001can you hear me yes okay this regular meeting of the independent school district 535 school board is called to order at 5 30 pm tuesday june 1st 2021 virtually in room 137 of the edison building with colleagues participating electronically in accordance with minnesota statute 13 d .021 until further notice members of the public are currently not permitted to attend these meetings physically due to covid19 pandemic recommendations interested members of the public are welcome and encouraged to view this meeting remotely at youtube.com isd 535 where the live stream video can be found we acknowledge that our ps sites are situated on ancestral lands of the dakota people we acknowledge and honor the dakota nations and the sacred land of all indigenous peoples present at this meeting our school board members superintendent michael munoz a non-voting ex-officio
002member and assistant board clerk miss michelle severson ms severson would you please call the roll thank you click amundsen here director barlow here director garcia here director mclaughlin here cheer marvin here vice chair nathan here and treasurer here thank you 2.01 approval of the agenda are there any changes to the agenda yes item 3.02 incubator edu winners announcement has been added to the agenda thank you is there a motion to approve approval amundsen second second workman and a second ms severson would you call the role thank you director barlow aye director garcia hi director mclaughlin hi director marvin hi director nathan hi director workmen hi and director amundsen hi thank you 3.01 under announcements and communications new principal introductions uh mr munoz yes at this time i'll turn it over to carl bakken executive director
003of human resources carl good afternoon board members i am very pleased to announce two new principles that will be starting in the district for the 21 22 school year first of all it is my pleasure to introduce nate wahlbrook as the new principal of century high school mr wahlbruck is returning to rochester and is a mayo high school alumni mr wahlbruck brings a variety of educational work experiences as a social studies teacher and an administrator in north carolina he previously also served as an assistant principal at john marshall high school from 2014 to 2016. most recently mr wahlberg was the principal at plainview elgin millville high school and we look forward to having mr wahlbruck rejoin our team and welcome him back to the district i'm also pleased to announce the hiring of steve willman
004as the new principal of elton hills elementary steve steve's more recent educational experiences include being an administrative assistant at mayo high school and an assistant principal at john marshall high school for nine years steve next spent five years at byron high school as the principal most recently steve has been the assistant principal at sunset terrace and this year he served as the interim principal at elton hills for a majority of the school year so we welcome both steve and nate and i invited both of them to be here i'm hoping they're able to join us tonight steve or nate would you like to say a couple words how about we go steve first oh steve you want to go for this it sounds great it's absolutely a wonder a wonderful pleasure to return back to
005the rochester schools and and see the wonderful things that we're doing and it's been a joy to work with the elton hills community and the families and the kids and the and the teachers it's been a wonderful experience and a whole lot of work is ahead of us but working hand in hand together we'll be able to get the equity work the work around kids and to support students through all the things they go through in their elementary years so it's a lot of fun um really enjoyed the experience thus far and look forward to many years in at elton hills thanks steve uh nate hey everybody uh nate wahlbrook here um when i took over at john marshall i had to follow in steve willman's footsteps which is no small feat um and uh
006he's awesome and so i'll go second behind him on this one as well i probably like at jm i won't do as good a job as he did nearly but i am super excited to come on back to rochester um and i'm super excited to be part of the the century team i look forward to doing great things together as a team working hard for the benefit of all students and we won't stop until we can guarantee high learning at century high school for all kids thanks dave i would also like to thank the board and everybody else for giving us this opportunity so thank you very much well mr um willman and mr wobreck welcome and welcome back uh congratulations and we really look forward to uh working with you and mr wilman it's
007nice to know that you already have this fan principle at century so whatever you've done you did it right apparently anyway we're really pleased to have both of you thank you moving on to 3.02 incubator edu winners announced mr munoz yes this time i'm going to turn it over to brenda whichman executive director of curriculum instruction and she'll introduce our guest today brenda it is always fun to share the amazing things that our staff and students do so for information about our recent incubator edu pitch night i'm going to turn it over to our number one incubator edu teacher coach and supporter mike hutchins all right thank you guys um i also just really appreciate the time to come here and just really talk about um the amazing students we have here at uh i
008just say john marshall but rochester's public schools um in general so um yeah so the incubator edu class both of you are unaware it's an entrepreneurship program that the students have been uh working on throughout this entire year as uh difficult as it has been this year with the with uh the distance learning but they've all just done amazing work and if any of you uh caught the pitch night that happened on wednesday um the students were amazing and did just fantastic work so i actually have one student from each group who uh presented on wednesday here and so i'm just gonna have each of these students um just share just take about you know 30 seconds to a minute just to share their product on their journey this year and just kind of how
009the whole class went for them so i'll just pick them out uh make them do it in order to smell this weird awkward silence uh charlie i see charlie's up there first so charlie de rosier can you please uh juice yourself and your product and all that stuff yeah hello my name is charles rosier i am a part owner of houdini we are built off of a sweatshirt so we prevent your sweatshirt strings from coming out of the hood lining and from becoming uneven through time and getting all tangled up and all messed up uh incubator was a really fun class this year i had a great time although we were online it kind of sucked uh it was awesome to eventually go in person and um start doing the work hey charlie do you
010also want to tell them who else was in your group just so they know yeah sorry uh my other two partners are carson mueller and isabelle osman who are at work so they can't be here today and then uh houdini was funded for four thousand dollars um for the other night and so i'm very excited to see what what what their next steps are on their journey and because they're all going their separate ways different colleges next year so we'll see i'm very excited to see what they do all right uh next up we will go to nina munoz nina hi everyone i'm nina munoz and myself along with nolan gora and isabelle valaissance created magna box which is a business and a product that you can attach to your outlet that will keep your
011charger intact so that it doesn't get pulled out of the outlet and then nina's group was also was funded for six thousand dollars uh they uh from here made from our from our board of advisors as well and uh make sure you look at their next steps too and then last up uh we have kasara and mehta uh who i know his connections being a little weird so hopefully you'll everything will be okay for us so sorry to sell yours uh hi my name is forum team uh along with 40 smith our product this year was an application called music forum which was focused on music connection and collaboration for young and upcoming independent artists who get to have better opportunities since their career and for me the incubator class is really awesome because i
012have to learn a lot more about problem ideation and position as well as collaboration and stuff working virtually and um and also by sending these sessions but we got the six thousand dollars as well and that covers our stuff all right thank you sarah um yeah so it was an amazing experience this year and the students just did so fantastic so if you if you have not had a chance to go and catch uh the pitch night i know it was recorded and adrienne and i'll put it up on the youtube channel so uh please check it out they've done fantastic work so um thank you all for the opportunity and for everything else this year thanks mike and just just a couple things for the board the the concept behind incubator easy once they
013learn the design process they're charged with solving developing a service or product to solve a problem and that's uh they work as teams we have uh adult uh entrepreneurs in our community to come in and serve as coaches to help them along the way so uh yeah it's an exciting class and it's it's as you heard some of the things that the students said they really hit on our graduate profile which we're trying to accomplish so thanks for mike for bringing this forward tonight thank you all so much thank you mike it sounds awesome i'm gonna go get a sweatshirt with strings i don't own one but i think i need one now that houdini exists so and those other products are amazing um i when i was the age of these kids i was
014babysitting for 50 cents an hour and clearly never learned to work with kids very well but anyway thank you so much this is an exciting program amazing chair marvin yeah mr barlow can i ask mr hutchins a quick question so mike how can other district students you know who perhaps viewed the presentation or or are watching uh tonight they're hearing about incubator edu uh how do they become eligible what should they do is there a pathway for their participation or involvement um the only really specifications that are required are that they're a junior or senior who are in the rochester area to be honest with you um so these students are almost all seniors nina uh as a junior um and then we also and one and one students nolan is actually from shaffer academy
015so he just he's open enrolled just for this one course to be able to do um so really like that's only requirement is um it's really like the time commitment for the students because the class itself is um it's a two-hour block visit you know a ctec class um all year round and so um all it is is registration and so students who are interested if you talk to your guidance counselor uh your school counselor they can help you how to you know work through it to put in your schedule and then you can be a part of incubator next year thanks mike any other questions all right again mr hutchins thank you so much this is it's really exciting great future thank you so much guys next 3.03 board committee updates to board members
016have any updates on committee work in which they've been involved it is nathan i'm just going to give a short one because you're going to get the results of the cciac community curriculum and instruction advisory committee work tonight in agenda item 5.01 when you hear about the sixth grade science curriculum so i'm not going to steal any of their thunder but that's what ccic work done this month thank you anybody else very quickly miss mclaughlin and i have been meeting with the student school board our last meeting of the year with both the middle school students and the high school students involved some great feedback about what students wanted changed for next year topics that they wanted to discuss we're thinking that we'll get a student group together this summer to set the agenda about
017how things will work going forward and on another note and a few of us from the board administration were able to attend the class of 2021 leap graduation that's launching emerging adults program for uh adult age students who are have gotten a special program in order to be successful as they transition from public school to life beyond public school and careers and it was an exciting exciting and very rainy but exciting evening for all of them and for those of us who are able to attend anybody else all right then we will go to uh the consent agenda are there any items to be removed for separate consideration move approval workmen second hammondson it's been moved and approved it's been moved and approved it's been moved and seconded ms severson thank you director garcia hi
018director mclaughlin i director marvin i director nathan hi director workman hi and director amazon hi thank you mr munoz yes we have some retirements today uh first one is richard armstrong elementary pair at pinewood elementary been with the district seven years betsy fish fisk doll special ed para at gage elementary been with the district 31 years and jeanette hawkinson special ed paraprofessional at longfellow elementary been with the district six years mary's shabastari elementary para bishop elementary defender of the district seven years and ruth lockhart custodian two john marshall has been with the district 16 years we thank these individuals for their service to our district and wish them well on their next endeavor and there's always something waiting after retirement thank you mr munoz 5.01 articulation cycle update this is a briefing on the approval
019of amplify science for sixth grade earth science mr munoz yes at this time i'll turn it over to brenda richmond executive director of curriculum instruction and she can introduce the other individuals that will be presenting with her brenda good evening chair marvin school board members and superintendent munoz tonight we are here to report on our curriculum articulation work in science our core academic subjects are generally up for review and research every seven years and this year we were tasked with studying science our presenters tonight are going to tell you more about the process but i'm going to give you just a bit of background information before they get started the 2019 minnesota academic standards in science set the expectations for achievement and science for k-12 students in minnesota the standards are grounded in the belief
020that all students can and should be scientifically literate scientific literacy enables people to use scientific principles and processes to make personal decisions and to participate in discussions of scientific issues that affect society our graduates should be prepared for career and college opportunities the standards describe a connected body of science and engineering knowledge that's acquired through active participation in science experiences these experiences include hands-on laboratory activities that are rooted in science and engineering practices the standards are based on current science education which emphasized the inclusion of three dimensions scientific and engineering practices cross-cutting concepts and disciplinary core ideas this year most of our work was focused on secondary science but we have formed a team consisting of curriculum and instruction uh principals and teachers to represent the elementary side and some of those leadership team members
021were writing new lessons this summer and we'll be piloting them next year so our work actually k-12 will continue into next year we have a stellar team with us here today to share about science articulation in rps they're going to share about our science journey this year and then provide the rationale for that briefing item of the purchase of materials for sixth grade so from the secondary cni team heather willman and jen conan freddell science teacher jenae monette and lincoln science teacher kyle casper are you guys seeing our slides yes okay perfect i'm going to turn it over to kyle first and he's going to give us a little bit of the overview so this is our implementation plan and that starts with the sixth grade implement the new standards next school year and of
022course starting with sixth grade this is a big change for a lot of teachers because historically this was a physical science here uh but with the new standards it will be switched to earth science and so that starts next year uh the following year will be the seventh grade new standards and that continues as life science also new that year will be the environmental science at ninth grade which will cover the earth and space science standards and last the 2023 school year the eighth grade will start with their physical science and the other high school classes will implement their new standards all right janae is going to talk about the overall goals that we look at when reviewing curriculum all right good evening can you guys hear me yeah oh good so yes um our
023overall goals as we started looking at different curriculums were to look at the diversity and the multiple perspectives of team members we value student voice and the experience the teacher voice and opportunity to learn not just shopping for new materials and ensuring that materials are provided and they're in an equitable pathway of strong instruction for all of our learners right so i'll talk you through the the review process i want to first say that we have been super lucky many districts have had to stop the curriculum work this year because the year has been so challenging and we had teachers who stepped up and janae and kyle and jen can testify every month we met for an hour and a half to continue to work on our standards implementation we're just we're lucky we have
024teachers that were willing to put that time in this year so first we form a team and we set a vision for what strong instruction looks like so we started really with what do we want instruction to look like for every student in every classroom then the second step was to review the standards and we we do something where we call it unpacking the standards where we look at what do the students need to know and be able to do with those standards sometimes standards are written in challenging language and so we really look at what is it that we really want the students to know and be able to do and and how do we make that actionable and then our third step was to develop a tool to help us review the materials
025so as a team we really thought about our vision and what we wanted for instruction for all learners and then we compared some other tools we looked at one from the university of wisconsin and then we created our own rubric based on what we thought were the most important pieces two important parts of that we're gathering student feedback and also community input as kathy talked about we have a community curriculum advisory council that meets monthly and so we had community members parents and students part of this work and then we reviewed the materials we made a selection based on that rubric and then we'll build a training and a professional development plan because we know that getting up high quality materials is just one part of the equation and jen's going to talk about our
026team members when we started this process originally we had just sixth and eighth grade teachers part of it as well as some instructional coaches and then we expanded it to include all middle school teachers were invited to be a part of it and then we asked our equity coordinator and american indian liaison to give their perspectives as well so as you can see from this list we have representation from all of the middle schools and a couple of coaches from those middle schools as well and as heather talked about we came up with a rubric and some of the important um things that this group was looking for was that it was interesting and relevant and had an incr anchoring phenomena for students that was trying to let the students come up with the questions
027and where the science would lead tools to encourage diverse points of view and representation in science multiple ways to assess understanding focus on thinking and sense making connections to our community and support from student dialogue and communication so our recommendation after this year-long process was to go with a resource called amplify and the things that we really appreciated about this resource it has a strong correlation with the new standards in fact it was the only resource that we reviewed that that that correlated with the new standards well enough to get high marks it's engaging and it's hands-on it has strong literacy components and that includes informational text and then students also have an interactive notebook that they keep and so those pieces are woven throughout all the lessons one thing we really liked was that
028students get a chance to do talk read write and visualize in every lesson so as we think about culturally relevant teaching practices we thought that was really important and then another piece that um that was exciting for us was the fact that scientists and engineers from a variety of ethnic and cultural backgrounds are highlighted in each unit so students really get that that perspective and then finally it was ranked highest based on ed reports but which is a non-profit that uses reviewers to look at curricular materials so that also helped influence our decision we did have a couple of areas for growth and development there are a few areas that we want to continue to work on as we use the resource because we know there's no perfect resource that we can buy so prompting
029students to ask their own questions is something that we'll continue to work on and then just leveraging the social and cultural backgrounds of our students we want to make sure that there are opportunities to gauge their prior knowledge and what they're interested in and really connect them with their community and then again that local phenomena to anchor learning so as we get training on these materials we'll continue to work on adding our own local element because we know that's really important for our learners that is what we have to share with you we are happy to take some questions if you have any miss nathan um heather can you talk one of the things that was really impressive to us on cciac is when we saw some of the videos of the curriculum in action
030and heather can you describe and i've forgotten what they're called the examples that they were all the kids were looking at the same example and it was a video that described and then they were reacting to it can you describe a little bit about how that is in the curriculum that it's not just you know flat words on paper but some of those other resources absolutely yeah each um each unit starts with some kind of an anchoring phenomena so sometimes it'll be a video sometimes it will be a picture and sometimes it's a simulation where the students are able to watch it and one of the things that that is really important about this curriculum is that it's very much geared toward the students driving their own learning and so um you would more likely
031see students doing different things in the classroom not everyone doing the same thing at the same time and then students generating those questions from whatever it is that they observed so if it was a video if it's a picture or if it's simulation they're generating those questions and driving that next step in the inquiry process any other questions board members two things i was just really impressed with the great group of people you had involved in this i think that getting diverse perspectives from people who teach different things who are involved in different areas of of education so important and so i really applaud that uh my question for you is is this something that would be useful to have approved sooner rather than later yes it would that would be great we're hoping to
032do some training this summer um and then we'll also have some curriculum writing that will go along with the training and then um we do want to have sort of a parent open house as well um so if it is approved we want to make sure we make some plans for that for the fall uh chair marvin move approval i mean move to action garcia it's been moved and seconded to have this become an action item the severson what you call the role thank you director marvin hi director nathan aye director workmen hi director amundsen hi director barlow hi director garcia aye director mclaughlin hi thank you this is now an action item be it resolve the school board of independence school district does hereby approve the purchase of amplify science for sixth grade earth
033science move approval workmen second to ammonson it's been moved and seconded any discussion ms severson roll call thank you director workman oh i'm sorry director nathan hi director workmen i director amundsen aye director barlow aye director garcia hi director mclaughlin hi and director marvin hi thank you motion passes thank you 5.02 literacy partnership update uh this is a briefing item about approval of decodable readers mr munoz yes i'll turn it over to brenda whichman executive director of curriculum instruction brenda well good evening again chair marvin school board members and superintendent munoz and we are happy to be here tonight to talk to you about that purchase and the much anticipated literacy partnership but it wouldn't be right to start this presentation without acknowledging the hard work that all of our teachers have done this year
034who have participated when we first started planning for an intensive learning experience that would span an entire school year and involve all of our kindergarten and all of our first grade classroom teachers and support teachers we weren't thinking we would be doing that in the middle of a pandemic to say that we've had to pivot and adjust our plans a few times is an understatement this absolutely could not have happened without the strong and steady leadership of our two literacy coaches laurie back and rebecca metchakowski who were led by peter dodds with all of the challenges we faced this year it would have been easy to maybe just push this off a year and there were times when we considered doing that but we believe in our students and our teachers and our leaders so
035we pushed through but it was not easy and even though we didn't get as far as we had initially planned we have come a long way tonight we have the following rps team members to share about our literacy partnership adventure peter dodds from elementary cni those two awesome reading coaches laurie and rebecca and two kindergarten teachers danielle noll and randy wood from sunset terrace so they're going to share a little bit about our journey in the literacy partnership and then talk about the rationale for the purchase of the decodable readers thank you good evening board thank you for uh having us this evening i appreciate the time to come and present so uh just to review a little bit there was a commitment uh i would say in january or uh february of last year
036of this idea of the literacy partnership and and making sure all of our teachers get this foundational training in the science of reading so there was a commitment to that and we did the work this year and we wanted to update you on kind of where we're at this evening and what our next steps are so what is the literacy partnership it's a year-long collaboration with our k1 teachers in diving into the science of reading and really looking at structured literacy and who was all involved all of our kindergarten and first grade teachers along with the majority many of our special education teachers at the elementary as well and why why were we doing this work well i think first and foremost quality reading instruction we believe is an equity issue and we want to
037make sure all of our students have access to high quality materials and high quality instructional practices and then you'll also find that the science of reading this term this phrase is actually deeply embedded into the new state standards that will be coming out in ela and that will be looking at more closely in the coming years and also our data illustrates that we have room to grow in this area and then how how did how did the literacy partnership happen this year well there was about six or seven meetings spread out throughout the course of the calendar year and our coaches did professional development training along with uh coaching support in the buildings virtually and and we also there was a heavy investment in making sure we got the right materials into our teachers hands
038as well so that's kind of an overview of the partnership but it is important to note i think that when we look at our data um and this is our mca reading data we know we're kind of static and we know there's room for growth so that's another key piece of the puzzle here today so now um rebecca's going to step in and kind of give you a little bit more of the background on the the why of this and what is that science of reading rebecca hello everyone thank you for having us um when we talk about the science of reading we really are talking about these five pillars of literacy these were established in the year 2000 by the national reading panel and what's happened in the two decades since it's just more
039and more research and evidence that shows that yes these are the five critical pieces in regards to literacy and those are phonemic awareness phonics fluency vocabulary and comprehension and it's not just enough that we say that there's five of them it's important to know that these five pillars have to all be strong all of our pillars need to be strong and all of our instruction needs to be strong in these areas because this is what happens when we don't have strong instruction in one of the pillars we get a poor foundation and skill breeders are proficient in all five really proficient and one of the key things that's come up in the last two decades with the research is that when we look at readers who we're finding in upper grades any grade beyond second
040grade so third grade and above all the way through 12th grade if they're struggling in regards to comprehension and understanding what they read the majority of the time it can be traced back to gaps in their phonemic awareness instruction and in their phonics instruction but especially down to that phonemic awareness and that sound level so what we think really encapsulates how important it is is this quote and that is that if a child memorizes 10 words they're going to read those 10 words that's all they're going to get but if a child learns the sounds of 10 letters they can read 350 free sound words 4 324 sound words and 21 650 5 sound words you can see here in this quote the illustration of how important that that pillar is in regards to literacy
041hello board thank you so much for having us here tonight so i want to talk a little bit about the intended impact of the literacy partnership and of course the first one and foremost was really to increase student literacy success we want them to feel good we want them to understand and be proficient readers so that's our number one outcome number two is really to support teachers and provide tools so that they can make really critical instructional decisions for each and every student and we want to support teachers with common tools and common knowledge both in unique awareness and phonics instruction those are two areas that we really needed to streamline just a little bit and then finally as a district we really wanted to see growth in our reading scores we've been stagnant for
042quite a while and so we really want to see those scores start to increase and we also wanted to look at areas that could perhaps use some growth but also to really celebrate and acknowledge our areas of strength within the district so how will we know if we're meeting our outcomes uh quantitatively we do have some evidence that we can collect uh the kindergarten students will be taking a phonemic awareness assessment they've been doing that now for a year and have found some great growth between the beginning of the year and the end of the year first grade will be implementing a new phonics assessment that is given one-on-one by the teacher so the teacher will hear them read they will do that at the beginning of the year and the end of the year
043to turn that in so we can have that comparative data but they'll also be using these two assessments formatively throughout the years to really make instructional decisions second through fifth grade will be working with fastbridge a reading data and of course our third through fifth grade students will have mca data that we can look back on i think you know the data is really exciting and i get kind of jazzed by looking at data but even more important is the qualitative data that we're seeing rebecca and i just had exit coaching conversations with every one of our elementary schools and we talked to the teachers for kindergarten and first grade and they really talked about student engagement and just how excited their kids are this year with some of the new learning that they're implementing
044and with our new phonics program they're seeing it bleed across to different content areas and they're finding that quite exciting uh we hope to start looking at some look fors we call them for walk throughs on the five pillars of reading and structured literacy so that we can just have some really engaging discussions about you know the instruction that we're doing while we're uh working with our students and then finally we've just been really excited about teacher feedback by and large it has been so positive um they were excited at the end of the year and we told them that next year as coaches we'll be visiting with them again and they were very relieved and happy to hear that and excited to move forward with further implementation of what they learned this year about
045the science and reading peter you are muted thank you appreciate it can you still see my screen great so one of the things that we wanted to make sure um the board understood this evening is what does this look like in the classroom right it's one thing to talk about it it's another thing to see what it looks like in the classroom so on the right there you see this uh tool that was introduced teachers a sound wall and this was uh one of our teachers shared this resource but then you can see students in the middle what they're doing is breaking apart words and fingerspelling them and then on the left hand side you can see i have two video clips here of two of our teachers danielle noel and randy wood who are
046here this evening and they're going to give share their perspective here in a minute but working with breaking apart words and understanding how to manipulate words which is a high level thinking skill when it comes to phonics instruction here are some other voices that we wanted to make sure that you could read and take a look at and these are from our teachers from the people in our system serving students and what they valued about the literacy partnership this year about the knowledge that they gained and also the tools that they used so you can see as a kindergarten teacher our students are being able to sound out words better than they have before from this reading teacher talking about blending and segmenting our students that struggled with reading this year they've seen an enormous
047difference and this is in a year of a pandemic on top of that here we have two special education teachers sharing their experience really talking about this partnership between gen ed and special education and how it helps them being part of the partnership understand what's happening in the general education classroom and how they can differentiate for student needs and then finally one other elementary teacher um this quote i think is is really important um because this teacher was saying that the tools and the learning this year um help them make a better plan to move forward when a student showed a need and that's really the main purpose of the literacy partnership and the great work that rebecca and laurie have done this year is is helping teachers add to their toolbox to support kids
048in their reading development that's what it's all about and then finally um danielle noel and randy wood are here this evening and i wanted to open it up to them to share a little bit about their learning this year and how they feel like it is impacting their students hi i'm randy wood and this is danielle canole and we are kindergarten teachers at sunset terrace i'm going to talk a little bit about how it's impacted my teaching as you saw with the pillars graphic phonemic awareness and phonics is a huge part of what our kids need for reading foundational skills and this has helped streamline our teaching we've all been kind of doing phonics you know for the past however many years but in our own way and this helps even the playing field across
049the district across schools so that if a child moves from one school to the next they might be off by a week or two in curriculum but it's the same language it's the same skills that they've been practicing the same way that they've been practicing it wherever they came from so that's been really great to help us out with our teaching and then also being able to collaborate together through the literacy partnership has been really awesome too it was a really good roll out i think even in the year of a pandemic even though we couldn't be in person doing the learning we were able to get on through google meets and then collaborate with our team and also teams from other schools too to do that learning together and we've just been really excited
050with what we've seen with our students as we're doing the lessons the things that they're picking up on um i mean each day they say things that shock me and they're starting to talk about patterns and words as we're finger stretching words they're asking questions like but if that follows a cvc pattern why is it make the long sound and they're just asking so many deeper questions about words that we haven't even really covered before and so they're really taking everything that we're giving to them and applying it and it's been so fun to see how much they've grown with that we started the year really heavy with rhyming and that rhyming has kind of come full circle so now they're finding words and they're like oh if i can read the word we then
051i know this is me and this is she and they're adding all of these different pieces to words and can read so many more words um than when we just focused on like our sight words or things like that so it's been super awesome to see that and i think one of my favorite things that one of my kids told me she came to me um middle of the year or so and she said just the other day she said at my old school they didn't teach us that words were made of sounds and so i didn't i couldn't read until i came here and you taught me that all of these words are just made of sounds and if i know my sounds then i can read pretty much any word and so it
052was just so awesome to see her like acknowledge like i'm a reader and i can read because i know these sounds and so it's just been really exciting to see them take it all in and starting to apply all that we've been able to talk about thank you so much danielle and randy for sharing your experience um i did want to and i'm going to try and share my video one more time here there was one more video i wanted to share with the board if it's okay just a quick 20 second clip we had two teachers at um one of our sites at washington um and this is joni erickson and angela lash and they made this great video they wanted to share their learning this year but i'm just going to show you
053a short excuse me a short part from it because i think it really illustrates the work that's happened this year so bear with me as i share my screen here thank you so much well even though through this hybrid dl and full in-person year we would say that we have the most confidence in our kindergarteners reading than we've ever actually had nearly 100 of our students are able to identify letter sounds and letters they are consistently segmenting and blending cvc which is consonant vowel consonant words and words with digraphs like ch sh t h w h and ck along with blends at a high level of accuracy using finger stretching so i i would like to play the rest but it's a little bit longer i do want to say to the board though they
054at the end they did thank the board for the many hours of work you all put in this year because they know it's been a difficult year and if you'd like to see that um whole clip um i'd be happy to share it with you just go ahead and email me and i can i can share that with you so uh i just want to make sure that i recognize all the people that contributed to those and the video and they were all really instrumental in helping us uh pull all this together for you tonight so talking about next steps uh next steps going forward and one of the reasons that we're here tonight is thinking about okay we've laid a strong foundation now we need to continue the work going forward so next year
055we're going to continue the literacy partnership we're going to move it to our second grade teachers we're also going to include our english learner teachers and our reading specialists in the learning next year as well we're going to really focus on data collection because we really want to show the growth that's happening and not just have us tell you about it and then the the key piece here is really looking at putting a new tool into our teachers hands which are decodable texts that's critical for the students to practice uh the work that they've been doing that danielle and randy and all of our k1 teachers have done this year so why decodable readers and that's where we're looking at this tool called geodes geodes is a will help our students apply their phonics instruction
056into actual reading and this is critical one of the critical reasons it is is because our new state standards are are specifically calling out these decodable texts and we know this is a tool that our teachers need to have in front of them lori yeah and so uh rebecca mentioned the last 20 years almost uh a little over since the national reading panel convened but even earlier than that if we look back 40 years we see that the research has been there it's just taken a long time for us to bring it forward and if we look back at the sum of the work it's still addressed today by current researchers when they look at becoming a nation of readers and so when we look at a decodable the criteria that they set forward was
057that books needed to be comprehensible the vocabulary needs to be understandable sometimes the codable text can be so contrived that it doesn't make sense and it doesn't sound like the way kids talk or the way they listen to adults talk and so we need it to be understandable and written in sentence patterns that make sense to kids they sound familiar it also needs to be instructive so the words need to be decodable uh it needs to align with the curriculum that they're being taught so that the skills and sequence of letter sounds and vowel sounds are introduced at about the same time as the books are presented to them so that they can practice their phonics skills right away and then finally they need to be engaging we need to be able to read them
058over and over and over again kids love to do it and by the way their caregivers will really appreciate it too if they're an engaging beautiful book with wonderful rich illustrations and pictures and supports so at this point we would open it up to any questions from the board director parallel one director barlow are you there uh yes okay thank you before i comment regarding geodes i really appreciate the presentation uh the information regarding the five pillars was so important and um after you laid it out if there's one area that is weak then it weakens the entire process i also like the awareness that reading is more than teaching but there's actually a science associated with reading and this uh definitely incorporates that first question deals with um support of the home you know
059how can we get parents on board if you will uh is that is this question beyond anything you've considered or discussed i think of the cradle to career presentation we had a couple weeks ago where they spoke of having or developing cards that they would be sending and making available to households to where parents could be more involved in that process and since where a year was spent regarding kindergartners and first grade and you know i think that's just a wonderful opportunity to engage involved uh parents because i i think so many parents wanna help their children and help staff okay and and so just a thought but more specifically to geodes now i did do some research uh and i was pleased to see that uh while there are a number of decodable readers
060out there i'm glad that you landed on with this particular product if i could just share a few notations i made it this particular product unites phonics with the compelling content and beautiful art i found that interesting because it's more than just you know words but it's additional elements as well and that it encourages the students to wonder uh to decode and to know versus simply read what's before you okay and that it also establishes this premise that every child is capable of not just reading but greatness and and that's you know and i'm sure i don't have to tell you guys as uh you know coaches and or teachers or staff you know reading opens up so much opportunity and then finally um uh i like the fact that this particular uh curriculum is
061rich with facts and ideas that spark students curiosity about the world around them and and so i'm i'm excited i hope my colleagues will see the benefit value and that we will be able to fully support you and bringing this recommendation before us thank you director garcia yes thank you chair marvin and i also appreciate the uh presentation that you brought before us i think it's um i think it will certainly fit well within the district um i do have one question and it might actually be answered by your literacy partnership that you intend to do with your english language teachers but what i was wondering is for those students who are bi or multilingual is there care in this process i guess that we you would be undertaking to address how we don't just
062push those students through into like a monolingual only literacy-based education that we would also be supporting them and maintaining other languages they speak in addition to you know learning to read and write in english thank you dr garcia appreciate the question we did just meet with our el implementation associate and um the supervisor of the el teachers in planning for next year and involved and really what we want to do is involve them in the process of planning because we know our el students needs might be a little bit different so we're uh planning together and reviewing okay this is what we got coming but what does this look like from an el perspective and i will say our one our implementation association yell uh um spoke exactly to your question like well let's just
063make sure that we are working with oral language and we want students to feel valued in their home language and uh he really made that point very clear which i appreciated so we're working in close partnership with our el team to figure out yes but what does this look like from an el lens as opposed to maybe our second grade general education teacher perfect thank you so much director mclaughlin i simply want to thank you for the great work that you're doing here i can't wait to see the results of this it's really exciting i also want to give the perspective that my new reader is now about 10 years past that stage but i remember this you know we wanted to practice we want to practice the parents want to do things but also
064kind of holding your breath to see if they could do it or not that seems so much better than that experience so i'm hoping that parents and teachers see that um i also want to comment this is the second conversation we've had tonight that focuses on equity for students and i really appreciate that i do have a couple questions though um really technical things but i'm hoping that it will expand the discussion um ms mack you talked about something in your presentation i'm just going to read it here the look fors during building walk-throughs on the five pillars of reading can you explain that for us and then i do have one more question oh sure so um thank you for the question we've created a um a document it's a working document right now
065and it's in draft but what we'd like to do is be able to go out and say and not necessarily us for sure it could be the principals in the school of the instructional coaches in the school teachers could use it with each other to go in and do some checking and see like how does she present this how does he share this information but is it true to the five pillars of literacy instruction and so basically what it is it's kind of like a rubric and it shows what it would look like if it's fully implemented so there's some verbage to go along with it it describes what you might see if if it is in place that particular piece or that particular pillar is in place and then what it might be if
066it isn't in place yet there's still a little bit of room for growth and so it isn't an evaluation tool we would never want to evaluate one another it is a tool to get us talking so if two teachers use this tool they might observe each other and then go back and say i wonder what they mean by this or i wonder how i could incorporate this and then that would be a time for them to work together contact and work with their instructional coach and for sure work with rebecca and i if we could share some ideas with them and then just if one of you could speak for a minute or so i was just so curious about the topics i think i got them right the finger spelling or the finger stretching
067what that means i'll yup i'll take that one um finger stretching is an activity that they've learned through our newest resource that they got this year with really great reading and it has to do with using your fingers to indicate the sounds in a word so if you ask a child how many phonemes do you hear in the word cat when they finger stretch it they go aft cat three three phonemes so that's it's really identifying and stretching it apart and as you go up in the grades they start they go from can you hear the phonemes to um how many syllables does this word have um so it it's not you know it's not just for our earliest learners but it really is something that you can see as we progress up through the
068grades as well i i also invite if you don't mind either randy or danielle to to share um their experience with finger finger stretching if they'd like yeah so um rebecca you modeled it very well and so and we even start then talking about okay when you when you stretch that out it was three phonemes what did you hear in the middle or what did you hear at the end or the beginning and really get them thinking about those patterns in words um and like i mentioned before so we're stretching it out and then we talk about like long vowels or short vowels and they're really starting to pick up on those patterns in words and why it's a long vowel or why it's a short vowel as they're stretching them and just having those
069conversations um about words thank you director nathan so it's a nice it's a night of thank yous but i'm gonna add mine because i remember when um there was a lot of talk in the media about the science of reading and there were the npr stories and articles i know the board got a number of emails at the time asking us what we were doing and the beauty of it is that our curriculum instruction team was on it and was already planning um to do this work so i appreciate the the forethought and the and the being ahead of the curve that you all have been this past year um one question i have about the um the assessments or or sort of knowing how the students are doing is how would parents know throughout
070the year how their students are progressing um with with with the skills how are they um do they get reports at conferences are there like formative assessments that they can track through the year as opposed to like the beginning of the year and the end of the year assessments that's a great question i can speak to it a little bit and then i would encourage anybody else to jump in but um uh the report card at the elementary level uh went through a drafting process this year in terms of re-aligning the report card and there's been a lot of work involved in that process but one of the key pieces is aligning that report card that our parents are getting and the information that our stakeholders are getting is aligned to the science of reading
071and the practices that uh and the learning that were happening this year so this summer that summer curriculum writing team that's part of their work is looking at that and how does it align to the report card so we can better communicate as opposed to one benchmark here and one benchmark there any other questions board members ms switchman as board members have been pointing out this is really an exciting initiative and uh amazing curriculum i'm guessing that you would just as soon have yes is what you're saying is that moving this to action would be a great idea yes i'll move it to action workmen second second nathan it's been moved and seconded to action ms severson would you call it role please thank you and director marvin we're going to start with you again
072please yes i director nathan hi director workman hi director amundsen hi director barlow aye director garcia aye and director mcfaflin hi thank you this is an action item be it resolved the school board of independent school district 535 does hereby approve the purchase of geodes decodable readers for 234 669.45 it's been moved and seconded ms severson thank you director nathan i director workman i director amundsen hi director barlow i director garcia hi director mclaughlin hi and director marvin hi thank you and the motion passes thank all of you very much we are now at 7.01 approval of boundary adjustments for the 2022-2023 school year as recommended by the boundary advisory committee this is an action item the board has received many briefings on the process and the findings of this committee so i'm going to
073read the action item after it is moved and seconded there will be a time for discussion be it resolved the school board of independent school district 535 does hereby approve the boundary change maps to be implemented beginning with the 2022-2023 school year move approval nathan second mclaughlin thank you it's been moved and seconded uh and now for discussion mr munoz did you have something you wanted to say first nope nothing bad all right board members well i guess listen uh well we'll go with director amundsen first and then ms nathan okay director nathan can go first i was just going to build on um different kind of munoz's comments was if you say that there's nothing to add then there's been no changes or no adjustments to the recommendations as was presented at the last
074meeting correct ms amundson thank you i just wanted to acknowledge the individual's boundary adjustments are always difficult it's it's the type of thing where you try to do what's best for the entire district and there are certain individual families that will be affected in a way that's an adjustment for the family um and and some some negative there's no such thing as a perfect plan so i wanted to recognize that the emails that we've gotten from families um who are in their perception adversely affected by these boundary changes that we are not ignoring um the the inconvenience or discomfort or or whatever the boundary changes are doing for those individual families that we recognize that there will be difficulties for them but that it's for the good of the district as a whole for balancing
075the um the demographics of schools and that type of thing so i know that there have been some emails that have come in and i don't want those families to feel like they're being ignored but there's just so many individual cases that it's impossible to address them all but i just wanted to make sure those families know that they have been heard and we've done the best we can yeah i'd also like to add in my over how to say over 40 years only get the exact number over 40 years in public education my experience has been as a teacher a school counselor administrator students are pretty good at at recovering from a switch to schools they make friends really well i do know that as a parent that's a concern from some but i
076i will tell you that the schools will do everything they can to make this new smooth transition for new students coming into their school so they're really good at making sure that it is a good transition this is not the first time we've done boundaries uh changes here in the district but you know anytime you bring on basically four new schools you have to adjust boundaries to balance out your capacity so i do know i'll share parents that our schools will do everything they can to welcome that new student and making sure that it's a really positive experience for them thank you superintendent director nathan um for the for the viewing audience who may not have read the entire um background information that's in the agenda item there are some statements about work that is
077going to continue regarding grandfathering or exceptions to attendance so superintendent munoz how do you anticipate communicating those decisions once they're made to the community well we uh we just will begin that work here in the month of june and we will bring that back to the board as an information item but i i anticipate there'll be some type of uh deadline um for making requests and we're not using the term grandfathering in that that has a negative meaning for some it would be administrative placement or an exception to attendance and board policy states what the four criteria are for exception to attendance so we will continue to follow that process but for a situation that wouldn't fall under one of those categories it would have to be an administrative placement and and like i said
078we will bring once that gets finalized we will bring that plan with some timelines uh back to the board miss amundsen um just so there's there's the issue of a student who would want to finish their last year at a building are you saying just just for the benefit of the public are you saying that it will be a case-by-case basis not an entire grade level that will be allowed to stay i can tell you our pa the plan isn't finalized and we just started working on it but the past practice has been we've done everything we can to let allow a student to finish their last year at that school if their space with bringing on four new schools or three at the elementary level most likely space shouldn't be an issue if it's
079not too many students the reason why we'd have to have a deadline and when they would have to let us know is as we start working on uh the budget process for that next year and start looking at staff you know how many kindergarten teachers is this building need and so on we would have to have a deadline on when they would make that request to for that administrative placement but our past practice has been to let them you know if they have one year left in that school to try to accommodate that so i anticipate that will will probably be part of the process but my question specifically i'm sorry i wasn't clear was it won't be a blanket application to an entire grade level at an entire school it would be a case
080like it's because in the past the past there have been those blanket grandfathering i'm sorry that's not a good term i don't have a better one but um an entire grade level allowed to stay that won't probably be happening under what you're proposing just to be clear for the public it would have to be an individual uh exception and there would have to be action on the part of the family to request that correct there won't be what we've done in the past where we let the entire across the city or entire across one school fifth graders stay i'm not sure how that would work but so no it would have to be a case case by case uh request by parent really clear about that so that people know that action would need to
081be taken if they feel strongly yeah and we would communicate that once the process is established you bet thanks are there any other questions or comments board members all right let me just say that understanding that this is going to cause change for many families for many students but as a superintendent said our teachers and our administrators are keenly aware that change can be disruptive they can be unsettling it can also be really exciting and that our students and their families will have a year before any changes take place uh to adjust to that and i i'm the only person i think in this screen right now who's been in education even longer than the superintendent has been my experience has been that kids look to the adults around them and if we feel optimistic
082that things are going to work out or right students believe that and they do work out all right so they're going to be looking at us at the adults to decide is this going to be traumatic or is this going to be just a change and maybe disruptive but also kind of exciting with new opportunities so at this point this is an action item the resolution's been read we've had the discussion ms everson would you please call the role thank you director workman i director emmonson hi director barlow aye director garcia hi director mclaughlin hi director marvin i and director nathan hi thank you the motion passes and i say that director amundsen has a question i have a comment i just wanted to make sure that um we express our appreciation again to all
083of the individuals who um put a lot of time and effort and heart frankly into into the committee and also the staff members and our consultants who um spent a lot of time i think it was a good process i don't you know i i know there are people who are unhappy but i think it's a very very small number and i think it's the best that we could possibly act being that boundary changes are always difficult and disruptive but thank you to all those involved in the many many many hours that went into it thank you director amundsen that's really important the committee and all those involved did a huge amount of work thank you all right moving on hang on thank you 7.02 approval of the 2021-2022 school district budget this is a
084briefing item mr munoz yes before i turn it over to john executive director of finance just a reminder for those who may be watching or watch this recording later the board did have a study session on the next year's budget so tonight john is just going to give a brief summary of that meeting so at this time i'll turn it over to john john all right thank you chair marvin superintendent munoz just going to share my screen here because i'm going to give just some of the highlights here the budget and the five-year forecast for you all right so just a little background school board must approve a budget by july 1st that's per statute or we do not have a legal authority to spend money starting july 1st and the main school board policy
085we keep in our minds as we're helping guide the budget setting process is making sure that the unassigned fund balance will end at six percent or higher at the end of the projected budget period some of the basic revenue assumptions that we've put into our budget uh so far are we are assuming general education state aid is going to be six thousand six hundred thirty three dollars per pupil unit state law is still at six thousand five hundred sixty seven dollars as of today we know that a special session of the legislature is forthcoming in june we hope and that should uh lead to an increase but we don't have any guarantees on what the increase is i will talk in the forecast that we've run another update assuming a higher number based on the
086likelihood that it may be bigger than what we have assumed so far we do have a voter approved referendum of 781 dollars per pupil unit we have local optional revenue which is basically a local levy set by our school board at 724 dollars per pupil unit and we're budgeting based on 17 743 students that's the number that we put in our enrollment projections back in february we have budgeted 7.1 million dollars of revenue from the crrsa act but we have not budgeted 16 million from the arp act and we know that we need to do some more work on that both from a community engagement perspective and some more planning with this next superintendent uh on our expenditure assumptions for next year we know that teachers and principals need to negotiate a new contract everybody
087else has a subtle contract or work agreement for next year so salaries and benefits have already been determined but our largest group the teachers we we need to get together with them i believe there is a date scheduled in a couple weeks to do that and then for contracted services supplies capital budgets we adjusted those to the four-year trend line this year for our district-wide budgets and then the site supply budgets were based on a per student allocation formula like we have done in the past uh enhancements within the budget next year we have an additional american indian liaison position we have the new executive director of diversity equity and inclusion included we have four middle school sport options at our middle schools we have the new rps online school and some of the staffing
088so far we also have testing coordinators at the high schools to refocus our school counselor time to what they do best at counseling rather than worrying about testing coordination and we are putting additional custodians into the budget to work on doing additional cleaning we do have some reductions in our fte or our full-time equivalent uh numbers for next year uh this is because when we were staffing as of march 18th which is kind of the cutoff date of making all these decisions for the budget that we are proposing we know that the number of enrolled students for fall 2021 is less than the number that we had assumed for fall of 2020 a year ago so while we didn't make reductions in the fall when we had experienced lower numbers we're now adjusting the budget
089and adjusting the staffing to fit within the number of students we're expecting a lot of our staffing in our buildings is based on a ratio and it's based on section numbers so we look at the exact number of students and we assign a full-time equivalent number of staff for the number of students that are enrolled as far as i am aware all but one teacher currently has a position position matching what they are owed or what they um are guaranteed for next year so there might be one teacher that will possibly be underemployed for next year but the the moral of the story is all the people that are owed a job and want a job have a job minus one person so there were no layoffs there were no reductions in force by the
090district they there have been retirements there have been resignations that created openings and then we were able to reduce our fte numbers with those ratios we do have 15 extras positions built into the budget so that if we do experience an uptick in enrollment over the summer we don't need to come back and have you adjust the budget right away to higher we can go up to 15 people and that's already worked into the numbers that we are presenting and i just again want to reiterate that the cabinet and the superintendent did not go through and make any other intentional reductions to any positions if there were any positions that somebody feels was cut at a building that may have been a principal's choice to use funds differently where maybe they took the same amount
091of dollars but instead of having this kind of position they made that kind of position instead i'm just going to go to the bottom line here on full-time equivalents so when we propose the budget last year we had 2627 uh full-time equivalents this budget is proposing two thousand six hundred twelve full-time equivalents that number includes the fifteen extras that we are holding uh just in case we uh experience more growth over the summer so overall on the budget side before i get into the forecast the total district budget is proposed at 430 million dollars and includes referendum construction you're going to see in the forecast here in a minute that we updated the projection and we believe that we will end this school year with an unassigned balance in the range of 8.2 percent up
092to 14.4 percent and you might be saying why is there such a gap we had our software kind of give us a projection based on what we've been spending to date this school year and assume it goes on the same trends for the last couple months of the year it's saying that we will underspend the budget that is school board approved which would leave more um in reserve than uh we budgeted same thing for next year if we go budget and we assume that the budget was fully spent this year and we fully spend the budget next year we'd have eight percent in the unassigned fund balance but if you acknowledge that maybe we're going to finish this year upwards of 14.4 percent then it would look like we would end next year at 14
093percent in the unassigned fund balance so well within school board policy i'm just going to jump into the five-year general fund forecast and just merge these items here together to make it a little simpler we do the forecast twice a year this is the spring forecast and basically we're the biggest changes here is we're updating budget adjustments through march 31st that we have the school board approve a few meetings back and the proposed budget for next school year i've already covered a couple of these numbers so i'll just concentrate on this one we are assuming again i had said earlier one percent but i'm going to give you a projection using two percent for the state aid growth we had talked about this at the study session that the maximum we could seek for a
094voter approved referendum would be one thousand eight hundred twenty seven dollars per pupil unit that compares to today's number of seven hundred and eighty one we do need to have an election on that unless law changes and allows the school board to renew this themselves but assuming that doesn't happen there would need to be an election by the fall or so november of 2025 to renew that or to increase to a number between 781 and 1827. as far as budgeting for expenditures i had mentioned before that with the teachers contract being our largest group of employees and not having settled a contract yet we assumed and this is just an assumption that salaries and benefits may go up 2.5 percent next year we won't know that until we get to the end of negotiations and
095see what has actually been settled upon we do have new teaching positions in the year because of student growth we are expecting to continue to be a growing school district after the anomaly of last fall and we also have assumed new positions for opening up our new school buildings in 20 to 23. we talked about that last time we're assuming three percent increases in other budget codes of contracted services supplies and capital acknowledging that some things like transportation might go up three and a half percent per the contract other things might come in slightly less but on average it might be around three percent this is just a look at the general fund revenues expenditures and fund balance over the last five years these are actual results just to kind of guide where i'm going
096next so you can see we were on a trend of spending into the fund balance if this chart were to go back a few more years it would have shown the fund balance coming down it bottomed out at 7.1 percent of the expenditures that year and then the last three years it went up we've added to our reserves and we continue to project that we will add this year as well we project that in in version two in version one we do not project that we project that we will spend um into that but again that's that's assuming budget and every line item we're fully spent which we are noticing is not the trend right now um this version one this kind of would be the standard way of budgeting it just assumes again the
097budget is fully spent last year it's going to be fully spent next year we would be okay we'd meet school board policy at eight point two percent this year eight points zero percent the following year um but then we would start to be below school board policy starting with the 22-23 school year the major assumptions in version one of the forecast or maybe the traditional way of forecasting is state increase of one percent salaries of 2.5 percent and i'm gonna just pop ahead here to version two so this is the one that takes into account now that the budget comes in a little bit better than planning that we spend less than what is approved by the school board and we actually build our fund balance this year and it would go up to 14.4
098percent so 35 million of 242 million is 14.4 percent then going forward and the revenue side we've used a different inflation we've used two percent assuming that maybe the state legislature now has enough money to approve a two percent increase in in education funding uh we've worked that in and um the school board member asked what if we use 2.4 instead of 2.5 on the salaries and benefits increases and we ran that in these numbers as well i would say that really it does save money but it doesn't save a lot of money uh it's not millions of dollars it's more in the hundreds of thousands of dollars this would be more like a point two or a point three so like two hundred three hundred thousand dollars by assuming uh one tenth of one
099percent less than what we did in the first forecast but you'd see in this version too we'd probably be just fine next year we'll probably be just fine even if we just let the budget go on autopilot again uh for the the next year there it's now the problem comes into the um third year out from right now is where we would probably have some sort of major reduction or some sort of major revenue increase or a combination of both to get us to where we need to be to comply with school board policy i showed this chart um it's in our budget book but we talked about that briefly last week this is the version one so the traditional way um 8.2 percent there in black is just showing where the fund balance would
100go if we fully spent the budget this year next year would be the eight percent so basically flat and then the black line starts to dive below the orange line and when that happens then we know we're not complying the school board policy if we do the version two which you know made those two minor adjustments um well three adjustments i'd say and we actually are at more on that fourteen percent number it gives us three more years where we can probably safely say we're going to finish above the orange line possibly even a fourth year there depending on how the arp funding is uh budgeted and used so it really seems like we're probably on track to not have a major crisis with at least within the next couple years so i think that's
101the good news of of using an updated projection there that takes into account more of the reality of where we're at right now with what we're seeing in actual spending this year my key points forecasts again are made for five years into the future a lot changes you know our state is only budgeting for this next two year period but i'm trying to project out what the state might do uh five years from now and so there's a lot of uncertainty with that so i would caution us on getting too worried about years four and five for sure year three we want to pay attention to but for sure we want to dial in on the next two years because that's where the funding discussion at the state level is at um the forecasts are
102usually negative because they assume the budget is on autopilot kind of been using that term now but it kind of just means that if we don't make any adjustments we just keep all the same jobs we have we keep paying all the same bills the same way um it would definitely show that the expenses are not going to or excuse me the revenues are not going to keep up with the expenses we need to be making impactful decisions probably one to two years ahead of the red flags within the forecast and so that can be things like lobbying legislature laters for more money reducing our staffing or going to voters for more funding those are just three ideas off the top my head that's not an all-inclusive list of how we solve these problems we've
103used again one percent for state aid in version one two percent version two for staff pay increases we've assumed two point five percent in version one two point four percent in version two just wanna remind any of our employees that just because we have included these as an assumption it's neither a guaranteed amount nor the parameter that the school board has tasked us with negotiating the contract at and then right now it's appearing that the 23-24 is our next red flag so if we back that up a couple years we really want to start planning for that in this 21 22 school year and talking about what would be our strategies to deal with that do we go for an operating referendum we talk about a capital projects technology referendum do we talk about staffing
104reductions program reductions i think we need to continue to have those types of conversations and engagements around future budgets that's where i'm going to leave off for this evening so i'd be happy to answer any questions you have on the budget thank you mr carlson director amundsen thank you um thank you for running the uh numbers to see what the difference would be in a 2.5 versus 2.4 assumption for contracts i was the one who requested that and it's really good to know that that type of adjustment is not in the millions which is what what we need to be looking at however i would like to just put out there that as i've said a bunch of other times if we're only getting one to two percent from the legislature increase and we're um
105settling contracts at at 2.5 or even 2.4 that is unsustainable it just the mast will won't line up and i think that's something that somehow we need to address i i know we're just one small school district amongst you know hundreds in minnesota who's dealing with the same issue because when we have compared correct me if i'm wrong but when we have compared how we're settling contracts in rochester with other districts were similar or below what other districts are giving for adjustments to their labor groups am i correct in that mr carlson i think that would be a generally correct statement that means that we are not overly high on our contract settlements we're being we're being reasonable which um which means that all districts in minnesota presumably are dealing with this difference in funding
106so as a as a district i think we either need to deliberately um make efforts to discuss with our legislators and or look for additional efficiencies i i firmly believe that our staff is always um mindful of our budget and and trying to be um as efficient with with our funds that we can but i i would like to see before we get to the reduction phase because i'm going to make an assumption that things aren't going to change a whole lot in terms of what we're getting from the legislative legislature in the next couple years so before we get to the point where we have to form a budget reduction as you know we could try something new especially this year with the pandemic we have seen multiple innovations in the way that we
107deliver our educational practices i think there might be people out there who have ideas about a new way to do things that could save money so i guess i'm putting forward that i think that there should be a formal initiative starting now to solicit ideas and have the time to study them and be able to implement them before we hit that deadline of having to make reductions because it takes time to explore things and the time to be looking at them isn't when we're making the reductions because then it's too late so i guess i'm requesting um that the administration look in some way of a formal program now to be looking for efficiencies or innovations that would save us money so i much mr carlson i guess i'm putting the ball in your court
108is there a or or superintendent munoz is there a um a way that we could formally start that type of process of examination well we'd have to discuss that i would offer up a statement that you did you said earlier uh we this is my 10th year in the district i don't think we've ever got more than two percent from the state and there's years we've gotten less than two percent but john just showed you where we've been able we do that every year we try to find ways to to be more efficient and cut costs and i would say in the 10 years i've been here we have not had major reductions but look where our fund balance will be at the end of this year so that's something that we do on a
109regular basis uh just for example anytime we lose lose a position for retirement or whatever we don't immediately jump right to let's fill it let's talk about do we need to fill that so that that's something that we do on a regular basis and i assume the the new superintendent will continue to do that and always look for ways to you know because like you said melissa we can't rely on the state to give us a lot more money so we have to find a way to be do more with less i guess director nathan so um i guess this is more of a comment before a question but um mr carlson you know that i really appreciate all the work that um you and your your team do and the cabinet does and and
110bringing this budget together but especially this year um i think you probably know the number better than i but i know that there was a state survey that mas that the minnesota association of uh school board um masbo minnesota association of school business officials got it um and other organizations put out to ask districts what the impact of this of this coveted year was going to be on budgets and the result that stuck with me was that 65 percent of districts were anticipating budget cuts if they got a even if they got a one percent increase in the formula funding so there's 65 and this is more for the community to hear there's 65 percent of districts in the state that are cutting their budgets this year and there are also a significant portion who
111have to go for referendums this year we don't and the reason we don't is because of the excellent financial management that our team has been doing not just this year but previous years when i when i saw these numbers i have to tell you i was thrilled because budget cuts are not why i got into being a school board member i don't think any of us were so um i i think this is something the whole community really needs to appreciate the work that's gone into making this happen we're not cutting staff we're not cutting programs and we're really setting ourselves up to be in a good financial position and i really do like the anticipation of let's look one to two years out and see what we may need to do in those out
112years depending on how the financial forecast comes in but the good news is that we don't have to do it today and i really appreciate that thank you director mclaughlin and then director garcia mr carlson just a brief comment i know that you've talked about this before and it takes on to director nathan's comment about covet but when you used um you were talking about the crrsa and the arp those are federal pandemic funding did i understand that right from our earlier conversations yes those are from the federal government yep that's all i had thanks and director garcia yes mine was also just a comment more to director amundsen clerk amundsen is that i i don't disagree that we should be seeking other options and opportunities um now and i think that we on the
113legislative committee and for my fellow committee members please correct me if i'm wrong is we're trying to figure out where we as a committee stand within the district to be able to do that because i think for us to become a little bit more politically savvy and and asking for what we want and making those direct asks of our legislature is not inappropriate and we just need to figure out how to do that in a way that feels good to our district um and and being able to partner with others who want the same things that we do because you know we may be a smaller medium-sized district in comparison to others but we certainly um don't have to do it alone we're not the only ones that are going to be asking and i
114think that to you know the adage of we're going to have to figure out how to do more with less i don't think that's appropriate for education anymore i don't think it ever has been and i don't think that that should be our philosophy now i recognize that we may have to make some difficult choices but there are ways that we can make our voice heard uh at those tables and i think it's time for our district to to do that and so the legislature the legislative committee we're trying to figure out what that looks like for us thank you other questions or comments from board members uh director barlow and then director nathan yes thank you uh john i just wanted to ask you to repeat something you said earlier um through your forecast
115and i appreciate the thoroughness in which you've done so and i would hope the community as well as my fellow board members understood um the clarity of your communication um were were pretty good for the next year or two okay and you're not saying uh don't bury your head or cover your ears you're making us aware of uh three years out that and and you would certainly raise the flag or create the sound the alarm should there be any significant difference and or cost for us to be called into action if you will i guess i want to have that assurance and then also uh allay concerns with the community that we're not going to wait for something to happen and then try to dig ourselves out of it part of your job responsibility is
116to inform and brief us after you do multiple times during the course of each given year and budget cycle and you will continue to do that is that correct that's correct i would say that we get better every year at using new tools that are available to us and that's why we're able to run you another forecast within a couple days from our last meeting and update it almost to include real-time results of where we were through april 30th and that was a tool we didn't have a few years ago and i think that just helps guide us towards more realistic ending point numbers instead of just assuming the budget is the budget we'll fully spend the budget even though we know we've had open positions and we haven't fully spent the budget this year
117so um i think i think we've we're getting better at how we're doing this and hopefully our communication will stay as clear as possible that yes i believe we are good this coming school year the next school year after this coming school year it's that 23-24 where it seems like we'll have some decision-making to do okay thank you dr workman yes first of all i would really like to compliment director garcia on how well she spoke about the legislative committee and i think she just really nailed it well and i look forward to expanding our work next year we got off to a kind of a rushed start this year and i felt like we were a little bit behind the curve some of the time but i'm looking forward to you know bringing the
118committee together again you know in the fall before the legislature even begins to to meet and i think it really would be helpful if this committee the legislative committee and other key people in the district could actually have some really in-depth conversations about where we need to go the kind of lobbying we need to do um understanding that we do have amsd which and msba and the superintendent group to rely on as well but some things are very specific to rochester and the legislature i think needs to hear from us on a much more organized concerted regular basis and speaking truth to power in all of this and also um we sometimes we tend to go around and somebody has an idea and it just kind of sits there or never gets advanced or or
119i won't say voted on but i'm very much interested in the ideas that director amundsen put forth tonight as well and um i don't know if this is i don't know how you'd put it on a future school board meeting on that list or what you would call it but um i'd really like to keep this um not too far on the back burner middle burner maybe so thank you and john thank you for your work with your team and i know it takes hundreds and hundreds and thousands of hours and lots of people working together and the leadership that we have on our in this district is really is really something to be proud of thank you uh miss nathan i think i think we're getting closer to determining whether we want to move
120this to action so miss nathan you may have very possible this will be the last word here well mr carlson i think you've said a few times that we don't know what the legislature is going to give us whether it's one or two percent the legislative committee did a great job talking about the the need to make our voice uh uh open to our legislators but i think it's important to make the point that those watching from the community have now seen the numbers and know the benefit that it would be to our students and our schools if we were to get that two percent and they are still negotiating the budget right now um but they have not yet determined whether or not it's going to be a one percent or two percent but
121the money is in the budget to give us a two percent increase it's there so if anybody watching this wants to contact their local legislator from rochester and tell them how important a two percent increase for the district would be anyone can feel free to do that as an individual citizen because i think we've seen what the benefit will be for the district and especially in the next few days because this is the time that negotiations are happening and and conversations are happening behind the scene thank you and this has been a full-throated a political endorsement of people contacting their legislators and we still need to vote to move this to action if we right now we need to focus on this budget i think absolutely got the message about having a committee uh talking
122about possible budget reduction or budget savings in the future so i've got that written down and miss amundsen you may have left oh it wasn't intended to be the last word i just wanted to add it on to what director nathan said about contacting legislators and i wanted to add that for the folks that have never done that before that can be a little bit um intimidating the first time around and so i would venture a guess that any of us would be willing to ask questions answer questions for members of the public who would like to learn how to advocate for public education with local legislators that myself especially i would be willing to answer any questions and please contact me if you'd like to learn how to be more proactive in activity thank
123you director edmondson mr munoz yes i i would encourage the board not to move this to action and just wait until the next meeting to take formal action on the budget that makes perfect sense thank you and it is a briefing item now it will be an action item on june 15th thank you thank you superintendent moving forward 8.01 policies this is the second reading of policies that were briefed at a previous meeting anybody from the policy committee have anything to say about that we have them they're available to the public to view anything from the policy company really nathan the board might notice a little change in our procedure in that we have we briefed these at the may 18 meeting and we are briefing them again um we received an opinion from msba
124about the procedure with our um briefing and action of policies that a policy should be on two agendas as briefing items and then on a third meeting agenda for action so we're beginning that practice with tonight's meeting so that's why you're seeing these policies again and there'll be an action item for the next meeting thank you and we can just never see them enough so we appreciate this additional opportunity moving on then at 8.02 future school board discussion considerations we have three items currently for consideration first one i think we need to consider tonight it is the return to in-person school board meetings june 15th and the decision was that we will begin meeting in person at our next meeting 5 30 on june 15th and the consensus as i understand it is that for
125adults who have been fully vaccinated masks will be optional for students and those who have not been fully vaccinated masks will be not sure that we can require them that they're absolutely strongly recommended is there anything else we need to discuss about that i know that that the administration has determined a way that the board can meet the cabinet can meet in the same room there's still concerns about how many community members might want to be involved director amanson just a question is the plan for us to be back at the board table or is the plan for us to be at the the larger seating arrangement that we sometimes do for a study session mr munoz yes back at your normal spot and then the only change we'll make is we'll probably move the
126cabinet tables all along the entire north wall so there's only one row of cabinet members there's more distance they can distance themselves and then if we go down on the main floor with the board then it limits the space that we can provide for those who come to watch the meeting completely comfortable at the board table again i was just curious as to what the plan was all right thank you i think then we've handled that one the next issue was the long-term superintendent process the idea here was the board members have already been asked to consider individually the strengths or areas of concern about our process for the hiring of an interim superintendent my recommendation which we can discuss if you want would be to have this discussion sometime this fall all of us
127have thought hopefully taken notes on what worked what we might want to change but have the discussion sometime early fall ms ammon center i think that we should have the discussion earlier because i think by fall we want to begin the process um if we want to do a concerted um uh public input um program sorry my words aren't coming easily tonight um that might need to start in the fall which means if we're going to look at the superintendent search firm hiring process again that would have to happen late summer early fall i know there are benefits to being on the front end of the superintendent search process in terms of candidates start accepting um offers so that the earlier we can do it the better the pool etc so my my mental timeline
128is that we're hiring somebody right around the time um school starts so i think if we're gonna have a discussion as a board about how things went i think that needs to be late summer all right ms workman um i i would pretty much agree what director amundsen said um i think practically speaking that most superintendents really don't start to make their move until january but i also think that it is really important for the community for us to have these processes set in place so that they know what the expectations are um how we're going to do it and maybe even weigh in if they don't like an original proposal so i think it's going to be a longer process than any of us have anticipated so far and i think maybe having this
129at the first meeting in august might be uh doable so that we can at least um you know kind of get a grip on where we're going or you know a study session all right uh mr barlow well i certainly uh support uh your uh chair marvin uh initial thought perhaps you were reflecting on the process we just completed still fresh in most of our minds where we have the ability to draw from well from start to finish a required x amount of time the truth of the matter is a long-term search is not unlike an interim search so we have familiarity if you will and i i think based on your initial recommendation you know fall well i'm here in august well okay i think the point again is that we have uh tools
130um and uh knowledge uh that really won't force our hands as if we have no experience or we have no a background and and so i'm comfortable with what you suggested thank you and this isn't we're not doing a vote on this so if you're comfortable with this the executive committee will take it under consideration and maybe second second meeting in august but we can certainly talk about what might make sense for that does that work for people ms workman um yes i'd just like to remind everybody that the interim superintendent search was very truncated compared to what a long-term search would be especially for considering a national search we need to allow time for that there was um minimal community input i thought the input that we got was excellent but you know it
131needs to be the broader community so um from my perspective um i i would rather start a little too soon than to start too late okay thank you for that and that's exactly the kind of processing we'll do when we get to this to this so thank you for that um the last issue is public comments uh currently as you know meetings are gaveled in at 5 30 and if we have people who are signed up to speak to the board in person rather than sending an email making a phone call or sending a letter they have the opportunity to show up well they will in the board room to speak directly to the board to remind us and the public this is not an option for a dialogue it is not an option to
132make a statement to the public this is specifically designed so people can tell the board what they're thinking um the one of the challenges we've had is that when we have people who want to speak to the board we open meetings with that at 5 30 and then those and they're not recorded and then those who are listening at home or those who show up for meetings uh the meeting may not be gaveled in until 5 45 or 6 o'clock and it could be a little bit confusing for people trying to get on youtube and nothing's there so i'm wondering if a good time to have that discussion do we want to have one start time for public comments and another start time for the board meeting could we have that discussion in august so
133something would be in place for the opening of the school year does that seem reasonable okay we will plan that for an august agenda as well our next board meeting will be 5 30 on june 15th uh we will then have meetings in july at 5 30 on july 13th on july 27th are there other items that you would like to consider for future agenda items i have already taken a note about a focus group or some sort of group to determine possible saving options going forward if and when the board or the district needs to make cuts any other items for future agendas hearing none it is 7 32 and we are adjourned thank you