RPS School Board Meeting - 11/16/21

001this regular meeting of Independent School District you this regular meeting of Independent School District 535 School Board is called order at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday November 16th 2021 in room 137 of the Edison building interested members of the public are welcomed and encouraged to view this meeting remotely at youtube.com/ ISD 535 the board acknowledges this site and all RPS sites are situated on the ancestral land of the Dakota people and we honor the Dakota Nations and the sacred land of all indigenous peoples present at this meeting are Schoolboard members superintendent Kent pel a non-voting ex official member and assistant board clerk Miss Michelle Severson Miss Severson will you please call the role certainly thank thank you clerk amonson here director Barlo here director Garcia here director mlin here chair Marvin here Vice chair Nathan here and

002Treasurer Workman here thank you at this time we offer the opportunity to say the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag United States of America and to the for it stands Nation indivisible andice for we welcome everyone who is invested in this school district students parents or caregivers District employees or taxpayers years we know that kids do better when they belong to a community that respects values and believes in them we want every one of our students to feel that kind of support and we believe that you hold those same values we also think that you believe as we do that any kind of distraction that's intended to take the focus away from our students is just a real disservice to Young people and their education there's a place for that kind of

003distraction but it's not here as a reminder School District requires effective masks to be worn by everyone Age Two and over in all RPS buildings and we appreciate you doing so we're committed to slowing the spread of CO as much as possible so that we can keep our schools open and students in the classrooms the Edison building is an RPS facility so if you choose to attend a meeting here rather than view the live stream at home or elsewhere you need to wear an effective mask policies and consequences are posted 2.0 approval of 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 I I I opposed agenda is approved 3.0 comments to the board board members welcome correspondents from the

004public in fact I have been uh very pleased that a number of uh people in our community have called me in recent weeks and we've had some conversations some lengthy ones we didn't always agree but they were they were interesting and informative I learned a lot and I appreciated those of you who really wanted to have a conversation keep calling every day we receive letters emails or calls from our constitu we respond to those we generally do not respond to comments to the board because this is not intended to be time for a dialogue um if you want a conversation however please let us know um either by your uh phone number or your email address and we'll be happy to talk with you um if you have signed up to speak of this meeting

005you have access to the guidelines that is a part of the agreement that we have for our speakers we know that you come with very different perspectives on issues we listen respectfully to all perspectives and we appreciate the fact that you listen respectfully as well each speaker will have three minutes and we ask you to respect this limit so others may have their opportunity to speak Miss Severson is our timekeeper when your name is called please have a seat in front of the microphone at this table state your name and whether you're you're a resident of this school district our first speaker is Mr uh Pernell Meyer I apologize Madam chair members of the board it is my pleasure to uh uh ask uh Tiffany Erie who's an art teacher at Franklin uh Elementary to

006come to join us she was the Minesota art teacher of the year last year and is going to introduce us to very excitingly another Rochester teacher who has attained that honor and so thank you so much Tiffany for joining us yeah is it working good evening I'm Tiffany Erie the art teacher at Franklin and monor at Franklin I nominated Alexis for the high school art educator of the year because I've always admired how she thinks outside of the box to do what's best for her artists at the alc and pushes herself to learn more so she can provide them with the best art education possible sua Patel from the alc said in her letter of recommendation that Alexis opens her doors and arms to students who need a calm place to work during the school

007day and shows them how to channel their emotions through ART but these are just icing on the cake for Alexis on top of providing a highquality art education and safe creative space for her students she's well known for her work with Ceramics has provided professional development for educators locally and nationally and demonstrates what it means to be a lifelong learner as she continues to seek professional development opportunities for herself not only did Alexis receive high school art educator of the year she received the highest recognition from the art educators of Minnesota I'm so honored to introduce to you the state of Minnesota's 2122 art educator of the Year Alexa [Music] thank you so much thank you uh Tiffany and it was a great honor to win especially since the person who I admire most in

008the district as an art teacher was the one who nominated me so it really was quite a surp Riz and um an honor and I prepared a little something to say cuz I figured people would want to hear from me um so I just thought back to why I fell in love with art and what my childhood was like with the Arts and I grew up in a community that was very creative and very artsy and my parents signed me up for as many different extracurricular art activities as as was available to me and it just has always brought me me so much joy and so I just have spent my entire adult life trying to help young people especially but all ages but mostly young people have those Arts experiences as well because I

009just think that it brings people so much joy in their lives to have to create something beautiful especially when you're going through difficult times yourself and you know especially through the pandemic it's brought me so much peace and healing to be able to engage in the art s um so it's just you know it's important to me and I love my job so much my Stu my one student today said you really like your job don't you and I was like yeah this is the best job and I think a lot of times people think oh you work at the alc like well there's a position opening up at JM or Mayo maybe you should apply for that and it's like no I like ryat and it's the perfect fit for me so thank you

010all for supporting the alc [Music] [Applause] thank you and congratulations I I just wanted to say we look forward to being invited to your art shows again now that that that will hopefully be happening again so thank you 4.02 Minnesota principal's Academy this is an information item Dr pel uh directors of the board we get to go from our uh fantastic teachers to our great school leaders we have a group of 17 Rochester school principls um principles assistant principles and also some central office staff who are going through a state funded program called the Minnesota principles Academy they're about a third or a quarter of the way through so this is an early down payment on about a year and a half program um but I think it is a really exciting investment in the

011critical critical role that our principles play so I'd like to ask um Jackie Peterson who's our executive director of Elementary and secondary education who is uh is going through the program as uh one of our central office leaders to join the two people who will be presenting on their experience in the principal Academy Jared grer uh who is our principal at Bishop Elementary and Martine hegland who is assistant principal at uh Century High School uh Jared and Martine are going through the program and I asked them to come by and give you a sense of how it is impacting the critical leadership uh that they provide in our schools intentionally wanted to have an elementary leader and a secondary leader uh here to give you a glimpse of this work in progress so thank you

012very much for taking time to be with us thank you so much for this opportunity thank you so much for this opportunity uh the board and uh uh superintendent Mel and uh cabinet um like you were saying uh the Minnesota public uh principal academy uh for me has given uh this opportunity to pull back and look at the what I would say the forest instead of the trees just the trees um on a daily basis I believe I do not have time to do that all the time to just kind of pull back so it's the trees all day um within uh dealing with uh different uh elements of uh discipline and uh um and uh supporting students however best practice for administrators requires us to pull back and reflect on the system so we

013do some of this already in our district to uh plc's and professional development but with the with the academy uh we have the opportunity to collaborate with leaders of other districts doing the same work so for example through my conversation with my colleagues one Insight I gained is the subtlety between leading and managing so there is this uh idea that sometimes principles are cut into just the managing of the day but how do we lead our schools so that we provide uh success for our students and uh and then we can see that success um with reflected back to us in the way that they um they lead their lives you know in the long run and so far I've greatly appreciated the opportunity to to attend the Min principal Academy as well I was

014drawn to this by the recommendation of a colleague that had participated in previous years um as well as that opportunity to collaborate with those around us in southeast Minnesota um after my first three months I'm seeing even more benefits that I knew um you know heading into this as well um it's a program that's really about thinking and about reflection um it does not always lead to something that comes right back to the building immediately uh however what it does do is it leads to u a deeper understanding around leadership a deeper understanding of decision making of strategic thinking and many other areas and seeing the research or reading the research and then tying it to current application by the by um current principles by current superintendents or district office staff has expanded my network

015and connections around topics that are relevant to all leaders so uh to connect with what Jared is saying here so so far we have discussed uh International bench making to assess what we are doing against Educational Systems in other countries strategic thinking and standards align instructional systems to understand Connections in evaluating for system Improvement so in for example for instance in one in unit two uh two months ago um uh I believe that it had the most to offer our district in terms of strategic framework we're introduced to a conceptual framework that helps follow certain steps before making decisions for implementations such as we have to analyze analyze context have a Clear Vision with strategic intent of what we want to accomplish and analyze some of our assumptions risk and interest when we have that

016uh that Vision uh so uh one connection that I made is uh with our action learning project with that unit I'm intending to understand the essence of shared experiences of black and Latin students who have been referred for disciplinary actions 50 or more times in in our district to address School differential discipline practices and contribute toward more equitable procedur that support these students in low socioeconomic status or cultural subgroups in their academic success and school inclusion so I'm going to focus because of strategic thinking on the analysis and the context for those students as Martine referenced part of this is having an action research project for us to further our learning and uh we're in that initial planning phase of that but I'm thinking a lot about my current situation as principal I'm at Bishop

017Elementary and as an elementary school that's going to be going through a lot of change for next year in terms of moving into a new physical structure as well as um with new students um and that'll mean adding new students and new staff so my action learning project is going to be around um kind of what it means to open a a building um the focus will be around um teacher collaboration and Collective teacher efficacy creating a self and well a safe and welcoming environment and Community Family engagement and with the opportunity for four new buildings to be opened in The District in the next year along with boundary changes and New Student populations at many buildings I'm hoping that my learning is relevant to all leaders in our system as well and I think

018a little bit of what we're learning in the academy we're already doing here um with the way that we collaborate with our um peers and even when we have uh situations challenges in the system we don't just uh jump in then make conclusions and provide Solutions but we sit down and consider you know uh the what is going on you know and who are these things these challenges impacting um analyzing just not the context within the school but also analyzing the context outside of the school involving families and then hearing what they thinking um before we say Okay so we're going to implement this and it will work in the system so uh I think uh uh strategic thinking is really important um because it helps us with an's ways and means so where we

019go how we do it and what we use when we're doing it so it's just kind of like a circular motion um uh so um I am really excited for this endeavor and can cannot wait to continue I could just say we've been together for two days um we had Monday and Tuesday at the Academy and we're still speaking to each other so that's U my colleagues will and um Brenda are also attending along with um the principles and first of all I'd like to to thank them for their uh participation and acknowledge that there's a lot of work that goes along with it it's not just attending um a couple days a month it's a rigorous program with lots of reading um and thinking um and we're all hanging in there and working together

020so I appreciate that uh of you and your colleagues who are participating and I also just want to say some of you who've been on board for uh the last 5 years or so remember I shared with you that I participated in aasa um people who supervised principles and it was a 2-year cohort and that really helped me to believe in participating in Learning and Development that spans over time versus attending a conference even a two or three day conference that it's really hard to to put into practice what you might learn there um and the difference between that and attending uh a 2-year program where there's work in between action research involved and conversation with colleagues not just in the district but outside of the district is very powerful learning that really can result

021in um change in our system so thank you for listening tonight and for the opportunity thank you and and board members Mr Barlo you have a question uh more of a statement than a question um first Jared um you know my years of knowing you uh you've been a principal and it's exciting to me to see you still uh honing your skills which are so important it's a reflective of the staff you serve and the students who uh have the benefit of being in the building you are U Martine uh I recall you as a a teacher and and now you're is an associate or assistant assistant okay and how exciting that is it speaks to really I think the opportunities that this District provides and what you guys are committing to you're just among

02217 how it will make our district that much more effective and our community and especially our students will benefit from the work you're doing so uh the long hours are worth it and keep up the good work thank you thank you you know and I just like to say what great role models you know as as we tell our kids you need to be lifelong Learners they see their building leaders being lifelong Learners and continuing your education and I suppose if you need help with your homework you've got a school full of kids who be happy to tell you um many many [Laughter] things I might just add that the curriculum that um uh Jackie and Martine and Jared and will and and other leaders are going through will now move on to the leader

023role in promoting uh Improvement for all kids but especially for struggling kids in reading math and science it will move on to ethical leadership culturally responsive leadership building effective teams coaching for instructional Improvement um and then uh making those really tough decisions and it all ends in one big simulation where they have to put it all together um and an action learning project that as uh was mentioned is very rooted in our work here in Rochester so if this initial cohort of 17 that are going through this um program feels that it's successful it might be something we could do on even broader scale to further develop leaders here in Rochester and H host a cohort here so it's premature to get to that point but I think having all of our leaders equipped with

024the same framework for thinking about decision making and how do you I love your point Martine about not losing the the forest for the trees um might be something that could uh be a part of our strategy going forward so for right now thank you for being the pioneers and being willing to invest this time in addition to your day jobs which are 247 already so thank you again thank you thank you chair Marvin yes can I I just wanted to share some other principal news um the principal's Academy has U developed the leadership of principles um in the state for a while but this year um the University of Minnesota has also collaborated on creating the first Minnesota principles survey which is a Statewide survey of all principles and it um I was fortunate

025enough to sit on the the stakeholder committee to develop the questions and it's really the first time we're comprehensively surveying the principles across the board on on issues and factors um that impact their roles and their responsibilities and their leadership and it's going to be such a a a great data set we'll get the data ourselves um regionally and locally of of what our principles are saying so if you're a principal out there and you're watching make sure you get that survey completed um but it's also going to be great for advocacy um in taking to state legislators about um the needs of our our building leadership locally and across the state so that you can best serve students so this this um individualized leadership approach that you're doing in combination with the Statewide data

026really um uh poses a bright future for what we can do to support our principles if I can add that I have it on good authority that RPS principles are leading the pack and completing that survey across the state and I might have just sent a reminder email out a few minutes ago saying that we need to be the best so make sure to fill out the survey so yes and um so thanks to all the principales who are doing that great thank you again we will move on to 4.03 secondary school safety strategy and staff planning and well-being Updates this is an information item Dr pel directors of the board we heard earlier tonight uh some concerns that have been expressed about um some behaviors uh in some of our schools and so I

027want to share with you briefly now and it's outlined in Greater detail in a memo that you've received and that's available through board dos how we are working to understand and positively respond to that issue I want to begin by saying this is a problem that that is not unique to Rochester it's uh something that school districts all across the state and the nation are seeing as candidly some students are struggling to return to in-person learning from 18 months of not being in that setting um it happens in Rochester to varying degrees uh across schools across grade levels but it's significant enough in our secondary schools that we have been working for the past 6 weeks with our principes at the middle and high school level quite intensively and School District staff to put in

028place a strategy that is intended to both immediately and overtime respond to these issues the issues broadly defined fall into two broad categories Defiance of adult Direction and fighting um now I want to be really clear this is a very a small subset of students in our middle schools and our high schools um I don't have an exact number for you but getting very clear about the scope of the problem is one of the things that we're spending time on uh in partnership with all of our school leaders the strategy that we've collaborative collaboratively outlined has six components that are outlined in the memo the memo the first is making sure our schools have come together to understand what's happening to identify the students identify the behaviors and agree upon shared responses to those behaviors

029that might sound like an obvious point but it often does not happen and so what happens as a when that when that schoolwide strategy is not in place is one teacher responds one way one paraprofessional responds another way one assistant principal responds another way and so the first piece is saying that each of our schools needs to uh examine and are examining the degree to which this is happened happening and be be very clear with with District support and guidance how staff are going to respond the second piece that I'm really excited about is that uh will Ruffin II and our Equity Specialists are going to be conducting what we're calling the perspectives project and this is to understand the experience of students who are being impacted directly by the disciplinary processes in our middle

030and high schools and to conduct focus groups with those students that we uh are working uh I've spent time uh with Will and the team developing that strategy and we're also going to receive support from Wilder research our partner in the development of the Strategic action plan and critically that process is also going to get staff perspective so we understand staff perspectives on what are the behaviors what are the issues I think what comes out of uh that project is going to have implications not just for how we respond in the short term but for the direction of our broader efforts in our strategic action plan around school culture climate um and discipline more broadly um so that's number two number three we're going to be adding some positions largely using our federal money intended

031to support students recovery from the covid pandemic um we're working with each school to identify what those positions are that would address these issues we've heard strong support for additional investments in our Equity Specialists across the district um as people who both not only deal deal with students directly but build the capacity of staff to deal in positive and effective ways uh with students not just students being impacted by the the disciplinary issues we're talking about now also by academic issues more broadly we've also heard uh some interest in adding what we call resiliency Specialists and paraprofessionals we're not talking about dozens of positions but targeted effective positions to meet the current needs um that our schools are identifying fourth we have Revisited uh the the discipline procedures that the board has approved in the

032student handbook and reiterated and clarified the steps that schools can take to hold students accountable for this behavior when it occurs and just to be really transparent that includes the fact that after positive dialogue has occurred with students after parents have been engaged um the option of suspension is a a rare but available tool when it is needed I'm pleased to report that that is a tool that our schools are very clear they want want to use sparingly if at all um but it needed to be clarified that it remains an option if it's not possible to address these uh behaviors in other ways um number five we have a number of the students who are um involved in these behaviors who uh receive special education services and so under Carla bison's leadership we are

033putting in place dramatically enhanced case planning for those students so that we are there with a full team trying to make sure that we are providing a full menu of supports we know those students have uh different needs from general education students and that is really an individualized student by student by student strategy and then finally we're going to be convening a working group to take a look at what are usually called restorative practices in schools there's been some work in Rochester around this work but um it needs to be both more updated and frankly more action oriented and focused and restorative practices broadly defined can be the way you talk to a kid in class the informal interactions to more formal structures like a restorative justice Circle through which students who've potentially been involved

034or who might be involved in some of these behaviors are positively engaged in community so we have some actual uh folks in the district who uh have personal experience with restorative practices but I want us to convene this working group to take a very clear look at what it might mean to really integrate those approaches into especially our secondary schools though restorative justice is also potentially very relevant at the elementary level to be clear that last P piece is a study effort it's not a decision effort but I think it's something I want us to be looking at because we know it will not be effective if we respond to this situation only with consequences we need to also respond with supports um so that's a brief overview of what I know will be a

035work in progress across the district um but something that um I want I know board members are deeply concerned about and I also want the broader public to know that we are fully aware of the issue and engaged in working with our school leaders and I hope increasingly with students themselves to positively address it I also want to take this opportunity um to share with the board and by extension people who pay attention to Schoolboard meetings another different but related issue that I'm very strongly considering and I'm sharing this to begin inviting feedback from board members uh now and following the meeting and um also we'll be reaching out starting tomorrow to get feedback from School leaders and that has to do with staff planning and well-being the issues that we just discussed which is

036just one of the major issues our schools are struggling and working to address now of student Behavior are also occurring as we try and help support students mental health generally students academic acceleration after missing 18 months of in-person learning and the fact that many of our families uh are going through very difficult times as there have been shifts in employment and even uh death death and illness due to covid and so our staff are going through a lot right now and in our current calendar we have very very limited time for planning to meet student needs and also for staff well-being and so what I'm seriously considering and I met last week with both our Rochester Education Association about this our teachers union and our principal Association our principal's bargaining unit um to get their

037feedback on it but a limited number of days in which we would not have students report this school year and we would dedicate the day to planning to meet student needs and to staff well-being even as I suggest this I want to say there's a tension there a very real tension because when we don't have students in school we don't have students in school learning and we know that can create a challenge for many families so I don't suggest this lightly but what we're considering is that during those extended periods of time in the school year when we have usually three four sometimes eight weeks with no break we would have a targeted Wednesday in which students would not support our Sac program school age child care would be available for families that take advantage

038of that but other than that we would not have students report and the target dates that right now um we're thinking of would be December 8th February 9 April 20 and May 11 and we'll write all this down after this I'm debuting this for for for reaction and conversation now Fe December 8 February 9 April 20 and May 11 they would be days that would not be scheduled or structured uh at the district level they would be um focused at the building level and and candidly our building leaders would be supported and assisted in thinking about how to use that time but would be directed that this is light touch time this is time for collaboration uh between staff and for efforts to really help staff take care of their own well-being so that they

039can serve students number of other districts are doing this around the state um I'm very mindful as I said before of the uh the counterarguments to something like this I'm at a point though where as I imagine the uh the the the complexity of the issues our our teachers our PA professionals our principles uh all of our staff are dealing with um and what it will feel like to deal with that level of stress and challenge when you have no break for multiple weeks and so this would be a targeted insertion of a limited number of days to provide with time for planning uh and efforts to strengthen their own well-being um I do not believe after conversation with our chair and our vice chair that this is an effort that requires board action but

040I always ad uh uh uh welcome and seek board input and advice and should the board choose to take some action that would always be an option but this would be within my uh responsibility as a superintendent to make this decision we've made sure that if we did this we would be above the minimum required instructional days uh that the state requires with some allotment for potential snow days cuz we still live in Minnesota um so we're going to be soliciting feedback from our school leaders uh tomorrow on this and some other uh Pro uh ideas we have to take some uh requirements off the plates of our schools as they are working to address these issues so I know I've connected two issues here that are related but distinct the student behavior issues are

041one of the things that I'm sure in our middle schools and high schools people might use these days to work on and address these days would Al apply to our elementary schools our early childhood our adult education um as well not a decision but something I'm very seriously considering and I wanted to share now um for your consideration and conversation so with that uh I am eager for either any observations or questions um but no request for Action at this time tonight from the board Miss Workman yes um you said you'd been in contact with um the teachers union and the principal's Union as well could you share a little bit about what their reactions to this might be um I think you know we have leaders here generally positive these were the meet and

042confer structures we have with both groups and I I should actually add I'm meeting with our par professionals Union later this week as well so a little foreshadow for them of what I want to talk to them about um generally positive they said don't do it though and um and actually add other work so if you do it and then you have a lot of additional activities or for instance you know requiring you know asynchronous instruction of students it actually defeats the purpose and so that was pretty clear uh guidance but I think some general support an alternative strategy that we discussed was actually extending vacations um that's not an approach I would recommend because while I understand the logic of it it doesn't help us when we get into the you know 8 week

043stretch that we'll have in the spring where there's no other planned Break um they also I should say were appreciative and supportive of the fact that I've also said on February 21st which has always been a non-con day we're actually not going to have staff report um at all um they also knew that there's a tension here that everybody in this community is working hard and dealing with covid and we want to be very clear these are not days off these February 21st is but that was never going to impact kids the four days I'm considering now would be days for our staff to do the work that they need to do to support students through the pandemic um it would not be a day for retail therapy to use the uh the word I

044got from uh one of the colleagues that we talked about this with uh Karen um Dr meling the perspectives project do you anticipate responding and providing us feedback back to the board about that study and if so what timeline absolutely we are just we're actually kicking it off this week and so I don't have the end date but we are absolutely going to share the feedback with you with the Strategic action planning groups and then with our administrators to address strategies so we'll do we're going to be recording the sessions and we're not going to do detailed qualitative analysis like you do for research but we're going to do very clear thematic analysis so that we can pull out the critical insights from those perspectives from both student and staff and uh I'm very glad

045you mentioned that I think for the board uh to get that perspective is also going to inform the other discussions that we would be having anyway of student discipline issues more broadly which is on our agenda for the year as well so and we included for anybody who's interested in the um in the specifics that we're seeking to understand we included the draft protocol for both the student and the staff uh focus groups in our um in the memo that I sent to the board so you can actually see the kind of uh questioning that we're hoping to engage students and staff in thank you had sort of a question I'm sorry if I missed out you're not doing qualitative study on whether or not we should implement the program or you're not doing the

046qualitative study on the responses to the focus group questions we're we're not going to do we're going to record them and we're going to do uh detailed analysis we're not going to do uh coding of the um feedack domains not like you do if you're doing a a research study but we're going to work with wilder research to make sure we have really really good process okay so it's really going to be practitioner oriented qualitative research or what sometimes is called um uh action research and so participatory action research that's what I'm excited about it obviously this brings together the the world I spent the last 15 years in with the world that we're in right now where the purpose is to bring that youth voice very importantly from kids who are directly impacted by

047these issues into into our planning at the school and District level okay and uh just a follow up on the focus group questions one of the things I was thinking because because of what is in the document for the restorative justice is that they talk about students doing best when they're they feel like there's trust um belonging in safety and might we reflect those in the focus group questions um some of them kind of hint in that direction um and I think that there could certainly be better wording um of some of the questions but I do appreciate the intention to ask the students because I think often what happens in these situations is we as adults say oh no we wish that the kids were behaving this way and let's ask each other how

048we're going to fix that and we don't Engage The individuals who are having the behavior that we're the most concerned about um I was also thinking in terms of some of these I know um gauge and acts like care teams for their kids where there's like mental health like you know kind of a multi-disciplinary team that will interact with kids might this also be part of or would they just naturally be part of that restorative justice team yeah those are fantastic ideas um our executive director of diversity equity and inclusion will ruffen the second is going to be leading this effort and those are just draft questions so I think connecting with Will on suggested uh shifts in them I know he and the the team have already started massaging them and they have a

049meeting with wilder research to get their feedback on it and that I think connecting it to existing structures in schools like you're suggesting with Gage is a great is a great idea I want to just say and of course the decision to create uh Will's position in department is one the board made before I got here I'm so excited because this shows why I'm thrilled it exists because this gives us capacity to do this kind of work that is going to be driving improvements and system change over time and so I'm I'm excited about Will's leadership of the effort and I'm really glad that we didn't have to invent this because we had already with the foresight of the board put the structures in place so I think it's going to be exciting it's going

050to be great right right uh you know I just want to say the idea of giving each building four days where teachers don't report and where people in that building can work together and compare notes and plan and strategize I think it's it's been a long time in coming um and especially now when teachers are are working with kids who are at school who are quarantined kids who need to catch up and they're spending time with them before school and after school because they have academic or emotional issues the value of being able to get together with other people in your building who know your students and come up with a plan for those kids you know Miss Meyer who was speaking before about fights going on what's happening with those kids that they feel

051that they have to fight they've been home for a year and a half and they come to school to fight what can the staff do together to uh to support those kids to make sure they're safe and you know you were talking about the strategies for for discipline sometimes kids need a time out sometimes you know little ones do and sometimes bigger ones do too just a a time out um but it would give every building and we have distinctly different buildings with wonderful uh different characters and cultures um provide them the opportunity for these administrators and the staff to come together and and figure out together what they're going to do moving forward um to help their kids ahead so so to follow on that I I do when you were presenting it I

052do like the idea of being able to give um everybody that's that would be or is now doing the work that time and space to actually do that work and focus only on that like the mindfulness of that is fantastic I'm wondering if in addition to that that for those who you know we're already hearing from how difficult it is on families to pull kids in and out of school and even though this is 4 days and we're giving them a heads up about it might we work with other Community Partners to offer something off campus campuses that are doing something to to sort of supplement so the kids have somewhere to go and you know I would imagine like parents can elect to engage in this so if I'm happy to have my child

053home you know on the 8th of December that's fine with me but might we have like you know YMCA Boys and Girls Club other you know Mental Health Service Providers sort of be available somewhere else so those kids that do need someplace to be have an activity or something to engage in so that the parents are not additionally stressed and then we have additional fights because of continued disruption thank you we could definitely look at that I love that idea Miss amonson thank you um first of all before we get too too far down this road because we have uh representatives from the media here will be reporting this story just to be really really clear those four days have not yet been declared as but like like um director Garcia said it's a heads

054up to the parents that this might be something with a little bit more study that they might want to get a child care plan in place for those days tentatively yeah I mean I'm I'm sincere in sharing this for feedback a decision has not been made but we would in very short order make this decision if we're going to do it because December 8th is not that is not that far away so yes no decision yet parents might want to think about that parents also can let us know especially let their school leaders know their reactions to the idea um and uh I just wanted to uh begin the conversation is there a way for us to um solicit more formal input than just letting their building leaders know though because I have heard from

055many community members how challenging quarantine has been in their days off in their in their whether they're even Pro some a lot of families aren't provided with even paid vacation days so if they aren't able to rep to work that day or if they've burned through their paid vacation it's it's a challenging situation that our families are in now I I I definitely see this as the best thing for kids and I think we as a school board are charged in selecting the best thing for kids and being able to release that pressure ER like like you said the dates were chosen in the middle of long stretches of time and being able to release that pressure a little bit on both the staff and the students is a healthy thing and if if we

056said to kids everybody go home with a book in your backpack and just spend the day reading that that has tremendous value um educationally and mental healthwise our our staff members I've heard from teachers that they aren't even getting their their break in the middle of the day because we have so few substitutes that they spend their break substituting and and with all of the the behavior challenges that we've mentioned and the covid challenges and and the uh you have a better term than learning loss I can't remember what it is um with with the challenges in in catching up from Co everybody is under a lot of stress and a lot of pressure and and I think it is best for for students and if we could communicate the reasons to the families and

057say we know this might put a little extra pressure on you to find Child Care um or supervision for the older kids who don't need child care but need supervision but these are our reasons what do you think can you make it work because it's what's best for all of our kids and I would want to to to hear from our families before we made that kind of an announcement because I I fear I fear for the pressure it will place then back on the on the parents and the families we thank you direct Robinson we we could certainly look at something direct to families the the survey and feedback form that our principles are going to get tomorrow explicitly asks them about this issue about the impact on families based upon their ongoing work

058and you know as we saw earlier in our presentation we we do need to empower and listen to our leaders who are connected to those families but I really appreciate the point of some opportunity for families more directly so I'll ask um Heather nestler our executive director of communications and Technology to work with me and others to think about a way that we might uh we might do that that the trick of course and I don't think this is different than what you're saying is we want to make this decision soon because the sense of of stress and urgency is great and so um but that doesn't mean we couldn't find some way for families uh to indicate some uh the implications as well um including the the really interesting idea that Dr Garcia had

059about you know which community Partners might we reach out to families may have ideas about that as well so you know we know a lot of them but they may actually have ideas about who we could bring into this kind of Citywide strategy so I appreciate that and we'll we'll add that to the Outreach option and I would also urge um a way to elicit from the survey if or from parents whatever communication method we use if possible we know that we usually hear from the people who are the most um passionate on one one end or the other and so we we wouldn't want to misinterpret the response as a bunch of parents with concerns that all of our parents are concerned so I would urge families to weigh in on this either way

060if you think this is a positive healthy move we need to hear those voices too thank you that concludes this discussion it's incredibly helpful feedback uh thank you for taking some time for it all right a 4.05 board member committee updates all board members are on a number of different committees and they do work 24/7 practically um any reports about recent board work that you're working on 247 so there should be yes Miss Workman yes um I'd like to let the board know that the legislative committee um which are um director Garcia director MCL myself and Dr pel met recently to outline what some of Rochester's priorities are um the delegate assembly the book this year is about this thick and it's 250 pages long I have not gone through all of it yet but

061I have focused on the issues that sort of align with what um we had discussed in our in our committee work I will be sending out those the recommendations um that we are proposing so that you have some time to think about it before our meeting on November 30th because I think according to the calendar we're supposed to do something by then um so that that will be coming but not until after sat Saturday when we have our pre- delegate assembly meeting where we also hash through a lot of this the um Community engagement committee will be having hosting uh listening sessions uh we plan to begin in January details of those will be coming out out but we want to make sure that we are available uh not just by phone and by um

062email but also in in person um and we'll host those throughout different places in the city so people can come and uh talk with us and Dr pel you mentioned a CO update that somehow I've missed the it's the safe and open schools Plan update 4.04 oh we skipped T that's what I skipped so now we've heard from board memb members and we will go back to 4.04 safe and open schools Plan update it sounded like the one before but it's a totally different thing yeah uh uh chair Marvin I I need to maybe find some more original titles for these things that would be nice thank you I want to ask Co update Co update is shorter isn't it yeah I I get paid by the word I'd like to ask Heather nestler executive

063director of communications and Leah bankr who's our health services coordinator to join us um they have been part of an Intrepid covid coordinating team that has done really amazing work in uh coordinating an incredibly complex process of keeping our schools both safe and open and so several board members asked for this update on our efforts and so I've asked um lean Heather to give the board a relatively concise but comprehensive so not easy to do update on uh our efforts around covid I will say that I know there are many questions about the vaccine man mandate issue that there is some suggestion organizations with more than 100 employees are going to need to adhere to and that ties to the uh requirements of Minnesota's participation in the office of um OSHA something occupational safety and

064Heth safy Heth we have nothing for you on that tonight um though of course board members can comment on it we are very much engaged with uh our professional associations and legal counsel to find out what's going to happen on that score there's some legal challenges that are going through and so um I know that's much on people's minds and I want to just say we're watching it watching it extremely closely the implications of that would be significant for us in terms of managing that requirement and funding it and so we will be back to the board with updates on it um and so I wanted you to know why Heather and Leah are not going to explain that because we are like most every other school district uh actually in the country waiting for

065some clarity on what the legal uh decisions are going to be so thank you very much all right well we'll take it away and we'll start with numbers to begin with um we don't have the dashboard done this week and I'm going to to preface that with the fact that um we've had a lot of cases that we're working through and it takes a lot of time to compile that data so I will tell you usually it's a a week behind schedule in terms of the numbers last week we saw that we had 133 positive cases across the district um at the end of the day yesterday we knew we were at 31 positive cases so we're seeing in uh increase in our cases but I think that's um relative to what you're seeing across

066the state of Minnesota if you saw if you turn on the news at all today you would have noticed um conversations requ regarding that um Minnesota's up 68% in positive cases in the past two weeks so um it St stand a reason that we also are seeing more cases Olstead County remains in the high level of community transmission um one item that I'd like to share with you is about um our students from the beginning of the school year so August 30th through November 7th because again I don't have uh last week's data so um we've seen a total of 684 uh positive cases and I can share this with you it's also on our dashboard but I'm just going to break it out in a little bit different uh view for you so of

067those 684 positive cases 598 of them have been students so almost 600 which equates to 3.39% of our student population so that's from August 30th through November 4th um this school year 3.39% of our students have received or have tested positive for covid-19 47 of those students of that 598 were vaccinated so that's 7.8% and keep keep in mind until 2 weeks ago um vaccination was not um eligible our students ages 5 through 11 were not eligible for vaccination and then as we look at quarantine numbers um our dashboard reflects this we have 2852 individuals in quarantine 2,835 of those are students so the vast majority so you can see we're noticing anecdotally that vaccination is working because we're not quarantining our staff um and they're not getting us they're not testing positive as frequently

068as our students because they are vaccinated for the most part um that 2835 students equates equates to 16% of our student population that has experienced quarantine um between August 30th and November 7th um I'll I'm going to turn it over to Leah but you know as we look at those numbers and I think Dr pel said this earlier we're always looking for ways to move beyond the pandemic so that is our our number one goal is to keep our kids in school and to resume uh life preco if you will and I think Leah will talk a little bit about one way we're working on that yeah and before I do that I just want to share some disclaimers about the data so I think you know you've seen County and state levels where there's

069a data leg because of resources stretched so thin and if you think about 133 cases was kind of a record-breaking week for us since the start of the pandemic um and what that means is those are cases that are reported to us to the schools so there might be cases out there so I I always describe this as a book and this is a chapter this is the positive case chapter these are the cases that are reported to us and that's how that number gets onto the dashboard um the other thing that is really interesting is you are seeing more and more over-the-counter testing that can be done in the home and so when those are positive tests we may or may not get those results so the numbers on our dashboard may not be

070100% accurate just because we don't know if we are getting those from the parents because what would happen um previously is if you were tested through your clinic provider that goes into a state system a med system and the county would let us know if they were concerned about a case in our building potentially that was infectious um and so we would be able to follow up on that we don't always have that if they're doing an at home rapid test so I just want to make a disclaimer about that number in general from the dashboard so I want to thank you for the opportunity basically to represent our district team and three sites for this alternate quarantine program I think we gave maybe a high level summary um at the last board meeting but

071I wanted to provide some feedback because we were able to launch the week of October 25th and before I get into it I just really want to acknowledge that quarantine is hard and we've heard about the tension tonight a lot and we feel that as well and so as we try to problem solve quarantine we recognize students learn best in the classroom the tension is a collective responsibility that we feel to our students and staff for their health and safety so please know that that is always in the Forefront of our minds as Heather mentioned we're always looking at a path out of the pandemic that's always whether we can loosen up mitigation strategies or not um one of the things that we were implementing with this alternative quarantine program was can we on a

072small scale look at a way that we can safely allow students to remain in our classrooms if they are asymptomatic even if they were close contact so I I think you are aware of the web page we did put together a web page with an FAQ um the week of October 25th we did a promotion and education of our families and our staff the three sites that are implementing this program are Bishop Elementary Willow Creek Middle School and John Marshall High School and so that first week really we knew on the front end of things we wanted our families and our staff to understand the intent again keep students in the classroom that do not have symptoms but what we would otherwise put into a standard quarantine um and we are doing a daily testing

073so we are using an antigen test a rapid antigen test to do serial testing so they are testing every day evening prior to the next day entrance into school so we did use some covid funds the general funds uh the federal funds to hire staff to help us Implement and coordinate in all three of these sites they've done a Fab abous job they've hit the ground running um the week of November 1st Bishop started this program um and I will tell you that in the first two weeks of implementation when we have done the contact tricon and case investigation of the students who would normally be in standard quarantine 80 to 85% of families have chosen the alternative quarantine program instead of the standard quarantine program and so our coordinator or facilitator at that site

074is working with our families to educate them and how to do that test at home we have a form that's a hip a compliant form they sign a student family agreement that basically says they will comply with testing and uploading those results every day before 6:00 a.m. the coordinator will check those results and the students are permitted into the classroom within Bishop we have one case so far that we have seen convert to a positive case and that was on the very first test so it's really hard to say if that was actually from the exposure within or if it just happened to be an asymptomatic um student that was in the building I've been working with the Minnesota Department of Health and also Mayo Clinic we want to understand what metrics we need to

075look at so when we when we pull all of this summary together in the middle of December is this feasible to continue on a larger scale or not and if so at what grade levels some of the things that we're really tracking are the conversion cases so from that index case what percent are actually converting to a positive case while they're testing every day in the program and the other thing that we're really looking at is the days 8 to 14 if you think about the incubation of the virus just because we permit them either on shorten quarantine to re-enter school or through this alternate quarantine program we really want to make sure we're monitoring symptoms and if anybody is developing symptoms we would then have them um do a PCR test so we do

076have safety within this program and we are monitoring specific data points we're looking at the number of school days that we've saved students from being home for Bishop alone just the week of November 8th and looking at all of the students that were currently in the program 102 days if you count for each student have been saved so they've been able to remain in school rather than home in quarantine and I think that's a really big win one of the things for Willow Creek they started just um last week if you can imagine so we have Elementary in a home room and so when we cast that net for quarantine we have a handful of students then that would either do standard quarantine or they would choose the alternate quarantine program if you're a middle

077school student or a sixth grader who now just received opportunity for vaccination those close contacts needing to quarantine could be upwards of 20 or more for each case so we're seeing an uptake of about 50% who are opting into our alternate quarantine program but it's a very big case load for that facilitator for every day if you imagine adding another 20 students um but they are doing it and they are checking those results and those students are able to stay in school and again we've had one positive conversion case and that was on the very first test day one we do within the family agreement like I mentioned we do want them to comply with testing every day to be in entered back into school within Willow Creek we did have eight students that were

078exited from the program because they did not comply with uploading their results every day so then in those cases we do revert back to a standard quarantine one of the other things that we're really looking at is you know this is implemented on a small scale for a reason because we know that we're learning as we go and we're refining process and our stakeholders are doing a great job of helping us um with that and one of the things we're looking at is for students who have multiple exposures should they continue to be in an alternative quarantine program because of the risk with those multiple exposures so far we have not had any students convert to positive case who have had more than one exposure that we know of within the school we are just

079starting John Marshall this week so we have some cases I think that we're working on and so that is something that we will be able to update um at a little later date we don't have a lot of information right now but we do have our covid response facilitators on site and they are ready to implement um I just really want to give a shout out to those three sites who've been willing to help us through this I think what we're seeing is our families appreciate the opportunity for their child to remain in school and if we can do that in a safe manner I think that's what we're hoping to find is can is this feasible can we do this can we stop the transmission and yet allow these students to remain in school

080questions Miss Nathan well I'm very excited to see the pro the progress in in the in the test to Day program um and I'll look forward to to Future updates but the participation rates and that you're already sh knowing those days saved keep keep track of those numbers because I think those are going to be some of the most uh telling for for all of us to see and I don't know if it's a a question for our team or for the superintendent but we have a number of parents very excited about the fact that students under um age 12 can now be vaccinated and I know that we went through a process of uh collecting the data about the percentage of vaccination in our schools for the students 12 and over do you anticipate

081um and I know we're still a few weeks out from that full vaccination status for those students do you anticipate that you're going to collect that data again and bring it back to the board to show us how we're doing now that we can include the elementary students in that numbers um director Nathan yes we absolutely will be looking at that data in fact we were looking at it this morning for high schools as we consider potential additional refinements in our approach to quarantine at the high school level and we were able to go quite immediately and look at and actually even our high schools which were very high have ticked up a bit which is great news so yes we will be continuing to look at actual vaccination rates as we begin to make

082some decisions about um next steps and as as Heather said trying to frankly dial back some of these mitigation strategies as soon as we think that it's safe to do so and is it going to be a combination of um how do I ask the question does does the test to stay program need to be ex expanded as one of the factors to consider as we consider removing uh things like the mask requirements I I think it would be but the early evidence suggests it would be great to do that it's frankly going to be more an issue of Staff capacity to manage it than it is the effectiveness of the approach right now I think we we're we're enough into it where we can say this could work and it's a question of actually

083just managing it logistically um at schools especially secondary schools where as Leo was saying there's uh the multiples are different but um the good news is it's we people seem to be responding and it seems to be saving time loss to quarantine and that's really really critical given that none of us saw the Delta variant coming and I hope this is not the case there's not anything else we want to be really good at this so that we can actually uh continue it if that proves necessary so even if we don't necessarily expand it to other schools which we're really going to look at I think it's still invaluable experience we've gotten because if we turns out we really need it we're going to have a lot of uh experience with administering it well thanks

084Dr Garcia so what would be that threshold that we need to reach here before we would consider expanding it to other schools what is it that you're looking for as a definitive yes we can broaden this option uh I I would invite lean Heather to share with that our discussions thus far would suggest that at the middle School level in particular it could be really uh potentially very valuable and that we might have the capacity you know to do it at that level um we're going to get a little deeper into the Willow Creek um uh pilot to take a look at it um so I I think it's it's it's we're going to need to see like we've seen um at Bishop that we are getting the significant reduction in time lost and I

085think we're seeing that that's going to be the case and then it's really the capacity of staff to to administer it and also supply of tests but I think concerns about that initially are somewhat abated that we seem to be able to get the tests that we're needing other thoughts on yeah I think you know one of the things I've asked all three sites to really consider is just the workload and how we Implement on grade level like I mentioned I think Elementary it seems more contained um we have you know a handful of new students that may opt into the program daily so that implementation education is so important for our families to understand you know upfront the intent of the program and how we're going to work with them to administer that um

086the the middle school is a challenge I'll be really honest if you can imagine a case load in the morning of someone trying to verify potential test results of upwards of 20 to maybe 40 50 maybe even 60 depending daily so I think um beyond the Staffing Resources it's just how do we get through that many students in before they can enter school that morning um I'm thankful now that we have vaccine available to our sixth graders that really is our group um that we just have that largest number that would be quarantined because if you imagine it's like taking an Elementary classroom times eight periods and that's the number of students then that we would end up putting into a typical standard quarantine but I will say overall I think families have been very

087appreciative of the opportunity and have been compliant um with the process and we know this is small scale implementation so there's always things to work through and so we're very flexible and we can pivot and they the sites have been doing a phenomenal job with that um in refining process so um it's been kind of fun to see and um yeah I mean we'll provide a summary and a wrap up once we get further John Marshall's just starting I think with our vaccination rates my hypothesis is that maybe we won't see it as cumbersome as that middle school that is the grade level I'm really kind of keeping an eye on as far as a case and workload on a daily basis thank you thank you very much appreciate that I think there are just

088do you feel like we got through the major points I think I think so I think so okay that's good thank you um point of order we have a a guest here who is going to be presenting a a proposal for a research study and so at this point I would move that we change the order of the agenda to move item 7.01 to item 4.06 do we need a second a vote or are we just letting you use your Authority I would rather use my authority but apparently I can't do that well I will second that and seconded all in favor say I I opposed all right we will then thank you we will then skip to order uh to order to item 7.01 approval of research study on the feasibility of a tele

089medicine program in RPS this is a briefing item Dr uh directors of the board I want to uh call Julie rusek who's our uh coordinator of family engagement partnership um and our good friend Dr valer Valeria christiani uh of the Mayo Clinic if she's here and she is here I couldn't see you there um It's actually an appropriate follow on from the last presentation because Dr christiani has been an invaluable member of our Advisory Group on the Corona virus and so I want to thank you uh for that and this is a related uh opportunity not about uh covid directly but about our students wellness and so Julie and Valeria thanks for being here welcome of course I I'll get started and then give Valeria the mic she's the smarter one of the two of

090us it it's nice to see you all thank you for having us tonight um I was going to say the same thing superintendent pel that um the goal of This research study is to keep our students in school and make sure that they are healthy and cared for and so we are really excited about this opportunity stemming from our partnership with Mayo Clinic and uh our our great partnership down at the alc with our ALC clinic and Mayo Clinic uh comes our tella Health proposal that Dr christiani will talk to you a little bit about tonight but really the goal is to make sure that our students all students uh those insured and underinsured or uninsured are receiving uh medical care so that they are healthy and ready to learn in our school buildings so

091with that I'll give it you thanks Julie so um the purpose of the uh well let me give you a little bit of background um thanks to the collaboration that we have together with the um school health program and uh RPS we've been able to do a few things one is to serve students at the alc uh through the alc Clinic but we also have found that there are many other students that also could benefit from the services of the alc Clinic team and one of the Silver Linings of the pandemic has been uh the kind of like skyrocketing um good use of tele medicine so how can we really help students where they are um in a different way and so through this partner ship uh together we came up with the idea of

092um taking this opportunity of providing a telea health program in the school setting this is very novel I think RPS is going to be well you guys are in the Forefront of this um we are going to be collaborating at the Riverside um Elementary School and uh the alc Clinic team will be providing a service there at Riverside and this is again this is the beginning it's kind of like a a pilot program um and we are going to be uh able to um um use a um device that lets the um provider who is at the alc Clinic uh actually do a limited physical exam via T Health so not only kind of like taking a history but also so being able to listen to the heart and listen to the lungs and look

093in the ears and use a very good camera to look at rashes it's actually pretty cool um and uh the the Riverside staff is going to be helping that student connect with us ALC Clinic providers all of course with um uh you know all this is totally voluntary you know the we have like a kind of like a menu of services that we came up together to see which students would be um benefiting from these and like Julie said the goal is to keep students healthy uh keep them in school and also provide services that uh many of these uh of our families uh have barriers to access um we all know that there you know many of our families um have different um strength and uh you know challenges and so we as ALC

094Clinic want to be able to um kind like reduce those barriers and help them get the care that they need so for example um you know um let's say that a um student goes to the um school nurse and says my tummy hurts and you know then the school nurse says you know does whatever she needs to do and then she says well you know this might be something that uh we can talk to your parent and see if your parent wants you to be seen and so there's that conversation with the parent some students might be already registered some students might not then we have to register them if they want to and then we do the visit and then the provider talks to the parent the parent stays at work um you know

095so so there's a lot of uh kind of like um good things that come up can come up of this program the research piece is just a very very small piece of these and that's the reason why we're here just to you know inform you and get your your um um you know input and approval uh there's um uh again this is very novel so we want to learn uh together and from the very beginning this was not something that um it was uh mandated that we needed to do the research study we kind of like the the both part Partners said yep we want to do this we want to learn and so um uh we are going to do a brief survey of the parents of the students that participate we are thinking

096that it's going to be a very small study so maybe like 30 parents total so not not like you know too many and we are also going to survey the um uh Riverside Elementary staff that helps with the visit and the alc Clinic providers that are doing the visit um so I already I was able to um you know work with the Mayo Clinic IRB of course since uh I've been working with them um in during these past few months to make sure that they can review the process and that that everything is um approved by them they wanted you know me to make sure that we had uh you know approval from uh our rochest Public School partners and it is uh what it's called an IR the exempt study because it's really minimal

097risk there's not it's totally voluntary there's no student identifiable information um you know regardless it doesn't matter if the parents don't want to participate that is not going to change the the the provision of the program so um you know that's that's kind of like the summary of it anything else Julie that we should I think you got it okay if successful I should say if successful we hope to bring this back to you and scale it up so that it uh can reach some of our other sites as well we have goals of this absolutely being successful and then taking it as an opportunity to our other sites as well thank you board members we have additional information that we've received um prior to this meeting but do you have any questions at this

098time Miss Workman yeah I I have a couple questions um so is male clinic bearing the C cost of this um tele medicine and if it is expanded to other schools would there be a cost to parents or the district to participate yeah great question no this is part of the alc Clinic Services the alc Clinic um uh serves students at no cost to families uh so we because it's an expansion of an ALC Clinic service it remains uh as such okay no I I I understood but um in terms of having the Riverside students participate I mean they're technically not part of the alc and in expansion to perhaps to other buildings would this Con be still be considered part of the alc program good good point so uh as of now we the

099alc Clinic uh serves in you know we we're focusing as you see we're starting with Riverside Elementary right and there's a reason for that and that is because we're focusing on community schools that we know that uh serve the majority of our families that can benefit from this service this is intended to serve um the our families that needed the most so um and at least that's the phase that we are in I am not going to speak to whatever the future might bring but that's that's what we're focusing on now so there may be opportunities to bring that forward and have future discussion about what that could look like but at this point we are still covered under the alc provision okay yeah and it wasn't clear to me that you when you consider

100expansion it would be only to the Community Schools at this point that would probably be phase one yeah okay I have Big Dreams Julie I know I know you do other questions or comments Dr carcia mine as a comment so I I toured the alc last month and I and one of the things that I said is why can we not just expand this Mayo clinic within the alc to all of the school so I really appreciate the fact that you're doing this and I also appreciate as somebody who does tell a health as a psychologist that there's mental health listed on your sort of decision tree so I really appreciate that as being an offered service for the students thank you and it's very impressive the clinic by the way and I was going

101to say I might take this opportunity to put you on the spot because this is a briefing item but before that um Miss Workman you have something um yes you referenced um the um IRB in the in the background information um it stated the study has been submitted to mail um for the IRB approval is that something you still have to do yet or is it something that done yeah it it was um uh has that been uploaded to board dos it's not on Vortex okay I'll believe if it would yeah if it would be helpful we can uh share definitely the IRB numbered and the the decision so you have it in your records I mean this I think that's usually one of the very first questions that the board asks um okay just

102to see just to make sure all the Ducks are in the are in a row and knowing Mao Clinic uh we've never had an issue with that so yep MH but you said it has been approved already correct all right yes approved and IRB exempt sorry yeah there so again it's a briefing item would you like it to stay as a briefing item or move to action I'd like to move to action I would i' like to second that oh it's been moved in seconded twice any uh discussion about moving it to action thank you to Julie and Dr christiani that's a good question good comment too um all in favor say I I opposed this is now an action item be it resolved School Board of Independent School District 535 approves the research study

103of tele medicine in Rochester Public Schools move approval second been moved and seconded all in favor say I I opposed and it is approved thank you so much no thank you for the opportunity appreciate your work I'll just add uh directors this is the first time I've actually seen Dr christiani in person and not through a screen so I'm actually I'm glad to know you're real the first time I Leah thank you good all right we will go back then to 5.0 consent agenda are there any items you want removed for separate consideration move approval second it's been moved and seconded all in favor say I I opposed um it is approved and Dr pel do you want to read the retirements um um uh directors of the board um I am pleased to acknowledge

104Cassandra Brown Bartholomew a first grade teacher at Riverside Elementary School um who is retiring after 14 years with the district um we have Jessica Bangert who is a human resource specialist here at the Edison building will be retiring and deeply missed as I'm sure all of these folks will be January 18th 2022 uh 2022 um Ruth Bisby uh registration and record secretary here at the Edison building will be retiring in April has been with us for 17 years um Wanda ly monkey a secondary PA professional at John Marshall High School will be retiring the end of the calendar year has been with us for 23 years Colleen Capri thomman who's been a special education par professional um at the Education Services Center rail will be retiring January 7th and has been with us for five

105years um panel Rose Evans who is a student nutrition services associate at Washington Elementary will be retiring uh in December has been with us for seven years and Thomas W Perry who's a student nutrition services associate at Gibbs Elementary School will be retiring at the uh actually has retired um uh effective November 1 and has been with the district for 5 years and so we thank all of those leaders for their uh commitment thank you Dr pel um 6.01 RPS online this is an information item Dr pel directors of the board you have heard often but not in detail about the RPS online uh initiative that has been a really exciting um new addition to the offerings that we make available I want to ask Jackie Peterson our executive director of Elementary and secondary education

106to um welcome uh Andrew Newman our principal at RPS online and Kim Hill um our online teacher to give us a sense of the amazing work they are doing I I will just say I've had a a chance not only to experience Andrew's leadership but to also experience Kim's amazing work as well and we are incredibly fortunate to have you both with us here today thank you evening uh board members superintendent um it's my pleasure to um introduce Andrew Newman uh the our leader at RPS online and Kim Hill uh teacher extraordinaire Rochester um RPS online and biggest cheerleader about the program on Facebook this fall as we were getting as we were getting uh uh ready to launch and um she was very diligently answering questions out in the community to uh support families

107and and getting signed up so without further Ado I'm going to turn it over to Andrew and I'm going to uh get our PowerPoint going you have it on up is that okay is Heather can I connect my okay he's he's got it on Google I don't I'll put it right here for you guys oh o oops wrong one I could show you if it was iPad you got to switch here and it might SC I just how do we work so while doing that I can give you guys a little bit of update of like what is going on in my room that way and I'll stop as soon as you're ready let me know um so when Andrew and Jackie got a hold of me and asked me if I wanted to come

108I was like sure I'll come and talk about my amazing kids and um I have been teaching for a really long time and if you had told me a few years ago that I was going to fall in love with teaching in a virtual classroom where I couldn't rent my arms around my students and give them hugs because anyone who knows me knows that's who I am as a teacher I'm that relationship teacher um I would have told you that you were dreaming um but I absolutely love what I'm doing I love the kids I'm working with they're amazing uh Dr pel and will were able to come in one day to see some of their culminating work on indigenous peoples and the the work around that that my students are able to do collaboratively

109in an online setting um even while they were there they the kids didn't really care that they were there they were like hey when are we doing the next one because we want to do another project like this and so that speaks volumes to what our students are doing um so I asked them today I said okay guys I'm going to go to the Schoolboard meeting tonight I said what do you want me to tell them because we have a lot of discussions and Dr pqu can tell you that's kind of how we discuss things in my room it's always guided it's not here's the instruction it's what do you think why do you think that happened can you notice a problem and they said we need them to know that there isn't any bullying

110in an online classroom yeah but because they're all in their own virtual space at least in mine there's like literally zero bullying um we even had one of my students today who's in fifth grade um had pres was presenting her Power Hour activity and she uh did it about explaining to the other students why n should have said she they were changing their name and going by they them pronouns and explain that as their power hour ex just a very brief this is how I see the world this is who I am and the kids were like thanks for letting us know that's awesome and that was like the entire conversation because they were like they're so accepting of each other and the the relationships they're building are amazing um yeah if you could every

111afternoon my kids beg me if we're going to be going into social groups so in the every afternoon they have an opportunity to go into breakout rooms whenever you guys are ready just tell me you you're doing great okay well they go into breakout rooms and they play they're fifth graders and they play um I've seen kids pull out a board game and have it in front where they put all the pieces and everybody and they angle the camera so that they can see the board and the one kid who has the game in front of them moves the pieces and they play board games I've seen kids yesterday eight kids went in a breakout room and who would have thought that they were going to be coming out having done a creative writing about

112um a space cowboy who was fighting zombie I mean it was like this whole thing it was just and they came out and they thought it was the best thing they'd ever done they thought it was the coolest thing that they just spent like 45 minutes writing this creative writing piece together and they think you know and that's their play time and they enjoy it um to give a little bit of a look at my day I keep looking to see if he's actually ready um I open my room like we start work at 7:50 um usually that's meetings answering emails contacting with parents things like that 8:30 my meet opens and I don't close that meet link until 2:30 in the afternoon so at 2:30 then I close it and I use my last

113hour to contact parents things like that and I even have it open during the lunch hour and the kids are allowed to be in the Google meet over the lunch hour I join on my phone I mute myself my camera and my mic I go have my lunch but I'm there if I have an emergency um and so it's just been it's been amazing I I truly love it and I don't know that it could have been what it is if like we have the situation we have set up being our own school I taught DL and this isn't just DL with a new name we are our own School having our own admin having um and having the admin we have wow I I asked the staff I'm like you know what do you

114guys want me to say and everybody spoke make sure you let them know how empowering Andrew is um he started right away building us into teams and we feel so empowered to take risks fall on our faces figure it out and come back together again and that's just a huge piece I think of who we are as a school as a building is is that um we're being given that level all the way from Andrew down to the people who just came on everybody feels that they have that power so yeah thank you and sorry about the breakdown of Technology there and I appreciate what Kim said so yeah we're not DL 2.0 we online learning at its best um so about a year ago this time we we were tasked with coming up with

115u providing um the parameters were be the best and so that's the way that we had wrote the the grant that was approv or the pap by mde and and really we are in an opportunity where we could have tried to be a blockbuster we we're set up to be a Netflix and so uh we're ready to go and it's been really cool um I'll and so right everything that we do is based on our mission vision and values and that's how we we lead every meeting how we do our classwork How We Do everything and again with the idea that this is this is how we function um so again I talked about that idea of of being a a Netflix and not a blockbuster is that I I get to participate in monthly

116and sometimes twice a month meetings with the the mde and the over 120 online providers and we are the only one of our kind K12 that is fully synchronous in the state and and and that sets us apart and and we have great opportunity here and unfortunately I know some other District that uh either couldn't turn it around quick enough they had to let go of 100 Staff last spring another one lost 70 they're looking to to lose another 60 again because um they weren't able to turn around like we did we weren't they weren't able to take a risk like we did and it's paying off and there's a lot of opportunity here not only to serve our kids in Rochester but across the state of Minnesota and so our current makeup right now

117is uh we have over 500 kids K12 um and so we have dropped just a couple kids right now as we we're entering trimester for our elementary but we've uh just recently at the the quarter brought on about another 40 kids um 9 through 12 um and we continue to grow um and then um for our we get a monthly ethnicity report um we're one of the most diverse schools in the district we were for a long time um and again not only serving just kids in Rochester but across the state of Minnesota and so we have 90 staff that are tied to our building ranging from fractional to fulltime and and they're about 5050 we have half of them are here time out of your day to just give us your thoughts on such

118a high tech power slide presentation I'm seeing the screen dancing when we come in and you can't help but be happy holy cow part of that yeah so that's okay so the the last I talked about we have uh over uh 50% of our all right well welcome that's all right we can we're good we're good you should have brought one of your students here to run the PowerPoint yeah that's all right um and so yeah the interesting part is right how do you lead a building where half your staff actually lives in Rochester and the other half across the state of Minnesota and around the country and so that's been great too a great learning process great connecting process the majority of our staff that don't live in Rochester are from the Twin Cities

119area and a lot of them are not new to teaching they're they're exceptional teachers that wanted to be part of this and I think they get that feel of that too and so we have just some parent student family feedback that we've collected that we just wanted to share and not have these folks uh right A lot of them chose online for certain reasons but they wanted to share their story so we have a couple stories we'd like to share appreciate you taking time out of your day to uh just give us your thoughts on RPS online do you mind just sharing your experiences so far and what you think um so far the years has been doing good um I've got to connect with a lot of teachers and I'd say compared to last

120year it was kind of hard because everyone was trying to get used to online school but this year everybody's kind of used to it and everybody has learned their curriculum better and how they can affect people who are on online so yeah it's been pretty fun how how have you how has it been going for you in terms or like what do you like about online or what's been going well for you whether just in general with uh peers or with your teachers like you just mentioned um definitely from last year they took a lot of points with like um breakout rooms we know that a lot of people it's kind of hard for people to do that so they take a lot of lessons from last year and now they apply to like using

121stuff like Po stuff like that so I think yeah it's pretty it's it's been pretty good what what do you like most about uh learning online most of all is probably that I get to take the information I get online from the Comforts of my home and I get to really prioritize what I want to do so then it's kind of hard to like connect with teachers after class because sometimes they have these plans but then when I email them talk to them on class it's really just a faster way perfect last question for you if if someone's wondering uh what they would like to if they're considering online uh what would you recommend I mean right we know some people are thriving in person some people might Thrive online what would your advice be

122to someone uh thinking about coming to online and honestly if you really need the personal environment like talking to a teacher oneon-one then obviously go um in person but if you are able to have the confidence to reach to teachers inside a Google meet online and I say camera helps personally um if you're able to connect with them online really you don't noce a difference so if you want to be here P personal Comforts of your home um if you have to do stuff for your family your family has some beliefs that about Co then it's pretty good being on that school awesome well thank you I really appreciate your time and and being with us this year and and I know our teachers and everyone that works with you are super grateful that you're

123with us so thank you so much I'm glad I can and another parent um didn't want to have recorded but she wanted to submit a message up there and and I just bolded up some things she didn't bold with her voice but um just wanted to share her perspective um that both are good choices and that um the online platform for this uh this parent has really allowed their child to open up and has been a great opportunity for their child um and then we we got another perspective from a a first grade parent that is open and rolling what you think about RPS on okay fine yeah I really appreciate RPS online in terms of flexibility primarily for our family we like to camp we like to travel um and it's offered a good

124opportunity for our daughter to be able to keep up up with school but also be able to do things outside of the home and and go out and about and how do you think um The Learning is going for your daughter in terms of the the coursework and learning what they need to learn I think that it's going very well what I really am excited about for our daughter is that she's really into um art music science everything is exciting for her and the way that her teacher structures her day is that she gets a snippet of science every day she gets some form of art every day so it's it's a robust well-rounded education on a daily basis yeah and then any any thoughts I guess in terms of other experiences either with your

125daughter's teacher or RPS online that you think is helpful for other families whether in Rochester or across the state that might be helpful for them to consider coming to RPS online yeah so one thing for me as a parent that's really important and being a state at home parent um is that I feel like I'm really engaged in my child's education my my um our daughter's teacher sends an email every day with what the schedule is we are in close contact on things that are needed and I know that she is with other families as well so for me to feel like I have an actual hand and a and I'm actually involved in what's going on especially in the first grade level I think it's it's vital and it's really really nice to experience

126great well perfect well that's good there you go thank you I'm really um and then again as as we've transitioned here another par par feedback in terms of um our programming for their child as they um work their transition back here at the beginning of the first quarter I'm again just really proud of our staff and and what we've been able to build in such a short period of time um the rigor and and the the welcoming environment that we've been able to build um so quickly um so you can read that up there and then we have uh one more uh staff perspective too that we'd like to share appreciate it um and just if you want mine just sharing your thoughts about teaching at RPS online yeah sure uh my name is Elizabeth

127Wy and I teach General Elementary music to a couple of classes on RPS online um so far I am loving it um all my kids are so great they're so enthusiastic about music they always come in you know to the Google meet with huge Smiles on their faces and ask and they ask me Miss Wy what are we doing in music today you know um they've been a joy to work with um and I remember on the first day um there was this little boy um and we had wrapped up and he said he didn't know my name at that point so he said Miss music teacher you're the best teacher in the world so that was that was a great moment um yeah I've really been enjoying it great well and I think there's

128a lot of great things for both in person and online um but what are some cool things that you feel that you can do in some freedom in terms of online that maybe you don't have in person I'm not going to lie being able to teach from home is awesome um because you know I don't have to drive anywhere and you know my cats can come hang out with me while I teach they're great assistant teachers um but I think it just um you know during this crazy time it you know even though we're on computer it it still gives them some sense of normaly you know of just okay now we're in music and in music we can breathe and we can dance you know and just explore different types of music and and

129learn various aspects of Music um I always try to make it as engaging as possible by doing a lot of movement based activities um but yeah that's that's one of the great things that I like about RPS online and then Miss Hill's here and she got to share already because did you have anything else I I think like so like that immediacy like I think that's part of the what the the high school students spoke to um the El the elementary parent spoke to um with this teacher who's the immediacy of that feedback so if I'm in the classroom and I'm giving and I'm not and I'm not against inperson teaching loved it I've done it for a really long time this is my 31st year teaching and um I love an in-person teaching but

130the immediacy with I teach a lesson we go over it they have the opportunity to either work asynchronously on their work time they have the opportunity to work in a breakout room by themselves if they choose that space they have a opportunity to work in a breakout room with peers or they have an opportunity to stay in the main room or work in a breakout room with myself or my student teacher we brought in high school School uh ctech students to support in our room and so that immediacy of the ability to say oh you're not getting this piece let me show you again um the big things right now in my classes we talk about how assessment means we're assessing where we're at not assessing just for a grade they they started the year

131very concerned about grades I think we've gotten away from that they understand the concept of equity and I mean they talk it every day and that's just just watching the way that they feel empowered in this platform it's not probably perfect for everybody but for the kids that it is the right fit for they are excelling um we have some students who one of the parents when I met during meet the teacher at the beginning of the year it was well you know they've always struggled with attention I don't see that child I see this child who feels empowered to come up and say you know I think I'm going to do a Power Hour project on German because I'm going to learn German as a fifth grader on her own because my grandfather was

132great-grandfather was in the war and we have a letter written from a nurse at a German hospital and I want to be able to read it wow you know and this is this child who I was born you know they have real issues with attending to what's happening but in this this format when my face is literally inches from them every single one of them you know it really works for some of our kids and it's just a great I love it I love our staff I love our families the kids are amazing we have an amazing leader who I followed him intentionally um Andrew was brought on as our distance learning principal last year and when uh we found out that he was going to be going on there were about six of us

133who were the core six elementary teachers that we followed him we all came from the distance learning World bu year um and that speaks volumes to the the team that we're able to build in this space we just shared a bunch of great things and right honestly there's been some bumps right so we're going to be honest with that so our goal we talked through was like trying to get some in-person opportunities and right between Co and Staffing we haven't been able to get to that goal yet um but we're we're working on getting to that yes to be able to bring in those opportunities so that that is one thing that we wanted to do we haven't been able to do yet um right again we're we're we're built for something that hasn't ever

134been built before and so um when there are updates and things that happen um normally um with technology um as we upload firewalls or all that stuff that on their end that there's been some connection kicks and we've had to work with families to get hotpots and technology and reset them and so we're working really closely as we build a platform because if the school's on fire everyone's there but if our technology go goes out then we're there so we're working through that we Tech fix a lot of things far the screen um and and regist for ours I'm working with I'm really proud of what we are able to provide in terms of courses but again we're Limited in the scope and the number and so unfortunately we've had to turn some families away

135because we're full and so as we again work to register for this spring a goal is to hopefully get on uh the course registration list at Mayo jam and Sentry as an option hey I can some classes online let's start to grow this here um and then finally Staffing the the scope and and doubling in size in August and and the way that we had to respond to that we were able to fill with really great people but it wasn't really cohesive in terms of a middle school with how we've had to do it but again I'm really proud of the people that we have with us so right despite all of those things I am really excited about this next piece to share with you we recently got our panorama our kids and our

136staff were number one or number two across the board in the district for middle school high school and Elementary our staff and students are reporting high levels of mental health and wellness and I wouldn't have expected we talked a year ago at this time of what what online learning can happen and here we are and it's super exciting to look at that to look at the areas that we know we have areas that we need to focus on and grow but that was super exciting to to hear and see how our staff are feeling teaching our mind and how our kids are feeling so far just this early part of and then finally um as we continue to grow like I said um we're we're working to expand our course offerings from we have 56

137courses this this year that we were able to offer we're hoping to almost double that up and do 126 by next year again depending on enrollment of of those courses we're working with partnering with Winona State and and they have student teachers and and students that are across the state how can they work work with us to provide support and opportunities for their student teachers to come in and work and partner with our K12 students uh we have teams that are looking into um adding more of an asynchronous component to our school that could maybe partner and be another access point for our kids in our district um and then with that um looking at how can we partner with Communications and Market these uh available seats across the state again because we are fully

138synchronous um and with that um that's that's all we have so any any questions for us this Workman yes um what are the barriers that some students might experience in order to attend RPS online school you know maybe families who would say this would be a great fit for my child except for you fill in the blank yeah we've found it to be there hasn't been one it's been um maybe there previous experiences either in Rochester across the state in terms of what they was pandemic teaching and then the how we're set up is more rigorous and so maybe they're not ready for that level of online learning and the expectation to show up and be there and to to get feedback and and be there others have been trying to problem solve hotpots um

139sometimes we're able to provide and and Tech has been great and helping us to provide hotpots but for some reason there's dead zones that we can't seem to work around um in other parts too um like I just mentioned in terms of uh courses we can't we we can't build a schedule for what they need this year unfortunately so those would be some of the the barriers at the point at this moment I think I was thinking more in terms of for example especially an elementary student does the parent need to be at home with the student during the day well I mean I mean obviously kind first younger grades it helps okay for the for your k one two that you wouldn't leave home alone anyway um yeah it helps to have someone there

140whether that's a daycare provider whether that's a parent or whether that's an older sibling Grandma we've seen all of those different combinations um in the upper grades my kids most of them do not have somebody at home anymore they a lot of the parents started year at home thinking they were going to have to be sitting next to their child all day long and I have some parents are saying you know I don't see my child all day because they're with me um they don't have to stay in my room they do have opportunities to be off screen and asynchronous 90% of my kids choose to stay right there in the room either with me or with their peers the whole day um even through the lunch I've had some kids who are home alone

141and one called my name one day and I grabbed my phone at lunch I was like what is it and she opened her camera she's like can you open her camera and I opened my camera she said how do I make this can of soup and so we did did a home economics class and we talked about how we don't turn on burners unless there's an adult but since I was there it was okay and we did the whole thing so for the older kids it's not um if you have a high needs um stud kid we've had a few of those families that are choosing to have a parent there um or either that or a caregiver if they have like home healthare type things having somebody there helps but for the majority of

142our students once they're about third grade they're pretty self- sustaining with the online like my class it's very rare when I have a day when I don't have 100% attendance it's extremely rare it's to the point like I email the parents and like are you all right because didn't see them today you know because they're always there I think we want to be clear if the county is listening that we do not encourage I mean there is an age limit right leaving kids at home so that definitely is a barrier for some families if they're working um that they they need someone to be with their child so and a lot of those families have set up like a home office so there's an adult in the home but they're not sitting with the child

143at the table doing the it's not homeschooling it's not distance learning it's a totally different a Mr brow uh yes my grandson is one of the 232 elementary kids are serving and uh I can speak to uh the truth that he uh is thriving and uh often times when I walk by his um he uh when I walk by his room I kind of lean my ear in because he's so focused and and committed and uh I remember Jackie when you when this proposal was first presented there were a number of questions then and I'm not sure we envisioned that um this high level of success what occur as quickly as it has and apparently it is due to not only the leadership of of you Mr Newman but your staff as well and the

144students and families that support this program and um I'm curious as to how we might be able to leverage um uh this educational product if you will I mean you had alluded to where the first in the state to offer a program of this quality and and often times we speak of well how can we generate more sustainable income resourcing and um I know you kind of alluded to it you're you're looking at I think you had referenced the 90 something courses right now and looking to double that next year uh what are the what would prevent us from um be being even more expansive than what your current Vision may may entail yeah right I think right it's just the working of this is new and we education itself wasn't built out to to

145get all and so we we this new thing in a space um that wasn't made for online so it's just that risk of do we continue like Blockbuster do we try to do some things like Netflix and I appreciate um the support so far to continue to grow and take some of these calculated risks in terms of growing and marketing and doing that because it is very different right we don't St for maybe where we grow and we have these opportunities so I think uh the continued empowerment to do that continued as we try to do some things differently just maybe an okay to do that but I think again everyone's been great and right it's just new and again I'm I'm super proud of every staff member we have as a person and as

146an instructor and that is clearly the strength of our program and people not only students were are interested but then teaching staff also across the state every reach out that they want to be a part of this too so I I think again we have an opportunity here to not just positively impact students of Rochester but again smaller districts that can't provide certain classes that we have excellent teachers that can do that come on over we we got you I think a few things realistically is we've grown as much as we can in terms of available staff and we have reached out Beyond Rochester we're we're lucky that we can cast a wider net because we do have teachers that are teaching not here in Rochester they do have a Minnesota license um that and

147that's important but so we're able to um draw on a on a wider area but we we were limited I think we could have more um sections but we just don't have the staff to do it that can change though as we plan for next year and look at growing and getting in uh to the hiring process early um and capturing the the staff that might be out there interested in teaching online um one thing that we plan on doing is um uh publicizing the list of of high school classes we do have and seats available in those classes so that we can really make sure that we're maximizing our um seats available for kids here in the district and outside the district so if I'm a student uh three hours away I could maybe

148take a math class with RPS online and get credit um and uh and participate because we don't want those seats to go unused if there are kids out there that need them Garcia yes I you mentioned the last time that you were before us and obviously we heard from a parent today during um public comments we're struggling with some of the uh implementation for students that have special education needs Andor physical or mental health disabilities can you talk about some of the ongoing challenges you still have and what are we doing flash what do you need in order to overcome those challenges so we can help those students and families well I I I think it's very similar to there are courses that are are really well um we have the ability to do them

149online but some really require an in-person um presence so that could be part of the challenge um that this doesn't work for every student so I think individually we need to look at how are we able to provide the supports that students need whether they're special receiving special education services or um other needs because um it's not going to work for everybody um I think we're learning along the way what works well online and what really um works best in person so is it maybe articulating that there are exclusionary criteria for this program or like if you need this then this probably is not the best we would need you to do this in person within the district or how does that work May I don't know that we were ready to go there because

150we really have found that things that we didn't think would work are working okay um so I don't know that we were ready to say an absolute no this can't work and I think the other part too is caros teams have been amazing because again like the scope in which we grew and and the responsiveness of it they've been great in in giving us the staff we need but again there's some um bigger than just it's not just RPS type situations some situations might be where there's programming where we can't do and it's either one or the other so some that happens but again in terms of like the scope of our staff um in an in at Mayo Century JM they have five of the same courses and they can be flexible in building

151that where we have one and so if you have certain needs we we can only tailor so many courses and schedules to meet that so again as we we grow and again as we figure out how do programs interact with each other our hope is that right we don't want to turn anyone away right and I don't like in elementary I don't know that it needs to be an exclusion area discussion I've got multiple kids that have either IEPs 504s for a multitude of reasons whether it's special education or mental health concerns or different a variety of different things and of them I would say I have two that it wasn't the best fit for um those two students either needed more um intimate where there's somebody with them making sure they got into all

152of their courses and if that wasn't something that the family was able to do that was difficult but I have others who are thriving in this situation um I have one student who's um got an iup for um autism spectrum and the parents said this is the most successful the child's ever been because of the the situation he's in so I'd hate to say exclusionary because I think each family does have to look and see I think putting together a list of these are the personal characteristics your child might need to have or these are the you know the foundations we would need to have what and truthfully this year we had so many people adding whether like staff members and things because we grew so quickly that um in a perfect world we would

153have been able to sit down and say all right let's put all of these students who this need in a course together because then we can have the pair push in and almost hand to hand take them to their next class through thr throwing out a meat link and taking them with you kind of a thing and we do that now but I think we could have done that better um but because of how quickly things grew we didn't have all of that in place and so that's one of those learning pieces of especially with the younger kids is all right we need to have a plan in place that if we're going to have these students taking part in the online school we need to be ready to just as you would in a

154building hand toand transfer um and so those are things we're learning I think the the reference to the the public comment on um Hospital home bond isn't um it's not an RPS online it's any it would be an in-person school that we don't do both we don't do in person and Hospital Home Bone am I right Carla yeah different programs yeah right clearly we we want you to continue to come back we want to hear more from you we we need to move on Dr pel has one of their comment but I hope you'll come back regularly because clearly this is an evolving exciting program I just uh thank you Dr Marvin I I just have to share one brief uh anecdote from the time will Ruff and I got to be in Kim's class

155because first of all she's a master teacher and it was just wonderful and the kids as she mentioned had been doing projects looking at uh indigenous Nations and so they were doing a presentation on the tribe they been studying and they were they a lot of higher order thinking learning about the tribes and they each were told to a pick a an eye-catching arresting image at the beginning of their PowerPoint to draw the viewers in and so they were showing and we got a brief version of it and they were showing it they were going through it and so there was artwork and queblo and things like that and then one of the students showed hers and it went up and it had a helicopter on it and she just launched into explaining about the

156tribe she in it and one of the other students said why do you have a helicopter there and I think and she said well it's an Apache helicopter and what was amazing was there was not a hint of any kind of judgment or mocking the other students said well no I actually think that's like it's a kind of helicopter in the military it's not like a helicopter the Apache use and the students said I wondered about that it didn't make sense and here you had these kids that were in this and they laughed about it because she was like I thought this was like a helicopter Apaches used and then they said well probably there have been Apaches that have flown them in the military but it was this amazing sort of community of learning

157and there was not a hint of making fun of that student at all and they laughed about it and I remember it now and I bet they all remember it now so it was just a wonderful uh little glimpse of how those sort of teachable moments uh show up um and it was just uh I think it was even more striking because we all were staring at these images that they were putting up there uh and and then uh Kim handle just handled it just beautifully as a teacher and sort of uh had the students put a period behind that and then we moved on so thank you for that kind of work appreciate it and yeah any of you are welcome to come in and and do as they did and come in and

158just come in and be part of our community anytime you want send me an email um I'll send you a link into the classroom and you're welcome to come in um we're also most likely just finished a career day in our class and we'll be most likely setting up another one come you know January February if anyone wants to come in and talk about their careers our kids love it so all right thank you so much thank you very much thank you that was great Dr Marvin would you entertain a short recess I've been requested to uh have a short recess so let let us recess until 7:59 stretch [Music] toes a gall e for I for I know Lear 79 8:00 p.m. more or less and we are back in session and moving on

159to um 6.02 approval of postsecondary enrollment option class classes at Rochester this is a briefing item dral directors of the board um and Madam chair I excited to ask uh Brenda witchman our executive director of um curriculum and instruction um and Heather Wilman our director of curriculum instruction to to join us to give you an overview of this really important issue good evening board and superintendent pel um we have a lot to share with you tonight about different College course options for our students but the first point of order is this big Bill from rctc that um I think just about a year ago we started to bring for Schoolboard approval um we wouldn't change anything about this but because it's over that dollar amount of $175,000 we are bringing it to you for approval

160twice a year so that's the first part of um our time with you tonight so you have the um resolution you have the information any questions for um miss witchman this is a briefing item and apparently we do have to pay this move action move it action second whatever it's been moved and seconded whatever to action to pay the bill to pay the bill thank you um any discussion it's an action item be it resolved the school board vote on moving it pardon we have to vote on it has not been voted on to be an action item all in favor say I I opposed now it's an action item thank you be it resolve School Board of Independent School District 535 does hereby approve the payment to Rochester Community and Technical College in the

161amount of $77,900 39 move approval I have a question about the 39 cents but I'll let it go thank you second second it's been moved with prejudice and seconded all in favor say I I opposed motion passes thank you Miss witchman then we'll move on to 6.03 approval of the 2022 23 course offering changes registration guide also a briefing item I um Heather and I were texting when she was on her way here from another meeting today and I just said oh thank you so much for being here it's going to be a long meeting and she said no problem I love to talk about this stuff so I'm I'm so glad she's here um this has this um oh we had to add some policies to it so it's a cool 100 Pages um

162the course registration guide and we start working on this the day the next year the day after it goes to print so you can just see we've highlighted the changes in this year's guide we've added some dual credit options we've added some courses and we did remove a course um it isn't just Heather and I making decisions about what goes in the guide we meet with our regist groups which includes all of our high school registar our um counselors principals we bring in teachers it's very much a collaborative process that involves a lot of people and I'll let Heather just highlight the changes for this year sure um so we have uh two new dual credit options um one is biology 1107 which has been offered at ctec but now is able to be offered

163at Century High School um that's uh anatomy and physiology so that will be a one-year course option um and then we do have intro to American government which is awesome because it's a requirement but also will fulfill credit and that will also be offered at Century and the reason for a century is because those teachers have gone through the process of getting additional credits and so they're able to be certified through rctc to offer those courses then some other additions we have mobile computer science principles so John barus um many of you know is our computer science Guru and he has kind of looked at those courses and thought about the best opportunities and worked with that um so it's just a little bit of a a different Arrangement um we also have algorithms and

164data structure in in Python um and then intro to criminal justice is a new course which we're really excited about we have a teacher that um has a legal background and is excited about what that could be and we're hoping that that could be um potentially a part of a pathway as well and then finally environmental science which will be offered um at the ninth grade level we'll be looking at changing our course sequence and so we'll have environmental science as that first course um and we've been working hard we had a group this summer um do some initial work and then we're working throughout the school year as well and then our course removal is just mobile app development so just a little bit of restructuring for computer science questions or concerns board members

165and I didn't mean to cut you off was that cuz you said it was 110 pages and I figured 100 100 like an hour and a half presentation how anxious are you to get this approved anxious anxious I'd like to move it to action been moved and seconded to move this to action any discussion all in favor of moving this to action say I I opposed it's now an action item be it resolved the school board of Independent School District 535 approve the 2022 2023 course registration guide for grades 9 through 12 may I ask a question are we going to have a chance to go through your PowerPoint or are we going to about the accelerated course data yeah yes that's next okay good just want to make sure all right so read the

166resolution approval approval thank you sorry it's been moved in seconded all in favor say I opposed motion passes thank you and you have a PowerPoint we do and um I think this is just an information item so that's why I'm comfortable to have that vote um go forward before this so um you asked and we delivered um you wanted to know more about accelerated courses so last week as part of the study session we shared some information about concurrent enrollment but that's just the tip of the iceberg there are many options and this is my fourth year in this position and I think I understand it like 50% um do you want to go ahead there are just lots of options so we have PSO but we also have concurrent enrollment we told you about

167that last week we have the AP courses advanced placement we have college in the schools articulated credit and project lead the way so we've just gathered some data for you to share where we're at with these right now and enrollment so the first one is PSO and um this is uh you probably know this um but it allows a few 10th graders 10th graders can take one CTE course but 11th and 12th graders to earn high school and college credit while still in high school um and our students the majority of them go to rctc um and they have to uh well yeah 11th and 12th gos may take um them on a full-time or a part-time basis um so just a breakdown of the students who have been taking PSO and a shout out

168to Dale Amy at rctc our um college readiness partner there for giving us this good data um and this is one thing I thought of at 4:00 this morning um Dale broke this down brilliantly by the number of students and my thought at 4:00 this morning was that the data that we pulled on the other things are by courses so if this kind of data pleases you um if you want me to break it down by student and number of courses we can uh update that differently at another time or or next year at this time when we're already scheduled to come back and um give you this data so um certainly the numbers have been increasing since um 20178 school year um looks like a a peak in the fall of 2020 but then

169um study um this year as well and then there's just a a graph that shows that by ethnicity a visual um the next type of college credit bearing classes concurrent so those are the ones that are allows our kids to earn college credit while taking classes at our high schools with teachers that are certified to do that um Heather the requirements to be a concurrent teacher can you refresh us on that I'm not going to yeah you have to have a masters in your content area or 22 credits um so that's why we have the two new uh teachers who were added because they have been working on that Masters in a Content area or 22 credits so one or the other and the only um the only difference would be a CTE teacher sometimes

170there's some variables there and while we want that option for PSO and it works like the online school that works for a lot of kids not every kid but works for a lot of kids we are really interested in concurrent because that's when we get to keep our kids on our campus so um and this was shared in great detail last week so I didn't go into much more of it um for tonight but that number is um increasing slightly too so next is advanced placement and this is the college board's AP program um over 90% of our colleges and universities um have an AP policy that will grant credit for students who qualify on the AP exams so and the number of credits are determined by scores on the AP exams so and then

171individual colleges have their own acceptable scores in their policy so the next uh slide is just showing that um by demographic and these numbers are declining a little bit um and we'll share at the end maybe some ideas we have about why that is happening then and and I didn't I didn't want to make this presentation really really long but if you look in the registration guide it tells you um which of these courses are college and schools which ones are AP um toward the beginning of the guide It's on page like uh starts on page seven so it shows all the advanced Place courses all the concurrent courses and then it continues on page eight so you can kind of see which ones I mean college and the schools the numbers aren't super high

172but we don't have a lot of college in the school courses and those are so College in the schools is for juniors and seniors um it's run through the Twin Cities to the um U ofm so and then there's a breakdown of students and again um that you know is declining based on one year I mean we'd have to look at other years to see the trend there and then a graph of the data the next is articulated credit um and that's uh the agreement between RPS and rctc so allows students to take specific courses that would transfer into credits at rctc so not for other colleges but for rctc so there is some if we look at the numbers next hether there's been quite a jump in these numbers um and I asked around

173about it and I think it's due to the increase in our enrollment in CTE courses ctec is growing by Leaps and Bounds they are full uh looking for more space so um I think that's because um a lot of the classes in articulated are CTE courses and then a breakdown again of the students who are taking that and then we have one more Project Lead the Way so these are nationally standardized Project based courses we've you've heard about them before we have them in middle school we have them in high school so colleges do accept pltw credits but it's not that easy to do I mean uh you have to work a little bit at it to get those courses to um convert to credits um and I you know hopefully our students know about

174that but we might have some that leave our system that don't even realize that that's an option for them um and then Heather if you just show I mean these numbers are down a little bit just in the this year but you know maybe that's a weird Year too because you know last year when we registered that was mostly online and you know things have been kind of not the same for a while so if we just keep going Heather that graph that's good and then um this is where there's a flaw in my my math and I'll apologize that apologize for that PSO that it shouldn't be listed this way because PSO is they reported number of students and so there you know this year there are 1,13 students but there could be 14,500

175courses I don't that doesn't report how many courses because you know they could be full-time they could have one course so my apologies for that but I just want to be transparent that there aren't 5,564 students who are accessing um th those courses so we can you'll need to let me know in your questions how you want me to handle that so when we were preparing for this presentation I thought you know they're going to ask like why does some kids take PSO why do they take articulated and we didn't do a breakdown of all of them but like the biggest ones so you know of all of these there are going to be students who are ready for college level work you know if PSO it's they they want to go to rctc they're

176going to save money um State schools they'll the credits will transfer easily but some students you know transportation is a real barrier obviously and they just want to stay at their High School um and some believe that the rctc courses won't be as rigorous as courses they can take in their high schools they feel connected they want to take classes from their teachers and you know if they're going to a 4-year school um the the credits may or may not transfer and they make transfers just electives so um the next kind of big category was um concurrent and again they're ready for college level work they want to earn credits um you don't have to have a car to take concurrent enrollment because we take it on our campus but um you know when you

177have a 100 page guide there be too many courses to choose from and do we get through to every St student so that they know what concurrent means I mean that's not an intuitive word like oh I know what that means so I mean we we do our best but there a lot of kids to communicate that with and then um the last one advanced placement you know students certainly who are ready for a challenge they want challenge before College it looks really good on a college application and it you know our colleges like the rigor of AP um but really the amount of work for some can be excessive and the test is really intimidating you know and sometimes students are taking multiple tests and it's you know and if they don't do well

178on the test um you you're not going to get that credit at the end and some of our students just don't feel prepared for that level yet so um I thought you know if you wanted us to come back you know whether later this year or next year and bring some students I think that would have been powerful to hear directly from them so we could certainly consider that so Heather help me feel the questions now if you have any questions or reactions any question Miss Nathan I think I sent you the this question ahead of time but I know that there's a PSO informational night do we share the other college credit courses information that night or is there a is there a global event where it's a One-Stop shop to get this information

179for students that's a good question we usually don't share the other information but we've had our own concurrent enrollment and kind of college credit night um we did not have one last year um because of Co but we had good turnout two years ago at John Marshall and we had all three high schools together and then we had some of the um representatives from the colleges and then I think it would even be helpful to have some of the students I just met with the equity Specialists last week to talk through the options and make sure that they they have the information because I don't think we do a great job of marketing all of the opportunities to all of our students we have a lot but I think it kind of depends on if

180you had a brother or sister that went through the system or if you understand how the course guide works and we know not everybody keeps it you know next to their bedside um so I do think that that um we'll probably look at that night again that would be specific to the courses that are offered right at the campus and I had forgotten about that we didn't do it last year but I remember standing at Spartan night and uh Panther night you were at John Marshall and it was like earn college credit in high school and there that was a little bit flawed and that those are mostly incoming n9th GR ERS and we're saying when you're in 10th and maybe 10th and 11th and 12th grade you can do this and they're like oh

181what do I take in ninth grade so we certainly can up our auntie in that and do a better job of getting the word out I mean it's hard you know um and I I know that it's something our counselors work on they you know go into classrooms and they're you know I think that's a lot of one-on-one conversations with students and to our teachers I think are marketing it a lot too not just just marketing but letting students know about the different opportunities can I ask one more so when we were talking last week yes at our study session and um we were hearing a little bit about the College and Career Readiness and what the work that's being done even before high school 8th grade with mapping out that that four-year plan do

182a lot of these courses require prerequisites so you really have to be talking to eighth graders to say you know if you're looking to take College in the schools there's some prerequisites you have to take before you take them or is or is that not the case there are some prerequisites there's not a lot that's a good question yeah I'm thinking about many of our um concurrent there's not um like our English 1117 and 1118 there's not a prerequisite um our college and the school's teaching as a profession there's no prerequisites so I think a lot of it is letting students know to kind of save room um I think more than anything because you know they have to sort of think about especially the ones that might be a block um you have to

183think about do you have enough time in your schedule the teaching as a profession is one that because it's at ctec they've got to have two hours and then they do that um experience out at the schools as well so I think it's sort of planting the seed that they want to save some room Junior and Senior year to think about that Miss Workman yes I noticed you had um the current enrollments for all of these programs except for the concurrent enrollment for the 2021 2020 school year do you have that information just to see what the comparison is between the other two uh school years that are on the slide that's on the slide that says total number of college level courses accessed by RPS students PSO concurrent AP CIS articulated but those are

184all isn't that's the total number but then you have it broken down on B on ethnicity you know you have okay you have um I'm articulated credit you have let's see you have it broken down by um ethnicity for three years um college and the schools you've got enrollment also by ethnicity um but then when you go back to the concurrent and then you've got AP Peak uh course enrollment by ethnicity for 2021 but backing up one more slide I think it's slide seven maybe concurrent enrollment you have 2019 2020 2020 21 but what about this year and I should have added that that was a big part of uh the world's best Workforce presentation last week that was in there the concurrent by ethnicity so I didn't include it again okay I was just

185looking for a number that was similar to what we see on the current slide without me having to go back to the world's best Workforce presentation you have 11th and 12th grade enrollment for 2019 2020 11th and 12th grade enrollment for 2020 2021 but not for this year on this slide so I would have to go back to the world's best Workforce I can send it to you okay please do thank you other questions Mr parallel uh first hether I think it's an excellent idea to um utilize the equity specialist uh as a marketing or uh awareness um to students who perhaps historically have not either been aware or uh given the opportunity I also agree that the sibling connections are important and um we still experience first generation if you will opportunities of individuals

186who are oh I'm the first to this I'm the first to that and then uh not so much a question but an observation I was unaware until yesterday had the opportunity to attend the uh University of Minnesota Rochester state of the campus uh event and uh I was unaware that uh um uh University Minnesota Rochester also was a potential PSO uh option and uh do we have and there was a high school student I don't know if that student was a product of Rochester Public Schools or a different one uh but um uh I suppose more so were you aware that UMR is an option and uh how many of our students are currently I don't need to really know the exact number but uh I think it's I was really enthused to hear that

187UMR was a part of the PSO offerings and you know we don't really market for PSO I mean rctc has the night out at the Fieldhouse that is widely advertised I guess I don't know if UMR is actively doing that because we don't really kind of Market PSO I do think though one of the things that we know is that you know we do have a strong partnership with our University um neighbors and I think a lot of our students some of them really do like that PSO option they're ready for something different and so I think the more op options we have the better and just helping kids figure out when when would I want to take a concurrent enrollment course maybe I want to stay at my campus maybe I feel really connected

188to that school um and then we have some that are saying I'm ready for something a little bit different um so it'd be interesting to see how many we do have um accessing UMR PSO we could definitely kind of dig into that and see and have them connect with us because we'd be happy to you know I mean we work with rctc to like we live stream the event and stuff so now that it's virtual so I mean it's not like we aren't a part of it at all but you know give them our information or you give me their information we be happy to connect with them more opportunities for our students the better Miss Nathan if we did have students attending UMR wouldn't we have to payr the same way that we pay

189um yes rctc and so I'm looking at this bill I mean this is all to rctc um and I I know I get bills from the University of Minnesota I just haven't I'll have to look into that yeah I suppose if there were unless they were over $175,000 we wouldn't necessarily see them but I would still get them right right I I can actually just share Dr vlo that actually we have a meeting with Chancellor Carol at University Minnesota Rochester to talk about this collaboration and Brenda's in that meeting with me and she's deeply uh excited about that possibility and that campus is growing and it is the most diverse campus now in the University of Minnesota system so I'm very excited about collaboration there as with President Boyd at rctc I think we have

190the possibility of incredible part parnerships and this is fun for me CU I wrote my dissertation on how you help students from uh historically marginalized uh communities or who have historically been lower achieving decide to take one of these classes so I can tell you what the secret sauce is at some point we look forward to that we'll have a special session one thing we didn't mention um that I'll maybe just say FX um our first year experience course that we offer as a part of each of our Comprehensive High Schools we're going to be adding adding that to the online school as well so next year that'll be an option for our online school students and I think that's one of the those great opportunities to get kids thinking about you know college being

191possible um and just going to that graduation I went a couple weeks ago the stories and um just the promise and the hope that kids have when they can see where they could maybe see themselves and the future is amazing so I'm excited that we're going to be able to expand that thank you and I just want to say one more thing about um the guide I should have mentioned earlier is you know where courses are potentially offered most of them have an O now for online school so I think that's going to um really increase the enrollment last year at this time when we printed this guide online school was not a part of anything we were talking about so the fact that you know it's already in place and we can add it

192to this guide we're super excited excited about that awesome thank you so much appreciate your work and and the information 7.02 approval of 2020 2025 type 3 Transportation contract Amendment with kids on the go in Beacon Academy this is a briefing item drel uh chair Marvin and directors of the board I'm going to um actually ask Executive Director of Finance uh John Carlson to come up on this item it is uh definitely within our executive director of operations Scott sheron's portfolio but my sense is that uh board members questions were in particular on the financial implications of this and so you know who we turn to when that is the subject at hand so thanks John yeah not a problem I understand there were some questions back on October 19th when I was missing and

193um wanted to be able to address those so I don't know if you want to just ask them or what you would like to do I think since I was is the one who posed the questions unless there were others on the board who did so as well if if you have the question and the answer you're welcome to sure go ahead and share that information sure so maybe let's just take a quick step back why are we providing transportation to Rochester Beacon Academy they are a public charter school so you can enroll in them the same as you could uh open enroll to another District like Byron or Stewartville if you live in the Rochester District charter schools have the option to designate their local public school district within the boundary where they sit

194uh they can tell them by March 1st if they would like the public school to do the transportation for them Rochester Beacon Academy started as a uh School providing their own transportation a few years ago and then a couple years back they approached the district and said we um are going to give you notice that you're going to do it for us now and so by law they can do that and so we do the transportation for Beacon Academy with that we do get their general education Transportation Aid funneled directly to the school district it's about $55,000 annually which is not sufficient enough to do uh the routing that is required uh for them uh another piece with Beacon Academy I looked up their uh Minnesota report card uh data this afternoon they're at 74%

195of the students that go there have an IEP meaning they are student uh with special education services um because they are over 70% the way the funding formula works as a school they basically get to Bill back to the resident districts uh where the kids come from 100% of the unreimbursed cost so their costs basically go through the state aid funding formula for special education and anything left over gets divied up to all the Resident school districts so in other words one way or another we are responsible for paying all of the costs for Rochester Beacon Academy we will be reimbursed about 72% of what we will spend and the reason we are kind of okay with managing it is because we were able to drive down the cost from what they were paying before

196they asked us to do it um we felt that we can negotiate better deals we're um we've been doing transportation for a lot of years we have a great transportation department and so with us routing it us negot ating it uh we drove the cost down so again since we're going to pay for it anyway might as well try to do it the cheapest way the best way uh and that was doing it ourselves I think that hits um the high points I guess this would just be something maybe the legislative committee can continue to Advocate on behalf of the school district I was on the state um Finance education working group and this was definitely a a Hot Topic um one of the solutions we had is that Charter Schools um be required to

197put a little bit of the skin in the game as well and basically have a cross subsidy they need to manage because just being able to stick it all back to the public school district when we already have a cross subsidy don't get paid 100% is what cross subsy means we um have one ourselves through serving our own kids and then we get build back from any Charter School um or basically any kid that leaves our district as a student with special education service that all comes back back to us and so you know continuing to advocate for full funding of special education would be very helpful because um honestly it doesn't feel good when you're paying the bills for kids who don't go here totally okay with school choice that's not what I'm advocating

198against I'm just saying it doesn't feel right to make a district pay for another District when the general education uh Revenue follows that student around the state wh they choose to go looking through my question I think you've answered the gist of them but I would like to make a comment one of the resolutions before the delegate assembly is to put into place at least initially the recommendations from that Finance working group that you were talking about so that would have a a solution there yeah it'll be very interesting to hear what kind of discussion we have at the pre pre- meeting on on Saturday other questions right this is a briefing item and Mr Carlson is there urg in getting this passed yeah I think it's sat for a month so I think they

199would like it I would note that the resolution should probably there's just a clerical error in the dates there I think it's said 2020 to 2025 and it was meant to say 2021 to 2024 so add a year on the start and drop a year on the end and you'll have the right date when you read the resolution okay move to action second and movement seconded to move this to action any discussion on in favor say I um I opposed it's now an action item be it resolve the school board of Independent School District 535 just hereby approve the 2021 to 2024 type 3 Transportation contract addendum with kids on the go Inc of approval second it's been moved and seconded all in favor say I I I oppos motion passes thank you thank you

200Mr Carlson 7.03 approval to purchase medify ma12 air purifier systems my favorite air purifier system Dr pel uh chair Marvin directors of the board I'd like to ask Scott sherid and our executive director of operations to join us as you know this is a component of our effort to mitigate the spread of covid within our schools and so this is a purchase that we would be uh using with your approval a portion of our federal funding uh that is intended to support that purpose so Scott thank you Dr pel good evening board members or evening good evening still evening yeah as drel said uh we have that federal dollars for Co and the facility division was allocated about 800,000 of it to look into what we could do for mitigation strategies related to hea filters

201and such we did a lot of research on them contacted a lot of different agencies and attended a several seminars and uh worked with uh we discovered that the U ofm was uh really high on the HEPA filter similar to the white box you see behind you over there so a while ago we purchased about a hundred of them and just to review them see how they worked and we've had absolutely no issues with them um so with this part of that 800,000 what we decided to do we wanted to look at seeing if we could put one in each classroom uh they cover about 2500 squ Square ft uh there's timers on them uh there's filter indicators on them they're pretty simple maintenance uh to take care of filters and that kind of thing

202uh and so we priced out a thousand of them or the purchasing manager did and we also wanted looked at getting filters replacement filters for them uh and we're looking at about uh 1184 of those because we wanted to buy extra ones for the current models that we already have as well um we got a a really good deal on them at a quote of $55 each so for a th000 obviously is500 $55,000 and then the filters are about $130 each and uh the total cost for that th000 uh hepto filters and 1184 replacement filters is $58,900 and6 um these items are available if they are approved tonight we can order them tomorrow they'll be shipped within 2 to 3 days and be here within a week and we're already in the planning process in

203hopes that it is approved to get them distributed out as soon as they arrive it'll be a pretty big shipment as you can imagine a thousand of these um I do want you to know that uh the the filters on these are supposed to last 6 months by that's with 247 operation ours aren't going to be 247 operation um like at board meetings I turn it on when I come in and it runs to the end of the board meeting we turn it off or when someone's using this RAM and that's the system that we want to put in place and put in the mindset of the staff that are using these that when you come into your room you turn them on they'll clear the air 2 200 square fet within 30 minutes run

204them all throughout your the course of your day then turn them off at the end of the day and and that will extend the life of the filters and we anticipate we'll get about 3 years out of uh the purchase that we're we're doing today hopefully about three years um as an aside there's obviously another $140,000 that are left here um we're purchasing active Pier systems which is a whole different system uh these are used like a UV light that actually kill virus mold uh oders that kind of thing these filters does capture it but the active Pier actually kills it and actually off off of surfaces as well and we're we want to spend the remaining 140 uh on the HEPA filters and we're going to anticipating we're going to buy uh 30 real

205large ones that blast out 5,000 square fet and we'll distribute them where the sites can use them in like cafeterias where the students pull their m last down while they're eating this is a great system to use in a cafeteria for instance then we're going to buy 50 smaller ones that cover about 750 square ft and we'll distribute them throughout the district as well but those can be used in isolation rooms if we're still using them nurse's office office manager areas that are connected to the nurse's office and knock out anything that's going on in those areas as well so that's the update on the HEPA filters but tonight uh I'm seeking the approval to buy the a th000 of the white boxes and 1184 filters question Miss amonson I realize this is a tall

206order but is there anything that we are able to measure on our own that will give us an indicator of whether this was an effective purchase I mean I know it's not a science experiment because we can't hold all the the variables constant but is there anything in in the company's information that says you should notice this or you should see this or anything at all like that well they just guarantee that out of that 2500 square feet that it's going to capture 99.9% of uh viruses spws mold Etc and the research that we've done on it uh particularly on the active Pier which our FDA approved uh shows that they do work I hopefully we'll see a reduction in uh Transmissions within classrooms you know as you may note that if one student gets

207covid and that student is uh taken out of the classroom but the remedial effects of potentially transmitting to others that haven't been infected yet or showing signs of it do happen and we've seen that on many occasions throughout the year where uh if one student's sick in a couple more days and another one is and another and it appears that it's all related to a classroom so we're hoping that we'll see the reduction of that that it'll eliminate that transmission piece that occurs within the classrooms so that'll be a good variable to to watch for Miss Amon and and I think I heard you say three years or so we're thinking um what would we do with the equipment at the end of that period of time if we decided not to keep buying HEPA

208filters we could sell them on Public Surplus if there's no longer any use form um or we could buy more filters if uh if we have the money for them thank you Miss moffen um you mentioned that the space is about 2500 square ft I haven't been in all the buildings and I know the classrooms vary by size is that an appropriate size on average of our classrooms our classrooms range about average is about 8 850 ft so it's overdoing it awesome thanks but you'll notice it's running right now and it's really quiet you can hardly hear it and there are four levels on it the machine that's running behind you there so it is it doesn't interfere with uh the ambient noise that's in the classroom thank you again this is a briefing item

209move to action second been moved and seconded to move to action any discussion on in favor of moving action say I I opposed it's now an action item be it res the school board of Independent School District 535 approves the purchase of 1,000 medify ma 112 HEPA fil air purifiers and 1,184 filter Replacements in the amount of $658,000 16 move approval second and moved and seconded all in favor say I I post uh it motion is passed thank you thank you thank 8.01 authorization to increase daily teacher substitute pay rate this is a briefing item Dr Mel thank you madam chair directors of the board as you know um supporting our staff so they can support our students during this pandemic is a ongoing Challenge and something we're all very focused on and one of

210the single loudest requests we've heard from those staff is to try and address the shortage of substitute teachers and so we have put in place a number of steps one of which we're asking you to approve tonight so I'd like to ask our executive director of Human Resources kle bachan to come and give you uh a brief overview of what we're doing in general but in particular to ask for your approval of this next step in that strategy Carl thank you good evening board members what uh you have in front of you for the resolution for teacher substitute or pay is to increase the rate from $165 a day to $200 per day some background about this we when we went to $165 a day during the 2021 school year we were one of the

211highest paying districts in the state if you recall I came to you in the fall and we continued with that because our intent was during what we thought at the time maybe was going to be a temporary need for an increase we thought we'd be able to go back when we still had Co very active the fall we came back and asked you to extend that $165 a day in the meantime a number of districts have increased their daily rate of pay I recently saw an article that Minneapolis and a number of other Metro areas schools are getting close to $200 a day um in addition to what the other schools are paying we are seeing more daily absences compared to pre-co times and we continue to struggle filling substitute positions and as Dr pel

212said he's hearing very frequently from teachers that this is an a dire need so we feel like we need to make a bold and definitive move here and increase it substantially to $200 to again put us at one of the highest rates in the state um a couple of other things I just want to highlight for you in addition to increasing the daily rate some other things steps we want to put in place to attract and maintain our substitute teachers is we would starting effectively uh immediately I should say um and then we're going to try this for a couple month period as we would reimburse substitute teachers for their license um we still haven't figured out the fine tuning on that but when we give them their first paycheck we would include a reimbursement

213for their license but we do want them to sub for us for a certain amount of time we give that the other thing we've had in place for a while is a a referral bonus for staff so if a staff and that we looked at our shortage areas when we initially put that out which were PA professionals and maintenance we would extend that to pair or to substitute teachers so if a current staff member referred somebody who became a substitute teacher and they taught for us for a certain amount of time then that staff member would be eligible for $200 um referral bonus the other thing that we've that we're working on is additional training and shadowing opportunities for new substitutes uh I've been working with Julie Jimenez in our office and she is the

214champion for substitute teachers um she really looks out for them and and advocates for them so one of the things we've been talking about is how do we better support them and she we have an idea that we would pay our some of our regular more established substitute teachers um an extra amount to have a new substitute Shadow them for a couple of days and we also do have some circumstances where we could have the substitute Shadow a license teacher for a couple of days and sometimes people come in when they apply to substitute they know some of the teachers and they've they've made that arrangement to do that but we're looking at at defining that a little better and extending it the other thing that we we have been doing and will continue to

215do is we will provide staff development for our substitutes so we had that staff development day a couple weeks ago we had recently surveyed our substitutes we saw um a theme of technology is really challenging um subbing has changed a lot Google Classroom so uh Brenda wichman's wonderful cni staff came down and spent the day training about 30 or 40 of our substitute teachers and helping helping them understand that technology better um the last thing I'll highlight is we are in the process of getting names of substitutes who would do testimonials so if we had some substitutes um and do some um public campaigning and making making a video or something along those lines or or something we could show on our website to maybe dispel some of the myths about being a substitute teacher

216and highlight some people who really like doing it and maybe we'd be able to attract some people that have an interest and I apologize I think I might have uh left this off but the potential cost of this would be $300,000 and that would come from the general fund so can't that would be $300,000 for the rest of this year yes estimated okay questions board members Miss Workman yeah so we've heard that um teachers in the schools now are have to substitute for someone who's um gone for one class period which usually or oftentimes is their prep hour what kind of compensation do those teachers receive for that hour oh I could not tell you that off the top of my head but they do get compensated for that hour sorry I don't have okay

217I mean I'm just curious if it was a flat rate or if it was built on you know your years of experience in your current salary if you remember is it a flat rate flat rate it's a flat rate sorry I can dig that out and get that to you are eight people in back you nodding thank you after ta22 I'm not Kidd I'm serious okay there's that well there's your answer other questions Garcia mine is more of a comment and I feel like it's the same one every time we have these conversations I yes I would love to pay people the amount that they deserve something that is reflective of us saying that we are compensating you and I also feel that um particularly from from a retired educator who is also a substitute

218teacher who sent us an email [Music] saying and we also need to Res respect and provide um I can't remember exactly the terminology that she uses but we need to be our our compensation for educators needs to be reflective right so there were concerns about the contract um and how what are we what are we doing as a district long term because I feel like a lot of these are Band-Aid Solutions and yes I'm willing to vote Yes on let's get them what they need right now and what are we doing long term for not just the Educators who are stepping in for each other but also the substitutes that we we need how are we retaining these people because you know on our HR list there are a lot of people walking out the

219door too and so how do we keep how do we keep the people that are here already happy and compensate them appropriately and effectively while also trying to attract new folks well I think we actually have increased our subpool compared to preo um not a lot but as I I've been crunching some recent numbers and it looks like we're averaging about six more subs per day than pre-co um but we did lose some subs to the pandemic there are Subs who are still being very cautious um there are a lot of people like I think last month we had 4.3 million people in the country walk off their resigned from their job which was up 0.1 million from the month before so we're all facing these challenges and we're brainstorming with people um I think

220one of the things that Julie does a really good job of is she does and one of the things we do for our subs a lot of districts do not do staff development on those days and we do think of hey how are we going to support you but we need to continue to expand and we we survey our subs we look at that and we respond to it and we're we're certainly open to doing other things so I'm we continue to just grind at it that's what we do scratch and grind and try and do things and try these things like these hiring incentives but we also need to improve the culture and that that's also important part right because I think the the labor shortage is the misnomer because it it's not that

221there we don't have enough people to provide the labor there are plenty of people how millions of people walked off their jobs over the last two years it's how do we attract and maintain and retain those individuals and so I I feel like I get that we're not the only ones and I'm this is not directed entirely at you it's just more of like how do we how do we fix this because it's we're not like if we're just going to if we have a limb cut off like a bandaid is not going to solve the problem and so we can keep putting money at this every so many months but at some point it's just going to be a waste of dollars because we're not doing what we need to to to keep the

222people like it's going to cost us less money to increase educator salaries overall or increase substitute pay overall rather than all of these like extra incentives over time too and so I just I know you've been coming in front of us often for these things and my my comments are often the same and I just I'm feeling the frustration of like what can we do to help we we do anticipate this will be a permanent increase um that we aren't going to come back and I think as I think a similar topic came up last time and I'll refer back to that is when we negotiate contracts with our groups you set us you set the parameters for us and we work within those parameters you know k i it seems to me that and

223sort of to speak to your to your concern Dr Garcia which I think is a real one that you got this multi-pronged approach that could be a permanent solution you know decent pay um support training um respect change the culture ensure that students and staff know that when you have a substitute in your building um that person deserves respect and this is how we are as a building going to treat that person um that when those substitutes feel that they have been embraced by that building and it may be that down the road we'll have certain Subs who will sort of are find a particular building is their home they'll want to come back because the last thing we want to do is just put people with the pulse in a classroom and say manage

224them for a while we want kids education to continue and I think the more we can um Empower our substitute teachers to be teachers um the better it's going to be for them and for our students and you know we've got I think a number of parents who've been staying home with their kids and they're ready to get back into the workforce this could sure be a good first step um and maybe decide that they want to become teachers down the road I mean that could be another thing is that if you're a substitute and you have this many hours under your belt maybe we'll Mentor you or give you a pathway into um getting a teaching license Miss Workman I think the reason I asked about um what teachers are compensated for you know

225when they sub for another teacher is uh who's gone is how does this $200 day rate compare with maybe what a first year teacher is actually earning it's less we made sure of that we made sure um there there was a there was a teacher that I uh spoke with recently who was like you know substitutes are earning $50 $50 a class period and I said well you know and that's more than we make and I said well you teach six periods a day you know I don't think so it's it doesn't surpass that and those are things we have to look at whenever we're looking at our sub rates is making sure we're not surpassing our beginning people on the beginning of the SCH okay I appreciate knowing that thank you I just have

226one more comment I think it's and it's more to the board too like the idea of having these four no contact days um for educators I feel like if we can sort of combine those as like not that it's necessarily full on Mental Health days for the Educators but Frontline workers like any educator anybody that's working in a school anybody that's a nurse or a doctor like we've been it's been so much for the last two years like I could I could cry just thinking about it and like I'm not even an educator on top of that I feel like we SL they have been pushed to the max for the last two years and they're tired they want like we didn't get to just stay at home and not do you know and so

227I feel like we also as the district have to recognize that and take care of that part of Staff you know like they had been even if they weren't in classrooms like mobilizing to an incredible degree to be able to pull off a year and a half going on two years in a pandemic and I you know I want to give whatever you come to us with maybe I'm not supposed to say this because I we have to make those decisions board meeting but like yes if they need money I will give them the money and I feel like if we're recognizing that our staff are exhausted and like to the Max and like we can't even get subs in the door because they're all tired we need to just like full stop like we

228need to take care of everybody and I think like in in certain um indigenous identified like care facilities this happens in a lot of Latin latinx places is they will bring in like they'll have days of like cultural pause right like take this day so that you can go do with family or we're bringing healers into you or this is how we're doing it's not staff developments like staff nurturing things and I feel like I would also like to spend money on that so that we can mitigate the need for I mean yes thank you for the it's going to be a consistent increase in their pay but also like we don't have to go through some of the other items of now can we also pay Paras more can we also come back and

229give an incentive for this referral you know all right Miss B I I think this would be a really good topic to bring before the legislature because unfortunately I mean I always tell people yeah I mean if I had a billion dollars to to to spend for the district every year yes we could do all of these wonderful things but we don't so I think this next year even though it's not a funding year we really need to make sure that our legislators are really thoroughly educated in what things are costing us what we need more to be able to get the job done so that when the new bium starts we're not approaching them with all of this then but we can you know we can start to kind of pound it into their

230heads ahead of time um so I'm looking forward to doing that and good idea for a future agenda item so thanks for that I'll get that noted and at this point we're looking at um increasing the substitute teacher pay which is a briefing item move to action second it's been moved and seconded to move this to action any discussion give them their money pardon give them the money well there's the action right there okay we don't have to vote um all in favor of making this action item say I I opposed it's now an action item be it resolved School Board of Independent School District 535 does hereby approve increasing the substitute daily teacher wages for those having in-person contact with students to $200 per day move approval second and moved and seconded all in

231favor say I I opposed motion passes thank you thank you C up 8.02 approval of audit report for the 2020 2021 fiscal year this is a briefing item drel uh Madam chair and directors of the board I'd like to ask our executive director of uh Finance John Carlson to join us and I'm actually going to just invite John to stay for the next three items um so get comfortable we have a very important report on our audit uh and the very good results that I think we should feel very good about and then moving from that into an update on how we are expending our federal covid funds uh and then finally an item on combined polling places but let's begin with the audit all right well good evening again and um Nancy from buron

232kdb is going to do most of the talking I'm going to end up stepping over to the computer to advance these for you because the clicker is not working so uh you get to drive the conversation take it away all right thank you good evening everyone members of the board and administration thank you for giving me some of your meeting tonight to talk about the results of the audit we'll start talking about all of the communications that issue so first of all the most important letter in the document is the independent auditor report summarizes the work that we did and um has the opinion paragraph which is the key summarizes that we are issuing an unmodified opinion which is the best that we as your Auditors can issue indicates that everything was fairly stated based

233on the results of the audit um in addition to that um we're still on the first slide sorry sorry um we had to perform a single audit this year because of the amount of federal funding that you received and we took a look at three of your programs in particular uh the Child Nutrition program with the increased summer Food Service uh the coronavirus relief funds that you've received and then also the education stabilization funds which includes Esser and gear and based on the work that we did related to that we're issuing an unmodified opinion on compliance and no internal control findings so a clean report related to the single audit then we have a report on government auditing standards which um talks about the internal control work that we did we're not giving an opinion

234on internal control we do indicate we had no internal control findings and that is on the entire financial statements and then also we look at compliance related to those standards and no findings there as well and then our F last official letter is the Minnesota legal compliance report and that is um from the state auditor's office they give us very specific State statutes that they ask us to look at as they relate to accounting matters and based on that work again no findings so all clean reports and um no findings so accredit to your finance department then we have a communication letter which houses um several pieces of information and that's what we're going to spend most of our time on tonight so starting out with some financial analysis taking a look at your general

235education Aid formula allowance to start with um general education Aid is your largest funding source so it's important to take a look at the components of that calculation of the aid and we start here and we give you a 10-year history to see the minimal increases that you have had on general education Aid and when we look at 2021 uh you did receive 2% and are experiencing 2 and a half% for the year that you're operating in now the other part of that calculation is going to be your student counts um and we start with the um residents so these are the students that live within the boundaries of your District not necessarily those that are attending in your buildings and that number um did decrease a little bit this year about 1.6% and that

236decrease came after 3 years of positive um growth in the residents and this resident decline is what we've been seeing across the state of Minnesota I think there were a lot of changes in choices that um parents made for their students and we have the same information in a graphical format on the next slide and again you can see that increase that you had been experiencing in the decrease for 2021 I think when you look at these numbers the key is that your um kindergarten and other is where you saw a decrease in this the elementary category as well so those secondary students uh were here and attending and that number actually went up I take those residents and wait them by grade level with everybody receiving 1.0 with the exception of secondary at 1.2

237so that increase that you saw in secondary is important there because you are getting a larger portion of general education Aid so when we look at the weighted numbers your resident still did decrease um you had a slight um increase in the loss to open enrollment um about 20 2200 students net leaving the district so overall the pupil units that you did serve in your buildings decreased by 2.9% so a little bit faster paced than the residents and again same information here and as with the residence your people unit served to had been increasing each year with the decline in 2021 so hopefully that decreases due to the effects of Co and those students come back around in the years to come one last chart that takes a look at that again highlighting the changes

238so you had been experiencing nice growth and saw the drop off in 2021 Switching gears then to take a look at actual dollar amounts starting with the general fund revenues um these have been increasing and you'll see a positive trend for each of the years including fiscal 2021 up about 1.4% so not a huge increase um that equates to about $3.3 million some shifting though when you look at the categories so the state sources which is the middle portion of the bar the green um that decreased about 190,000 and that has to do with the decrease in the enrollment that you experienced the bottom portion the blue um that is your Levy that number also decreased just with a change in the levy for the general fund for the fisal year and then the top

239portion is where you see the biggest change that gray portion the other includes your federal funds so it's Federal and local that increased over $5 million with those Esser gear Corona virus ref funds all of that included there when we look at um budget to actual results so taking what you had planned for the year and looking at what actually occurred and then the variance column which is going to be on the far right hand side and when we follow the variance column up to the top and we look at your revenues the variance is about 1.2% so pretty close to what you had anticipated um a couple of categories with some fluctuations first of all the federal sources were under what you anticipated just expecting to spend more of that Esser money before year

240end that didn't happen it still will be available for future years um to draw on and then the state source is over budget with conservative budgeting for special education it's a tough one to pin down changes from year to year so conservative budget there and then on the expenditure side of things you did have a little bit larger variance about 8% under budget um and it came across almost all of the categories it had to do with what you were dealing with with covid um there were fewer substitute costs with the distance learning um you were need foras in that environment as well and then your projects in the capital outline line also under budget just with the change in what you had anticipated and what actually occurred during the year so overall you're anticipating

241a decrease in your fund balance and you did actually increase it by um 2.6 million the next couple of pages take a look at your expenditures um starting just with an overall trend by function and you can see you had an increase here 2 and a half% so a little bit more than the increase in revenues um but again across several of the categories just with normal salary cost of living increases things like that so nothing unusual there and we take those expenditures and we uh present them on a per pupil basis so this gives us the ability to compare to the state of Minnesota averages which we can do for a fiscal 2020 we don't have the 2021 numbers yet so that's what you'll see here on the top we have um the Rochester

242school district for each of your funds for a total of $16,234.73 basis and then we've given you um the peer group that you're typically used to seeing that John provided us the districts to include and then finally the overall Statewide average so you can see there are some variations there um where you're spending your money you can see that special education Aid a little bit higher than the state average and that of your peers and then offsetting that you're going to see lower regular instruction which just comes from the shifting of the revenue and where you spend it and then we have one more chart that takes a look at your expenditures and this one takes a look at them as a piece of Pi by function again and when you look at 2020 versus

2432021 you can see that the pies are almost exactly the same so very consistent um spending across across those two years the next chart takes your general fund and rolls it all together and looks at it at a very high level and you can see each year since 2017 you have had excess revenues allowing you to increase the fund balance overall so again like I mentioned on the budget to actual chart fund balance up about 2.6 million in the bottom portion of this chart we've given you all of the components of the fund balance so we have a nonspendable those are for prepaid items so items that are used in this fiscal 22 that were purchased prior to year end then we have the restrictions and these are outlined um by State Statute so the

244state gives you spending categories and revenue to to cover those spending categories and that's the residual that you see here then there's an assignment which is set aside internally by the district and then finally unassigned which is two numbers up from the bottom of the chart and you can see that was at 30.2 million at the end of the year and you have outlined a policy to have not less than 6% of the operating budget in that number and at year end it was about 20 12 and a half% of your actual expenditures So based on the work that you've done in increasing that fund balance you are in compliance with that policy at your end we have another way to look at your um Financial Health and this is your unrestricted fund balances or

245percentage of unrestricted expenditures so what we're doing here is taking the nonspendable the assigned and the unassigned and then comparing those to similar expenditures so we factored out all of the restrictions both in the balance and in the expenditures and when we look at this for 2021 you did increase a little bit just as you have each of the five years we're looking at but still fell below that Statewide average which I anticipate will um increase this year as well like it did last year so that's hovered right around 20 21% for about 10 years and you've seen nice increases from 10.7% up to 20.3 in fiscal 21 next couple of slides take a look at your long-term liabilities um including not only the bonds that you have issued and the capital leases that you

246have issued but also those pension the Statewide pension um liabilities that are proportioned out across districts in the state of Minnesota so you can see when you look at your total debt that is up about 23.5 million you issued the 46.9 million bond that included some refunding so the refunding happened um reducing the debt and then you also made $14.4 million in normal principal payments and then you'll also see that that pension liability did increase again this year up about 23 million and this graph takes a look at the same information um showing you your total debt that you issued down in the green line and then the total debt including pension opep and compensated absences on the top and you can see the swings that happen in that number based on that pension so

247when things change and the economy is better and interest rates and returns are better and assumptions change it goes up and down and that's what you see happening in the blue line okay so just a couple more slides taking a look at your special Revenue funds starting with food Food Service both revenues and expenditures in this fund were down um you did have excess revenues of almost 900,000 um the decrease in activity related to a fewer males served with distance learning and some of the Hybrid models that happened during the year so ended at um just about 3.7 million in fund balance and then your community service fund um Revenue did fall short of your expenditures in this fund for the first time since 2017 um active ity programming all of that was affected with

248Co um that's a common theme across the state of Minnesota um but the good news is that you have almost 2.2 million in fund balance and this fund is segregated into several categories and all of those categories were positive as well so even though it was a tough year you still ended in a good spot and that is the information I have anyone questions Miss amonson uh for the media or anyone else who wants to celebrate with us um the clean audit report the no findings and and um how many of your districts achieve that U not many I think that this is probably my second presentation this year uh with that kind of a report it's extremely rare to not have any internal control findings we do have a lot of districts out there

249there doing a good job with the federal funding because I think the department has done a good job of giving guidance and providing what you need but um internal control findings happen in almost every District in some format so very rare so pretty impressive yes very good question Miss amonson welcome Miss Nathan and on that note I like to do this every year um because although Mr Carlson is exemplary as a leader in this area um we know he has staff that is responsible for keeping our numbers on track so I would like to recognize them in light of this this great result we have Jared kit our budgeting manager and I'm not going to pronounce all these names right I apologize Lori Han lton our accountant Jill mullenbach accountant Andrea Rogers accountant Anne shyac

250accountant Andrew hoffbeck our accounting manager Nancy milky accounts payable Linda kch accounts payable Jenny kigs accounts payable and accounts receivable and CTT Wilson fixed assets the people behind the scenes that we don't see but we are really appreciative of so please send them our thanks yeah thank you for saying that appreciate it and if we had a full audience I think everybody should applaud and stand up now but with the empty room and sorry for the three and a half hour wait IED that the audience left though well you're it's videotaped no recorded not video we don't do that anymore you'll still be famous it's worth it I was really pleased to see once again that our restricted fund balances are good so that um you know student nutrition Community Education and others don't have

251to take money from the general fund in order to pay their bills so um all of you guys who manag all of this stuff awesome thank you Miss Nathan um on the slide where you talk about our general fund Financial Health where we're consistently below um the the state average um tell me what that means is it an issue should we um it's just a a point of comparison uh larger districts typically are not above the overall Statewide average because this is the Statewide average so we have smaller districts in outstate and Northern Minnesota that have the demographics that bring in large amounts of federal funding and their fund balance percentage might be 50% we also have smaller districts that need to save more because a catastrophe is a catastrophe no matter how big or

252small so I wouldn't say that that's alarming I wouldn't say that's something to correct I do like to see as an audit of the positive trend great thanks other questions and Mr Carlson is this available to the general public yes this is on board docs right now and I think we also add it into our website on the transparency report at the bottom of our website so there very transparent correct okay thank you other questions thank you so much both of you oh wait we have to approve this I say I do think we need formally approved okay it's a briefing item move it to action second it's been moved and seconded to move this to action uh any discussion all in favor say I I oppos it's now an action item be it resolved

253the school board of Independent School District 535 except the 2020 2021 audit report of the school district Financial records as of June 30th 2021 as submitted by uh Bergen kdv limited move approval second moved in seconded all in favor say I I oppos motion passes thank you so much thank you a good evening than so much thank you and then Mr Carlson it I'm not sure if you've gotten comfortable yet or not this is 8.03 federal covid funding update this is an information item very good um I was asked a little while ago to maybe do a recap of where we stand right now with our federal fund so that was uh the intent behind this a lot of this is um money that has been spent to date and uh we'll talk about that

254there's uh money still left to spend before all the federal funds are exhausted so Brenda is going to run this for me basically basically just a quick rundown there were three Congressional acts since 2020 that supplied extra Federal funding to the majority of districts across the United States uh the first one we referred to as the cares act Corona virus Aid relief and economic security then we moved right away into the crsa and then eventually um I think this was late 2020 was the American Rescue plan Within These uh three Congressional acts we are presently aware of at least 30 different funding opportunities some of them were um very specific in that um maybe they ruled us out because uh they were targeting the funds to some other entity or a charter school or something

255like that so of the 30 we know that we've been awarded 21 different funding sources uh the grand total was 38.7 million and generally we have until September 3r 30th of 2024 to exhaust all these funds so um there's a lot of flexibility in there even though there's not a lot of flexibility and by that I mean we have discretion on how how we spread it out uh but with 21 different Awards and 21 different tracking mechanisms we do have to make sure that the funds within each Source are spent the way uh that the law or the rules uh are telling us to do that um as of November 7th when we pulled this data to prepare for tonight we had spent $10.8 million of the funds I know that the bulleted list kind

256of below that does not exactly m match to 10.8 million and that's uh intentional I was just trying to find like the top five uh reasons are the top five areas where we've spent money so um with most things at the school district uh the majority so far has gone on Staffing that's been contact tracing instructional technology positions some Technology support position positions those were really important when we had to switch right to distance learning uh we uh spent a a decent amount on summer school last year called Summer of Discovery and then uh this year we've been putting some of the money towards the RPS online school since we um that as you heard earlier kind of really expanded really fast um and so we wanted to make sure that that was uh staffed

257appropriately um the next biggest purchase falls into the category of tech devices uh we bought laptops for our teachers and Chromebooks for our students and so you had to prove those expenditures right away um at the uh fall of last year and then uh a couple other uh points there we uh spent nearly a half million dollars on cleaning equipment part of that was to um we're having trouble Staffing in our custodial um area and continue to uh look for more maintenance uh people uh but those were the automated or autonomous floor scrubber uh and those be set to uh basically clean the floors while the uh person on duty can go do something else and then come back and check on the equipment later uh we spent around $300,000 on vehicles to kind of

258expand our transportation so we really targeted making sure our secondary schools had a van um on premises so if they need to run out and get grab a student get a student uh to the building to give extra supports they didn't have to try and line up a bus route to get them there on a certain day and then uh we've spent money on contracted Transportation as well and on van services and busing Services um one point that I was going to make um not directly related to this but um I think there was some misinformation circulating at one time about uh we get more money the more restrictions we put in place and that's absolutely not true none of this money is tied on masking or social distancing or putting kids in distance learning

259none of it was contingent upon that these were this is all extra money that was um given to us to um basically uh find our way out of the pandemic and and it didn't have strings attached um as far as safety mitigation strategies so just wanted to make sure that was clear um as of November 7th uh we have $3.7 million encumbered encumbered is an accounting term that basically just means we've reserved the funds in the budget system so there's either purchase orders um or staff um that are committed to those dollars of of the remaining funds and so again that's Staffing for RPS online school that instructional technology teacher couple Technology support positions contact tracing positions you heard about earlier and then uh recently I approved a purchase order for Chromebooks in our adult

260basic education program at hofor so you kind of do all the math there you get down to there's $23.6 Million worth of decisions left to make as of November 7th and as a super superintendent and I were uh kind of talking through like how are we going to allocate that out how are we going to make those decisions we're basically going to um categorize things into four kind of broad buckets first would be Co mitigation you have saw a perfect example that tonight you approve the medify uh units that is for immediate mitigation purposes uh to improve the indoor air quality our buildings so these are going to be Staffing and supplies their short term to get us through the last days of the pandemic then we're going to uh categorize into student academic social

261and emotional support So this could be programs or other initiatives to help our students recover um after the pandemic investments in staff so this could be supporting new Andor existing positions as we continue to move forward over the next couple of years and then launching long-term change so we are going to identify some uh Investments and new strategies that will tie directly to the updated strategic action plan that's being work worked on right now so it be kind of a launching way to um fund some of the initiatives that I know that are going to be um good and uh might lack a funding source otherwise and so it's a perfect opportunity to use this time to study and figure out what we uh should do differently going forward so just a couple of timelines

262that are left for different spending decisions that will come your way uh we are doing a comprehensive uh five-year Financial forecast so this is what we do every time this year we take the audited results that you just heard about we put those um into our model then we take this year's Uh current budget we're also working simultaneously right now on finishing up budget revision so kind of rolling forward all those unused site funds we want to roll those back into the budget get your formal approval to spend those and then we need to start forecasting out the next 5 years uh so we can kind of see where we're going to land because uh that's really going to drive I think some of the remaining decisions on those funds and potentially mitigating um a

263projected deficit that we were talking about back in May when we were doing the budget for this year and then we also want to come on January 11th we have a uh study session set aside that night to kind of just do a comprehensive dive into the overall budget situation so we can talk more about the 5year forecast we'll also bring you uh some of the overarching strategy and recommendation of how uh we feel uh we should allocate the remaining funds within those four General buckets I don't know that we're going to come with an exact plan and say 50,000 for this person and 50,000 for that person but we kind of want to give you a a breakdown of those remaining funds into those four broad areas and then uh of course you would

264be brought any of those spending decisions that require your board approval kind of Step by Step as we go through this I think that was it on the covid funding update at you know if there's any questions we could go down that path Miss Workman um yes I think it's really important for the media to report this third full paragraph in the background on board docs the 38.7 million dollar of federal covid money is primarily reimbursed to the district after it has been spent there's been a lot of chatter out there that somehow you are sitting with or we are sitting with $38 million stashed all over the building somewhere and we're just itching to run off with it so we don't get those funds until after they've SP been spent correct that is correct

265we spend them then we seek reimbursement so that's a reason kind of why you need cash reserve and fund balance to and that was going to be my next point is that we do have a cash Reserve I'm assuming that you know we can afford to do this my question with that is how how long does it take to be reimbursed for those expenditures yeah usually it's not too long so they have different dates where you draw the money is what the term they use and you know it might be something where you draw on a Wednesday and you get a direct deposit on you know the next Tuesday in your bank account so so we're not talking out like months and months we're talking a matter of days yep okay thank you very much

266Miss Nathan so Mr Carlson do you anticipate that I know we'll hear about what the planning is um in January but do you anticipate we'll um actually approve the various spending pieces as part of our budget or do you think it'll be separate um expenditures even before we approve the budget in June yeah I think if there's any purchases of things you know any more uh items that cost over 175,000 those you'll just get as they come up I'm not aware off the top of my head of any large things hanging out there I think getting the the air units was one of the last major things we had on the list I think in general my plan would be that it would be um identified and and clear what you're approving in either the

267revised budget or in the next year's starting point or starting budget thank you Mel I thank you madam chair I think the critical variable here is is that we on the cusp of opening schools and closing one dealing with a number of other changes that come from that in terms of Transportation routes and other things and so while this budget projection that uh John has done every year is always important I think it's especially important this year because of that very major change like when you open a new business uh sometimes you lose money before you make money and so opening a new school can bring costs that don't immediately um aren't immediately uh covered by enrollment and so this is really why this process that John and the team uh uh our undertaking is

268super important for the expenditure of the rest of those dollars um because there was a significant projected deficit and so despite the good position we're in um thanks to the board's leadership and and lots of your work that predates me here we really need to sharpen our pencils on that especially as it applies to the unknowns related to those new schools and the closure of another school so that's the big question and that's really the reason why we'll be bringing you a strategy that is rooted in where our budget projection is um for the the use of the rest of these funds I can just given a quick example where was a small group of us meeting yesterday and as we were just going through our budget allocation document when we close forell for example

269we'll lose a counselor when we open Dakota We'll add three school counselors because that's the same as what we do with Kellogg and Willow and and ja uh we'll be adding at Overland and we'll be adding um another half at uh longell so we're not necessarily going to grow students right away but we're going to have three and a half more school counselors next year so that's what he's saying and that's what I've been trying to hopefully communicate and and we'll try to detail that out a little bit better in this next budget projection is that our staffing is going to go up even if our students don't go up just because of how we're reposition um ourselves with our new buildings other questions thank you Mr Carlson excellent then we'll move on to um

270and this is a crowd pleaser approval of combining what I'm telling him not to leave yes this is a fun one John approval of combined polling places briefing item thank you I'll be glad to talk about this item I forgot about so annual uh for the last 3 years I've brought to you a combined polling places resolution and we know that we only need to act on this or actually implement this should we run an election on a day where there's not a Statewide election and uh it's a little tricky this year because this is the first time we're dealing with redistricting at the same time so the guidance we got was still go to your school board pass the resolution by December 31st with your recommended uh precincts you would combine should you run

271an election but know that by March 29th there's probably going to be new uh precincts new Wards and all that so within 30 days of that we'll have another opportunity to kind of look at the map see how it looks and then uh bring back another resolution to say this is how we would combine if we have a school district election on our own at this point we're not planning any school district election in 2022 that would be on our own so it's kind of more just a formality of just pass it and um so we dot our eyes cross our teas um because likely if we were going to do an election anyway next year it would be on a Statewide election day anyway it's an even numbered year so questions should this get

272moved to action or go on the consent agenda it can go either way it's just needs to be passed by December 31st so whatever your pleasure is I I really to me it's not controversial because I actually submitted the exact same res solution as I did last year I didn't change anything because you I think it's kind of a moot point but we need it as a placeholder for the next 3 months I'd like to move it to action so we can just get it off our plates and so we don't have a consent agenda with 90,000 items in it all right then I'll second been moved in seconded to move to action any discussion all in favor of moving into action say I post it's now an action item be it resolved School Board

273of Independent School District 535 does here hereby approve the resolution establishing combined polling places for multiple precincts and designating hours during which the polling places will remain open for voting for school board for school district I'm trying to do this in one breath that is the longest sentence uh voting for school district elections not held on the day of a Statewide election move approval second been moved and seconded all in favor say I I I opposed motion is passed thank you again Mr Carlson now we're going to 805 through 807 and policy committee this is all you 805 and 806 our second reading which won't be read and the first reading and 807 is uh procedures briefing thank you madam chair I know you all waited for this part of the meeting um item 805

274uh yes this is the second reading of any policies so if anyone does um have any comments or any uh concerns about any of those you can either share them now or you can let us know before the next meeting item 806 are our policy recommendations that we approved at the policy committee meeting in November and I think I'm starting policy 20302 order of the regular school board meeting the purpose of this policy is to ensure consistency in the order of business at regular school board meetings and we updated the language of the categories on the agenda genda based on how we're restructuring our annual School Board calendar policy 406 public and private Personnel data the purpose of this policy is to provide guidance to School District employees as to the data the school district

275collects and maintains regarding its employees volunteers independent contractors and applicants otherwise known as Personnel the updates are based on the um msba model policy recommendation and there were a few grammar and punctuation Corrections policy 413 harassment and violence the purpose of this policy is to maintain a learning and work environment free from harassment and violence on the basis of race color creed religion national origin sex age marital status familial status status with regard to public assistance sexual orientation gender identity expression or disability and the updates are to the language as per msba policy policy 503 is on student attendance the school board believes that regular School attendance is directly related to success in academic work benefits students socially provides opportunities for important Communications between teachers and students and establishes regular habits of dependability important to

276the future of the student the purpose of this policy is to encourage regular School attendance it is intended to be positive and not not punitive and there was updates to the language based on msba model policy policy 501 School weapons policy the purpose of this policy is to assure a safe School environment for students staff and the public updates to the language based on the msba model policy and recommendations from executive director of operations and then we have two policies that there were no changes recommended but they still need to be reviewed periodically that would be 507 corporal punishment and 625 animals in the classroom so we'll just update saying that we reviewed them and we have a new policy policy 625.com its obligation to modify its policies to allow the use of a service

277Animal by individuals with disabilities and this policy was uh written by our legal council and if anybody really wants to dig into the details of the policies all of the policies with strikethroughs and changes are available on board docks well and I just want to say policies are one of the most important things that a school board does and this this one this briefing was done in surround sound so I think that was impressive so now we will can we continue to the next agenda item Madam chair procedures procedures reviewed with changes recommended uh the first one is procedure 406a public and private Personnel data we deleted the flowchart we replaced the current employee authorization for release of Information Form with an updated form procedure 43 no that's yours sorry the surround sound continuous uh

278Pro procedure 413a and 413 A.1 um accompany the policies that we looked at and so they just had minor updates one was just uh updates to the language based on the msba model policy and the other one had some grammar punctuation and format Corrections and then uh 503a student attendance of course that a companies as well and that again was just grammar and punctuation and format Corrections most of which Miss sson has to mess with so and we had two procedures that we reviewed um alongside the introduction of the new policy on service animals and we had no changes recommended to procedure 625b request for animals in the classroom form and procedure 625c animals parent notification form so I'd like to make one comment just for any viewing public who is still with us or

279happens to decide to watch this meeting online as a later time is that the policies tell us the what and the procedures tell us the how and it's up to the superintendent and his staff to implement these policies and hopefully the procedures provide some guidance as to how they will do that and we don't make those decisions really as to a lot of the how but we get all the input from you as to what you need in order to implement policies and committee do you want the procedures to just go on to the consent agenda or would you like them voted on now what we're going to start doing with procedures because we don't have the multiple briefing requirements as we'll just have that follow the policies and then the policies and procedures will

280appear on the consent agenda at the same time excellent okay thank you so much any any other questions comments all right do we have any other uh any uh additions to the annual calender or any uh any updates or any agenda items that you would like considered for a future future meeting we are going to be rescheduling the update on CC that is scheduled due to uh some medical treatment that a key leader is is having and so um we have lots and lots of Alternatives um that we can slide into the what we call our Focus topic which was will be our Deep dive if there are particular issues that board members are interested in that's our November 30th meeting um let us know because we could talk at the executive committee meeting about

281either moving one of the items that we already have on the annual calendar into that slot and then moving the CC briefing to whenever that was scheduled or we could see it as a window to look at an issue that is on your minds so maybe let the chair the vice chair me know if you have any thoughts about what you'd like to focus on at the November 30th meeting all right and as a reminder we have um special session beginning at 6 pm on November 30th Our Truth and Taxation meeting um which will be followed immediately by the regular board meeting if uh people in the community wants to speak specifically to the T tax implications discussed at 6 o' uh they can address the board at that time they'll sign up the way

282they usually do with Miss serson and have a three minute uh time slot assigned uh truth and Taxation will be followed immediately by the um Regular board meeting and do we want to announce this now or do we want to wait from it um our Our Truth and Taxation meeting uh will be on Wednesday um December 1st well that's my question at 6m do we have to have it then or can we just announce to the public that it's moving the date well if you're going to be embarrassed you might as well do it in front of your friends so what has happened here is I got my truth and Taxation statement electronically tonight and had the wrong date on it it had Wednesday December 1st I said how could the county do this to

283us and I looked back and said it's because I sent them the wrong date so uh my fault we've been uh you passed a resolution that said it was going to be I believe on Tuesday November 30th at 6: p.m. so I almost am wondering if we shouldn't hold it twice just to make sure that there's no accusations of trying to move it around and it would probably be a 15minute meeting or so on Wednesday um you know the second time around at what time six I it also be at six o'clock six o'cl so and and and I absolutely respect that and you'll never make another mistake Carlson because um you think it would not be enough for us to just do a media blit saying it actually is November 30th which is what

284we've been announcing for ever yeah if people aren't paying attention and they literally just get that form in the mail it says exactly what time and date and room number it is I would feel not good having a dark building can can I ask John a question does that go out with the tax notices is that people get I'd be worried that if they get it in that form and they're used to getting it in that form yeah correct they would criticize us for doing okay so you're suggesting that we do the six o'clock on November 30th and another six o a six o' on December 1st correct and and we would only need a quorum here we wouldn't have to have all if all seven board members can't be here correct all right do

285we have to take any action that night on no it would not be an action night because you're going to do that on December 7th as scheduled okay it'll be fun to see how many people come to which one and Taxation and fun those are two words I always you know think of together so yeah okay chairman do we need to pass a resolution now to accomplish that do you think just to make it full I think the resolution has already been passed earlier that deci said it was going to be on November 30th so we're keeping that then we're just going to add a second one and I don't think you need a resolution for that we just need to schedule it we'll just put that on the calendar okay thank you Mr Carlson

286y that's absolutely doable so meeting on November 30th and a short meeting on December 1st and a regular board meeting on December 7th and then a special meeting on December 14th which will uh be primarily a closed session to consider the interim superintendent evaluation and without any further comments this meeting is adjourned at 9:47 p.m.