to be interesting to see how that works but we'll have more information on that in the next couple of weeks mr uh we'll rough in that second second or third second thank you has been instrumental in getting that going too we will then move on to the superintendent evaluation report this is the 2021-2022 summary at a closed session on august 16th the school board conducted a year-end evaluation of superintendent ken pacquel's progress toward three goals that he and the board agreed were vitally important for the 2021-2022 school year during the closed session each board member provided their independent assessment of his progress toward each goal using a scale of ineffective developing effective and highly effective board members also provided evidence that supported their assessment in

075aggregate the board rated superintendent pacquel highly effective for all three goals the entire evaluation is imposed is posted online i'll provide a brief summary for goal number one which was to develop the rochester public school strategic action plan and guide the work of rps during the 2022 through 2025 school year board members said that the strategic plan was approved at a board meeting on june 21st 2022 and is already being implemented this was a huge effort involving 78 people committed to working groups as well as thousands of community members who provided feedback dr paquel provided big picture thinking without losing track of details and especially because of his interim status when he took on this effort his willingness to lead it and his expertise in accomplishing it were remarkable and we are absolutely committed as

076a board to continuing to work with dr pikel over the next three years the second goal was to implement the rps safe and open schools plan to minimize the spread of the covid19 virus among students and staff while working to keep all pia school rps schools and their programs open for instruction in person throughout the year dr pikel did create an informed plan in collaboration with local county state and national health organizations and experts and with the exception of two weeks when a staff shortage created the need to transition to distance learning rps schools stayed open to face-to-face learning during this past school year goal three was to build the capacity of the new office of diversity equity and inclusion to coordinate implementation of the school district's equity policy throughout the district dr pikel took

077on a newly created department and expanded it to include additional responsibilities including family and student engagement and additional staff including equity specialists the current office of equity and engagement is now equipped and empowered to educate and form and influence all aspects of the strategic plan dr pikel has proven to be an unflinching champion of the critical importance of diversity equity and inclusion in our school systems and has made it a priority to empower the voices of those who have experienced or who have been affected by marginalization added notes is that dr pacquiao has received overwhelmingly positive feedback from community members who appreciate his willingness to meet with them to listen and to be informed by their perspectives he has also been successful in recruiting exceptionally qualified individuals to work in leadership roles in this district

078including our new director who is here this evening despite great physical challenges and he's also created that position for a director of research assessment and evaluation and has hired an expert to fill that position so in closing rps this board feels is incredibly fortunate to have kent picales our superintendent this board looks forward to continuing to work with and support him and again the entire evaluation is available online then we move to 5.0 the consent agenda are there any items that any board member would like to take off for separate consideration ms workman yes um this is just an observation with 5.101 approval of adult meal price and this is something that is generally pretty routine but i think it's important to share that the rate of federal reverse reimbursement received for the dis i'm

079sorry for student free meals including the value of usda foods the minimum price that districts are allowed to charge for adult lunches is 4.95 per meal the current adult price is 4.15 and so the reason this doesn't in my opinion need to come up for discussion for the board just a opportunity to educate people is that if the administration and the wonderful people that we have in our student nutrition services had felt that we should charge more than 4.95 for an adult meal it would have come before us but it didn't so um i'm certainly happy to support this along with the rest of the consent agenda so that's a comment right that's okay wanting to modify that so at this point is there's someone who would like to move the consent consent agenda move

080approval second that's what i was looking for thank you it's been moved and seconded all in favor say aye aye opposed and the consent agenda is approved 6.01 our focused topic is school safety dr pikel chair marvin and directors of the board um this is a sensitive topic because this is a topic that is about how we keep our students safe from threats outside our school buildings and we intentionally scheduled this topic months ago when our students are not in school because part of the tension that we and other educators face is that when you talk about these issues it can heighten anxiety among our students about their safety and yet we know our parents our community our students our staff are deeply concerned about this issue and so we on the cusp of this

081new school year have scheduled this update we've also intentionally scheduled this update when thankfully we have not in recent days had a tragedy like we saw in uvalde in texas it would be inappropriate i think to schedule the update you're going to get now in the aftermath of such a tragedy because what you're going to hear and i would like to invite um scott sheridan and julie claiman up to provide this update you're going to hear that this district is a national leader in keeping our students safe that we are continually analyzing perfecting and improving these processes and practices final point if i turn it over to scott and julie both of whom i believe i can share our former law enforcement officers before becoming rps staff members is that this presentation is not going

082to be extremely detailed and that's by design because you don't give away the detailed steps you take to keep our students safe and yet we think you should know we think about this and work on this every single day so scott and julie thank you for your leadership and look forward to this this overview thank you good evening board members good evening the superintendent eloquently described why we're here so i'm not going to expand further on that i feel very lucky to have julie clayman on board on in our district initially i was hired as kind of the role that she's in now and then it my role kind of transformed real quickly into adding a bunch of other tasks and i felt it was really important that we have someone specifically dedicated to the

083safety and security of the school and superintendent paquel agreed and we hired julie through a process and she's done a phenomenal job in the almost year you've been here now i'm just shy every year okay but i do want to start out and we're going to give you a general overview but like the superintendent said we're not going to be diving way into the details go away into the weeds on this we have multiple layers in place of security and we'll briefly describe what some of those are but i do want to reiterate that no matter how many layers you have in place you know how much matter how much money you spend no matter how hardened you make your buildings no matter what type of software systems notification systems and all that that you

084might have in place you can't ever guarantee that you're going to be 100 effective to prevent school violence in school and that's the sad reality that we're facing a long uphill climb to to try to get to that level as the superintendent said we are dedicated to that and i believe we're one of the leaders certainly in the state if not in the nation as far as the enhancements that we have in place here there's still more work to do and so we're looking forward to continuing those enhancements as well when we do our crisis management planning there's three tenants that we we try to work under obviously the first one is to increase the security of the staff and students in our in our buildings and we do a lot of like i said

085multi-layered functions that that do that the other part of it is we want to minimize the loss now safety and security may not always be related to a violent event in the school could be related to a gas explosion it could be related to something you know a hurricane or a weather event that comes through and our intent is to minimize the loss and damage and one point under this that i'd like to make is when we built our four new schools we built storm shelters in those each of those four schools that aren't necessarily in place in our current schools because they weren't really required by cove but these are greatly enhanced storm shelters that we built that would uh allow for all people that the of the enrolled staff and students that are

086in those buildings to take shelter in up to 200 mile per hour winds and and so these are some of the things not only the violent part of it but also the weather events as well and then of course the final goal is to make sure that those enhancements allow us to return as quickly as possible to normal function and what what do we have in place as backup systems in order to to make that happen whether it's generators emergency lighting and other enhancements that with our relationships we have with our contractors in order to get buildings back up and functioning again along with that you have the mental health aspect the supports that we have in place through a wide variety of very skilled employees and collaborations that we have that provide assistance to

087our students and our staff to manage any traumas that they might have be affected by any type of event whether it's a violent event or a weather event or something similar we do have of course these non-physical pieces i mean physical i mean physical enhancements in a building these are the non-physical ones that we have we have crisis response team that we have in place in our district that responds to all crisis events within the district it's a very well-schooled well-oiled machine that if an event happens a significant event that happens in a to a staff member a student in a school we provide resources that immediately and go out and work to provide listening sessions to provide mental health support to the staff and students and to manage those events of course we have

088our local partnerships with our law enforcement and particularly with our school resources officers julie and i are former former school resource officers julie far more recently than i but mine was 30 some years ago about 30 years ago hers is a year ago and uh but we have this great relationship with them uh we're called 24 7 whenever we have an event at the school an example we had a break in and significant damage at one of our elementaries a few months ago and we were called at two o'clock in the morning or i was called to come in and then we immediately got resources in place to get the building back put together so that sac could still start at six o'clock in the morning without even knowing what had happened we just sectioned

089off the place and started the repairs but that's the kind of relationship that we have with our local law enforcement and our sros the threat assessment teams are both district-wide and also site-based teams these are very well-educated staff members that and support teams that are able to take information that comes in from a staff member or fellow students and utilize that information to determine the threat level of a potential act that the student might might do we talked about the speak up already that's a new enhancement that we had that's i feel is really going to be a big benefit to our school district we also monitor social media on a regular basis julie's far more adept at that than i am but she's really good at it and again some of these other resources

090that are in place provide 24 7 access from that were notified even in the middle of the night if there's a an issue potentially in one of our for one of our students that uh myself or a list of other people that are on the list as a the calling tree is informed immediately and we take action even at two o'clock in the morning whether it's getting a hold of law enforcement do welfare checks or we get a hold of administrators or we contact the parents directly if there's a crisis that we believe might be occurring with one of our students like i said that's occurring 24 hours a day as we go along i know i'll talk about these recent enhancements that we have done in the eight years i've been here the door

091buzzer cameras at all sites you're all familiar with those secure entry points we've just completed all those with the referendum dollars we did our secure entries that's a single point of entry that goes through each of our buildings not here at edison obviously or at frydell because we're waiting to determine what we're going to do with prydell but the other sites all have a secure entry we're always working to upgrade our camera system and we're always looking to upgrade systems of detection using our camera systems that we're looking at as well to increase security we've always expanded the radio systems you'll hear later about the distributed antenna system i'm sure you're waiting anxiously to hear about that one the distributed antenna system and all our other points of entry are monitored whether it's by a

092sensor on the door where we get door propped alarms now julie and i and a couple other people if a door is propped or open that shouldn't be open for a certain period of time we're immediately notified the enhancement that does is it allows the sites to be completely aware of a door that's not normally used is breached and they're allowed to take action or send a security pair or whatever you'll check it out i'm going to refer now to julie let her talk about uh some other roles that the options are about good evening everybody so um we talked about the crisis plan as scott said and so along with myself and mike stock he and i are the ones that go through and update the crisis plan and we did that this year

093went through a few things um we added something this year and i think that was sent out to everybody that was a change a little bit on a hostile visitor so we've changed that up i've sent everything out to office managers i've been out to talk to each office manager gone over things if they have any questions they've been asked to contact me they email me and so that that's really good that we have that communication um i think it's very helpful um and it's very important that we have stress to everybody is just because you get the crisis fun make sure you read it you know go through the top things instead of just having the i have it and sit down so we've really kind of been pushing that that you go over

094that and kind of know your your way around that um that brings us to um our drills that we do we do um five five and five i'm sorry five five and one so we do five active threats five uh fire drills and one weather and that is a state statute that has to be done so we get those done so this year what we've done um we we asked that they get them done and not hold them up and wait for them at the end of the year do them all the time kind of spread them out and i've had no way of um seeing when they're doing it until the end of the year because then they send out their forms and then they send them in so this year um the administrator

095coordinator and i um amy kern we have developed a safety drill dropbox and what that will do is that once a drill has been activated or done they can instantly go in onto google put all the information in and then they can submit it what i get from that then is i get an email alert and i know right away that one's been done um i can go back into my spreadsheet i can see who's on top of it or who needs to have one you know that we need to get going on that one so it's kind of nice to know where things are at instead of waiting to the end of the year to have them sent in so it kind of makes everybody a little bit more um responsible to get them

096done um that brings us to our new um well it's been a year but it's new for some that are going to be getting our emergency notification system that is our visual notification system for weather active threat and our fire emergencies this alarm is now in almost all of our buildings not quite everyone but this has been implemented with our referendum dollars that we got so um hopefully everything is we have a couple buildings left to do but as of right now a lot of our almost all of our schools have it and what this is is um this is a drill it's a three colored drill a blue for active threat yellow for weather and white for fire and what that is is each one of those beams of those are in each each

097room of every single school so that's even in the bathroom so what that means is when you have an alarm if the corresponding button which is an active threat would be blue if that is pushed then it beams a strobe light of blue through all the rooms not only does it do that but it gives an automated uh voice comes on and it it instructs the staff and the students that there will be standby for an emergency broadcast and so um we've been currently right now i've been going around to all the schools and we have been training office managers and the administrators on how to use that we highly recommend that they all um not just one person use it but everybody get used to using that because again you know we practice like

098we are actually doing it so um it's been recommended for them to all do that we have multiple avenues of direct contact to our first responders and there's i don't want to get into everything what we have but just know that there is more than just a phone just a 9-1-1 call that can be made we have things that can reach them immediately and so that's kind of a little feel a little bit well on that um we have another um rapture visitor management system that we have this is a visitor management system where we take a visitor's identification card and we run it through our system this then will alert us if a sexual offender um is coming out of our properties and so what that does not just alert the gal or the

099guy that's running the the card but it also alerts all the sros not just of that school but of all the schools um it alerts scott me and i believe some other people who are on our tree and so we all know right away what's going on and so we are and i as eyes as sro i got a couple of those back a couple years ago and i immediately responded and we all respond to that um and so that's a really good um program but what the card is used for is that not only does it just alert that but it gives it prints out a badge a sticker badge with the person's photo on it and it indicates to them it also the the person who's putting them in has to write where

100they're going into the school and after that i started playing around on raptor i just started um getting involved with this because the gal who was running it she is now retired and i've noticed that we can actually print out a list of all the people who have come in and where they're actually going so we're kind of me and again amy kern are going through some of those things and so we're going to be able to use that as a tool a little bit more than what we're just using it to print out stickers and and putting it on people's shirts and getting into the building along with raptor i have been in correspondence with a representative and they've got a lot of other great programs that they are coming with up to us

101about and we're kind of in the works with those things and hopefully we can implement them down the road they're they're it's getting to be really good what they're coming up with as technology gets better right um so hopefully we'll be able to add some of their things onto our program [Music] our aed this year as you know those are the automated external defibrillators that are in all of our schools and in those we've decided this year we are putting tourniquets and not just the secondary aeds but all of them at every single one and we are going to be um the nurses the current nurses right now the school nurses will be getting trained to how to use them and then in hopes that they will train our staff so everybody can use them

102in need of needing to use them because we all know it can save a life um i think that is the updates that i've got yeah there's a takeoff on the tourniquet i know it's something a little new that we have but um when i was uh in my former career on the emergency response unit we practiced combat uh medic training and and doc matt sanchez was our medical director and he he was the impetus that started the original tourniquets in the secondary schools where he provided him i think using his own funds in order to put him in our schools and the value of that if if you do research for instance in wartime research the thing that the soldiers die from is blood loss it's not necessarily the initial trauma from a wound

103but it for the vast majority of them it is the blood loss and as sad as that is in uvalde that seemed to be the case for a lot of the students in that particular school as well so our thought process was providing at least another resource a tourniquet that could stem the flow and allow somebody that has the knowledge and how to place it and how to use it could potentially save a life and we just think it's an invaluable piece that we're going to expand throughout the district in the aeds along with a medkit that has like a pressure bandage and a hemostat agent that helps clot the blood as well and we're still in a bit of the infancy stage hoping to have all this in place in the next week or

104two but we're still working on and getting the training piece done on that particular piece of it questions comments miss nathan um i appreciate all this information i think our parents and families and staff appreciate it too i want to give you also some credit for what you have on our website um where you have a detailed description of what kind of communication will happen with parents in the event of a crisis situation it lays out pretty clearly where parents should look for information from the district um and sort of in the reverse of that maybe going back to that um the speak up system in the event that there is a parent who has a concern about a threat in the off hours our principals don't have 24 7 phone numbers or cell phones

105can parents use that speak up function to contact the district or i would assume during the school day the first choice would be to contact their principal but what where's the best contact if there's an adult in the community who feels they have information to share with the district well let scott and julie add to certainly the best is to actually call your school or you know email but if obviously something happens could you send a message over the speak up system yes it's intended for students but we would get it and we could certainly respond it we want to be cautious that it is not a channel intended primarily for parents but was something certainly time sensitive we would obviously pay attention to it and respond to it as well i agree thank you

106great information oh sorry people um i just had a question it seemed that when you were talking about the tourniquet you referred to it as the singular is it more than one inadequate what each building would need if we had the funding we would get multiple tourniquets right now there's one okay good to know um and then a second question um ms clement i just want to reference the emergency notification system my understanding of the design of that is for people who are either hearing impaired or sight impaired it enhances the ability to notify all students quickly yes exactly that's exactly what it was designed for awesome thank you mr barlow and then ms workman uh thank you i know scott and i we spoke before the board meeting i told him that he answered

107all my questions and um but one or two to arise since the presentation the first one deals with the rapture visitor management system i'm glad it can queue up and identify sexual offenders so proper notification can occur just also potentially identify active warrants and or parole violations or i'm just curious because we what we don't want to do is deter parents from you know visiting or whatever so you bring up an excellent point it only covers the sexual offender piece because the vast majority of sexual offenders per their protocols are not allowed in you know close proximity to schools and that's how it's that's why the notification comes the other piece that uh we didn't talk about is our um our vie that's our volunteers in education when you're volunteering education and you want to

108come read to your students or you want to go on a field trip with a student you're required to fill out a form and that volunteering education protocol is that a background is completed on that person we have a parameter set as far as how they're reviewed if there's certain red flags in that background that pop up we have a review committee that looks at it and scores it and we make a determination whether or not what level we want to allow that particular person to be at for to be a volunteer in our schools we may have to limit them to just being able to read in the classroom versus go on a field trip where they might have one-on-one contact with students beyond their own based on that background but we have a

109protocol in place that we follow and notification of those it's very private and confidential of course but it is something that every volunteer that wants to participate in on a field trip or like i said and meet in a classroom or something has to fill out and that background is completed okay then i'm going to share briefly my wife never wanted to go to a movie or watch a television show that had anything to do with firefighting because i'm a retired firefighter but i saw your prop door notification uh my assumption is this is dealing with exterior door exits or okay okay thank you remember i just had one follow-up just done some sorry can i or not go ahead okay um when you say background you mean background check yes a formal background check

110by uh outside agency thank you thank you endless workman so maybe i i miss this the aed med kits etc and all the stuff that's in them are is that how many of them are there i mean is that like one per classroom or one per building or oh you're shaking your head like i guess it's like two or three for the building okay but there will be a tourniquet in each one of those okay and then will staff be trained at some point to be able to know how to use the tourniquet yes and just in case the school nurse isn't available too that is our goal yes okay anything else thank you to both of you very much thank you thank you thank you thank you we're on to monitoring then 7.01 referendum

111update dr cacao chairman of directors of the board i'm glad that uh scott did not get up we know that the community has made an extraordinary investment in the future of our kids and our community with some new buildings and we periodically update the board in the community on the progress of uh the referendum funded construction and so it is time for one of those updates scott thank you superintendent the last referendum update was in march of 22 so it's been a number of months a lot has happened in the past few months particularly over the summer the credit for this presentation goes to kian mcwaters from knutson and because he created it and he did all the budget updates and everything he's just too shy to be here i'm giving him a hard time

112uh this happens to be a view of uh dakota in its early stages and this is looking to the south an overview dakota middle school if you've had the opportunity to walk through it's an absolutely beautiful building this is this more recently this is facing west the area right at the bottom there is the gym one of the three gems all three gyms are in a row there that bottom area there is the bus entrance so on the east side is where the buses are going to come in and turn around and drop all the students and they're going to enter on that east end on the left of the screen there where you see the cars that's the parent drop-off area and that's also the main entry into the building and then the the

113classroom wings as you can see around the right-hand side of that particular screen this is a picture of the cafeteria kind of a stunning picture and this is looking to the north uh from the edge of the cafeteria up above there is a walkway that goes to the upper levels in the classroom wings this is the media center a lot of glass a lot of modern updates including uh serviceable uh doors garage door type doors that can go up and down and create learning spaces for them there's one of the gyms again it it seconds as a storm shelter as well this is one of the science rooms at dakota this is one of the group learning spaces at dakota with the modern furniture down at the end where you see the orange there is

114a screen you can there's some controls on the side wall that you can punch and the screen will come down and there's a big projector there and you can use that projector to show movies or give lessons as well it's a very enhanced system down there and that's in each of the group learns dakota this is the cafe sideway lettering as a cued aside when you go to harry bishop you'll notice the lettering is the other way looking this way i'm reading up this one you're reading from the top we googled it we're not quite sure which one is correct yet i don't know but this is the cafeteria longfellow is open as you know we did the ribbon cutting last week a beautiful building itself we are starting the demolition of long the old

115bong fellow i think on the first this is principal adams this is on the the brick enhancement piece at the old log filler where we lose and cut out some bricks and some of the students were allowed to take the bricks and sign the sheet there say goodbye and this is just a view down the hallway at longfellow this is a view of the cafeteria a view of a normal classroom this is the media center uh there is still more work to be done here on the right there you'll see that uh black space we are putting some doors in there they're just a long lead time to get here but we are going to put some doors on there that will provide another learning area back in the back of the media center another

116one of the gyms you notice we put wood in all the gyms including elementary we listened to our community who said we need more gym space and we need more for our sporting events our volleyball and our basketball teams particularly the youth teams that like to rent our buildings and so we put in wooden gym floors in all of our schools this is a group learning area and longfellow you'll notice all the dynamic different colors ariad bishop area bishop isn't done yet we do have a temporary certificate of occupancy but it is not a full certificate of occupancy so we are allowing the staff to come in and get their classes set up this week which they are we still have uh some work to do the cul-de-sac or i'm sorry the roundabout in the

117front needed to they put it in and it was wrong so they had to tear it out put a new one back in again that delayed a little bit and that prevented us from doing our second course of asphalt on the bus driving because it was attached to that so that delayed us a little bit but they knutson says that we will be ready this one has a little different coloring than the other than longfellow obviously this is the media center still under construction this is right off the cafeteria on the main floor across from the office this is a group learn obviously there's no furniture set up yet but this is a similar group learn to the other buildings this is another small group learning area that people that were built under the stairwells

118and you'll notice all the glass and the visibility that's that's there this is uh one of the wings that we created this is uh for autism rooms uh these have a little different function they instead of just the door that opens into the hallway they each have a private doorway that has a foyer that they recede into so it provides them some more privacy and ability to enhance the learning of the students that are going into those particular realms and it was designed specifically for that century high school pool edition um these are pictures of the pool again remember it's a stretch pool that has a bulkhead uh we'll be bringing the big bulkhead in i think at the end of september there's a lot of work that still needs to be done this is

119the blue duck system that's installed now this is a ventilation system that pulls the chloramines off the top of the pool and vents it out the building locker room this is the hallway in between the gym on the right and the pool on the left and if you're walking north this is the hallway in between it divides so the wall on the right used to be an exterior wall to the gym and the the bit about the pool is the pool was delayed as sometimes happens in construction projects particularly when there's long lead times on materials and scheduling concerns there was an issue with the installation of that blue duck system and there were multiple contractors that were involved in it and they failed and of course when that happens then with the multiple contractors

120that were involved we had to take our time review what happened because we had to fix it and our intent was to put the blue duck system back in we wanted to determine what the cause of the issue was and it took some time to get an assessment done then we had to meet with all the contractors and mediate who was going to pay for it to figure out uh the responsibilities for it we were successful successful in our mediation pool but it did delay the pool another three four weeks so instead of opening at the end of october as planned it's now going to be probably mid-november maybe late november with the pool unfortunately that pretty much is at the end of the girls swim season at that time but the boys swim season

121starts i believe in november right after that but our intent then with the rest of the pool project is we just put out an rfp for the mayo pool upgrades you'll notice that the funding for that i can't read it i'm sorry i'm on a different screen but this is the the cost for each of the buildings overland is complete and we're signing off on that one as far as closing out the construction of it dakota middle school funding we're still working on that there's no money left in the contingency for it so we're careful of what we're asking for improvements there are some other niggling little things that are we want to get taken care of at dakota that we're working with a civil engineer to fix particularly with some sports fields that are

122there longfellow is we're going to be closing out because obviously they're open and running and here your bishop is still under construction in the pool as well as we move on to the mayo pool you notice it's only twenty one thousand dollars that was spent out of referendum the rest of the money for that pool we had to transfer to uh long-term facility maintenance revenue or a general obligation bond in order to fund the work there our middle school pools we have funds remaining to do the infills for the three middle schools that was planned that schedule was pushed out a little bit because we we want to make sure there's enough pools open all the time so before we do mail century will be done before we do the middle schools may over them

123and then once mayo is complete then we'll do the infills of the middle schools unless we think unless we change course you direct us to change course on that but that's the plan that we have for that then there's also the funding that's shown for the secure secure entries and the emergency notification systems that we put in and the other projects like the auditorium etc and the schedule that this is a schedule that can put together for us and uh so even though the referendum is three years old we're still probably at least two to three years out before everything is complete so it'll be about a five-year toll on the projects for the record thank you scott ms amundsen the future land purchase then that is far down that timeline it's at the end

124of the timeline that won't be happening anytime soon then our plan is to hold that 1.4 million in reserve temporarily until we make sure everything is paid for that we need to get done with the referendum and then we'll decide on the future land purchase or what how we utilize that money that we'll come back to the board and ask to help us make that decision but the timeline on that is quite a bit down the road potentially if you're referencing the potential of building a purchasing land to build a new high school yeah that that timeline could be protracted out for several years yes miss nathan so when you mentioned the um blue duct situation with the century pool and mediating who would pay we did not have to pay for any of that

125or did we we did we contributed to the the fix of that okay and did it didn't affect i have looking at this budget versus previous budget it didn't affect the overall it didn't affect any of the other construction components of the pool that we couldn't do because we had to pay for the blue duct correct okay yeah we had contingency dollars still in place that we could use miss workman looking at the pictures of these classrooms and actually having been in um and at overland a few months ago i'm just really impressed with how the space can be used it's very versatile i was thinking back to my days in elementary schools when we were all lined up in desks and they all looked the same and students didn't really have and teachers didn't

126have the flexibility to meet differing student needs um not just that but also depending on what activity they were actually doing in the classroom so just more of an observation it just it really warms my heart to see this thing i just need to reiterate that we aren't done even though their students are in the buildings there's still things that are going to be fixed there's still punchlesses punch lists that we have to take care of it's not perfect yet ideally we'll get to all them and get them complete but it is there are functioning buildings that the students seem to be really enjoying particularly openly with the students kathy i'm i don't know if this is the right point of the updates to to summarize because like you said we're not done but and

127you can tell me if i'm wrong but i don't remember any we did not have any large change orders or or any that i can remember in this whole project that that changed the overall cost of all of our projects i mean we have a hundred and oh gosh that small 185 185 million to spend 180 million to spend and then we had interest earnings and bond sale premiums but we've stayed within the budget that we originally proposed we stayed within 185 million right as far as how much we applied to each project that's changed right obviously but we didn't i just know that there are stories from other districts where large building projects have gone wrong and the time frames have been different but i think we have to acknowledge we told the community

128what we were going to do we told them the time frame within which we were going to do it and with the minor exception of the pool we've done it and i think you deserve credit your team deserves credit our contractors deserve credit for that because that's an awful lot of money for us to manage in a relatively short amount of time so thank you and certainly within the covert period as well with the long lead times and the supply chain issues i'm just flabbergasted how knutson and all the contractors were able to pull this off in the timeline that they did thank you which is good because i remember seeing photos from what is it 65 70 years ago of when elton hills wasn't ready and they rented houses in the neighborhood and held

129classes in the in the in rented houses in the neighborhood so when you said harriet bishop isn't done i panicked just a little bit but it sounds like it will be done by the first day of school thank you scott free reporting for that thank you incredible work that you've done appreciate that we'll move on then to 8.01 approve research request the effect of cinequel or maybe a sinoqual on objective brain function measures in youth ice hockey players and we appreciate those who have been waiting um to provide us with this information dr pikel actually dr martin i'm uh bears i'm going to hope that actually we can forego any need for presentation unless it's relevant for board members dr peter ruck our director of research has reviewed these proposals he's not here with us

130tonight dealing with a health issue but he recommends as do i approval of this and also the next proposal this is an opportunity for some researchers for mayo clinic to test a dietary supplement that's widely available interestingly focusing on our hockey players so we also have one of our athletic directors here it's also unanimously supported by athletic directors and the measure of impact would be a brain scan and a blood draw and so we recommend approval we do have as dr marvin said colleagues here who could address concerns but i also want to defer to the board as to whether or not this is required given the strong support dr rock has given for approval of this any objections to moving this to approval dr garcia it's not an objection that's my pretty standard like

131how our parents and students that don't speak english going to be presented this information and as long as that is taken care of then whoever the willing participants are would like to do this then have at it i can just say dr garcia anticipating that question my understanding is that all our hockey players do speak english sufficiently and parents as well and so but we will if that's not the case make sure that translations are available and i think to build on those comments just to uh reiterate for the public that this is an opt-in study so uh there has to be informed consent and communication given before people participate it's not a mandatory participation by any individual exactly thank you uh mr brown and i fully support dr buck's recommendation uh i do know

132that there are a few of the male physicians here that to speak to this i believe and to if they care to just talk briefly tonight their time they didn't wait for the whole time thank you and welcome good evening i'm dr michael stewart i'm the former division chair of sports medicine at mayo clinic where i've been since 1983. this is dave krauss who's one of our physical therapists and fellow researchers so we really appreciate the opportunity to work together with our rochester public schools we've been passionate about safety and sport and as you know concussion and traumatic brain injury and repetitive sub-concussive blows to the head or body could have long-term consequences so we've already utilized the study in junior a hockey both with the rochester grizzlies and the austin bruins this dietary supplement

133is safe it's actually from pre-con health and thorn which supplies dietary supplements to all the major sports leagues the olympics many colleges it's vetted nsf certified which is probably better than a lot of the things that our parents give their children such as vitamins and other supplements so this is uh obviously a very safe type of supplement it will be randomized which means students will either get a placebo which looks and tastes exactly like the actual supplements so they will not know what they're getting they'll be tested the only invasive thing is actually a blood draw before season and after the hockey season each student athlete will be remunerated 100 when they complete the pre-season testing and 100 when they complete the post-season testing but it is completely voluntary we have a consent form which

134will be uh reviewed with the the student athlete and their parents it's been approved by the mayo clinic institutional review board and this is all very very carefully monitored so we're hoping for for strong enrollment this is groundbreaking research that we think the mayo clinic and the rochester public schools can can bring to peer-reviewed scientific journals and actually make a difference in trying to improve brain health for our young athletes miss workman um how will this be communicated to parents i mean do you are you planning like having an in-person presentation where you would explain what you're going to do and have an opportunity for questions exactly like we do in all our research we will have written materials but also an in-person presentation with an opportunity for them to ask all their questions and

135we certainly realize that many or some may choose not to participate which is fine we're hoping for a large cohort because that strengthens the science miss mclaughlin i just had a really minor question it was pretty late at night when i was reading through your materials is this for both boys and girls at the high school level yes and we think that's a real strength of this research project because our previous research with junior a hockey in rochester and austin was male or boys hockey only so we really have been trying for for years to incorporate more of our female athletes in into our research even though there's no legal body checking at any level of women's hockey in the world there's a lot of contact and there certainly can be repetitive traumatic brain injury

136or even overt clinical concussions so we think it's a very valuable part of the research protocol thank you for doing that there aren't any other questions just two things how do you pronounce the name of the supplement cinequel thank you that's good and then uh my second issue is would someone like to move this to action so move second then moved and seconded to move this to action all in favor say aye aye opposed this is now an action item thank you thank you very much oh not done yet but we'll vote yeah we'll vote um and here's the resolution be it resolve the school board of isd 535 does hereby approve rochester public schools collaboration with mayo clinic and voluntary student participation in research study the effect of cinequel on objective brain function measures

137in youth ice hockey players move approval and moved and seconded all in favor say aye aye opposed and the resolution is approved we have another research request 8.02 to approve the research for key school system practices that close the opportunity gap research overview for rps dr pikel uh dr marvin the board members this is a doctoral study that um brad ward student at the university of minnesota who i believe works in a day job in forest lake public schools or another school in between cities wants to do in our system it did not require institutional review board study because none of the methods involve either individual other sensitive data it will be interviews and surveys he's going to be looking at lincoln and washington schools in our district as schools where the gaps between student

138demographic groups are narrower than in many other schools in minnesota and the goal will be to understand practices that they have been used in those schools that may be of value to schools more broadly in understanding strategies for closing opportunity gaps and my understanding is his b he will be interviewing staff not students and with an emphasis on leaders miss workman will um any of this research be useful to the people who are involved in the study um dr workman it's hard to say at this point this is part of a as uh peter rock uh sat down and looked at this proposal it certainly aligns with the board's equity policy and subject we'll have to see what the outcomes of the study are to attest to its usefulness but certainly practices that close opportunity

139gaps right that could potentially be useful to us but we'll have to see what comes out of that but i mean that's certainly an option yep okay and in the background material it indicates that both the washington and lincoln principles have consented to participate in the study so so unless uh you want i need more time to study this i think it would be appropriate to move this one to action move to action been moved and seconded to move this to action uh all in favor say aye aye opposed it's now an action item the resolution be it resolve the school board of isd 535 does hereby approve rochester public schools collaboration with mayo clinic that's that's a typo um and i should have got that before um collaboration with bradley ward bradley moore thank

140you involuntary uh student participation and research study key school systems practices to close the opportunity gap research overview for rps move approval second and moved in second to approve this resolution on favor say aye my proposed uh resolution is approved thank you 8.03 approval of distributed antenna service for dakota middle school longfellow elementary bishop elementary in overland elementary schools dr pikel dr marvin and director of the board i'm going to invite um scott sheridan just to be available if there are questions that board members have this is the approval of an antenna service that will further enhance communication and security in our schools scott is here and certainly can come up to either give a brief overview or answer those questions if you haven't any questions this is also a prep for action item move

141to action second it's been moved and seconded to move this to action on favor say aye aye opposed it's now an action item it resolved the school board of independence school district 535 just hereby approve the amount of 795 921 dollars to install a distributed antenna system for radio service and purcell cellular service at dakota middle school long fellow elementary school and harriet bishop elementary school and cellular service at overland elementary school approval second it's been moved and seconded all in favor say aye aye post and the motion carries 8.04 approval of gun safety resolution and before we discuss this i would like for someone to move it to action so that i can read the resolution because i think having an accurate very accurate idea of what the resolution says exactly is going to

142be important second and moved and seconded to move this to action on favor say i i post it is now an action item and the resolution be it resolve the school board of independent school district 535 hereby encourages local state and national electric elected officials in their continued efforts to pass and implement legislative action in order to reduce gun violence within rochester public school district and elsewhere to protect all children students parents guardians caregivers educators staff and all members of the public from increasing harm and trauma experience in our communities and be it further resolved that the school board supports the superintendent or their designee at implementing the provisions of planning for purpose the rochester public school strategic plan 2022 2025 and more specifically the provisions related to safety supporting and belonging the board also

143supports the superintendent in creating and implementing action strategies and initiative purposefully designed to reduce gun violence and be it further resolved the board directs the superintendent or their designee to create an appropriate letter or communication in onwa arabic bosnian cambodian chinese english lao spanish somali and vietnamese to parents guardians and caretakers that explains the importance of secure gun storage to be included in annual registration materials at each school site and related back to school communications and be it further resolved the school board directs the superintendent or designee to update the student handbook to include information about secure storage of firearms and be it further resolved that the board the superintendent and the district will continue to work with elected officials local law enforcement agencies health care agencies mental health providers non-profit organizations and other advocates

144to collaborate and increase efforts to inform district parents guardians and caregivers regarding secure storage of firearms in their homes and strategies to reduce the prevalence of gun violence in communities served by rochester public schools any discussion um i would like to speak to this resolution i wanted to defer to dr garcia first because she's the one that brought it uh formally to the board go right ahead no go ahead just don't include it i'm so i think when uh director nathan um in a very nice way sort of called us out as the legislative committee to bring something forward um it was easy to go right to the data and like one of our speakers earlier even though the data is something that we anchor ourselves and the thing that's bringing us here is the

145children and so if you read in the background section it's very clear why we're bringing this forward and the information that we as the legislative committee pull together um from a number of different resources showing that gun violence obviously is a very serious problem and this isn't something that we're going to be able to do just in silos we need to access and reach out to all partners and so that is at the local state and federal level and so that's something that we are laying the groundwork for us to be able to do because as those of you who have been reading my twitter it's our damn job to protect our kids and so if we're not gonna do that i don't really understand what any of us are doing here at the board

146table um but if either of my colleagues would like to speak to the information in the background section any of the recommendations that are made i would be happy to respond to that as well but i think this is a very unique opportunity that we have to show our students when they tell us that they're afraid to come to school that we're actually doing something about it and i would like to speak to the resolution as well as a member of the legislative committee my thoughts on working on this issue kind of behind the scenes over the last couple months really started with director barlow actually asking a question in december after the shooting at oxford high school in michigan and i think what's sad about this is that it this continues to happen um

147you know leading up to evali and and so many others in between um so thinking about it from the legislative committee the thought that went through my mind and i think that what dr garcia and ms workman and i talked about is what else can we as a school board do to do our part to specifically help reduce senseless and end senseless gun violence in our community and even thinking about some of the other presentations here tonight uh mr sheridan and miss clayman talked about uh the school security update that's one piece of what the district can do but what else can we as a board do and even listening to the last agenda item about the antenna system it's an enhanced security for our buildings this all plays a role in keeping our students

148safe i see this resolution as just another tool that we as a board can use to keep our students safe looking at the the background information that was is presented here it talks about intentional shootings those are the school shootings it talks about intentional and unintentional acts those are the young people in our community and it also talks about the reality of suicide in our community again those are our young people who are in mental health crisis the background information also talks about this being an individual institutional and societal commitment to address these issues as dr garcia was talking about i categorized them both and the background information into kind of two categories one is the mental health category the other is the safe gun storage category and the background information provides the statistics that

149our helpful speaker also talked about tonight so i won't repeat that information but what we're looking at here is something that's a public safety risk of unsecured guns and i'll speak more specifically to the safe gun storage issue because dr garcia does a great job talking about the mental health piece we're looking at the public safety of our students and our staff and that is a school board responsibility the strategic plan addresses this in terms of prevention and what we can add here with this resolution is the education piece for our students and families we are asking the board and the district to create and implement actions strategies and initiatives that purposely are designed to reduce gun violence and our speaker earlier miss jenki i appreciate her comments um again she talked about the education

150piece and the public safety piece our parents need this assistance and that's why we're uh presenting this here today um in terms of education we're asking the the district to create a letter and communication to all rps families and to put information in the student handbook to be updated so that everyone is aware of the information that we want to provide specifically about secure gun storage and the education that can be provided to reduce those intentional unintentional and risk of suicide in our community when it comes to access and use of guns i also think it's important to highlight the paragraph in the resolution that talks about collaboration even the rochester police department recently has implemented a process to provide gun locks to the community that that is it's exactly what needs to be done

151at the right time and i am thrilled to partner with them on that project i'm hopeful that our resource officers can provide those in our schools if that's something that our buildings want to to implement here and it's not just a one and done it's just the beginning of do those collaborations and finally the idea of the secure gun storage is designed to reduce the prevalence of gun violence in our the rochester public schools community and i would ask my fellow board members to support this resolution can i just i just want to follow up on a couple of things so speaking to the mental health piece i have very real um and obviously direct experience working as a mental health professional with individuals who have done awful things in our communities and one of

152the things that i often think about um is something that is in the background information for this resolution so not only is this an individual institutional and societal commitment and is that necessary for us to be effective the thing that i hope to pull out of this that i think we often as a society like to shy away from is the recognition that if something is going to happen in our schools and if it is an intentional shooting whether it is by suicide or a mass shooting in schools the likelihood that that person is known to us is incredibly high so we are vulnerable to someone who is already in our system and we are the ones that are responsible for preventing that from happening so school shootings and suicides entirely preventable but we cannot

153do this work in silo pieces so we can't just have the criminal legal system addressing it on their end we cannot just have mental health professionals addressing it and then separately schools addressing it and separately organizations like every town or be smart addressing it we need to come together in this collaborative effort and one of the things that i appreciate about our superintendent as you could also see through your evaluation is that you've already done things and helped us implement practices and procedures and even policies to make these things achievable already so we're already moving in this direction this is just us being very clear about our intention to protect our kids i just have one more comment i'm sorry um i i meant to um recognize i'm not only miss jenki but the others

154in the audience who were here earlier and now um in support of this resolution that they're they're here with our people in our community dr um thank you chairman i just like to briefly say when because this may come up in the minds of some listening when the board takes on these larger issues like this and as you can see this has been a matter of board leadership i do not believe that this in any way undermines my both ability and responsibility to focus on the academic success of our kids that is job one that's what they hold me accountable for that's what i think about the safety of our kids as we educate them is obviously important but in my mind there is no conflict as i might get direction like this from the

155board between this and what is at the heart of my job which is student success in reading mathematics the arts all of the other subjects so i want to provide a reassurance that in my mind there's there's no tension there between the board exercising its leadership on some larger issues and the first thing that i think about every day which is uh the knowledge and skills that our students need to succeed in society this is the context within which they can do that safely mr problem thank you i wouldn't think that it should be necessary to work so hard at sharing the conviction the passion that my fellow board members have expressed in this resolution for me it's not a for me this is a nonpartisan issue it's not a red issue blue issue it's

156a a community issue and this resolution i think um speaks to where our hearts are and that is for the well-being of our all of our students and their respective families certainly public safety health safety are issues of concern and i commend my board members the legislative committee for the hard work you guys have engaged in it makes it easy to support recommendations such as this and i would just hope that our community because it isn't a us or them it's a community view that i hope we all are able to realize i and coming to the board meeting tonight was listening to npr and they were sharing that the governor had a recently announced a gun safety lock program that would be extended through the end of the year and how local departments to

157include our very own rochester police would benefit from that and participate in that and i just see rochester public schools doing its part and i'm glad that we're able to do this i believe in a uniformed and unanimous fashion and i just like to point out that you know the beginning of the resolution talks uh deals with the things that we encourage officials to do we support the strategic plan the actionable part of this involves providing education for students and their parents who have firearms at home about how to keep them safe that's it safe storage of firearms it's education and we do this kind of thing all the time in the spring you know we provide our juniors and seniors you know when it's getting towards prom and graduation how to stay safe when

158you're at a party how the dangers of drinking and driving we provide education about not texting and driving we provide information about drug use it's education and that's what this the actual part of this is just saying let's make sure that people have the information hopefully they will read it and hopefully some folks will be more careful and a life or two or more might be spared i to me it's just plain old common sense we educate and this is providing education miss nathan well i'd like to thank my colleagues for bringing this forward you know they could have stopped at the gun safety piece but what i appreciate and i think it's been reflected in their their statements and and in their passion you've really provided in the background information a road map about

159what the district is doing and i for any parent or family member community member who is concerned about our student safety i encourage you to read the entire piece in our in our board docs because it does talk about all the pieces of the strategic plan and it does talk about what we need from our legislators and it does talk about that specific i call it a public health piece about gun safety and we've heard it in two other agenda items tonight we heard it in the back to school plan that whole reach program is all about developing those relationships so that if there is a student who is struggling we are able to identify them early and and the school safety piece that um the mr sheridan talked about um there is no question

160that this is something that i think of every single day as a matter of fact this summer it was it was almost a break because our kids weren't in the buildings and as some of those other school shootings were happening i thought thank goodness our kids aren't in a place that it's being targeted like is being targeted elsewhere but now that they're coming back we're committed to keeping them safe and i think we've demonstrated that through multiple places tonight and i look forward to perhaps in the future our legislative committee monitoring the work of our state or federal legislators and there might be a specific piece of legislation that we eventually look at in this area of safety but for tonight this is this is a great piece of work and thank you the resolution

161has been read it's been moved and seconded are we ready to vote move approval second we did that already but that's good that we moved to action no we read the resurrection so anyway there you go um all in favor say i i opposed and the resolution passes thank you 8.05 superintendent goal setting 2022-23 dr mccal dr marvin and board members uh as ms severson brings up a powerpoint there are four four goals that i'm proposing would guide my work uh over the course of the coming year they're aligned with the strategic plan and also the board's previous action on the important work we face ahead of us with the budget and then generally helping me grow and develop as a leader i will say in my meeting with the chair and vice chair this

162week at our executive committee meeting we agreed that there can these goals can be further fleshed out through further clarification i would submit that you could should you choose to approve them at this level and we can collaboratively work together to define with some precision how they might be measured but of course i'd like to go into the new school year with some clear goals from you for my work in the year ahead so perfect timing thank you you can see for the first goal i am proposing that more than 50 of our schools will make statistics statistically significant gains on one or more of the goals in their school-wide continuous improvement plans schools will have at least two such goals many are planning to have three or four each of those goals will be

163measurable and what is meant by statistically significant improvement is that the improvement the improvement is sufficiently large enough to know that it almost certainly didn't happen by chance that it was the result of kids reading better kids making more progress toward graduation kids being feeling that they have a stronger sense of belonging in school kids believing that they are academically more motivated to succeed so that's my recommendation for uh goal number one my recommendation for goal number two has to do with that second level level of our strategic plan the systems change initiatives the board has approved those 11 change initiatives for the year ahead those bullets are just a summary of what each of the plans are there's detailed information in the document the board reviewed at its last regular meeting and the recommendation

164is that by the end of this year and as the board member board members know we will have a collaborative team that will begin working on those plans in september and that's our wave one strategic change systems change initiatives that by the end of this year we have a very clear detailed and effective plan for implementing that systems change the example of fleshing out my goals that i mentioned a moment ago is illustrated by this what is effective and i think we can come up with criteria for effective they're measurable they're clear they're time-bound so the board could look at any one of those plans by the end of this year and say we have a very clear strategy for system change all of those efforts are in the strategic plan as directions we want

165to move in but all of them now require further refinement and development by stakeholders and ultimately by the board and that's what i propose to be my second goal for this upcoming school year the third goal i propose uh would be to continue the implementation of the budget stabilization strategy that the board approved in february 2022 as you know you made difficult decisions to prove uh improve approve year one of that strategy which resulted in a significant decline in the structural deficit that the school district faces there is a second year of that strategy that will be harder and that lies ahead and but that is critical to put us on a path to a sustainable financial uh footprint and so i recommend that my second goal be the successful implementation of the criteria and

166the plan that you approved in february 22. again i believe we could establish some criteria for what successful implementation of that plan means and then the final recommendation is that as part of the leadership development strategy which is included in our strategic plan the board and the school district is on the cusp of identifying a set of leadership competencies that we want to encourage in all of our leaders and that the board would use that set of leadership competencies to evaluate me and help me grow as a leader based upon the work that i'll do during the 22-23 school year so in this sense i'm asking to align the board's vision of my leadership development with the broader vision of leadership development that we'll be developing this fall in rochester public schools just as i

167was thinking about what does it mean to have a set of leadership competencies i pulled out one that the board of my last employer used which was a non-profit research research organization called search institute and we had five broad competencies modeling the way inspiring and sharing the vision challenging the process enabling others to act and encouraging the heart and this was how in 2014 they evaluated me and i evaluated myself against those competencies so i'm suggesting that we'll be developing a set of competencies for leadership in rochester public schools this fall and that the board would evaluate me along those competencies uh as part of my review this year so that's my recommendation for the goals and um i am you know eager for feedback and action and would love to go into the new

168school year with these goals approved but if the board feels like we do need before approving them to flesh them out further we certainly could do that i also think i could work with the executive committee to do that if these goals seem on track to the full board in in principle questions or comments for dr pikel ms mclaughlin i just have a comment that i really appreciate the i think it's what's the first content slide here of having all of these systems change ideas all in one place to look at you know you've given it to us in so many different packages that i love having it on one slide so thank you um i think one of the things we did last year that was really helpful was having a mid-year reflection so

169i i don't know that that's something that's officially part of the package but i think it would be nice if the board could agree that we would have a conversation sort of similar to what you did last year where you gave us an update and then we had a a conversation about it and um given that time frame then we would uh look to flesh out some of those specifics one of the things i really liked with the evaluation last year is that we had those measures specifically spelled out with with um with date certain and i think that made our evaluation at the end of the year a lot more focused for evaluation so i'm all for a little bit more development of those chair marvin and i tend to think that last year

170was kind of unusual and that superintendent piquel was interim and that's why there was a in my estimation a mid-year a need for a mid-year evaluation and as he has suggested i would think that our executive committee should there be ongoing concerns or inquiries could have that occur after you are meeting with the superintendent weekly versus i'm not opposed to a mid-year evaluation i'm i'm not sure there's a need for it and that you're no longer he is no longer in an interim capacity point uh taken mr barlow that obviously isn't one of his goals but i think that's something that we can talk about going forward should we uh spend time doing that or is is it not going to be necessary miss amundsen i'm in favor of a mid-year reflection just because a

171year is a long time and you know in the life of a class in school and i think that there's always opportunities for improvement if we're looking at continuous improvement in multiple ways how do you do that without taking a point in time and reflecting and assessing and adjusting yep and i'm wondering if we can have that discussion at another time because right now we want to focus on the four goals that the superintendent has put out certainly i mean i think agreeing on a direction now without the specifics of the direction is important well i think also clarifying the difference between a mid-year reflection and a mid-year evaluation i mean in my in my mind it would simply be a conversation where the superintendent would have a chance to give us an update on

172where these goals were progressing we wouldn't give a score we wouldn't come to a unified conclusion it would be a progress report okay and can we get back to the goals and are we ready to say yep we approve these and let's move on uh we approve these and tweak them a little bit in terms of dates or do we want another week or two to continue to consider them before we vote i'd support approving them i do like the idea of the executive committee working on the measures okay and helping us through that process right so other discussion i will take whatever direction the board gives the executive kid well we always do uh someone have an appetite to move this to action okay it's been moved and seconded to move this to action

173on favor of moving this to action say i opposed it's now an action item and what am i missing thee i will make up a resolution well the person who moved it be it resolved i'm looking at the wrong goals be it resolved that the school board of independent school district 535 does hereby approve the superintendent's goals for 2022-2023 move approval okay been moved and seconded all in favor say i i post goals are approved thank you and that was not the most elegant resolution in the history of resolutions but no it's all swell to end through there you go okay then we're going to move on to 9.01 the school board goals at our study session we agreed um came to consensus at least on three goals they were to improve board communications with

174stakeholders to continually monitor progress toward the goals and outcome of the strategic plan utilizing the goals of the strategic plan as the primary basis for making decisions and to create methods for engaging and educating the community and staff on the rps budget now are there any modifications or edits to those three again we didn't vote on them but by consensus we said these are the three things we as a board really want to focus on then can we go back to goal one and we have three measures there including creating and approving a board handbook and these are all on board docs that describes the school board's roles and responsibilities including procedures and protocols creating a protocol for posting viewer-friendly accessible summaries of board meetings and scheduling quarterly community listening and conversation sessions for the

1752022-2023 school year are there any of those that you want to discuss or have modified ms workman well i just have a question about the first one to create and approve a board handbook um by january 1st would you anticipate that you would want one of the established committees to take that on as a project to have something to for the board to actually look at or is this something that we're going to sit around and the seven of us are gonna figure it out at the board oh there's no way that would i i agree that would be very difficult um i can speak to that i think the intent was because the policy committee had already begun the work of developing the procedures that came from the conversation we've had on the series

176200 policies that it would fall to the policy committee to come up with a draft and then we were hoping to discuss it at a study session i think we had talked about earlier on in the process we'll finalize it when we do the abcd update to give the board some examples of some handbooks from some other districts and give board members an opportunity to look at an outline of the handbook to make sure that we're covering everything especially for board members who were oriented more recently who are looking for a little bit more than what they got so four of you are off the hook for the immediate until this time and certainly you know we could have input from others and work from others too so any changes to those measures then moving

177on to goal two about monitoring progress towards the goals and outcomes of the strategic plan the measures are at board meetings be prepared to reference strategic plan goals during discussions and you know we talked about finding some way to link to code issues that we're dealing with at meetings with particular parts of the strategic plan and the second part is to by the end of september to designate dates for the annual board calendar draft for plan updates over the next two years we want to make sure that this is accessible to the public so that they're going to know what to expect and when to expect it anything there that you think needs tweaking okay then the third one about educating and engaging and educating the community and staff on the rps budget two measures

178by the end of april of next of next year prepare a concise document and video describing the fundamentals of minnesota school finance and the rps school budget there is an enormous amount of this information already provided in the budget book that mr carlson and his department do and minnesota school finance is really complicated but he does a great job of describing how it works and specifically how rps schools are funded and budgeted and the second part of this is to support the superintendent and others in creating and facilitating and i don't know if i have this right the community budget and finance advisory committee is that okay so this would be a community committee that would work with the district as we address our finances in our budget in an advisory capacity any part of

179that that you think should be changed then are we right this is an action item there's no resolution so i need to move to action first it's already an action it's already an action okay and there's no resolution so here's the resolution be it resolved school board of isd 535 does here by adopt uh school board goals for 2022-2023 and just one other point of clarification that i don't know that we ever clarified but some people might be wondering why are you talking about student achievement here why aren't you talking about growth in mca scores the school board sets goals so that we operate more efficiently so that we can support the superintendent's goals and the broader district goals it's how our work as a governance board interacts with the broader work of the district

180so that's why these goals are really focused on our work and how we work and how we communicate as opposed to some of the other goals that you'll see in the strategic plan or the superintendent's goals so all three of those pieces i will say for the first time since i've been on the board we have all three legs of the stool we have a strategic plan we have superintendent goals and we have board goals that all align thank you and that's a really good point too because these are specific to how this board works together and with the community so thank you mr chairman i have one more just comment on that i also give credit to the executive committee of leading us in that direction and doing the work to get us focused

181on goals and our role here in what we do thank you speaking for the executive committee thank you um okay it's been moved and seconded all in favor say aye aye opposed motion passes we have information provided about the most recent updated annual board calendar that's a 10.01 and 11.01 upcoming board meetings through october 20 22 any additional information questions about either of those all right then at this point we'll go to 11.02 a closed session for labor negotiations this regular meeting will be going into closed session as per uh permitted by minnesota statute 13d .05 subdivision 3a to evaluate the parameters of ongoing labor negotiations following the closed session we will return to the board table be called to order and adjourn the meeting it is now 8 14 and we are in recess

182if we remove approval we have to move approval we have to vote on it too you're right move approval second it's been moved and seconded all in favor say aye aye host we are in recess this regular meeting of school board is reconvened at 9 11 pm and we have one be it resolve the school board of independent school district 535 does hereby approve the 2022-2024 rochester administrators association raa work guide agreement move approval second it's been moved and seconded all in favor say aye aye opposed motion passes it is 9 11 pm and we are adjourned