RPS School Board Meeting - 09/07/21

001this regular meeting of independent school district 535 school board is called to order at 5 30 pm tuesday september 7 2021 in room 137 of the edison building the board acknowledges this site and all rps sites are situated on the ancestral land of the dakota people and we honor the dakota nations and the sacred land of all indigenous peoples as you know fire code restrictions limit the number of people who can be present in the boardroom and policy requires appropriate effective face masking for everyone over two year two years old in all rps buildings we will provide you with a mask if you don't have one and as always you have the option of viewing this meeting remotely on youtube.com isd535 we have important work to do for rochester students we will enforce the requirement

002to wear an appropriate mask and that means covering your nose and your mouth and we will recess this meeting if anyone refuses it's absolutely your choice at this time i request respectfully that you think of your health and probably more important the health of others in this community which i don't find funny who are susceptible to colvid and please uh wear a mask at this time if anyone in the room chooses not to we will recess i can see we have a few people here who feel that it's important to not mask so at this time we are in recess every shape that you're wearing mask and i'd ask all of you to wear them covering your nose and your mouth we can recess again we can do this all night long thank you i

003appreciate that present at this meeting our school board members superintendent ken pacquel a non-voting ex officio member and assistant school board clerk ms michelle severson miss severson will you please call the roll thank you claire commonson here director barlow your director garcia here director mclaughlin here thank you chair marvin here vice chair nathan here and treasurer workman here thank you and just for your information director mclaughlin is meeting with us virtually so you can't see her you can hear her you just can't see her just put that out there at this time we offer the opportunity to say the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god 2.0 approval of the agenda are there any changes to the agenda seeing none move approval

004second it's been moved and seconded all those uh in favor of approving the agenda say aye aye opposed agenda is approved 3.0 comments to the board board members welcome the correspondents from the public that they receive every day by email or phone call this school board also has chosen to provide 30 minutes at the beginning of regular meetings for individual individuals to address the board in person we do not record or publish the emails and phone calls and we don't live stream these pers these comments to the board either procedures are posted so you know that issues involving personnel negotiations and protected student data are not allowed personal attacks abusive language and disruptive behavior are always inappropriate at meetings where the primary goal is to discuss and make decisions about how to provide the best

005possible education for everyone's children the board will listen and generally not respond to speakers but we will be happy to connect with you later if you request further clarification or conversation each speaker will have three minutes and we ask you to respect this limit so others may have their opportunity to speak miss severson will keep track for the time when your name is called please have a seat in front of the microphone at this table state your name and whether you are a resident of this school district and our first speaker this evening is amy nelson members of the board i'm i'm using my handy dandy defogger uh with a mask uh wipes here so i can give you a sense of how things are going um the school year has started and we are

006in the midst of it and i want to give you the first of what i'm sure will be a series of brief updates on how things are going in implementing our safe and open schools plan it's an opportunity for me to update not just you but the rest of the community and by way of updating the community i'm pleased to note that the rochester public schools covet dashboard reappeared today it is now there updating each week's outcomes in terms of people who get or other a set of metrics around kovid it will be updated every week right now it's not as easy to find on our website as it will be by next week when there will be a pop-up that makes it very clear so you can take a look at that last week's

007quarantine numbers in the school district the number of kids we have to quarantine is a critical measure of how successfully our plan is being implemented we're low because kids were not in school all week and we're not in buildings all week i will tell you that as i was putting these remarks together today and getting updates from the team we went from having had 10 cases reported today to 14 cases reported today to 16 reported today and that's how it feels in the schools right now the numbers are uh growing and we are getting a better sense by the day of what uh controlling covet and mitigating covet looks like as the delta variant is in our schools from august 30th we've had 52 cases of covid that we found among our students from the

008start of this school year and that includes those 16 that i mentioned today 27 of those were pre-k through 5 so elementary 21 were secondary of course our secondary students can be vaccinated and so eight of those students eight of the 21 were vaccinated of the 21 18 were symptomatic and so we we are seeing symptomatic um spread um at the ten cases at the elementary level we had we did see where uh symptomatic in terms of staff we've had four staff uh who have come down with covet three were vaccinated and one declined to give their vaccinated vaccination status and three of those staff did have symptoms the plan tonight initially board members was to have principal amy adams from longfellow uh join us for an overview what's been happening in her school that

009school as you know is on a different schedule for many of our schools and so they have been open for the longest they've actually had 27 days of instruction and have passed the midpoint however principal adams contacted me and she has a parent-teacher association meeting tonight that she ultimately decided she couldn't miss so i'm just going to pass on a few thoughts that amy shared with me and other members of the team she feels like students at longfellow have been doing a great job of following the medi the mitigation strategies have sf staff in putting together a safe and supportive environment for their students and she particularly highlighted the long fellow parents who are really diligently following the decision tree that we released and choosing to keep their students home from school when they do

010have symptoms she had a great line in the conversation we had about how things are going at longfellow she said we're very glad we've had to quarantine students but not classrooms and i think that's a really important goal she appreciates the approach we've tried to take of casting a net when a kid may have been exposed to covid but with uh making it a top priority to try and allow the class to continue it takes a lot of person power at the school and the central office level to do the contact tracing that that strategy requires but i'm pleased to say it's going well thus far um amy shared that when students at longfellow have been quarantined staff have been working very closely with families to develop a learning plan that still meets the needs

011of those kids even while they are in quarantine and they've been taking a number of other steps to mitigate the spread in schools for instance when they're doing conferencing with parents they're spreading out the times to lessen the number of people in the building at one time they're also limiting outside visitors to their building and longfellow is a school that traditionally has a lot of volunteers in order to lessen possible exposure according to principal longfellow what are some of the challenges that they're grappling with and then i'll share a few of the challenges that we're hearing from other schools a big one is that the symptoms of covid are very similar to symptoms of other illnesses in many symptomatic cases and so understanding how to react to that is something we need to continue to

012provide schools with guidance on she shared that it's very challenging for families when they get a call that a student needs to quarantine during the day and the family needs to respond they've tried very hard to be flexible and understanding of that even as they do need to call those parents they really stress that a whole array of sanitation procedures we know this but take a lot of extra time for instance serving and cleaning up from lunch while following those mitigation strategies and this may seem very granular but this is what it's going to take to keep our schools both safe and open this year they've also really worked to limit movement throughout the building to lessen exposure which has been effective in so far as they've had very very limited exposure at longfellow but

013there's a price to the kind of free-flowing interaction that we want our kids to have and finally she asked me to pass on that she has greatly appreciated the district-wide meetings of covid coordinators that we've continued to convene across the full district it's not only a great way for people to hear from our team but to share ideas across our schools at the district level a couple points uh with just a few days under our belt from other schools the vaccination clinics that we've conducted at a number of schools have been quite successful and appreciated and it's something we look with partnering with olmsted county to do again over the course of the year we are going through disposable masks very quickly one estimate that uh scott sheridan uh shared with me was maybe 5

014000 per day but that might just be because the school year is just beginning but we're thinking we're going to need uh for the duration of this part of our plan more masks the the big issue really is staff workload we are seeing it not only among our building coordinators contract tracer but especially our nursing and health staff because leaning into this plan is taking uh is taking a lot of effort two final points one we discovered through some feedback very helpful uh good critical feedback from some uh actually parents in the community that the language in our plan around our youngest learners in our early childhood programs was somewhat confusing in that it suggested that kids older than two should mask but that in certain early childhood programs it was not a requirement we

015are presenting the board later in this meeting with some language that i think addresses that that those students would be required to mask but that where there is a developmental meaning age of development uh reason that the young person cannot effectively wear a mask that is added to our list of exceptions which our staff have been managing quite well and so that was a lack of clarity in our policy that some language we'll get to later in the meeting would address um and a final a final point that i want to acknowledge one of our one of our participants in comments to the board mentioned uh what's the end game where are we in terms of these mitigation strategies how long do we need to keep them in place i just want to say we

016don't know that yet but we are very actively committed to finding it vaccination status is clearly going to be part of that formula we are initially exploring the degree to which through the minnesota immunization information connection or mick as it is summarized we can get actual vaccination status on our students and our staff because that data all exists in a repository there are some questions about data privacy and whether we can actually get that data now we would never know teacher x is or isn't vaccinated it would be anonymized but there's a question as to whether we can get that if we can't get it through the state repository we will request it voluntarily from both staff and parents and we'll make that decision next week so the first issue is where are we with

017actual vaccination rates we really need to know that related to that obviously also are the decisions that are going to be made about young children and vaccination another highly relevant point as several as one person in our comments to the board um shared earlier um beyond that we are going to be continually looking both for the science and for indicators of uh the safe opportunity to dial back different measures in the plan but the candid answer is we don't have recommendations from the cdc on that minnesota department of health our local county department of health and we don't have that yet in the data from our own district but i want people to know that we do want there to be an end in sight we just don't want to give an end that we

018can't stick to over time but i want to articulate the strong desire that we all have and that we are looking for to give our district and our community a sense of when and how some of these measures might be relaxed but we want to do that guided by the science and actual analysis of our own data so this will be one of i know a number of updates maybe not every meeting but we wanted to give you a sense of how things are looking here at the start of the school year thank you dr pikel uh 4.02 rps online recognition this is an information item superintendent this is one of one final maybe not the only time one other time you're going to hear from me in this meeting and board members this recognition

019is a bit unusual insofar as i know that later in the year we will bring you an in-depth update on this exciting new opportunity we have with rps online our new k-12 online school but candidly board members the team that has been putting together this new uh exciting endeavor in the middle of a once in a century pandemic and many other challenges deserves our thanks right now as they're in the middle of this challenge not two or three months from now when i know we're going to come to you and give you a comprehensive overview of how things are going so let me just give you a quick sense of where our new online school is and then i want to actually put on the screen and acknowledge a number of the people who are

020making this happen because i will just tell you they are burning the midnight uh oil and going far above me on the call of duty to create a new fully virtual option for rochester kids and families we now have 500 students enrolled in rps online there's 233 elementary kids 120 middle school kids 140 high school students most of those are rochester students only 23 are open enrolled though we're thrilled to have them in our new online school we are actually um really really full through eighth grade with some limited remaining openings and also able to take in some high school students on a case-by-case basis but it is i think really good news that uh we are quite full in terms of what we initially planned for capacity for this this new online offering rps

021online provides a comprehensive curriculum that meets all state standards and all of our teachers are licensed teachers to teach in minnesota there are 54 teachers who are involved some are teaching part-time so it's actually comes to about 37.5 full-time equivalents most of them are from rochester but interestingly some of them are not teaching here but they're fully teaching in our schools they're in chisholm bemidji minnetonka twin cities and one from the state of georgia who are providing instruction um we also have high school students who are in our uh three high schools or ctec or p-tech who can take some classes in rps online which is i think really excitingly going to be a way to solve some of these scheduling bottlenecks that have always been a challenge at the high school level most of

022these classes are being taught synchronously meaning while kids are online with their teacher a few are being taught asynchronously um and we are uh mostly doing that where we couldn't fit the class in the student's schedule to go live you know at that time so if i can ask that we put these names on the screen and i um i'm gonna jump through them whether or not the slide actually comes up or not i just want to thank these folks um i i see andrew newman in the back and andrew has been our able able capable leader of this effort and i want to thank you because from the first time i came in rochester i got the sense of you were in front of the fire hose stepping up with this critical leadership and

023um it has not gone unnoticed i know you have an amazing teaching team that's helping you do that i was so excited to spend a bit of time with them virtually on their first day as andrew's leading them through professional development and it is a great team we have janice hanson providing able administrative coordination and if you go to the next screen we should have some names on it next slide and if not rps online works better than school board online let me just tell you who some of these folks are building a master schedule in any school is a a feat of incredible complexity and so we have um really leaned into the expertise in our other high schools steve aiken who is an assistant principal at jm gina colas who's a secretary to

024the registrar at jm tom olsen who's ben franklin assistant principal they have stepped in to help us with the high school master schedule patty whalen assistant principal john adams and craig schneider willow creek assistant principal have uh leaned in to help us with the middle school master schedule we have had a whole array of people helping us hire teachers and staffing rob cothurn our huber human resources manager chris langen director of elementary and secondary kim mcdonald director of elementary and secondary melissa stanky your director of our student support services nicole mueller director of student support services now we have a whole team that has been helping with and helping with enrollment and support through our student information system skyward we've had melissa getch on registration and records diane paprocki from the office of elementary and

025secondary education who sat outside my office for the first two months here answering call after call after call with patience and optimism laura holman from skyward support melissa dominic skyward support and sheryl burke also from skyward support um board members i uh look forward to coming back uh with jackie peterson our executive director of elementary and secondary and andrew and giving them a time to actually brief you in detail but as they are navigating this really really challenging launch of a brand new school we wanted to just take a moment to acknowledge and thank them for their work right now while they're still in the middle of it so thank you so much [Applause] [Music] [Applause] thank you moving on 4.03 hyvee cash for students dr paquel i am actually going to especially since you

026stepped up here ask um uh john carlson our uh executive director of business financial affairs to introduce um chad harto who's here from hyvee john has been his point person and so we are so grateful for this support you've given rochester kids john yeah thank you i was just trying to get the powerpoint switched over here all right um hyvee cash for students so how this started i think i remember uh getting a phone call about four years ago uh hyvee reached out to us this was not something we went and begged them for money uh i think we might do that in the future um i actually wasn't sure if it was a real thing or not most people don't call and just say how can we give you money and uh hyvee has

027been a very loyal partner in this program for four school years now so i just want to introduce uh chad from the uh the local market here and he's gonna walk us through a couple things and then hopefully he might even have a check for me okay all right all right thank you uh school board and thanks for this opportunity i'll be brief in the interest of time and just want to share with you a couple results that's what the slides uh that john's gonna buzz through for us just a little background uh john's too kind saying that we just came wanting to give money it was just more about what hyvee always prides itself on and so is a program that i've been a part of in different hyvee markets where i've worked before

028i moved to rochester six years ago and so we wanted to do something to help the schools out and this was the way we thought would be easy cash for students is not anything we came up with it's been done in other markets for several years and so that's what this slide kind of outlines you can go to the next one this is just kind of the outline of the program um nothing too detailed here just it runs during the school year august 30th to may 27th and a dollar for every 250 in receipts is contributed to rochester public schools based on receipts that are turned in we're excited to offer it again this year and the last day will be may 27th for receipt dates and then the collection period like we've done every

029year in the past so very simple process that all the schools do a great job taking care of simple form nothing there uh just a little history on the program this is the going to be the fourth year of the program as john said and um the first year was uh the figure there eight thousand two eighty seven twenty three cents the second year uh has proven to be our biggest year nine thousand three twenty one and forty five um obviously during the tail end of 2020 is when uh the pandemic hit and so we saw a as expected impact on the program but this year we're still very proud to contribute to rochester public schools 8 299.99 we should have rounded up the one penny so i'm sorry about that uh but andrew is

030detail-oriented did a nice job on this and so we are very proud to give that to our schools and um and just like i said be a part of the community that's what hyvee always prides itself on and on behalf of our entire market and and myself i appreciate the opportunity to be here and we're proud to support the schools and the work you guys are doing and obviously the teachers in our in our community and helping our children is the future of our uh our town and world so we're glad to be a part of it thank you for the opportunity hi v for continuing to be such a wonderful partner it's amazing plus your bakery is really good too jim marvin and i put in a plug is it true that the hyvee

031program has started again this year yes yep it's true and it doesn't just have to be parents who contribute receipts as i understand it every school has a collection box so feel free to go to your neighborhood school whether or not you have parents in the district and drop off your receipts because as i understand it every dollar counts it does that's a great call out thank you thank you thank you so much 4.04 naming of the new middle school process and invitation to the public and ms amundsen and her committee have been working on this miss amundsen thank you i'm the unofficial spokesperson for director barlow and director rickman and myself who were the subcommittee in the spring rochester public schools students submitted their nominations their ideas for good names for the new middle

032school according to the criteria which was presented i believe that was from the community engagement committee who set the criteria number one reflect the school district's values and beliefs number two represent the diversity within our community and number three instill inspiration and students so the um the task of our subcommittee was to narrow down those hundreds of submissions that we received from very creative students some of whom had excellent sense of humor in some of their submissions but mostly which were very serious and really really good submissions so um our subcommittee narrowed those names down to five and so we're going to announce those finalists tonight and then within the next couple of days there will be a voting mechanism put up online so stay tuned to our website and our social media and voting

033should be open um probably by late tomorrow or possibly the the next day and right now it's scheduled to end on september 16th so everybody gets one vote and the winner will be announced at the school board meeting on september 21st so the finalists are the finalists names are not presented in any particular order susan b anthony who was a social rights activist of the 20th whoops 19th century known especially for her leadership as an abolitionist and women's suffrage champion one of the student nominators said i see a lot of schools named after men in our area so i think a woman's name would be good the next nomination was dakota which is a word meaning friend or ally that comes from the native people who lived in this area since at least the 1600s

034another student nominator said i believe our new middle school should be named this to represent the first settlers of our area the next nomination was martin luther king jr who was a noble peace prize winner who was a tireless leader in the civil rights movement a student nominator said martin luther king was a strong advocate for equality with non-violence and the final two names unity a term used to describe coming together in harmony to form a complete whole a student nominator said it inspires those attending the school as well as members of the community to create and maintain unity well sophie a word from our indigenous people meaning wisdom the student nominator said it is a tribute to an amazing people that make minnesota great yay and and i just want to say i remember

035in the early 80s when we were building willow creek and um bellevus snodgrass was one of our choices she was a principal a long time ago in roster and not a single student nominated velvet snodgrass this time as you recall part of the issue with that name and she was wonderful was the initials elvis nod grass so there was there was that but these are five amazing nominees again all of them and hundreds more came from rochester students and do you have an idea about the age range i mean no they didn't have to list that but um but going by by some of the entries without great spelling i would say that we had some very young students it was amazing um amazing number of students who had ideas and again some were incredibly

036uh creative very creative so thank you 4.05 board member committee updates all of our board members are on a number of different committees and they do work throughout the week any board members have reports or updates they'd like to share i have an update yes so the um cciac the community curriculum and instruction advisory committee i always have to think about that um as a committee that i've been serving on and actually been served on it even before i was a board member they're starting their schedule for the fall up um september 13th and decided that it might be best for some other board members to have a chance to participate so dr amundson and director garcia are going to work together to represent the board at those meetings beginning this fall and ccic couldn't

037be in better hands thank you anybody else ms workman yes um the policy committee met and as you will see later on in the agenda we have a number of procedures and policies that we will be briefing tonight but i'd really like to say this take this opportunity to say it's not just the three of us director nathan director amonson and myself but it also involves the superintendent and all the different cabinet members who are responsible for specific sets of policies so they review those policies and then they make recommendations and we have conversations about them so i really want to applaud all of you for your work and your dedication and your commitment to making everything really run really well for our students and our staff so thank you for anyone else all right

038i have uh two quickly the student school board this year is comprised of well every year students who are in secondary 6th through 12th grade who nominate themselves to be part of this board they meet once a week they discuss issues that affect their schools and their district they are heard and respected by the school board they give us advice and they will have their first meeting at the end of september this one will be virtual but we hope to bring them back to the board board rooms as weeks go on so it's an amazing group of students who are committed they're smart they're determined to make a difference and we think that being on the student school board gives them an opportunity to do that yes i'm sorry to interrupt um i might have

039heard you wrong but i think you said they met every week and that that would be a very committed thank you that would be a commitment they meet once a month thank you uh and then the community engagement team had a meeting with a small group of people who had concerns about our equity belief statements and our equity policy from my perspective it was a good conversation there were just six of us involved but we were able to talk about a number of things involving equity and i i for me it was particularly meaningful because it appeared that we were looking working from two different vocabulary lists when our school district for instance and educators in general talk about critical what they mean is profound deep analytical thoughtful problem solving and so we have critical

040theory about novels for instance literature theory and that is looking at something through a different lens like how would a feminist look at this book or how did a child look at this book trying to understand something from a different perspective the other two terms that we talked about were equal and equity and again in the world of education equal means the same if you're treating kids equally that means that you're going to provide busing for a kid who lives three miles from school you also have to provide busing for the kid who lives three blocks from school and doesn't need it means exactly the same equity the way it's used in our district in most districts means trying to provide each student with what that student needs so that that student has an opportunity

041to be successful so what that means is that if there are a bunch of kids who want to be an orchestra and some of them can't afford an instrument you can provide that child with an instrument it doesn't ensure that that kid's going to get to be first chair ever but providing the opportunities that kids need and it's going to be different depending on who you're dealing with i spent a long weekend with my grandchildren the 18 month old doesn't eat as much as the 14 year old nobody eats as much as the 14 year old but so it was equitable that the older one got more food than the younger one and i i hope that that cleared up some things for that group and it's maybe a discussion we should continue having okay

042thank you for that um then we'll move to the consent agenda are there any items to be removed for separate consideration move approval second it's been moved and seconded all in favor say aye aye opposed the consent agenda is approved oh you got it we have a number of retirements members of the board i i i i've said the two times i've had the opportunity to do this that i'd always feels a little awkward as somebody who's so new and hasn't had the privilege of meeting a lot of these folks but in many cases i've heard about their great work and so i want to take a moment ask per our tradition and acknowledge the following people who are retiring from varying lengths of service in rochester public schools rebecca j mealy who's been a

043musical teacher at pinewood in washington elementary schools has been with the district for 30 years from our cleric world of clerical staff robin j davis who's office manager for secondary school at kellogg middle school has been with the district for 20 years paraprofessionals play a critical role and i will say i've been thrilled to meet many of them and we have an incredibly strong and dedicated cadre of paraprofessionals in the district a number of retirements from their ranks cindy a eggert who has been a special education paraprofessional at gage elementary school will be retiring after 36 years um kimberly j saban a special education professional at franklin elementary retirement effective in the coming months and mr bond has been with the district for 18 years kip a stark is a special ed paraprofessional at hoover

044early learning school has been with the district for two years and mary margaret smem a special education paraprofessional at mayo high school has been with the district for 16 years in our student nutrition services we have donna k ackman who has been the student nutrition services associate at kellogg middle school who has been with the district and is retiring after 33 years donald a johnson student nutrition services assistant nutrition manager at century high school has been with our district for 25 years ricky r johnson student nutrition services associate at jefferson elementary has been with the district for one year and in our maintenance services department david walter swinsky who's been a custodian lead four at jefferson elementary will be uh leaving the district um after five years and so we thank all of them for

045their service wish them the best for what's next and hope that they will remain involved in some way in the work we do in rochester public schools thank you dr paquel 7.01 of the 2021-2022 every student welcome this is an action item and i'll give you some background information here rochester public schools strive to create an environment in which every student feels inspired challenged and empowered and welcomed the following letter conveying this message has been drafted and it's a short letter i'll read it to every rochester public school student welcome to the 2021-22 school year in rochester public schools whether your learning experience will be in person or virtual virtual we are so glad you're here no matter where you were born or what language you speak we welcome you no matter your skin color

046religion sexual orientation gender expression economic status age ethnicity culture or ability we welcome you our wonderfully our wonderful diversity makes ours a stronger smarter better school system we will continue to work to provide a learning environment where you feel physically and emotionally safe included and respected we invite everyone in the community to become partners in supporting you we're eager to work with you and help you succeed have a great school year the rochester school board i'll read the resolution be it resolve the rochester school board of independent school district 535 does hereby approve sending the welcome to the 2021 2022 school year letter to all our ps students move approval second it's been moved and seconded any discussion all in favor of approving a letter say aye thank you ms mclaughlin that scared me i'm

047sorry all opposed the motion passes thank you um also amy ike had said she would say a few words about the national national welcoming week uh that's going to focus on ensuring that everyone no matter where they're from knows they are welcome in our community ms ike thank you thank you chair marvin board members thanks for the opportunity to tell you about an event that's coming up this sunday afternoon at 1 25 live from 1 to 4 pm and you may have seen some information come out this event is called belonging begins with us so the opportunity to talk about this is appropriate right after you talked about being inclusive with our students in the district this event invites families especially those new to the area to the country to minnesota to come and learn

048about service providers in our area and we will all be there you can just about name the service provider and we'll be around 1 25 live we're offering this as an outdoor event due to covid but we are encouraging masking even though we're outdoors so just so people know that ahead of time there will be free food and beverages some kids activities as well as lots of information for the adults and there will be interpreters available to walk the event with families who may want or need some assistance in translating some of our information and so we want this to be as welcoming an event this actually kicks off a week of events called welcoming week which um was started by welcoming america a non-partisan nonprofit that looks to make communities more inclusive so thank

049you for asking me to give a little information on that thank you miss 7.02 the 2021-2022 student handbook this is a briefing item dr paquel thank you chair marvin and board members as all of you know every year we do put together a student handbook that summarizes important information that our students themselves and also parents and even members of the community need to have we have as always updated that to reflect a number of changes in both school district policy and state regulations and practices i've asked heather nessler who's our executive director of communications marketing and technology to give you an overview with an emphasis on what's different there's a lot of stuff in this handbook that's very important and we are going to highlight what has changed from previous years i will just say

050this has been a collective effort and so heather may choose if board members have questions to call up or some of her cabinet colleagues may jump up to provide information on their areas of responsibility but heather has been fantastic in coordinating this revision across all of the lines of our work so thank you so much heather and i'd like to give you the floor all right good evening i did not prepare a presentation because you have this document in front of you in board docs and um it is very similar to our past document and so we will be updating this online and putting a pdf version that you can download as well online we're also going to work with our bilingual staff to pull out a the top changes and information from the handbook

051to create a video so that way we have a translated mini version if you will and then our bilingual staff is always amazing and we'll work through this with families that have needs to understand it uh deeper so i will just go through the quick changes we did add the graduate profile because we're grounding all of our work in that this year and we also added our equity belief statements so you can find those at the front of the handbook which i think is important for our students and families to be aware of we've not changed this but i know there was a request to talk through the district level contact information and so on page six you would find if you have a classroom concern the first action you do is you start by

052contacting the teacher and these are just simple steps that we want our students and our families to understand so that way they go through the process and there's a consistent process across the district at all of our sites if you have a school or program concern our parents will contact the principal's office or the program manager so you start there so it's really just going to the immediate contact if you're not sure who to call you can call the office of the superintendent and we have some wonderful people in there that can direct your call and then if you have concerns that interest or concerns or interest in policy development or long-range planning um our folks would contact you so um we can talk through that more if you need but that is on page

053six and it is also something that's uh in our on our website as well that is standalone so folks can follow that if we advance 10 pages to page 16 we change the definition of the role of a school resource officer to follow that of our mou which you were presented i believe last last week in a meeting so it talks about our sros being a civic engagement and educator an informal mentor and role model and a law enforcement officer and those definitions were taken directly from the memorandum of understanding the other change that we added um these are so minute page 28 we list all the rights rules and regulations that apply to our students and we added in policy 808 it's just a direct link to policy 808 because this will be a

054digital document so that's just a new addition there which is our masking policy we've also added policy 522 which is our title nine student sex non-discrimination title nine grievance procedure and process we added it in its entirety and i believe it's like 18 pages um so this book is quite extensive compared to last year but we've added that policy in its entirety which has been approved previously by the school board i believe back in march um we also added another policy which is policy 524 in its entirety and we did this because this is the internet acceptable use and safety policy and we made some changes within that policy that was approved back in may that talked about a parent's rights and responsibilities and so we wanted to include the full uh policy in here

055so that our parents could see that policy and in addition a little bit later you'll see that there's a technology student use agreement which is also part of the policy that we have a student use agreement okay so i didn't like i said i didn't do a presentation because these are just policies and i know they're not boring to some of you but i wanted to cruise vision and hearing screenings that's page 59 so you can see this book is getting expansive um we added some language in here because of coven 19 so there are some restrictions and different processes that we need to follow with the vision and the hearing screenings with coped19 so that is spelled out on page 59. we also added a section on page 60 and 61 about mental health

056we feel that this book is to really encompass the whole student and mental health and the supports that we offer and our buildings are really important and we're doing a much more concerted effort to communicate with our students so we had we added a larger section on mental health within this within this document so our students know where to go for support and then finally um the last thing that we have is this student technology device use agreement essentially it's the same thing that our students are already being told when they receive their device it's just outlined in paper here and in some of our schools they're receiving a smaller contract if you will that matches the pbis positive behavior interventions and supports languages so that they can say okay my school motto is pause

057p-a-w-s so positive always listening or whatever that case may be and so they might be getting something like that at their school but this one is a little bit more formal talking about cyber safety talking about digital security and of course it talks about device breakage and the replacement for device breakage or lost charge cable charging cables as well so we include that in here and of course we work with our families the technology team and the school um principal or other principals in the building will work with families in the event that they cannot absolutely cannot afford a broken ipad or something along those lines but we want to do we do want to have some accountability with our students and families these masks and i think that's all yep those are all of

058the changes so i know i cruised through that pretty quickly um but they were they were uh pretty easy changes to to make at least from our perspective no questions ms garcia yeah so you already you kind of started to answer this about in other languages so will it be downloadable in another language or do i have to call one of these numbers at the bottom of the yes great question we had in the past translated this written in five languages and i talked with our um board i'm going to get his title incorrect but i spoke to our leader of that team and he said that it's better to have just a smaller snippet of what that information is and then to offer a translator instead of having a translated document that's 80 some

059pages and so we're going to work through our script so that we have the right information and then families can call if this is a google document you can translate it as well which we have done in the past and we certainly can do that it's not as accurate or precise as having um our bilingual staff translate we've had that conversation and they feel that that is the best approach so i'm wondering though then could we at least have like the superintendent's message translated because it's in very bold like please return the form located on page x and return to your school principle for the following instructions etc and so if we already like when i read when i opened this i was just sort of like okay this is all in english i called

060the number for the spanish line to see what would happen it went to a voicemail okay and so i just so if i get someone do i get a copy did they just send me to this you know updated blurb but i feel like if we're asking very explicitly in the superintendent's message to do something yeah to say like yes i read this here's the signed document like that it just needs to be very explicitly stated and not hidden and like video google translate blah blah blah yep we can do that um and then i had i think that was probably my last question i do appreciate as a psychologist the fact that you added the mental health piece also um i think that was probably it just the clarification on the the language for

061the document yeah uh director nathan so how do students get educated or updated on the contents of the student handbook i'm gonna i'm looking to my colleague jackie in the past we put together um presentation and we're coming up to you a little bit late i'm just going to acknowledge that typically we come to you in early august to approve this before school starts um when we're already in our second week so this is something that usually gets discussed at that like one page level um it's usually a powerpoint and um advisory i believe target classes things like that at a different level and it's the sites or jackie's department breaks it out by age level appropriate so i know that our at our elementary level the language that's used is not just this but

062it's described differently than perhaps middle school or high school and since we're not printing and mailing it out this year how are parents notified that it's available okay that's a great question and one that we have talked about what we plan to do in the future and we're still going to do that this year there's still more than half of our families that have not completed the skyward um student verification information and when they go through that process we send reminders we'll have a check box there where you can download read it we're gonna have to work through that whole um translation component but then they can acknowledge it there we also can work with our individual sites to send these messages out just like we do with anything else the district will send a

063blanket com email out but then we'll have our sites included in with their newsletters they're working on newsletters right now for their for their classes and their um student body so we'll include it there and then if we're really struggling to get res uh responses then we can start working through some other touch points whether it's like student conferences or things like that that's what we've done in the past and it seems to work quite well thank you other questions or comments this is a briefing item is this something you want approved sooner rather than later or yeah i don't see any changes coming of this because the policies are already approved it's more of a formality i think so if it were approved we could just make those changes right away and start working

064through some of the specific translation pieces move approval second what i heard you say is you want to move this to action oh yes just kidding that's what i was doing okay it's been moved and seconded that we move this to action all in favor say aye [Laughter] you'd think by now i would get it that karen is right there talking to me but i keep hearing this voice from thank you miss mclaughlin all right this is an action item being resolved the school board of independence school district 535 approved the 2021-2022 student handbook i have a problem it's been moved and i think seconded all in favor say aye aye aye thank you all opposed it's been approved thank you miss nestler moving on to 8.01 approval of bid package number two for the

065century pool this is a briefing item uh dr pacquiao board members and chair marvin you'll recall that at your last meeting you had a very extensive briefing including multi-colored graphics on the century pool the bids have since come in and we are updating you on them um scott sheridan our executive director of operations is here if you have questions i also see our friend keen mcwatters in the back from knutson if there are other questions we have not prepared a presentation given that you very recently had a thorough update on the pool itself but we know that uh your review of this bid is uh an important step in the process and so we are here to answer questions about it unless uh scott there is information you want to provide at the outset we're

066glad to take board members questions and comments [Music] and as as dr paquel said we got significant amount of information not only at the last meeting but also in the board documents you put out so thanks for that questions for one question yes um so the total cost of uh this bid package was higher than what um was estimated which you said was possible and um the budget variance increased by that amount and at the last meeting mr carlson said that we had the funds to cover that because of some of the interest do we still have the funds to cover that additional six hundred thousand we'll call the finance director up to answer that question for you he's anxious to come up and talk yes yes we um we do believe we have enough

067to do this we are running right down to the end of this and it's really now contingent upon uh what we might end up spending for land that's kind of like the last place holder in the budget that we're trying to figure out we don't have specific land identified yet so we don't know exactly what the cost per acre might be or how many acres are buying but as of right now we can afford this big package could i ask you just to clarify for board members the land separate from the pool um explaining this is you're speaking of the larger referendum uh budget and that we do have a remaining purchase of some land tbd that is the purchase you're referring to correct that is correct that's um it's part of the referendum and

068it's the final kind of piece of the referendum that we said we're going to do by land for additional schools in the future miss nathan are there any additional bid packages that are going to be released relative to the pool no additional bid packages there are some equipment and furniture that would still need to be quoted out and that'll be handled by the school's purchasing department we do have budget placeholders for them but the final cost for that has not been determined and this is a briefing item move to action second and moved in seconded to move this to action any discussion on favor say aye opposed this is now an action item be it resolved the school board of independent school district 535 does hereby accept the best value proposals for roofing package 7a

069from merit contracting in the amount of 649 621 plumbing and hvac package proposal 22a from harris rochester inc incorporated an amount of 2 million and twenty seven thousand dollars electrical package proposal twenty six a from eagan companies an amount of seven hundred thirty one thousand nine hundred eighty dollars and 28. oh sorry i was thinking there was a word missing and 28 competitive bid packages in the amount of nine million seven hundred and seventy two thousand nine hundred and sixty six dollars be it further result that the school board of independent school district 535 is hereby approved the knutson general conditions for the sum of two million 24 for a total cost of 11 million ninety seven thousand seven hundred and fifty one dollars move approval second been moved and seconded all in favor say

070aye aye aye all opposed the motion passes thank you gentlemen 8.02 goals for interim superintendent this is a briefing item dr pikel dr marvin and board members as you know it is a critical priority that i have clear goals for my work this year as your interim superintendent and that board members have had a chance to review those goals we had a study session discussion of those goals which i think significantly enhanced them i think it's important to restate that because i'm here on an interim basis through july these are not goals that extend beyond what could be reasonably achieved in an interim year i think in a multi-year situation goals that are connected to measurable uh outcomes and inputs in the educational process would be appropriate goals for a superintendent just tonight we've heard

071about student outcomes ranging from you know achievement to other issues we've also heard about discipline disparities we've heard about an array of things in a multi-year situation i think annual progress on goals like that are appropriate things i think that would not be appropriate in an interim capacity so i think you have three goals for before you that are ambitious but achievable the first is the development of a strategic action plan to bring to life the board's commitments in our current strategic plan and and other vision statements the second is keeping our schools safe and open during cobit the aboard really significantly enhanced i think the measure of that goal which is essentially that we implement the safe and open schools plan with fidelity over the course of the year such that board members at

072the end of the year could say this plan has been implemented effectively at a high level and then finally working with uh our executive director of diversity equity and inclusion will ruffin to really create his office and that function in the school district which is very new for us and which i'm very excited about but which also has a lot of important work to be done and it really isn't just will's office at the central office level though that's key it's really how we lean into the board's equity commitment across the district and so by the end of this year we would also be able to update you on what that work looks like and how it actually comes to life so those are the goals you have before you i think that they are

073enhanced by the discussion that we had at the recent study session and i'm pretty enthused about rolling up my sleeves and getting to work on them but i look forward to any other observations or thoughts that the board has about them any observations or thoughts with the one exception that um you're not going to go back in time and goal two and give us uh data in june 2022. i i i will say director nathan's capacity to catch any mistake in a document is striking constructive criticism and i will say for the public the taxpayers of rochester copy editors and consultants get paid for what kathy nathan provides for us as a public service it would more than pay for the century pool so we are yes thank you for that correction i i aim

074to be in this year this school year although if you could travel back in time we'd take that too oh a lot of stuff we could do but okay and you were exactly right about miss nathan but this one i mean it was one number you know one number means a lot all right okay um this is a briefing item i'd like to move to action it's been moved and seconded twice to move it to action uh all those in favor say aye aye opposed it's now an action item be it resolved the school board of isd 535 accept the following goals and measures in the evaluation of interim superintendent pacal at the conclusion of the 2021 2022 school year goal one developed the rochester public schools rps strategic action plan to guide the work

075of rps during the 2022-23-20 23 24 and 20 24 25 school years the measure of this goal will be school board approval of strategic plan before june 1st goal two is to implement the rps safe and open schools plan to minimize the spread of the cobit 19 virus among students and staff while working to keep all rps schools and programs open for instruction in person throughout the year the measure will be based upon evidence and information that will be submitted in early june 2022 at least five of seven members of the rochester school board will rate the interim superintendent's leadership of implement inflammation implementation of the rochester public schools safe and open schools plan as good or excellent goal three build the capacity of the new office of diversity equity and inclusion to coordinate implementation

076of the school district's equity policy number 105 throughout the district the measure will be a comprehensive written report to the board will be submitted and an accompanying presentation will be made at a school board meeting during the month of june 2022 the report and presentation will provide the board and rps community with a clear understanding of how the office will conduct its work to meaningfully advance the goals of the equities equity policy on an ongoing basis move approval second it's been moved moved and seconded all in favor say aye opposed motion passes thank you at 9.01 procedure recommendations this is a briefing item here's where it gets fun uh-huh speak for yourself so the policy committee um met uh the first week of this month to do its monthly policy meeting and um one of

077the things that we talked about was procedures can be handled differently than policy right now we brief our policies twice before action but procedures are handled differently and they can be reviewed and approved at the same meeting so we thought we would start doing that at this meeting to try to move things forward more quickly through our agendas and dr edson and director workman are going to participate in describing the policies and procedures tonight so we're hoping to do with this item is to run through these procedures and at the end have a resolution to approve them the first is proceed is a new procedure that we're proposing and it's procedure 206 a time place and manner restrictions and procedures for public school board meetings and comments to the board we've been referring to these

078procedures at the beginning of our comments to the board section and what we'd like to do is formally include them in our procedure 206 a this procedure provides the community with some general information about comments to the board including the purpose the procedures that apply and prohibited conduct the policy committee is also recommending three changes to the language that we've been using we have added a generic email address for the assistant board clerk so it doesn't have to be changed every time that person and the position changed we remove the date specific limitations on the number of speakers so we had date date specific to previous school board meetings and it is now replaced by up to eight individuals will be scheduled in advance to speak at each meeting and we added a language that

079individuals cannot be scheduled to speak at two consecutive regular board meetings oh my turn um update to procedure 425a.1 staff development evaluation of progress towards educational outcomes this procedure is meant to outline the steps taken to monitor the progress being made at each site in achieving educational outcomes through staff development and the change is just languages deleted regarding submission of the site staff development report procedure 425 a.2 staff development individual requests the purpose of which is to describe the steps in requesting leave to participate in staff development activities by staff the changes would be to designate approval by the executive director of curriculum instruction of code 7 to leave for leave to participate in staff development activities if it involves staff development dollars or overnight travel and then there is procedure 425a.3 also about staff

080development and that's about awarding of school board credit and the purpose is to outline the steps necessary to earn the credit with the school board instructional staff can use these school board credits to make a lane change on the salary schedule and the change is just technical changes related to credit awarded an effective day of lane change retroactive pay very technical policy 503a student attendance outlines the protocol for addressing student absences the changes are to clarify the definition of an excused absence based on missing 50 percent of an elementary school day and 50 percent of a secondary class period without an excused reason added language about referral to truancy intervention program we deleted attachment a which was a template for the truancy notification letter we added the definition of a habitual truant change to age

081under 17 years and procedure for seeking to withdraw from schools changed the age of the student to 17 years procedure 503.3 a exception to attendance provides guidelines for submitting a request and meeting requirements to be granted on accession to attendance changes here added we added the definition of a transfer student we modified the end of exception two quote until the parent legal guardian rescinds the request unquote instead of requiring annual application and we have one more procedure 533a wellness that we are recommending be retired because the language and the procedure is already covered in minnesota statute and school board policy 533 that is the end of the briefing of the procedures and as director nathan said because these are procedures if we want to pass them tonight we can or accept them tonight we can

082but we would have to move them to action second and moved and act moved and seconded to move these procedures to action on favor say i i opposed okay this is now an action item be it results school board of independent school district 535 approve revise or retire these procedures move approval second removed and seconded all in favor say aye aye all opposed they have been approved sure marvin yes um you didn't open up an opportunity for discussion and i do have a comment sort of well it wouldn't change probably the outcome of the vote but you're right i didn't yeah my position uh dr garcia go first yeah so i think for 206 a.m the board procedures um under 4a number of speakers and time limits i can understand you know individuals cannot be

083scheduled to speak at two consecutive regular board meetings but i'm in terms of accessibility like if somebody doesn't have regular access to email etc and the only way that they could speak with us is via board meeting like i don't may i follow up on that because i had i had a similar like i can understand the need for the structure especially now that we have so many but at the same time there are people who might need that and and i raised a similar concern during the policy committee but not specifically about accessibility but about the right of somebody to address a certain item that is on an agenda and then say there are chained say that's a briefing item and say changes are brought back the next week before we pass it or

084you know vote on it the the ability of the public to be able to comment on the changes was one of my objections to not being able to speak it to consecutive board members my policy committee colleagues pointed out that they're able to communicate with us in other ways but i i understand your your concern about whether or not um you know email or phone calls would benefit everybody but my objections to this particular change um i was reminded that this is quite possibly a temporary situation because for those of you in the audience now uh before covid and and a lot of events it was just uh and before i was elected to the board it was just me and kathy and the rochester education association people left in the room at this point

085there there wasn't a lot of interest in being an either laughing because it's so true um there wasn't a lot of interest in watching our meetings and um and and there were many meetings that we had no public comments and you know i don't know what the heck happened we landed on mars or something but um it seems to me that if things ever go back to normal that we could look at changes to our previous procedures but right now the ability of someone um to even get in to speak at all it could be a couple long months wait to speak to us because there's so many people on the way yeah i understand that in terms of the like one person shouldn't be able to speak at multiple meetings when there's a whole

086list of other people who are speaking for the first time but yes i so i i don't necessarily think that my vote would change in the assumption that we could certainly revisit this i just feel like well and procedures are meant to be a little bit less permanent than policies so they're meant to change which is why we don't have to brief and then wait you know brief again procedures can happen changes can happen faster than policies so we can respond to the conditions does that does that address your concerns yeah i think so to me it's just a language thing like individuals cannot be scheduled to speak at two consecutive regular board meetings which in the event that there are multiple you know what i mean like my brain just needs the end of

087that sentence director barlow you haven't uh i too had a concern regarding 206a but i think as i processed um the language i understood that the intent was to not necessarily preclude people from communicating before the board but to include as many people as possible and i could envision perhaps a situation where um if there were only five people who had signed up and a person who had spoken at the previous meeting could have qualified to be that sixth seventh or eighth speaker the language of the current policy would suggest he wouldn't be able to but if the intent is to allow a more greater access to our community and it's communicated to our community that we're not trying to censor or limit what we're trying to expand and include as many new voices to

088our conversations and to the educational futures of our children then i fully support the intent languages dr garcia suggests is always at times difficult but if the intent is to be more expansive and inclusive i fully support it yeah i just like individuals cannot be scheduled to speak at two consecutive regular board meetings when there is a wait list you know what i mean like something like that i think part of the thinking behind that is that we have tried to be very clear that this is not a venue for giving a speech right this is it's one way that people can speak to the board and or they can make a phone call or they can write a letter or they can send an email or they can drop by make an appointment meet

089for coffee i picked up people before who said i don't email but can we meet somewhere so we want to make sure that we are absolutely accessible to the public who want to talk to us but not so much that this becomes a place that replaces social media when someone wants to get out a message to the greater community there's a place for that it just isn't here and i think that was part of the reasoning behind um limiting that in addition to it as director barlow said um to make sure that more people would have an opportunity um to speak face-to-face if that was their preference absolutely but i think being explicit about that is the necessity you know what i mean like if you're gonna come in two and three and four and

090five times to talk about something that is not on our agenda something that we are not doing in schools you get scratched in in you know favor of a person who is new or has something relevant to to comment on um so yes i mean if that's kind of where if we're saying the intent my interest is always like if we intend that then that's what needs to be said but if this needs to just move forward with the assumption that we are going to eventually change it i just want to i just wanted to be clear that i don't want it to impede accessibility and i would like for it to have that flavor of we're being a little bit more expansive in allowing others to be part of this process thank you and

091director nathan well i think as we were thinking through this the the practical application of the language i think will lead to what both director harlow and director garcia are looking for and dr amundson as well you know our agendas are only released on friday and so the community doesn't know what's on the agenda until just a few days before the meeting and by the time friday comes many of our speaker spots are already filled so to the issue of people being able to speak to issues that are going to be before us at the next meeting spots might already be filled by consecutive speakers by the time the agenda comes up so by not allowing the consecutive meetings you leave those spaces open for those individuals who see something on a friday agenda and

092say i'd like to speak at the tuesday meeting um i i agree with director barlow that the diversity of speakers different voices is really important to me especially those i may not have heard from before and and um assistant board clerk stevenson does a great job in taking these requests and if we're hearing from an individual that you know the only way i can i can get to the board is to speak to them in person i'm sure that she would let um chair marvin know and we could figure out how to accom how to accommodate that because we really don't intend to limit people's participation because they only have one way one way to communicate and also if the community sees the same faces meeting after meeting i worry that there's a perception that

093there are no room for different perspectives that they're that that they're they're blocked out because somehow these people have the capacity or the time to get their written request in sooner or faster so we also talked about the logistics of simply keeping track of who spoke when so we have that record because we're keeping track of it in our agendas but then keeping track of what they spoke about and and we can't really put limitations on individuals based on their content so if they are speaking about something that's not on tonight's agenda we can't necessarily prioritize them unless we stick strictly to public comments only related to tonight's agenda and we limit all other all other comments to the board but then that doesn't let community members speak about broader community issues or things that

094we might not be talking about for a few months but they want us to think about so that the logistics of that we talked about at the at the policy committee so um i think this language if if implemented in the capable hands of a set of ms severson i think i think will get us the diversity of voices and perspectives that we need at comments to the board um and give the board the input it needs to make its decisions but thank you for your your input because we can always make the language better um i really appreciate the concern too just so you know um i think dr garcia you articulated a a very plausible good alternative to what is here which would be you can't speak at two meetings if the agenda

095is full if you have over eight the reason we ultimately didn't recommend that is it would put miss severson in the position of bumping people from a meeting they'd already signed up for so you you called tuesday said i want to speak next tuesday you're on the list but you spoke the previous time then we bump over eight requests and it requires her to say well you lost your spot splat spot because you've spoken twice and the complexity of how you message that was getting difficult i find very appealing the way you have put it which is you can come more than once if we have space but it was the the complexity of how we would actually manage that um we could we could we could try this and maybe have a time certain

096opportunity to reconsider it um so that we actually really agree as we've done actually we didn't i don't know that we put that in my and my goals for the year we've agreed we're gonna have a mid-year progress check we could also say two months from now we're going to consider this because i think what you've articulated would be a viable alternative to this it just would require that ms stevenson to monitor that complexity of you've spoken twice or five times and our agenda's full so you can't speak this time and i i get a little nervous about putting her in that position of saying not this week um so that was the psychology of it nathan and i think one other piece that we haven't had a chance to work through and i think

097that was part of what you were referred to director garcia is what if only four people sign up before the meeting right now we're focusing on having people sign up before the meeting for logistical purposes you see how much work ms severson does organizing the people before the meeting make sure they're here make sure they're you know understand the speaking process but um what happens if someone shows up at the meeting and wants to speak that evening and there was you know previous uh procedures that allowed people to sign up the night that they that they came to the meeting um and that's we've been talking about various options um our legal counsel has given us some options on how we can handle that but that's something that we can work on um to bring

098to the policy committee is how might that be part of the logistics so that and that could include someone who spoke at a previous meeting right that would be the there are no all this all not all the spots are taken so there is space for people to speak i rushed us through this and it's totally my fault so i think this is a good discussion would it be um amenable if we i think we already voted to pass if we and again totally my fault um if we go with this and then agree that in another two months or one month or whatever uh we revisit this particular procedure and see if it's working or if it needs to be changed is that reasonable i imagine at some point it won't be necessary but

099yes yeah mr barlow well one thing we're not suggesting is that we uh let me rephrase that we are indeed continuing to encourage our community to come and and to communicate their concerns to the board we're not suggesting that we don't we're not interested or we're hoping that soon you will no longer come and present or share on one hand we're we're hoping that this level of interest as it relates to the educational development of all of our children will continue to remain high and and so we have no reason to suggest that that will web or ab rather and and so i i look forward to perhaps the opportunity to review and reconsider in a month or so to see the lay of the land at that point thank you all right i think

100we're ready to move on then from procedures to policies these are policy recommendations this is the first reading briefing we will not be voting on these tonight okay um so because we approved establishing procedure 206 there's a change to policy 206 which is which provides procedures to assure open and orderly public discussion as well as to protect the due process and privacy rights of individuals under the law and we just added a section to reference the new procedure 206 a and uh policy 409 which is employee publications instructional materials inventions and creations the purpose of this policy is to identify who owns an original work that the employee creates while employed by the school district um no changes to the substance of the policy but legal counsel review and update of the language as well

101college policy 533 wellness the purpose of this policy is to set forth methods that promote student wellness prevent and reduce childhood obesity and assure that school meals and other food and beverages sold and otherwise made available on the school campus during the school day are consistent with applicable minimum local state and federal standards the changes here were to change the language of student nutrition services to refer to rps department and staff responsible for the implementation of this policy policy 603 is curriculum development the purpose of this policy is to provide direction for continuous review review and improvement of the district curriculum the changes as we added language regarding screening of students for dyslexia and language to inform students who are not meeting academic standards in high school about the availability of public school services through

102age 21. [Music] policy 604 which is instructional curriculum the purpose of this policy is to provide for the development of course offerings for the students the there was some language added um and also some standardization done but the language added was inform students and parents of high school mca scores iep is in the need for transition plans for post-secondary education and employment informing students who are not meeting academic standards in high school about availability of public school services through age 21 to students who meet the requirements and continuation of ieps while the student is enrolled in public school policy 618 assessment of student achievement the purpose of this policy is to institute a process for the establishment and revision of assessments to measure achievement toward meeting the minnesota academic standards track academic progress over time

103and provide minnesota graduate information related to career and college readiness language was added definitions of above grade level tests below grade level tests and on grade level tests we also added school board approval of criteria for student performance on elective standards we added staff development on implementation of assessments and what defines a student's completion of a state standard the use of statewide assessments to evaluate career and college readiness and development and administration of local tests in social studies health and physical education and the arts to determine if a student has met the required academic standards in these areas and just when you thought we were done with policy 60 618 was also added about the use of a student's performance on a statewide assessment as one of multiple criteria to determine grade promotion or retention

104part of a final course grade or on a transcript informing students who are not meeting academic standards in high school about the availability of public school services through age 21 and to students who meet requirements and continuation of ieps while a student is enrolled in public school sorry i thought my part was done but i see this is highlighted with my name also district sharing communication from the minnesota department of education on academic standards and assessments consequences for not participating in assessments impact of mcas on remedial minnesota college courses options for students non-participation and assessment and career exploration assessment requirements and benchmarks accommodation of english learners development of plans for post-secondary education or career participation in and payment four college education exams encouraging students to take courses for college credit and continuation of targeted instruction

105intervention and remediation through grade 12. and the final one is policy 820 district facilities the purpose of this policy is to define responsibility for planning and maintenance of school district facilities language was added school board approval of all major maintenance projects estimated to exceed 175 000 and all new construction projects isn't it nice to hear three voices instead of just director nathan's droning on yes oh that was a little harsh no it's it's it's it's a lot to ask of one person well there you go there you go all right uh any questions or comments for the policy members these will come back um at the next meeting so if anybody has a chance to look at them between now and then they can email any of the policy committee members excellent thank you then

106moving on to 9.03 policy 808 cobia 19 face covering guidance and future decisions on face covering requirements this is a briefing item dr pikkel or ms nathan my guests will go with the policy committee um so the policy committee and superintendent discussed options for streamlining the process of approving changes to face covering requirements to be more responsive to coven 19 conditions we as it was mentioned before we've approved and modified our policy 808 three times the policy committee met and has the following recommendations that we remove the language from policy 808 that identifies who is required to wear a face covering and where face coverings are required with the exception of requirements on school buses and other transportation which is a federal requirement the school board make minor changes to the language in policy 808

107to match the six feet social distancing requirements in the safe and open schools plan and to remove the exceptions related to pre-k students and the school board pass a resolution that reaffirms the current face covering requirements describes the requirements for our pre-k students and provide recommendations provisions for the recommendations notification and approval of future changes to face covering requirements outside of changes to policy 808 we discussed the following advantages to this resolution changes in the face covering requirements could be implemented when needed to address current covet 19 conditions and not wait for approval at the next school board meeting the school board will continue to be informed as the resolution requires consultation with the school board chair and notification to the school board of any changes to face covering requirements the school board could take

108action at the very next meeting if we supported different face covering requirements the face covering requirements selected and implemented by the superintendent shall continue in effect unless and until the school board in consultation with the superintendent and appropriate school district staff and public health officials deems it in the best interest of the school district and its students to implement different face covering requirements this is a briefing this is a briefing and this is the because of the nature of this item we can move it to action yes we can we can do it under on the emergency provisions of policy 208. i'd like to point out too that if you click on any of those links it will take you to policy 808 with the recommended language changes in it so you can look at

109that if you have not already done so move to action second and movement second to move this to action any discussion about making this announcement oh sure now you don't want to talk no all right all in favor of making this an action item say aye hi hi opposed this is an action item i'll read the resolution and it's robust it resolved the school board of independent school district 535 approved the proposed changes in policy 808 covid 19 face covering guidance and be it further resolve the school board of independent school district 535 directs the superintendent to continue implementation of the face covering requirements approved by the school board on august 17 2021 all persons are required to wear a face covering when they are in any building that is owned leased or operated by

110or on behalf of the district unless an exemption or exception stated in this policy applies persons are not required to wear face coverings when they are outside the school district facilities but on the grounds of those facilities all persons are required to wear a face covering when they are in any vehicle that is owned least are operated by or on behalf of the district unless an exemption or exception stated in this policy applies and be it further resolved the school board of independent school district 535 directs the superintendent to implement the following face covering requirement pre-kindergartens students who are two years of age and older and are participating in early childhood programming in a district building are expected to wear a face covering while indoors to the greatest extent possible within their developmental abilities staff

111will provide instruction and support to reinforce proper handling and wearing of face coverings and be it further resolve the school board of independent school district 535 authorizes the superintendent after a consultation with the school board chair and notification to the school board to select and implement different face covering requirements for the school district or any specific school buildings without school board action if the superintendent reasonably believes that prompt implementation of different face covering i'm having trouble breathing face covering requirements are necessary and that constraints of time and public health considerations render it impractical to hold a school board meeting to approve the implementation and be it further result the school board of independent school district 535 authorizes that the face covering requirements selected and implemented by the superintendent shall continue in effect unless and until

112the school board in consultation with the superintendent and appropriate school district staff and public health officials deems it in the best interest of the school district and its students to implement different face covering requirements second and moved and seconded would anybody like me to read it again yes yes please marv and i assumed that you weren't having trouble breathing because you were wearing a face covering that was because you yeah i don't know i could do this all day that was ironic that's all it's been moved and seconded all um any discussion all in favor say aye aye aye opposed the motion passes thank you so we are moving on to second reading 904 second reading ms nathan annie yes so these are the policies that were introduced at the august meeting and having them

113on the agenda signifies the second reading we do not actually have to read them again good but again they'll be on the consent agenda at the next meeting so if anybody does read them through and find any comments they can email members of the policy committee thank you just a note um that we will have regular school board our next regular school board meeting will be september 21st we have september 28th tentatively as a study session we will have regular uh school board meetings october 5th and october 19th with a tentative schedu study session scheduled for october 12th board members are there any issues you want to be included or considered for an upcoming agenda hearing none i thank those of you who have hung in there for this long for attending for your tenacity

114for your commitment and it is 8 10 pm we are adjourned you