RPS School Board Meeting - 3/01/22

001this regular meeting of independent school district 535 school board is called order at 5 30 pm tuesday march 1st 2022 in room 137 of the edison building interested members of the public are welcome and encouraged to view this meeting remotely at youtube.com isd 535 where the live stream video may be found the board this board acknowledges this site and all rps sites are situated on the ancestral land of the dakota people and we honor the dakota nations and the sacred land of all indigenous peoples present at this meeting are school board members superintendent kent pacquel a non-voting ex-official member and assistant board clerk ms michelle severson ms severson will you please call the role thank you director amundsen here clerk barlow here director garcia treasurer mclaughlin here chair marvin here vice chair nathan here and

002director workman here thank you at this time we provide an opportunity to say the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance liberty and justice for all 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 school board meetings have very specific posted agendas that we need to follow in order to do the work the board has been entrusted to do for that reason these meetings are not designed to be opportunities for community dialogue however it's easy to get in touch with us our email addresses and phone numbers are available on the website we absolutely make time to have conversations with you when we're not constricted by the restraints

003of a business meeting if community members prefer to speak to the board at a meeting we welcome you and remind you that minnesota statutes and policy provide very clear guidance about speaking at an open meeting each speaker has three minutes again if you have more to say or have questions you want answered let us know and we'll get back to you within 24 hours when your name is called please have a seat in front of the microphone at this table state your name and whether you are a resident of this school district and we have one speaker tonight i believe i'm stephen allison referendum update this is an information item dr pickell chairman and directors of the board as you know the citizens of rochester have made a huge investment um a prudent investment in

004the future of their kids and their community by helping us build some wonderful new buildings and periodically we have updates on the progress of that very complex work so i'd like to ask our executive director of operations scott sheridan to come up and give you a sense of things except that scott is outside the room i believe at the moment and if anyone can let him know we don't really want me doing the referendum update um i know he's here was caught up with events uh and we certainly could pivot the order there he is oh there's a man who loves to make an entrance there is an entrance ladies and gentlemen scotcher [Applause] all right sorry about that this is our 21st referendum update and uh this was put together again by kian mcwaters

005from knutson construction and it's just several pictures of where we're at with each of the buildings the first one i believe is dakota this is dakota middle school and they have some interior photos a typical classroom that has the lvt the luxury vinyl tile down the walls are painted the ceiling fan this is a picture of the cafeteria they're putting down the terrazzo flooring and the the paneling that you see there the plywood that will be covered it's going to be look really nice there's some more baffling that'll be going in up there as well the tv's not on down here is there a lot easier if i could see the tv over there sorry sorry uh the science room this is a fit up for one of the science rooms with the casework that's

006in it the ceiling still needs to go in this is one of the group learned bathrooms currently they're still divided between male and female in that center area once the gender neutral statutes uh become law if that is the case in the future we can easily take out that center piece there it was just designed specifically like that so that they could become gender neutral bathrooms another piece i want to talk about with dakota i don't know if you heard about this but last week dakota was awarded the min sharp award by the state of minnesota through minnesota osha and the mnsharp award is one that relates to the safety and it's called the safety and health achievement recognition program so it's minnesota safety and health achievement recognition program so it recognizes like major construction

007companies that with their managers and their safety people that work in compliance with osha rules go above and beyond the normal osha rules and it has to be for construction projects that are 18 months or longer and through minosha knutson or this project dakota project was awarded the mnsharp award and there was a presentation of that last week chris benson who oversees safety for knutson to manage that our own mike stock from our health and safety worked with him with all the osha rules and i just thought we should recognize the great work that the award that they received it's the first time in rochester that mnsharp was awarded to any project in rochester and the other people that are involved in that through knutson of course are keane mcwaters whom you're familiar with don

008richardson byron schmacker and tony haga are the site supervisors and project managers that are working on the project and of course our own bill burton leo barbosa as well on to longfellow longfellow's moving along quite nicely like we told you before it needs to get completed and occupied occupied by may so that school can start in july there's uh you'll notice when you compare longfellow to bishop that longfellow is much further along than bishop is but this is a group learned bathroom this is that cafeteria you'll notice all the glass and the light so it's a beautiful setting out there i believe it faces to the south and a typical classroom setup with the case work that's in it this beautiful media center it's a big tall two-story media center it's coming along real nicely

009there's a lot of glass on the opposite side of that as well harriet bishop like i said they're doing mep the mechanical electrical plumbing roughens right now the roof's almost completely on the windows are almost all in from quite a ways since i was here last month cafeteria is still getting roughed in this is one of the classroom wings on the main floor a group loan area with also also the stair oil at the end of it i believe this is on the east side and this is uh up on top on the second floor where it's topped off with a slab a group learned area up on the second floor the century high school pool editions coming along fairly quickly now if i was remember right when i was here last time they didn't

010have the precast up yet but since that time they've now fully enclosed uh the natatorium with the uh the precast and with the roof on it this is uh the southwest corner of the of the pool the crane that's this is on the north side crane putting in the final precast sections on the north side of the pool an interior look there's no water in it yet obviously and this is on the west side and uh like i said it's coming along real nice we were able to remove the crew the crane this week so during the time the crane was there we had to limit the use of the gym for the students that were there because of the swing of the crane but now that the crane's gone they have full use of

011the gym and all the amenities there regarding the the budget you have a copy of that with you overland is pretty well complete we're closing that out with the budget there the schedule with dakota long fellow bishop and century all within two weeks which is really pretty amazing when you consider the lead times of a lot of materials and the impact that the supply chain has had with multiple projects that we've had on page two is the we're still in the infancy stage with mayo pool we just had a meeting last week with wsn the architect that's designing that as far as how far we need to go on it and like i said they're just still in the design phase we were working with the engineers on that middle school pools are still to

012be decided we haven't done anything with the middle school pool as of yet the emergency notification systems are are all went all being completed uh they're not aren't all done yet they'll be completed this summer but everything's again within two weeks time frame secure entries are all complete the auditorium reservation renovations are complete still considering land purchasing and then you see the budget there for everything else so in the the gist of everything when you add everything up including the 180.5 million referendum plus the interest that we earned on the referendum dollars it gives you an overall budget of about 185 million and we're right there at 185 million with the projected costs of getting everything done we have about 16 000 left over there is still some contingency money left out there which is

013normal practice and construction that you always keep a little in your back pocket in case those unexpected things pop up but if keon was here i i think he'd tell you he's a little nervous but he does feel a little better a little bit better as the weeks go by and we get closer to the end and things get more rock solid as far as budget and costs he feels better and better with the projects any questions miss amundsen um so i realize it's it's shorthand but for those in the audience who maybe don't know what a group learn bathroom is because taken out of context i think that could be interpreted in an interesting way thank you it's a bathroom in the group learn area and then could you also for those um who

014haven't heard yet what gender neutral bathrooms mean yeah they're individual stalls that are lined up uh along the wall and so uh any anybody can use them there's it does isn't specific to a certain gender and and the the doors close fully they aren't stalls like people think of with everybody using the same bathroom they're more like your bathroom at home would be where you go when you close the door it's just a line of doors floor to ceiling doors on them thank you i know there's been some confusion in the past in fact i don't want to prolong the bathroom conversation too much but you know we've seen the ones that have been installed elsewhere and they they're like those porta potties that people use you know when we have sporting events cross country

015they'll have 20 of them lined up just separate completely separate units and you see the athletes lined up for miles to use some outdoors only these will be indoors and they don't smell bad no it's a smart design yes this workman yeah i was kind of going to say i've i've been at i've seen these new bathrooms and they are much nicer than porta potties just please understand that the chair marvin was using that as an example of stalls in rows thank you for that because again i don't want the entire meeting to be about bathrooms but no you're exactly right they're lovely actually any non-bathroom related questions fantastic thank you so much mr appreciate it we will move on to 4.02 school building openings and closings update this is an information item dr pikel

016chair marvin and directors of the board as you know as scott's presentation gave us physical evidence of there's a lot of movement in our district as we prepare to have students transitioning to those new schools that scott just gave us an overview of and transitioning away from one existing school and so i'd like to have executive director of human resources carl bakken come up and join us and give the board and the community an update on that very complex effort that is on the way to successful completion good evening board members um i'm giving you a second update on our school opening and closing process um i was last here on november 30th and at that point we had two meetings since that time we would have have had five more meetings um we have

017been meeting um every we were meeting for a while every two weeks now during staffing and other things going on we move back back to every three weeks this is a group that has continued to meet and it has grown to talk about the things that need to happen with schools opening and closing the group consists of rea membership principles communications technology student services maintenance construction cni human resources and cabinet and we're up to 19 members um as as dr paquel mentioned many logistics many intertwined topics um our meetings are structured where we do updates from the uh 19 different areas that we have the other thing that we bring up always during the meetings are what are issues that are urgent or where people need support and then our third thing that we talk

018about is every meeting at every meeting is are there people we need to add to this discussion as we move forward so some of the topics that we've talked about that we've gone through are talking about hiring building administration and at this point overland was filled through a transfer the long fellow principle stayed the same our ferdell administrative team is going to dakota we have rps online has been posted externally and we are hoping to interview for that shortly we've talked about budgets for new buildings staff development for new buildings um what special education programming that might be in some of the buildings when buildings are available first for move in and those temporary certificate of occupancy dates um the 17 we have 17 areas that we talk about and i went over a couple

019of those but moving um boundary changes as i mentioned technology we talk about mass we talked about mascots we talk about the old buildings so what are we going to do to recognize bless you recognize the buildings that are closing they talked about i think something along the lines of breaking the bricks at longfellow and some kind of recognition at fredell as we as we get ready to move on to a different set of programs being in there um just some of the things that we talked about at the last meeting um in addition would be we're getting to the point where furniture has been kind of finalized ordering technology we find out things like when you order those wireless hot spots that there actually is a delay because of a supply issue overseas and

020now we're starting to talk more about moving and jerry ernst will be going to the buildings and talking about how teachers will move their materials so the work is not done we will continue to meet and continue to problem solve and connect people that need to connect and talk about these issues and i'll open it up for questions ms workman yes um you said that the fradell administration was going to be moved to dakota middle middle school will the current staff have preference in transferring there or how do you plan to handle that well that's a that's another complex issue and we actually i didn't mention that i apologize we had a separate meeting with longfellow freidel and bishop staff in the case of dick fredel going to dakota most of those staff will be

021moved if you're a full-time teacher there um there are some exceptions so if i'm not a full-time teacher and because freidel is going to be larger going to dakota and i'm say a 0.7 and now that's going to be a 0.1 position i would be displaced as per the contract we've continued to work with rea and just make sure that we're on the same page and following the contract following the processes where we landed which means and so i think because that message might have been everybody is moving we did have a meeting with um those buildings to to explain that that might not be accurate okay thank you thank you mr bakken thank you appreciate that now we will move on to board member committee updates this is an opportunity for our board members

022to talk about the committee work that they've been doing and i'm going to take the prerogative to go first we have two representatives from our student school board here jack wagner and lillard and jack and lily if you want to come around this side and then sit at that table right in front of a microphone while you're doing that our student school board involves representatives from each of our middle and high schools who engage with their building administrators and other students in their buildings and also with rps school board members and district administrators including the superintendent they compare notes they problem solve and they provide insight and advice to the district that insight is vitally important in helping the adults to understand the student experience and to analyze issues from a variety of perspectives at

023the last student school board meeting the topic of discussion was diversity equity and inclusion and what that looks like to students who are in our school so lily and jack have volunteered both of you are students at ferdell and thank you for coming here um to share what their group discussed so lily and jack take it away hello our names are jack and lily and we go to freidel middle school we are glad to have the opportunity to be here today to talk about diversity equity and inclusion we have asked multiple students and staff to give us their opinion on what the school district is doing well regarding diversity equity and inclusion we also asked them what the school district is struggling with regarding these issues and finally we asked what diversity equity and inclusion

024means to you many people said that they would like to make clubs like the gay straight alliance and student support group standardized just district wide when they said this they were referring to middle and high schools another thing that was mentioned throughout our interviews was the idea of making social emotional learning lessons more engaging for students additionally some students noted that our school is doing well at celebrating specific months dedicated to important topics such as black history month transgender week or coming out day however they do wish that those matters would be celebrated outside of the specific time frames some students and staff feel that diversity is only achieved when there is balanced representation they also share that in their opinion equity and inclusion is reached when equal opportunities are provided to all students many

025students and staff stress the importance of children seeing teachers that are similar to them staff also noted that they appreciated the hiring of equity specialists in school buildings they believe that it has been a huge help in achieving equity district-wide thank you for listening to our suggestions and we really appreciate the opportunity to share some perspectives from our school we would also like to thank marjorie tweedy who helped us interview people and everyone that answered our questions thank you so much and this is what the future of this district looks like thank you [Music] [Applause] lily and jack you just made it harder on me because i used to give reports about student school board and no one's going to listen to me anymore they're going to wait for students to show up so thank

026you and do you have a parent or guardian here could whoever that parent or guardian is or are raise their hand oh [Music] yeah good job with these kids thank you any that's really a tough act to follow anybody else madam chad i would ask that we pause until everyone in the room has a mask on per district policy and we can just we can wait i'll note we have uh one member uh here a person here who is not masked and we uh certainly can wait or you can absolutely if you uh need to keep your mask off you are absolutely free to leave the room this is unfortunate we're actually going to be talking about mask requirements today and we're not going to be able to get to that agenda item in a

027timely fashion apparently you guys tonight if you'd like to step outside you won't have to wear a mask either this is something that our students do our staff does everybody else here is doing this recess i apologize to people watching i apologize to those of you who are here we have a full agenda we have important things to do we cannot conduct this meeting unless until people who show up are willing to abide by the guidance that we have provided for everybody at this point we are in recess and we are reconvened at 6.06 p.m we will move on then to 5.0 the consent agenda are there any items to be removed for separate consideration approval second it's been moved and seconded to approve the consent agenda all in favor say aye aye opposed it

028is approved then 6.01 our false focus topic is world language overview dr pikel dr marvin and directors of the board on a night when many of us are thinking about events in ukraine it is an appropriate time to be talking about how we are preparing rochester students for the complex world in which they are going to live their lives and in which we are depending on them to be leaders and so the ability to speak uh world languages is a key component of that readiness and so as part of our continuing walk through many of our academic focus areas in our schools tonight we have a chance to learn about where rochester public schools is with world language so i want to thank executive director of curriculum and instruction brenda whichman for working with her

029team to put together tonight's focus topic briefing so brenda thank you are i'm happy to be with you tonight to talk about world languages in rochester public schools rest assured um this entire present presentation will be in english and i'm going to grab one more tier i think heather nice i'm sorry to say that we do not have a kindergartner amazing today okay all right somebody has all right well we're happy to talk to you about world language tonight uh we'll start with our background as we usually do so in world language we actually don't have state standards but we look to the actual world language standards we're currently reviewing our world language programming through our curriculum articulation cycle and steph's going to give you a little bit of background all right hello there um

030so you can see in front of you that you have the elementary offers a spanish immersion program and that's at gage elementary and that program feeds into willow creek spanish immersion program and we also have exploratory spanish for a quarter at grade seven and a quarter at grade eight and then when we have um high school the students have four options they can take spanish latin french or german courses and there is also the bilingual seals test that is an option to our students and i won't steal brian's thunder he'll talk about that in a little bit so more to come on that i'm going to talk a little bit about why why would we seek to learn a world language why would a student seek to become bilingual or multilingual and we narrowed it

031down to three major areas and those three areas then lend to that which is on the right hand side of the of the slide and so starting with academic achievement studies do show that students who take a world language tend to do better on on exams on tests and that's linked in a way to their ability to focus in on topics and being able to think about how they often are switching between two languages it allows them to focus in on the most important details and so that focus helps them in their other courses another area that i think struck me when i think about their academic ability is to as they switch back and forth between languages they're learning that shift and the ability to shift between topics and ideas and we think about

032a student's school day and they shift between five or six different classes and so our students who choose to take world language are often finding it easier to shift between ideas and those classes as they move throughout their day those cognitive benefits that students have also lend to this idea of that improved focus area um and being able to problem-solve better and to engage in critical thinking and engage in complex tasks because of the parts of their brain they're using when they are learning world language and certainly there are people here who could speak to that more than i can but i think these struck me as i've studied and learned more about world languages and then of course the cultural competence and i think dr patel you referenced this in the beginning but our

033ability to be empathetic and curious about others and learn about people through their culture and through their language and understanding emotion through someone else's language and really being able to engage in our world from perspectives other than just our own and so again academic cognitive and cultural all lend to that which is on the right hand side with expanded job and career opportunities of course enriched life when we think about being able to experience other cultures and then also that idea of curiosity and empathy for our students and for us and i think now we're on to promising practices all right so we have some promising practices we'll tell you a bit more about we have a campaniero's class which christina and katie are going to talk a bit more about use of authentic resources

034so that's a big piece of where we're heading we want to be using more magazines videos literature teaching grammar as a concept and using it in context so not just grammar by itself but trying to make sure that we're getting to application and then focus on focusing on using the language not just learning about the language and then finally we'll talk a little bit more about the bilingual seals all right so i'm going to turn it over to annie i think to start us out hi i'm annie i'm going to speak a little bit about our world language articulation cycle that's going on right now the purpose of it is to review the programming for all of our languages in the district right now to determine where they are strong and what areas we need

035to look at as growth areas and then to make recommendations moving forward the group currently consists of world language teachers administrators and members of the curriculum and instruction team and we started meeting last year in january of 2020 we continue to meet monthly and we'll continue to do so until we've completed our review and are ready to make recommendations yeah and just to speak a little bit more about the data that we're collecting um we over the past past year or so from january i've decided to create a number of data collection tools three surveys and then a classroom observation rubric with the surveys we decided to go with not just for one for students currently enrolled in foreign language programs but for those outside just to get a fuller picture of how we can

036better appeal to students and pull them into the program um we also created a survey for professional development needs for the teaching staff that's one we've um reviewed most recently just asking about how do we best improve our language whether that's in district finding conferences outside of the district any which way that we can help improve that and support that and then finally we have the classroom observation rubric we're looking for things like comprehensible input and other things that we're going to try and look for within the language classrooms and that's something we're trying to get um out there within the next month or so can i just reject it would it be okay if you introduced yourselves i know i didn't uh like jump that before you went maybe as you're speaking but just

037so we have a sense because we're so grateful for you being here um i'm annie oz i am a former spanish teacher and now an instructional coach that's great uh noah debris i'm the latin teacher at jm high school hi everyone my name is megan redlin i teach spanish over at century high school and i'm going to talk a little bit about the classroom observations piece that noah was just talking about so the plan i think for us is in march to be able to go and visit other world language teachers and see what their classroom practices currently um will take a look i don't think i don't think we're going to elementary school but i think we're for sure going to middle school high school and um like taking a look at the spanish

038immersion program to kind of see the practices being used and implemented there as well so this will give us a better idea of not only classroom practice but also help us to see where we are now and where we want to go in the future based on best practice and so i think with observations and using that tool that noah was talking about that's how we'll plan to move forward so brian's going to talk a little bit about the bilingual seals which is something that's fairly new so he's going to explain it a little bit and then give you some data on um where we're at right now with bilingual seals hi i'm brian durgan i'm the implementation associate here in rochester um so the bilingual seals is a law that is in minnesota state

039statute to provide opportunities for students that are multilingual and allows them to earn college credit and of course this year which you know also allows students that have a certain proficiency level to earn elective credit here in rochester which i think is great for multilingual students that has that opportunity and the seals are specific for graduating high school students so students that take this assessment that we use through a bond or through extemporary depending on the language they take an assessment that they use they can earn college credit they need to um attain all the english credits to be able to have this um endless credit at um college it is through the minsky system so they have all the universities and technical college colleges in the in minnesota excluding the university of minnesota but

040they are asked to provide credit for students that you know seeing as they're not involved in that um and then but they are asked to demonstrate efficiency and four domain four domains of language so speaking reading writing and listening so they're assessed in each one of those and then um that most of that and then students can uh get attain a world language proficiency certificate um in ninth grade um they wouldn't be eligible for obtaining a bilingual steel if they took it in ninth grade but um that is something that they could use look at um talking about world language like looking at data like how are students doing and um like say like spanish immersion program or like just using the other collection point it's possible that something that could be done um see

041like where their language efficiency is at um and then the criteria here the actual proficiency guidelines that are used for um world languages so that this is what the test levels i'm at so if you are an advanced low level you're in four semesters of credit at the at the high score at the college um and then at this level for high school you would earn two or two elective credits at the intermediate high you'd earn the gold seal and that would be three college semester credits and 1.5 elected credits and then at the intermediate low level you get two semesters of college credit and then one credit of elected credit at the high school and then just some historical data you can kind of see like where students have um and what languages they

042have attain these and so these are only for students that these are not all the students that have taken it but the ones that have actually earned and at what level they've taken to that or have earned and then they are only so if a student takes uh so uh this week we had a test at the alc providing opportunity for those students um they have if they were in 10th grade it would not count towards this data until their senior year like let's say that would be 2024 so they have to be graduating seniors to count towards their data of um once it's submitted to mbe for their purposes right and then before we get to challenges we have one more spotlight and that's the company euros class so heather i wish you hadn't

043promised that we would speak in another language because because i was ready to come in and say what is that willow creek um my name is fryend i'm a seventh and eighth grade spanish teacher at willow creek and i'm really excited to tell you about our companeros initiative uh brand new this year our immersion students from gage are now seventh graders at willow creek and this companeros companeros means partners and we have all these amazing highly skilled immersion students who we are going to combine with heritage learners and at first i want to define what a heritage learner is i'm a heritage learner i grew up in a home hearing and speaking spanish but in a place where english is the dominant language and so before i decided to be a spanish teacher i kind

044of grew up illiterate in spanish i could speak in spanish i could understand spanish but i did not have the reading and writing skills something really cool that we've discovered through some research and guess who was late to try and listen to the slides is that our dual immersion language students and our heritage learners have similar weaknesses and similar strengths both of them great vocabulary high level reading skills some read some reading for sure some writing oral proficiency way up here heritage culture learning pretty good but where they're lacking all of them grammar writing and then world culture so our our spanish speakers um you know spanish is spoken in 21 countries not just in mexico so students of mexican heritage honduran heritage diverse heritages get to learn about the other spanish-speaking cultures along with

045these dual immersion kits so the kids whose dominant language is english um the benefits are for everyone having these authentic relationships um the dl kids we call them dual language immersion kids with the hl kids the heritage language learner kids is great for all of them and i want to say as a heritage learner i really am so excited about the benefits to our heritage learners not only will they get proficiency and literacy in their home language but they also have a stronger sense of self and identity it's a huge confidence booster we would be valuing skills that they already have people pay big money to learn to speak spanish or to travel or to learn about cultures and these kids are walking around with those strengths today so builds their sense of identity and

046confidence it validates and values what they already have and again it's a great community builder getting these kids to play together work together and learn together we are so excited um right now the exploratory program at middle school sees for me at little creek i have three to ten heritage learners in every section of my exploratory spanish guess what we teach there colors numbers days of the week it is not an appropriate spot for someone who speaks spanish already and we have struggled to differentiate and to offer opportunities a lot of times parents will ask that their kid opt out of that class um or be offered something else but we've got three to ten kids in each hour so if you do the math even with that low number we're talking 60 kids that

047could be two sections of a heritage learner class so we are very excited to use the momentum that has been created with our really cool immersion program to partner to be companeros with the heritage learners and create something that's good for our district and really really good for our kids um i did bring the data but other communities that do have heritage learner classes do see increased graduation rates and post-secondary participation so we want that we want that for all our kids language is awesome and i'm katie miller i'm the instructional coach for the spanish immersion program at both gage elementary where our k5 program is and at willow creek middle school where we have our seven six seventh sixth and seventh graders and next year we're adding on to eighth grade so every year

048we've been learning and growing and this was um what started to be as a challenge of what do we do with our exploratory spanish class for our immersion students knowing that that too is good like our heritage learners is going to be so high and above them in or they will be so high above the curriculum that it was something where it gave us the opportunity to try something different and through conversations just over the course of last year we started thinking about heritage learners and just what you know this is a great opportunity to try something different and we're really lucky to have our program at willow creek because we have so many spanish-speaking heritage learners that it was like a perfect location and a perfect opportunity to try something new so we're really

049excited it's you know like i said it's new so you know we'll have our bumps on the way but we're very excited and um excited to share the success that we'll have at the end so and i'm so excited i want to share one more thing that's also again data supported i wish i could show you i'll send it to you students that become literate in their home language see big boosts in their um second language so if we say our heritage learners are speaking spanish at home and learning english at school there's a correlation between them learning to read and write in spanish and growth and improvement in their writing and reading in english so awesome awesome well i know you guys are going to have questions for us as well so just a

050few challenges to highlight i think maintaining and growing our enrollment in the spanish immersion program particularly at the middle school we want to make sure we have healthy numbers so that we can continue that program katie has been really instrumental in trying to figure out can students enter if they didn't start as a kindergartner and what does that look like and so we've got really good processes for that right now but we want to be really thinking about that maintaining high quality language learning if we have to use alternative delivery models so noah is an example of this because he's teaching latin but it's satellite teaching for some of the students because some are in front of them and some are from the other buildings and so we want to be sure we can keep

051that high quality but still run those programs where the numbers might be smaller offering languages that are culturally relevant for our students our students have asked for things like arabic dakota can we have different language offerings and what could that look like so i think that's something for us to explore developing programming that strengthens our students capacity in their first language as christina talked about so beautifully and then how do we how do we think about funding and continually improving our curriculum and instruction efforts that's that seems to be really challenging to try and make sure we do a good job with that and we've got competing interests right now we've got science and we're also looking at world language and we have english language arts standards coming down the pike so how do we

052make sure we we support those pieces so future plans we are going to continue our world language articulation study group we're going to be looking deeply at the data that we collect from both the non-language takers as well as the students in language classes and then we'll bring some recommendations to you possibly this spring but maybe more likely next fall with what we think would help to strengthen our program we'd like to increase the number of students taking the bilingual sales exam we're going to be giving that in spanish 4 at both century and mayo and possibly john marshall as well we think that that would be a great group of students that's already completed that programming and we want to see how well they'll do and then we want to expand and diversify our

053world language opportunities and then continue with the heritage language learning opportunities so we want to open it up for you guys to ask some questions of our panelists and so let us know what you want to know we can kick it off thank you all for coming um to our seventh and eighth grade middle school teacher one of the questions i always wondered was why a some in seventh grade and some in eighth grade as opposed to a continuous is that great question i don't even know who to ask that to um i've been with the district seven years and ever since i've been here that's how it's been um of course as a language teacher i would love to see it every day all year in every grade so i'm not sure where that

054decision happened however i've heard stories that there was a time that we had a whole semester of language learning um and again um best practices with language learning do show that that consistent ongoing language exposure has the best retention and the best growth so if anybody wants to take that take that up i would totally be right behind you good question we talked a little bit about we were kind of anticipating questions that might come up and i do think that's one of the things i wonder about a little bit in terms of a middle school redesign or middle school rethinking some of those those courses that are our quarter courses we call them exploratories but there's not very much choice kids um they all take pltw they all take the world language and so

055i think there might be opportunity for us to think differently about what that could potentially look like at the middle school level ms workman um i have a number of questions but i'll just do one first um on a number of years ago when the program first started here i know that the uh qualifying test to receive the what is it called the seal on their diploma was the same test that was given by the department of defense and so the standards were extremely high for that is that the same test that you use now or do you use is there a different test that's used so the one that we use now brian and katie you have to correct me if i'm wrong is the stamp i believe and it is a really high

056um a high bar so that's why you don't see many students getting the gold seal most of the time it takes about six years of language study to get to that gold level or so silver level so many of our students if they've only had like say spanish one through four they might be able to get to world language proficiency um but they might not be able to get to the gold or the silver you mentioned an acronym just now stamp stamp what does that stand for do you know is it s-t-a-m s-t-a-m-p a stamp just like a postage stamp and i don't know what it stands for i don't know if any of you guys do that's the assessment that just uh let us name to the vendor avant it's fairly new that students

057can get the college credit um we've been giving it i think since 2017 katie started it when she was in the implementation associate position um and so it hasn't been very many years but then we just added the opportunity for kids to get elective high school credit if they get the either the gold the silver or the world language proficiency and the assessments um that are offered are recommended by the minnesota department of education so they send out like a recommended list of assessments that would qualify um to meet the recommendations for the seal and the statute so um avant is one of those vendors and the stamp is the recommended assess one of the recommended assessments did you have a question mr barlow [Music] i'll begin with this one first of all i have

058a year and a half old grandson who's learning english arabic and somali and i sometimes struggle in relating to them that being said i am curious though for our heritage learners [Music] are they my impression is that oftentimes heritage learners are encouraged to speak english you know and for some they may even potentially feel a sense of shame because they're not necessarily proficient in speaking english and so how are you able to encourage our heritage learners to see the value that there should be no shame that uh that's something which should be honored and uh i'll just stop with that uh question there and await your response great point and i think having the heritage language offerings it will be instrumental in boosting that confidence and absolutely we want to move from a deficit idea

059about your cultural background and your language background to that asset based this is something people pay money for and spend a lot of time on and you already have these skills and i'm in middle school it's powerful um this is a class where even though it's colors and numbers these kids sometimes excel and get to be community experts but you're right there is also especially in middle school we don't want to be other we don't want to be different and if you're three to ten kids in a class where other students are learning spanish for the first time you feel more other but if you're in a class with dual language learners with high levels of vocab and communication skills i also want to acknowledge that there is a huge range between they're not a

060homogenous group the kids they grew up with spanish in their home or arabic or somali we've got kids that can read harry potter in spanish from the public library to kids that can understand everything that abuelita says grandma says but they answer back only in english so the students that we will want to invite into companeros we definitely want to celebrate and value what they already have but we also won't be bringing in everyone i think we have 118 students today at willow creek that would qualify as heritage learners um and we don't have room for them from them all but we also want to take those kids that want to be there and that have a comparable language skills our immersion kids are so highly skilled um so i know you're going to talk

061about immersion another day but um i subbed in the sixth grade class immersion social studies class last year and i went in there excited to get to use my spanish and we had a very high level conversation about the native american internment camps in minnesota in spanish and um i don't know how many ap level 4 spanish students could have that same conversation and the immersion program i'm super impressed from what i've experienced um those kids have high vocabulary and high academic vocabulary and it will be tough as we figure out who can who we invite into the companies we want to make sure that they'll be a good match ability-wise and skill wise but i think the heritage language learner classes will value and increase the confidence of these students again to be asset

062based not deficit based and in our immersion program just to clarify we have a mix of students as well of heritage learners and native english speakers so and some students who we say are kind of that both hand that they understand but they don't maybe have as much of a background um so we really think about our groups of students like that and when they come to us but i can tell you after a few days of kindergarten we're all language learners in kindergarten and so we really feel like our immersion program is really about being bi-cultural and biliterate and we really really believe in that understanding of multiculturalism and we discuss it on a daily basis in our classes in gage and at willow creek so because we have a beautiful mix of different

063students coming from very many different backgrounds we have some students who are on their fourth language in our immersion program and they're not just learning spanish but they've learned three others before that so you know just to understand too combining these all these kids together isn't just saying we're combining like a native english speaking student who's learned spanish to our heritage learners no we're really having a beautiful mixture of students with different backgrounds and and really talking about their identities um is also a big thing for us in our immersion program ms mclaughlin um please send us the data about how it's helpful to have crossover between the different languages yes i'd be glad to and my question is i understand from what you're telling us that this seems to be kind of ramping up

064of what you're doing are there heritage language learners in their own sections yet or is that something that you're planning in the future this will be the very first year quarter four this spring and this is the first time because you know these those first kids that came through gage are now seventh graders so uh that has been scheduled at level four quarter four so we had time to uh create the curriculum and maybe make it up um yeah so it hasn't happened yet and i look forward to telling you how it goes and then i would like to say that so next year um i was hoping there could be two sections if we split up the immersion kids and then uh mix them in with heritage learners we could have two sections in

065grade seven and two sections in grade eight we definitely have the numbers um to make that happen it would be cool to do that and again the immersion kids that have grown up together it's fun for them to branch out and also mingle and mix and get to know other kids in the middle school that's helpful thank you miss workman um yes you included in our information a world language enrollment chart and i was wondering there's quite a bit of discrepancy between spanish level 1 and latin german and french levels could that in part be attributed to the fact that students have this exploratory in spanish in middle school and haven't been exposed to the other languages or is there just something magical going on that i'm not aware of um when we've hosted eighth

066grade parent nights before i'm speaking from a john marshall perspective because that was where i taught spanish what we found is that a lot of times it's the parents who kind of encourage their students to choose spanish because they see that as the language that is going to be the most beneficial moving forward what we tried to message at least at john marshall is it shouldn't matter what language your student is taking because there are so many benefits that um steph alluded to earlier that no matter what language your student takes it's going to help them in so many ways outside of whether it's french or german or spanish but i do think that's not the entire reason but i think that that's a significant contributor okay thank you and then i would also like

067to add that most recently we've also so we want kids to learn language and we're giving them spanish as a way to practice learning language at the middle schools our big three goals are introduction to language and culture language learning strategies and interpersonal communication skills so when we do those language learning strategies we tell them this will help you in latin this will help you in english this will help you in your other choices so you're right it i mean yes and no mr barlow and then finally for me um there are some who may think well this is america and um uh if you're attending a an american public education school the only language you should be concerned with learning is english so i appreciate the inclusion in your presentation uh why learn a

068language other than your own to me that was so significant it's not suggesting that there's something wrong with english it's just creating the point in place of awareness that one can grow beyond simply learning or knowing a single language be called english or some other so i really just wanted to acknowledge that to say thank you for including that because we're not suggesting uh that uh well we once thought laden was a dead language okay we're not now suggesting that english is uh but we see it something that can be built upon and increase the overall acumen of our student learners so thank you nathan so um and i don't think this is necessarily a question for you but it could be a question for the superintendent in some of the preliminary results from the

069focus groups in the surveys on our strategic plan and we've also received emails we have parents asking us to expand our world language options in the into the elementary schools it's not part of an articulation process because the articulation process really looks at what we have but do we see a conversation or a pathway i mean it's obviously a big addition but we do know other districts do it and not to put you on the spot because you've only been doing this for a week as superintendent but any thoughts thank you dr nathan with resources we'd love to do it my own children attended immersion schools from kindergarten and so i've seen the power of it i will also say that i and i know i've talked with um our leadership about this i think

070we also have an important discussion to have about the mix of languages we're offering um i was so excited to see chinese and arabic there i think chinese and arabic should be back um i'm glad that's been there i don't want to do it at the exclusion of our other current language offerings one of the things i'm going to be interested in working with this really awesome team on is how do we encourage more students and then in the case dr nathan of young children their parents to choose world language because we do have to make the case and as i think director barlow just did quite well and so we need to actually persuade them to choose immersion or to take foreign language in high school when they wouldn't necessarily have it and i

071think we have to get creative um about about doing that but yeah the research is quite clear the plasticity of the young brain can be shown in any subject it is mind-blowingly obvious with foreign language acquisition in a way that almost seems uh fictitious but it's true that the the neural connections that a young brain makes when they're learning new language tied to lived experience is just off the charts so even if the kid doesn't keep studying the language it's great cognitive development so it'd be very exciting to be able to talk about doing that yes i was going to ask about you know starting language earlier and i know dr piquel expressed the the frustration that we have with our lack of funding in terms of expanding it into well let me let me

072back up when the current seventh graders were in second or third grade the parent group was very concerned about what would happen in middle school and the roadblock at the time so this is four or five years ago now the roadblock at the time was to find someone who was licensed in the content area and licensed in spanish do you know if that's the case still from mde that you have to have both or do we or do we just look for someone who is already fluent in spanish who has the content area licensure i think that our current teacher is licensed in spanish but then also teaches spanish language arts and then social studies so i think that's how we've we've staffed that right now is that that teacher is licensed in spanish but

073then and then we have to invest in some curriculum materials and then some time over the summer for um the team to be able to to plan for that and katie's a part of that as well thank you thank you so much great presentation we appreciate your work and we'd all like to say goodbye in spanish [Laughter] thank you so much our next agenda item 7.01 uh this mask requirement update dr pickell chair marvin and directors of the board the the irony of this presentation will will not be lost on some of you who are here for an event earlier tonight um because i want to talk about a change in our mask policy this district can be very very proud of the work that we have done to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus

074from the outset of the virus and through today i believe after a lot of consultation with both our internal team folks in our schools external advisors none of whom are uh have been asked to or are endorsing this proposal we are at a point where we can prove it prudently make a shift from requiring all students staff and visitors in all of our schools to mask or wear face coverings at all times to a building by building approach through which masks would be strongly recommended but optional unless five percent or more of the students and staff in a school or rps facility test positive for covid in which case those students and staff and any visitor to that facility would be required to wear face covering for two weeks and if the rate of covid

075in that school or facility remains at five percent or above at the end of that two weeks it would be extended for another two weeks and so in short this would not be should the board choose to adopt the recommendation i'm making tonight the end of a mass requirement rochester public schools it would be a shift from a district-wide requirement to a building by building requirement as is outlined in the memo that i shared with you yesterday and that's available through the school district website the requirement would also apply to transportation and extracurricular activities and so that if a school was required to mask because of the spread of kovid in that school kids on school buses that were driving or participating in extracurricular activities unless as per state high school league they're actually in

076practice or on the field playing or performing they would also be required to wear masks in that situation really importantly at present no rps schools or facilities meet that five percent threshold because case rates as is outlined in the memo i shared with you yesterday are very very low at this point but we have in the past at the peak of the omicron surge and we might again in the future and so i believe after a lot of consideration this is a strategy that can sustain the school district through the foreseeable period of the this pandemic which we know we all keep expecting to be over and never yet seems to be very importantly this shift to a building by building approach would not apply to students in our early childhood programs who are not

077yet eligible for vaccination many of them have exemptions based on our existing policy but for those for whom that doesn't exist would continue to apply in early childhood settings it would also not apply for staff who tested positive for covid and completed our required five-day isolation meaning they're not at school then they take a test and they test negative and they come back they do per cdc requirements still need to wear masks for days six to ten so that is the second group that this would not apply to third would be staff in our health services offices who provide direct service to students and fourth would be a student who's demonstrating symptoms maybe they're in class somewhere else in the school they go to the school health office and they are going to be going

078home they would be masked as soon as we are identifying that they have symptoms concurrent with taking this step should the board choose to take it we would continue to do all the other things that we're doing to mitigate the spread of covet in our schools very importantly we would continue to monitor covid rates and if a school ticks over those rates at the classroom the grade level or the school level to go to distance learning where students actually learn virtually from home that policy would remain in place our 10-day isolation period for students who test positive for covid would remain in place that's five days longer than the cdc requires the reason that we are staying with the 10 days is that's really the full known incubation period of the virus and very importantly

079if we don't have masks in our schools and even when we do masks are not always perfectly worn by students we've decided that we would maintain the full uh 10-day incubation period so that would continue we continue the work the social distance students as possible within our classrooms we are making kn-95 mask the highest quality mass available to secondary students and staff little kids uh can't wear the kn-95s but we do make other high-quality masks available we continue to do that we'll continue to encourage vaccination as we have been throughout the pandemic since vaccinations have been available and then very importantly if and when we take this step we would really lean into the fact that masks are strongly recommended and when a student chooses or a parent advises a student to wear a mask

080no bullying no stigma that is a choice that we affirm and celebrate really importantly there's an alternative approach that i know the board may want to consider and i considered it a lot myself and that's just to wait until county transmission levels are at a different level in olmsted county they do remain at the high level but are trending rapidly downward there's some reason to believe based on my conversations with public health leaders at olmstead county that we may fairly soon hit the medium level at which case the cdc also recommends masking can be recommended but not required the reason that i believe this approach in rochester public schools is a better fit for our district at this time than simply waiting for the cdc level to be reached is twofold first of all olmstead

081county is big and it's a very diverse community that has many many contexts that are far beyond the number of schools we have in our school district but equally importantly all across olmsted county all of the organizations and individual family homes that uh our county public health has to advise don't have school nurses and public health offices where they can carefully track the spread of covid in their business in their school we can and we do we have superb superb staff in our school health offices and so our ability to track cases of covet and act quickly on those cases is not the case across the rest of olmsted county and that's why this policy once again is not abandoning mass requirements it's having to be driven by the actual increase where it occurs in

082uh in case rates so before you tonight you really have uh three decisions and were in your shoes i i think all of them are are very viable there's a resolution before you that would operationalize the recommendation that i'm making um you could choose per a resolution that you passed in september not to act tonight and leave that decision to me that you would then revisit at a later board meeting as you passed a resolution allowing when timing doesn't prohib permit a board decision the superintendent can make an interim decision that you would then revisit or you could take another approach such as deciding to wait uh for uh transmission levels at the county level to shift and just again be very clear were you to choose to make take that approach i would understand

083it but after a lot of thought here's why i'm making the recommendation that i am first of all case rates in olmstead county are headed down rapidly but there is not a guarantee of the timing within which they'll reach that that medium level the positive cases for a hundred thousand people in olmsted county were 1741.71 the week of february 3rd 526 the week of february 17th and 271 the week of february 24th so that's our county let me tell you about our school district back january 10th we had 756 cases of coveted within rochester public schools february 14th we had 127. last week we had 63 cases we are at a level where this is not a reckless move or i wouldn't be recommending it a few other general points that people are familiar with

084and i want to be really clear before i say this that i believe masking has been and remains a prudent appropriate tool in the mitigation strategy so none of these are anti-mask arguments it's about where we are right now in this pandemic we do have very low rates of serious illness or hospitalization among both rochester public school students and staff and we have no hospitalizations or serious illness that are known to us at this time and there have been very very few throughout the pandemic um i think we need to be honest that a lot of the studies of masking talk about the highest quality masks worn in a very very effective way as adults are able to do our students have been awesome they've been diligent i have been frankly stunned at the adherence

085to a mask requirement since basically i got to rochester but they're not wearing any n95 or kn95s and they're kids and so mask adherence uh is something that remains a continuing challenge i still think it's a valuable tool which is why i'm recommending we retain it but we need to i think be also realistic about uh children and adolescents wearing masks our vaccination rates uh remain strong in rochester public schools but they're never high enough we're going to keep working on that right now across all of our secondary schools so middle and high schools we are at an average of 63.48 percent vaccinated and 44 in elementary schools there's a big range on either side of those two averages but um we can be proud of the vaccination work we've done to date and we

086would keep working on it an important point one of the points that somebody mentioned to me not that long after i got here you have a doctorate but it's not in any of this medical or health stuff and it's true but i do know something about teaching learning and social emotional development masks are not without consequence for language development for relational connection for kids experience of school in the fullest sense and so i think it is incorrect for us whose primary purpose first is both safety of our students and the education of our students not to consider the fact that there are consequences to masks and and those are consequences that i think when the spread of covet is high are absolutely appropriate uh trade-offs to make but when we get to a point where

087we have 63 cases of our entire 18 000 student school district there's a point where i think we need to consider those educational social emotional and relational implications of masking and then finally and this is relevant and i almost didn't include this point either tonight or my memo because rochester public schools shouldn't go just in the direction of other school districts because they went there you know we're rochester we need to do what's right for rochester students that said we are in the realm here of public health where people's perceptions i think we've all learned the hard way during this pandemic matter a lot to their adherence we are part locally of the big nine conference which is our local school districts the people we compete against in athletics and we go to various science

088fairs and things with at present rochester and winona are the only two districts in the big nine conference that require masks and winona the school board has voted they will be moving away from their mass requirement on monday the association of metropolitan school districts of which we also are a part is a bit more mixed but a majority have removed the mass requirement and a majority of those that still have it have said they're going to be removing it now i would not urge you to give a lot of weight to that point but in so far as i get a lot of emails uh not just from parents and staff members but also from students that context does matter to them why why here as opposed to there i'm not saying you should consider

089that because we should imitate their decisions i i assume they've made the right decisions i think it does impact our students willingness to adhere to the requirement at a time when they may see uh other students and i i get a lot of messages from students who ask about that so in in some this is a difficult decision i respect the boards uh and i'm grateful for the the thoughtfulness and diligence that the board has given to this issue which we all know has taken on in some ways a symbolic weight beyond perhaps its particular value in any given moment on any one of our faces but it's an important decision and one that after a conversation with all of you and then our chair and vice chair i thought it was prudent to bring

090to you tonight again it's one in which you could choose to defer decision or we could choose to move forward with the recommendation that i have before you know thank you dr pikel and in order to keep the discussion focused i want to read the resolution that we have and if that's seconded we could then engage in discussion get resolved school board of independent school district 535 supports the superintendent's recommendation and directs the superintendent to implement the recommended face covering guidance effective march 7th 2021 and be it further resolve the school board of independent school district 535 approved the proposed changes in policy 808 the covid 19 faced covering guidance second i think we need a motion motion first so moved i was giving someone else an opportunity okay it's been moved and seconded any

091discussion i have a couple questions all right um superintendent fically just want to make sure that i understood what you were telling us that if uh school gets to the level of the five percent positive rates the students that are ill staff that are ill they'll be at home quarantining the remainder of the students then would be back to required masks um just make sure that that's clear what conversations have you had with school administrators to determine what that may look like particularly the different levels elementary middle high school the compliance that they would expect of lifting the mandatory and then putting it back what that what they what their expectations would be about the compliance with that uh director mclaughlin it's a great question i uh shared this idea with all of our school

092principals plus the school the school nurses who are also in the corvette coordinators they had many different opinions on it i think that they thought it was workable in that sense it would be a challenge because if you have no masks on and then you have to put masks back on there was general sense that it would be possible because i think the message to students would be hey we had these masks off we now have spread in our school it's actual spread among our students and staff to be safe we need to mask for two weeks if we do this well for two weeks we'll be back to having them off so that it is you know data driven in that sense but you're highlighting a really important point the the challenge of having

093students ha experience one condition and another is something that we'll need to be very attentive to um and i guess i should say if we found that this policy simply resulted in much lower levels of student compliance than we've seen with our district-wide policy i would come back to you and suggest we need to go back to a district-wide approach um but i think broadly stated it's fair to say that the administrators thought that this was this was workable um in a practical sense and then i just have one follow-up in the and i haven't thought about the numbers in detail like you have that we did the distance learning for two weeks and if i understood at that point there were numbers higher than the five percent that led us to that decision since

094we've been back have there been five percent in any of the schools i know that might be a harder question to answer but i'd be curious to know if you know that definitely before distance learning and i'm not sure i might i'm looking over at heather who attracts these things i think we distance learning really snuffed it out and so she's nodding once we came back we were under that and we've been under that since that for all over all the schools yeah i don't believe we did ram that date when we came up with five percent but we were definitely over at multiple schools pre-distance learning okay thank you miss amundsen so in the building by building model this is a two-part question um what would trigger for instance here at the edison building

095or other non-student buildings so it would trigger re-masking especially school board meetings for instance and sort of as an extension to that what would trigger us not worrying so much about the building by building and just saying you know like say another variant comes through and we see this big surge what's going to trigger us going back to you know let's stop worrying about the buildings it's time for everybody to do it because i i would love to be optimistic and say there will never be another variant but that has not been our experience so far uh director robinson those are great questions i'm never very good at remembering two-part questions because i focus on the last one but um the first one about a non-school facility with students not street facility thank you it

096would be the same five percent for staff that work there um i talked a bit with the chair and vice chair about the school board meeting piece and i don't believe it's in a resolution but my assumption is as goes the edison building so goes the school board meeting because just like we're saying extracurriculars go with the school if the edison building has five percent or more coveted cases we would mask at school board meetings just like you'd be masking in a school at a extracurricular for those two weeks but that that doesn't really talk about school board meetings because these are not edison staff people right but also a lot of people come to a a game in the school that are not parents from that school and we still tell them to mask

097i agree with you the the school board meetings might be something we want to have a separate discussion about and you know we we talked a bit about it policy 808 includes the provision that you have to mask at school board meetings and so the resolution basically only says we would shift away from that but perhaps we would want to think about a different approach to board meetings to your second question which was if we basically find the building by building approach is leading to lots of buildings that are having to be masked i would absolutely bring back to your recommendation to potentially go back to district wide masking or to look at another approach so that if we had the sense that allowing schools not to mask was promoting spread we would get ahead

098of it and we wouldn't wait to discover oh my gosh the whole district is masked again i didn't i don't have a number for that like if there's five schools massed we'll go district wide i think we would we would watch the case rates i mean as you say a lot of this is premised on the fact that we are headed on a downward trend and and we know various new variants emerge but the problem is is that the school board doesn't meet necessarily often enough and so that would be something i would want the ability to you know turn on a dime yeah that's a good point i think the policy would give me the authority to do that in between your meetings and then you'd have to bless it at the next meeting

099oh and and again it's the option i mean if it's requirement that we have to mask fine but otherwise it's still an option and people can show up in a mask even if we have a no mask requirement here miss nathan um okay before i ask my question to build on that that question from um dr amonson about the authority to make the decision i think i would concur that the last resolution that we passed gave the superintendent the authority to make that decision and then for us to ratify it at the next meeting and so that would stand so that would stand um it just so happens that we're at a nexus tonight where we're getting a recommendation and we're able to to take action on it should we choose to do that um

100i guess my second question about that would be um as far as the timing um this is a week by week decision because our cova team will be looking at the data and and really making a go no-go decision every friday afternoon so we'll know in real time you know no more than seven days you know out what what the circumstances are and i would assume that we would continue to undertake this approach either until well we would continue to take this approach until you came back with us with a recommendation to maybe recognize the change in the case rates that are in line with what the cdc says about medium or low spread or or i'm thinking more about taking it away as opposed to to going back but it would go either way

101you could either come back with us for a recommendation that says we need more widespread masking or you can come back to us with a recommendation that says i think we can loosen some of these other requirements i just want to say that the recommendation the superintendent has made is six pages long it is very thorough it is incredibly thoughtful and addresses health issues academic issues social emotional issues it's very specific in terms of if this then what next um i think and i question this at first even delaying the implementation of this until next monday i think makes sense because our school buildings if we pass this our school buildings are going to need to get the message out to students as we've discussed before some of you will choose to wear masks some

102of you will not there will be no judging there will be no bullying and to make clear too that if the spread rises everyone will be back back to masks again so give that a few days to sink in so that every student really understands that can i jump in just because you and i were part of the student school board i just want to comment on something that those students said would you mind go ahead okay um the students at the student school board with dr paquel there were talking about this and i think what really sunk in for me is they weren't talking about themselves they were talking about each other and their families and that was important that it's not just about you know the kids sitting there that is making the

103decision they're making it about other people in their lives and thank you and it was emotional and gratifying that so many of the kids were saying i will keep wearing a mask no matter what because i have a grandma i have a little brother i have somebody who i want to keep safe and it was um humbling melissa so we've we've heard from multiple perspectives and um recently we've we've heard from people who say is this the right time for us to back up with a spring break not too far away so if we feel like well we can't take counts of people while we're away at spring break and if we feel like there's some sort of increase in transmission from people traveling far and wide during spring break do we have any idea

104about how we would handle special cases like that when we don't have building data but we also are feeling like there's activity happening that we might want to be cautious about yeah dr robinson we we talked about the deferral to spring break and i i i think that could still be an option we're not it's not just around the corner we have a bit of a bit of time so it feels like just around the corner right right it's there's a bit um i think we have to trust our families and our families in rochester have been pretty fantastic about reporting cases and i think that we you know when we've had breaks before it's true it goes silent during the week of the break but on monday we do find out which when parents

105call and they say you know my kid's gone and we've always said when they say they're absent we definitely proactively ask you know is it covered so during that spring break if there is a rise in cases we would know them that monday and if we deferred this until after the spring break we would still have the same problem of not knowing what the spread was during break um but i think that's something that we can we can work with our school health office staff to try and be proactive around i think it's a really important point i i would just say also briefly to the point that dr mclaughlin made about the the student school board um i heard that as well i've heard it elsewhere that is one reason why unlike some districts

106that i respect a lot in this area i am not recommending a district-wide seat abandonment of masking full stop and that's what most others are or many others are doing and i'm saying it's we're shifting to a building by building approach driven by case rates um i understand why that still could make some of those students we met with uh very concerned and so that's why i say i could see the the county wide spread piece i frankly don't think a county-wide number when we're trying to trending down is should give those students a lot more security than an actual case rate in their actual school melissa um another uh person that we heard from was a music teacher who talked about singing is there an ability to put an exception in place for what

107you might consider high-risk activities like that um you know put a box of masks in the in the singing rooms or what have you i'm just saying is there the ability with what we're looking at to be flexible for special cases like that do we get the superintendent authority to say this is a high risk situation we'd like you to mask in this room or in this class or during this activity we we we certainly could take that under consideration i haven't had a chance in this proposal to talk about things like music rooms i will tell you that in the meeting that uh when director mclaughlin asked about like what's been the reaction from administrators one thing administrators were pretty clear about this particularly in elementary school so it's a little different than the

108point they were saying for them it's it's all or nothing in a school because we looked at classroom we looked at classrooms bed because especially in elementary classroom you can measure cases by one class versus another and we said well let's just mask in this classroom about that and they were like no because just the social emotional impact of these fifth graders are masked and these fifth graders are not and then the challenge of the administrator in the hallway trying to say no you should have a mask and you shouldn't now music classes are are different i think we could certainly look at that and i think we'd want to work with our you know music staff and i don't know what other circumstances that would apply to um i'd want to give those teachers

109uh probably the discretion in that space making masks available yes no question that's a slam dunk you know in those settings but as i think probably a lot of us have heard and probably as you know director workman knows better than any of us you know teaching music in a pandemic with a respiratory virus is really a hard a hard task to undertake so i don't know heather if there's anything else from the coveted team perspective on the question of music that you'd want to add it i don't mean to call you out if you feel like i've kind of hit the main points but heather's involved with the team okay i got a i got a passing grade dan uh chair marvin i i you made the point earlier that this is a well

110designed thought out recommendation we have uh does the carry of does it cover every potential [Music] possibility no but it is addressing the knowns that we can address and making available i think options should there be an increase and so uh i'm not that you're asking but i do support the recommendation and will um i don't want to necessarily call for the question to vote on it right now i would like to continue in the conversation but i think we have adequate information i have adequate information to make a decision mrs workman yeah i would say i'm glad director amundson brought up the example of singing in the elementary school i think the articles that i've read said that singing is much you're more much more likely to catch something by singing than you are

111by playing a wind instrument you know for orchestra students it's just fine you just have to feel figure out how you're going to to adjust but um i think that is a very real concern and then it's possible i hate to say this is that if there is a lot of spread in our music classes we will see a rise and then in the in the percentage and then we would take the next step and one more question i would have is is there any way you can put this in like a spreadsheet form so we can see point by point you know if this then that that would i think that would help my parents a lot closer or a flow chart yes um i guess the only other point that i would like

112to make is that i'm glad that the proposed policy still includes encouraging vaccinations that that is so important i would love to see 100 or as close to it as we can get and particularly even the disparity at the high school level with the different buildings you know there's it might not it might not be a lot of attendance at a clinic but i think we still should be offering them so that we can send that message that it's important mr oh go ahead kathy um one of the mitigation strategies that we talked about when we approved the purchase of the hepa filters was putting the hepa filters in each classroom i'm assuming that that has been fully implemented and that's another mitigation strategy that stays in place for preventing you know the spread yeah

113director nathan it has been and um you know i wish we had had the opportunity to run an experiment and look at the impact but that wasn't the purpose i think it made a difference i think it has played a role post-distance learning when the case rates were so high it couldn't make a difference but when you have a moderate level of spread i think those hepa filters are but yeah they're fully operational and we'll keep them as such mr barlow was getting close to calling the question i wonder at this point if we're ready to vote on the resolution that's before us don't hear any objection it's been moved and seconded all those in favor say aye aye opposed and the motion passes unanimously thank you and thank you for your work on this

114dr paquel thank you since you're thanking me i i'm gonna i can't thank the staff in our health offices enough they have been heroic just unbelievable and they will continue to be and i think it would be actually appropriate for us to recognize them at a board meeting at some point they've been they've been the epicenter of this work and will continue to be very good idea absolutely thank you 8.01 john marshall high school bid package number three this is an action item dr pacquel uh chair marvin and directors of the board i am once again pleased to ask our executive director of operations scott sheridan to come up and uh he may ask a few colleagues to join him if necessary but scott will take the mic thank you good evening again i am

115with me uh ian mcwaters from knutson construction they are the construction manager agent for the vast majority of our projects and next to him is jason woodhouse from crw who's the principal designer of the john marshall iaq project a quick little background uh the john marshall project was on the 10-year plan that was approved last summer at that time it was 32.7 million dollars since that time we hired knutson to be the cm on this part this project as well and then we hired crw as the architect as we got into the scope of the project for a variety of reasons the scope of the project increased to about 39.7 million dollars and this would include all the the work within the building including replacing all the boilers lighting sealing mechanical plumbing and some electrical

116along with the replacement of the front curtain wall like john marshall and i could go on for the entire list 40 you know 40 million goes a long way with a lot of work um so on october 5th you approved uh bid package one on january 18th of this year you approved bid package two we put out the pulse for bid package three on january 24th and they came back on february 4th it also includes the asbestos removal part of this project as well on the 17th of february we received 11 bid bid scopes and opened them and they totaled 9.7 million dollars there were five uh five alternates in this uh proposal alternate one has to do with uh area four b and five this would be to provide hvac and ceiling replacement within

117that particular area it wasn't included in the original design and the total bid amount for all one was 2.2 million plus some change and it is our recommendation that you accept that alternate alternate two was hvac ceiling replacement area 4c this is in the cafeteria in the kitchen area at john marshall and this is 853 and we recommend that you accept this alternate as well the remaining three two of them have to do with the emergency generator and one has to do with exterior wall panels using aluminum instead of steel and we're going to defer on that a decision on those will be made at a later time as i stated earlier the asbestos abatement part of this was included in this bid pack as well and that came back at 427 thousand two hundred

118dollars and the remaining costs that you see in here for additional design services for crw lhp in the amount of 693 256 and then the general conditions dollars which are held by knutson construction that pays for a wide variety of permitting all different types of fees and we're holding 4.9 million plus in the general conditions so as you add this total up it's now at 45 million 179 um so it's come increased obviously from 32.4 to 39.7 and now it's 45.179 and i brought kean and jason here to answer any questions you might have they're far more intimate with the knowledge and the details of this project and they can answer any questions that you might have as well miss anderson first of all what is a front curtain wall who wants that one jason

119likes that one you want to try it scott it's that really cool front glass and aluminum stuff in the front of john marshall but jason says it much better than that so yeah the curtain wallet john marshall as you look at the main entrance it's the area that has kind of maroon color so it's got glass and maroon color it's metal panels it's glass and that's on quite a bit of the building except area 5 which was the most recent addition which is 15 years old already but that curtain wall was installed in the 1990s so it's 20 plus years old and it's starting to have leaks at certain spots and so this would include replacing all that with a much better insulated wall construction we thought that was prudent as we looked at replacing

120the entire mechanical system this higher r value helps downsize the mechanical and helps operational or the the life of the building so so you will see a noticeable change from the maroon panels and the glass to more of a metal panel with also new glass that's better insulated as well so that's the curtain wall if that helps melissa i apologize for not thinking of this question earlier so that you could look this up but off the top of your head do you know when jm was built i believe it was 1957. i was going to say late 50s too i wasn't here for that but my parents went to jam so i know it's a very old building do we feel like this kind of an investment is going to significantly lengthen the life of

121the building well there are no guarantees of course but that's that's the intent of doing this the way i view this is you have an old old used car and how much money you're going to put into that used car until you decide to turn it in and build something new maybe that's a question you might have asked later on here but we're not at that point where we want to turn this used car in and go buy a brand new one there's still a lot of life left in the building i believe the boilers are original jason right original in the building from 1957 so you can imagine the lack of efficiency these boiler systems have and when we replace them with these new high efficiency boilers the amount of money they're going to

122pay for themselves over time anyway to what our current boiler systems are and that's just in one area there's all kinds of other uh savings by making these changes in the in this project that are going to help us in the long run did i say that well now yeah yeah i think boilers there's some air handlers that are original to the building so there's a few parts and pieces that are have lived well beyond their life expectancy that would be covered as part of this miss nathan so compared to um comparing the price of this improvement what's the cost of a brand new um high school these days i would guess that you're looking at 120 to 140 million variables okay a good comparison dakota was 55 million and that was about 170 577

123000 square feet john marshall's twice the size and so that's kind of a rough estimate that you can use julie yeah i have a few questions believe it or not about the dehumidification equipment um so when i taught at john marshall taught orchestra john marshall we had just the opposite problem which was the room was too dry and we had instruments wooden instruments that would crack is there any control over the at the room level for the the percentage of pew medication or dehumidification yeah this will include humidification within like the orchestra room there okay and those key spaces that have those wood instruments and other critical items okay so i mean in the summer it's it's spring and fall it's not much of a problem but once you hit winter and it gets cold

124and so your humidity level drops that's when we have problems yeah so i'm very glad to hear that that will save the district money in instrument repair and trust me it's not cheap do we also anticipate that this new equipment would result in an improvement in air quality in the building yeah so this is going to the displacement air system that the new schools have so it's 100 outdoor air coming in to be supplied to the classrooms versus kind of the more standard is that mixed system where it recycles some air so so it does improve that it follows a new school type system which is good um and so yeah it's addressing that need two things um one there are some of us in this room who don't think that things from 1957 are

125all that old and the second one i i misspoke this was not an action item it's a briefing item but it could become an action item julie i have one more question i noticed that this is going to be done this summer of 22 and 23. is that adequate time to get all of this done it'll be done summer of 22 23 and then finished in summer of 24. okay my next question was going to be if there would be a calendar issue where we would have to you know shrink it on one end and expand it on the other like we have done a couple times for our more lengthy projects yes we did actually look at that but in the end we we were hoping to get it down to two summers and

126we would have asked to have a calendar alteration at that time but as we went on we realized the scope of this project would require it to move out sorry for three years and just to make sure that we could get it all done in a timely manner then we wouldn't have to adjust the calendar either so i can infer from this that enough of this work is you know you have self-contained things that where it's not like everything is open and torn apart at once but you get this done and then you get this done and then you correct we'll be working through sections of building at a time so we'll basically build temporary walls so that our dust doesn't travel to the other spaces of the building so you're not having to clean

127the entire facility every year and then we'll just continue hopping through each summer great thank you again i'd like to move to action second it's been moved and seconded to move this to action any discussion all in favor of moving this to action say aye aye post is now an action item be it resolved school board of independent school district 535 does hereby accept the 11 competitive bid scopes in the amount of 9 million hundred and 710 seven dollars and accepts the abatement package number one bid amount of two hundred and thirty nine thousand seven hundred dollars and the abatement package number two bid amount of one hundred and eighty seven thousand five hundred dollars from the mavo systems inc be it further resolved the school board of independence school district 535 does hereby accept

128alternate number one in the amount of two million two hundred and seventy four thousand forty three dollars and alternative number two in the amount of eight hundred and forty three thousand seventy dollars be it further resolved the school board of independent school district 535 does hereby accept the additional design services for crw lhb an amount of six hundred ninety three thousand two hundred fifty six dollars and general conditions cost in the amount of four million nine hundred and forty three thousand one hundred and seventy dollars for knutson construction move approval second it's in moved and seconded on favor say aye aye opposed motion passes thank you very much thank you thank you thank you thank you then we have 802 investigating relationships between discipline and academic performance this is a briefing item dr pical dr

129marvin and directors of the board a number of weeks ago you met monique davis who is a phd student in applied economics at the university of minnesota who's going to be helping us with reviewing the research literature on school resource officers i met monique when a professor dr paul gluey who she is working with in her doctoral studies and monique reached out to me through a mutual connection at the legislature to say do you think there might be some reason to look at the connections between students literacy rates and the impact of their involvement in school discipline and so that conversation led to their proposal to dig into some of our data and i'm grateful to our still new uh director of research assessment evaluation dr peter rock who you met last time um as

130per our board policy peter has uh died dived into the proposal and uh so we're bringing you a recommendation that you approved this study and peter can give you an overview of what the researchers propose to look at sure so good evening nice to be back before you again only a week later uh the proposal is really basic it's uh in terms of our uh obligation so what they're asking for is de-identified student data so the data will not be traceable by name birth date so on and so forth about our students their academic progress their academic achievement and any discipline related outcomes information that we may or may not have such as limited english proficiency special education status and so forth uh so what we would do is we would provide them those data

131and then they would share back their findings with us once it was complete they don't need to survey anyone talk to students talk to employees not families nothing like that this is all de-identified secondary data analysis so a pretty straightforward proposal in this case that really should give us some good insights i was playing around with that with those data earlier today for a different reason and we have a lot of rich detail in there so i think it'll be really interesting to see what they come up with any questions board members julie um yes i know this is dated february 14th i was wondering has the irb application been approved yet the university of minnesota's irb does not generally approve studies until they get support from the institution that they're partnering with okay so

132it is applied for uh they did submit the application um but we don't have a letter of approval from them yet so that's sort of a chicken and egg situation well secondary data analysis is exempt from irb review under um the code of federal regulations this would be exempt under the well this wouldn't even be reviewable at all because of secondary data analysis so what will happen is the university of minnesota will politely smile and say thank you for submitting the paperwork and now you can go ahead thank you also a briefing item i'd like to move this to action a second it's been moved and seconded to move this to action on favor say i i post it's now an action item be it resolved school board of independent school district 535 approves the

133research study proposal to study the relationship between student academic performance and subsequent disciplinary behaviors and interventions in rochester public schools second it's been moved and seconded on favor say aye aye opposed motion passes thank you so much [Music] we are on to policy recommendations um they have been briefed already any questions for the policy committee ms workman yes i noticed in my policy review and preparation for our thursday meeting that i inadvertently went through this one again and i would like to suggest one minor change section 2 general statement of policy point a the last sentence reads currently as the school district also makes reasonable accommodations for disabled employees and i would like to change that to employees with disabilities so it's just a slight language change and julie which policy is that 4-1 401

134that work duly noted okay thank you anything else 9.01 closed session for labor negotiations i move the school board go to a closed session to discuss strategy for labor negotiations in accordance with minnesota statute 13d .03 subdivision 1b made the motion is there a second second in favor say aye aye my proposed motion passes this um open meeting is recessed at 7 38 pm closed session will commence in the edison conference room so this open session of isd school board is reconvened at 7 52 p.m uh mr barlow will you read the names of those present at the closed session please certainly present were board members edmondson workman mclaughlin nathan marvin and barlow also in attendance were superintendent pikel from finance carlson and from human resources carl bakken thank you and i have a resolution

135be it result the school board of independent school district 535 does hereby ratify the 2021-2023 collective bargaining agreement between the rochester public schools and the rochester education association employees move approval second been moved and seconded all in favor say aye aye opposed motion passes and thank you rea and thank you rochester staff a wonderful job of working together other business calendar update any updates for the calendar that need to be noted oh we do not have anything any significant updates okay now i'm looking it's not actually on the agenda anyway so thank you okay other business we have a study session on march 15th at five o'clock a regular meeting on march 22nd at 5 30 and another study session on march 29th at 5 pm and unless there is anything else it is 7

13653 and we are adjourned dr mcallister you