001Good afternoon. The time is now 4:00. the the Wayzata Public Schools Board of Education work session for February 20 for Monday, February 23rd, 2026 will please come to order. Let's go around the table for introduction. We'll start from my right. Sheila Prior. Dan Chanestra. Paris Vende. Oh, we have one more. Alicia Little Paris Wendy. I'm still thinking Dan is the last one. Valentina ears Heidi Kar Chase Anderson and I am Milan Sony. Thank you all for coming and welcome. Uh we have one main item on the agenda and a very small item to following that. So we'll get started with the first one. Um we have a teaching and learning report which in which executive director for teaching and learning Diana Miller will present opportunities for students to take courses in career and technical education.
002Dana, good afternoon Dr. Anderson, members of the board. Um as you know CTE or career and technical education is one of our areas under curriculum review for the past few years and last year they were here to give you progress and they're back. And so I am just going to turn it over to all of those knowledgeable and they're going to take you through this process. So with that, I believe Scott or Abby, are you kicking them off? So, okay. So, Director Abby Bra will kick this off. Thank you. Thank you. Um, members of the board, Superintendent Anderson, it was about a year ago that this team was here to showcase experiential learning at Wayzata High School with you. Uh today we hope to build on that and share with you what career and technical
003education is, what it offers, what we have done in a comprehensive review since then and some future next steps for our programming 612. With that, I'm going to hand it over to this very capable team and go from there. Thank Thank you, Abby, for getting us started. I am Scott Torduer and to my left is Paul Kimbler. Both of us get to fulfill a variety of different roles inside of all things career and technical education. Before we started with us, because maybe I'm speaking for myself, but also Paul, we could probably talk about career and technical education for hours and hours, but we thought it might be helpful to really build a foundation. So, we are going to ask you to think back to your educational career. And for me, that was a long time
004ago when I was on the other side of a classroom desk. And I want you to think about either a class or an experience. When I say career and technical education, what is something from your educational past that comes to mind? And we're going to try to keep this maybe like a bullet point or a few words. If you're like me and you need a couple moments to reflect on that, then I'll do that one more time. So, from your educational past, when I say career and technical education, what do you think about? And it doesn't matter who goes first. We're just going to go moment of silence until someone does. Well, I remember taking um uh Paul Kimbler's marketing class in ninth grade. Okay. So, we'll go marketing carpentry where I built my dad
005a new cattle loading chute. Okay. I I remember classes in math and I'm old enough to remember slide rules that I used to use. Yes. I don't know. Most kids probably don't even know what that is anymore. I remember lab work stem cell spinning down and getting the stem cells out of blood. Oh. Um I was part of I know now there's uh the HOSA program here. I was part of Hoya which was health occupation youth apprenticeship but similarly I was able to shadow lots of different medical um occupations and that's how I ultimately decided to be an occupational therapist. So only project that I did in my engineering years that I could relate to the industry other than the the typical theoretical work. uh but that that's the only project that came to my
006mind which really gave me understanding of how industry works and how you can actually take what you learn and apply to industry. I need clarification. Are you talking about school or college? If we go maybe pre-college that would be perfect. So secondary I my education I had my education in Russia. So it's Soviet uh system. We didn't have any like shadowing opportunities. It I think that the approach was that everyone's supposed to know uh quite a bit in math and all. Uh so everyone was required to have a knowledge at the same time. To be honest, my several teachers would leave me to teach when they had to run somewhere. So that's was my opportunity to see how can I teach and choose a profession. I think I'm the last to go. Um uh in
007my high school, I don't know. I maybe I'm thinking about it wrong and I think maybe the definition has expanded a lot since I was in high school. It was more like the classes that you would take if you weren't planning to go to college or even if you were and you wanted some skills, you know, that you could use later in life. And um I don't think my high school had a lot. We did have an auto repair class we called shop. I did not take that. Um and we had homeck. So thank you for sharing your perspective on what at least from our perspective like what fits inside of the umbrella or the container called career and technical education. One of the things that both myself and my teammates would share is as
008we get to interact with community members and parents, the thing that we love to hear most is, "I so wish I had that experience when I was in high school." So to hear from your vantage point where career and technical education was and it's our goal to share with you where it is now and the opportunities that exist inside of our robust programming to serve the needs of our students. That's what we're hoping to cover with you today. um maybe to go up to a 30,000 foot view for the district's strategic vision or strategic direction, specifically one and two, to ensure a high quality daily experience for each and every student and to deliver highquality instruction that leads to high academic achievement for all students. We hope to show you how both of those are
009happening inside of career and technical education for the students that we serve. When the portrait language started to become one of those foundational pieces, we really loved having common vocab that can be experienced for our students, our families, and our community members. One part of this that Paul and I got to experience in this very room last week, Wednesday, the Compass program has a has an event that we refer to as the mentor kickoff. And that's where our students are paired onetoone with their mentors. We use the language that exists inside of the Portrait of Wayzata graduate specifically the I can statements to have students develop goals or growth areas and then they connect with their mentors on those very specific goals and growth areas. So again, we're using common language inside of the building
010and we're having students connect with community members outside of the building using the same language. Yeah. And beyond Compass, our goal at the high school is that as you can see on the board, each and every student post secondary success regardless of race, class, gender, or ability. So, how do we know we're succeeding at that in the CTE area? Well, that's where the portrait of a wise graduate comes into play. We know that as we develop students and we help them build the knowledge, skills, and confidence in all seven of those areas that we are helping to build highly productive members of society down the road. And in the CTE department, we do this in all of our classes on a daily basis. Whether it's one of these um areas, one of these characteristics or
011multiple of these characteristics, it's happening every day with our students so that by the time that they graduate high school, 9th through 12th grade, they're done. They will have examples that they can come up with concrete examples in each one of these characteristics that they can not only write down, they can draw on, they can go to interviews, and they can say, "This is where I demonstrated this. This is where I demonstrated this." And they can also say, "This is where I stumbled in this area along the way." And so we give them some great experiences in all of our classrooms. Sorry, I went first on that one. Um, again, maybe it's I I always love to take a step back and to really figure out from where we've come so we have a clear
012vision of where we're going. I have had the opportunity to be in the district for a really really long time. around the time that I started on the very top. Um, there are three kind of I guess we would call those forward- facing visuals and we use those to really allow our students to see how our courses were maybe interconnected. Um, those images certainly show their years. Those are from around 2013. And those were to put the at that point in time separate departments of family and consumer science, business, marketing and technology and engineering technology and design courses were listed under those. Around 2020, the work kind of shifted because we understand inside of those three somewhat connected departments. There were a variety of different courses that could really be connected together into then what
013was called a sphere to really serve the needs of our students and families better. And a good example of that would be that if a student is very interested inside of interior design, chances are really good they should take an architecture class. They should probably also take a home construction class to understand how buildings actually go together. So in the pivot from those three separate areas to what became the forward-facing kind of imagery called career and technical education, we were very strategic strategic around taking family consumer science, business, marketing, technology, engineering, technology and design and health sciences and putting them all under one umbrella called career and technical education. This allows our students to find like what I would say in student language like what lights your fire at a very introduction level and then
014also pursue subsequent courses beyond that. As part of our program review inside of career and technical education, our advisory board and students that we serve made the recommendation to shift from career spheres to career pathways. So kind of the chronological way up top we're back about 14 years ago in 2013 that was the forward- facing view of the separate parts of career and technical education 202122 career spheres were launched and now today we are using career pathways is the language that connect all of CTE programming. um from me it's or again it's kind of nice to really think about like what career and technical education does and the value add to our students that we serve. But we've kind of summarized it as in it's the courses that students take their academic knowledge and then
015they see where it's going to fit inside of the world outside of school. And a fun example of that, like I can probably do so many of them, but for those of us that have had to or I'm guessing all of us in the room have been inside of a class and wondered why am I taking this and or where will I ever use this knowledge? Um, all of career and technical education through experiential based learning opportunities helps students understand why we're doing this and where outside of the world or where outside of the world of school this knowledge is valuable. This again as part of the review process is a shared vision that all of us on the CTE team represent. Think it's probably good. Maybe we'll do a quick pause and if we
016want to do a quick review of that text. I can't Again to circle back last statement on there back to Paul's point around using that common language that exists inside of the portrait of a Wise graduate we are connecting our students with a common language that exists in the world outside of school inside of our community partners as well. When again we started thinking about how we can group courses together to best serve the needs of our students, we built out 11 career pathways. And for 2026, there will be 12. Inside of these career pathways would exist over 70 courses. And we've grouped them together again with hopes that when our students find an area that really really excites them or lights their fire or becomes their jam, students can jump into an introduction level
017course, take an intermediate, and then also have opportunities to take capstone courses as a result of that. Um, in grouping those together, when a student opts into a pathway, there's no like real guard rails that they need to stay inside of a pathway. It's more of an exploratory, but the pathway concept again allows our students to explore things at different levels of immersion. And this is super super cumbersome. However, if we have something in front of us that we can probably see and maybe feel. Um, this is the forward- facing document that our students and families see in order to Thank you. Do they all perfect? Um, this is the forward- facing um document that our students see to allow them to um really interact with those 11 moving on 12 different pathways and also
018see all of the courses grouped together within each pathway. probably noteworthy. Every class or every pathway has an introduction level. Our feedback during the with during program review was really that courses need to have some sort of a numbering sequence. So if it's a number one, we know that's an intro course. If it's a number two, then we know it's an intermediate or advanced. And as we work on each of those pathways and building them out, our goal is that every pathway has a capstone experience at the bottom to allow our students to experience this at a different level of immersion now. We don't have to listen to me anymore. Right Trudy, is this one you? Sweet. So, I'm going to hand over the microphone to Trudy. Trudy is currently involved in the CTE internship
019program and we thought that she would have a much better voice to explain value of this from her perspective. Uh good afternoon. My name is Trudy Nquay and like Mr. that I am an intern for CTE internship and CTE internship is basically a course that is held at Wayzata that allows students to gain work experiences based on stuff they're interested in. For example, I am interested in social media. I am interested in journalism. And as um one of the CTE interns, I am helping the new CTE Instagram account, posting videos daily and trying to, you know, grow that account and allow people to know about the the the course in general. And as for this year, we have 70 students participating and 80 students who are willing to participate next year. And almost all interns
020gain around 15 to $20 per hour. And students, like I said, get to work with their interests, whether it's healthcare, engineering, education, child care, manufacturing, basically anything. Thank you, Serena. Hello everybody. My name is Stella Taka and I'm a current senior. Um, in my uh experience at Wayzata High School, this is going to be my fifth time taking the academic mentoring class, which is Emily Hal's uh class that she made and she created to help students learn a little bit more about what it is to be in education. Um, a little bit of statistics for you guys is 789 students uh enrolled in the class this year. Academic mentors also support in all content areas in Wayzata High School as well as elementary schools and middle schools. Um, and mentors are student trained leaders. So,
021Miss Hul has a curriculum that goes over cultural, behavioral, and just questioning techniques, things like that that help in the classroom be able to develop relationships with many, many students. There are two sections to also academic mentoring, which is the mech and the wet, and that stands for the math exploration center and the writing exploration center. that allows us to cover all topics at Wayzata High School and just beyond which con creates connectedness within the district as well. Thanks, Stella. Um, my name is Serena Carr. I'm also a senior at Wise at a high school. And one of our other opportunities for experiential learning throughout CTE would be our certified nursing aid course. So CNA gives students the opportunity to become a certified nursing assistant and then you take the test the certified the CNA
022exam for Minnesota at the end of this course to see if you're ready to be a certified nursing assistant and go work in the real world. So this is an amazing course for any students interested in like nursing or just healthcare in general. They've got 117 students. The first year we moved it to the high school. So, this used to be uh at one of the community colleges and then we took it twice at a high school to offer everybody the opportunity to take the course. And then we've had 135 students this year and then 197 are interested in taking the course next year. This is a great opportunity for students to have that hands-on experience as they're partnered with that classroom learning. We have um certified nursing assistants come to the class. So those
023that are already out there working in the real world, those registered nurses are coming to work with the students and help them for their skills testing. The skills testing is when we go to six partner sites within the community and these students get to show what they've learned so far. They get to work in nursing homes or whatever it is and work with a registered nurse to give care to these to usually elders as well. uh many of the student CNA students are working locally now and some of them uh got this through the CTE internship program as well. Another opportunity as many of you probably know would be Compass. There are three cohorts for Compass. The graphic communications which me and Trudy took and then business management and economics and cyber security and applied
024mathematics with personal finance. These are just opportunities for students to get that real world business exper or like business type experience but then get it in the classroom as well. These are team taught in crosscurricular classes and they all have graduation requirements for the high school embedded within them. This is an opportunity. It's a whole semester long. You take it for two out of your four blocks of the day. So, it's definitely a commit, but it offers students the opportunity to pretend they're in like a workspace. like you basically pretend you're at a corporate job some days. You're all dressed up in business casual and you really get a sense for what that environment feels like. This Yeah, it's an awesome class. It was one of my favorite classes at the high school. And you
025also get one-on-one community mentors, which Twitter was talking about earlier with our mentorship kickoff that happened just last week. And then we also have 15 of the Compass alumni actually come back and they became mentors or guest instructors which just really speaks to the program is everybody loves to be involved with Compass program and wants to come back and share what they've learned. A huge part of Compass would be our local business partnerships where we do our charter projects. I know personally I worked with Wisetta Education Fund which gave me the opportunity to work on their social media coverage and then yeah for their gala as well. You also get credit co college college credits for every student that takes this course through North North Henipin College. And then since 2016, we've actually had students
026earn over 3,000 credits, college credits through this course as well. And then one more, sorry, would be exploring careers in education. This is concurrent enrollment with Minnesota State Mano and it's exploring careers in education human services where you earn three credits. This is just another semester long class where you get to similar to the academic mentor program. You get to go into the elementary schools and work with the students and get that firsthand experience working with like the kids and just all age range all age ranges. Um there's 50 students enrolled over 50 each year. And this for me was a great opportunity to learn like, oh, I love working with fourth graders, but I don't love working with kindergarteners. It was an amazing experience for me to just get to know everybody, get to
027meet the teachers, see what they're doing. You learn a lot about the background of education. You learn about the different roles within like what you guys do and then what everyday teachers do as well. Um students participate in off-site field experiences at Wayzata public school sites. Like I said, the elementary schools where they're provided opportunities to observe the teachers, work on one-on-one one-on-one with the students, and also teach many lessons throughout the year. And then this leads up to our future educators ceremony in May where we recognize all these students that got to help out in the classrooms and are planning on pursuing education in the future. And then we also have our unified program which is a an opportunity for students to work the general education students to work with a special education students
028in a collaborative learning experience. This is amazing. We've got unified arts, unified communications, unified theater and unified PE. Whatever it is, we have a unified program for it. And this just offer offers students opportunity to strengthen our community at was at a high school and add a sense of belonging throughout the hallways as well. This emphasizes teamwork, empathy, communication, and shared responsibility with the students. There's a lot of student led opportunities within this class where you get to plan your fun Friday event and you get to find activities you're going to have the students do and then plan like the lesson for the day. This reinforces the value of inclusion at our school and that collective success. So, this is just like a experiment experiential learning opportunity for the general education students and then the
029special education students as well. Thank you for that. Next, we're going to talk about the chosen trot preschool and it's basically a part of child psychology and it's specifically the second course where when you take the first course you learn about all the basics and the second course is just you implementing those things that you learn. Um you um within this program you get to serve within 20 families each year and the enrollments of students have really been growing as the school has with 180 students this school year and 220 requested for next school year. And within this program um each students basically set a daily learning activities for um the kids such as science, math, art, music and language development movement which only like takes pressure off the parents knowing that they're bringing their
030kids to somewhere safe where they also get to learn for like about an hour or so and it's open to pretty much everyone from sec um 2 years old to 5 years old. So yeah. to you guys. Thank you. Can I come up? We go. Good evening. I'm Don Johnson. and I'm an English teacher at the high school, but over the past year and a half, I've had the privilege of coordinating our curriculum review um through CTE with Scott and our 6 through 12 educators. It's been a really rewarding experience the last year and a half. And one of the things that we decided right away in teaming with our CTE teachers was that we needed to do this with two um we need to embrace two things. that was that six through 12 teachers
031would do it together and that we would involve community and students along the way throughout our working sessions. So um we aligned or we worked to align 6 through 12 four subd departments within CTE business family and consumer science health science and technical education. And when we started this process early on we met with the CTE director at Minnesota Department of Ed and she said here's where you need to start. We ask that all CTE courses fall under the same frameworks. And she had us focus on these four. So every single CTE course in the state of Minnesota should embrace and consider these four frameworks and all that they do, all the work that they do with students. So we should find these common elements in all of our classes. And so what we did
032is we took these four frameworks and we said, "Wow, we can link these four things to language that we use at Wisetta Public Schools." So we did that with all of our industry adviserss, all of our CTE 6 through2 teachers and all of our students to help them see that when we start with the core of the work, students are first our first consideration and then we're looking at where are our changes or our shifts needed in relation to these four anchors. So we started every working session and every conversation looking at these four anchors and the the bolded ones are CTE or excuse me Minnesota Department of Ed. So all changes all courses are meant to support industry projections that we're creating and supporting students in learning things that will not only support community
033when they leave but they will also be able to have skills that will be relevant in the real world. And we call that at Visetta public schools. Where's the relevance for our students? There are opportunities for students as you just saw to have have courses where they are doing experiential learning. So we looked at that through the lens of what are the learning preferences and strengths of Gen Alpha students. Those are our current 10th and 11th graders down to birth. How are we making sure that the experiences that they're having in school are meaningful for them and how they've grown up to learn. They're not the ways that we learn necessarily. So we're shifting our curriculum to meet the needs of our rising students. Social emotional learning is another framework at MDE. So we said
034that's our portrait of a way graduate and our portrait of a middle school graduate. And then formative and summitative assessment was a really really great conversational piece because our comment was well we've been doing formative and summitative assessment through our PLC work at Wayetta schools for a long time. And the response was, "Gone are the days where summitive assessments stay with the teacher. Think about assessments that students can take with them. Where are meaningful, relevant credentials that they can earn while they're in high school that will serve them when they leave and into the real world?" So, we think of like the CNA credentials and other certifications that we'll show case with you later. So, we asked our teachers to think about where those assessments are relevant. We're not just taking a multiple choice test
035and then it's staying in a cabinet for the teacher. Want to do this one? Sure. One thing that became very clear to us when we started the vision of what this review process would look like to highlight where Don probably already built the foundation was that we needed to include as many ears, eyes, and voices as possible on this particular process. So, we were very strategic around including students into this process to really hear firsthand from their experience and to help us really steer the future of CTE programming to best serve the needs of our students. in partner with that. One part of this review process that has been exceptionally rewarding is to see the entire to Don's point, the entire 612 team collaborating again to best serve the needs of our students and our
036community. Um and in addition to for each particular review session, we had invited in advisors or parts of our advisory board to verify that what we view to be current is actually what's happening in their reality. So that is the part of relevancy that even the adults in this situation really appreciate. So as many community members and students that we could involve in on the process as possible create much more relevancy and timely feedback in the process again to increase the outcomes of our students. And for us biggest takeaways and rewards number one working with students in this process is getting them off campus. You'll notice that we're actually here in this building for this session. um and allowing them to see a side of education that they may not have ever seen or may
037not see before they graduate. And also there they were practicing the portrait traits in this role as an advisor to their teachers. And we really focused on bringing juniors and seniors in. We um we'll show you the statistics in a minute of who actually came to help. But it was so powerful to watch teachers taking notes on the feedback that these students were giving them and for the students to then come back and process with us that experience and like I never knew that teachers did this and I got to see my teachers in a different environment and the reflection that you're doing as educators. I didn't realize that and so it would had so many powerful outcomes beyond moving our curriculum for the next set of students. Then our industry adviserss helped all of
038us as educators kind of refresh the fastm moving world in our minds that's out there and where do we go knowing that the next time we do curriculum or program repro approval in five more years the world is going to look a lot different. So we need sustainable courses and educators that can shift every year based on industry demands. And so for our CTE curriculum review advisors, we had 10 industry professionals contribute expertise. Um, and we used a university partner who provided AI consultation. He was at the Opus College of Business, University of St. Thomas. He is their AI teacher there. So he met with us twice to help us consider where we go with AI with our students and how we use it to help them be critical thinkers and how we help them
039practice using it before they graduate. We had 34 ways out of high school juniors and seniors provide student perspective. And we focused on juniors and seniors intentionally because we knew they had the most experience as students and they were also rising adults. So we wanted to give them that opportunity to be rising adults but also give us that your experience as learners whether in Weisetta public schools or beyond as an older student about to graduate. We had two Weisetta high school counselors join our teams and one achievement specialist contributed student support insights and then multiple industry site visits informed program alignment. And um I think one of the things that's powerful to also note that's not on the slide is every single 6 through 12 CTE teacher participated in the curriculum review working sessions. So,
040no one opted out of the process. And then go ahead, Scott. You're up there, so you might as well. I think that it is it's really helpful that the entire team participates inside of this process. And also when we involve again industry advisors, students on the vision of what is coming next, it allows us to keep dreaming and serving the needs of our students. Um knowing that to Don's point, next time we get to do this is in five years. And if we think about the pace at which change is happening currently, five years feels like a long time from now. Um maybe one part that would be kind of helpful on here and maybe this would be a little bit of a step back but during this process we are also kind of leaving
041an end goal that each of our pathways will have and I don't want to ruin a surprise coming up later but each of our pathways will have an industry recognized credential associated with it and or college credit. So that's kind of our intermediate goal. Um then also another big piece of work that we did under this curriculum review is we beginning with the class of 2028. Many of you know that the Minnesota Minnesota requirement for graduation involves a personal finance credit. And so we already were offering two personal finance courses at the high school. And we we really knew that we wanted students to have choice because when you're a teenager, if you have choice, you're going to like it and you're going to dig into it probably more than if you're forced to take
042the one class. So, we met as all the teams that were teaching those courses met currently and at the time a year and a half ago, MDE had recommended outcomes, what students should learn or be exposed to to earn these credits for graduation. So we took all of these outcomes and as educators we determined these are the non-negotiables for ways out of public schools. You are going to get meet all of these outcomes and we actually kept all of them except for two. And the reason the teachers decided not to use those two is because they felt like they were already they the language was kind of already part of another one. Um and then beginning next year we added two more. So now students have four choices. They can take AP business and personal
043finance, compass, AP cyber security, applied math and personal finance, finance one, personal finance, and independent money management. And one of the really exciting things is that the top three all come with college credits, whether through the AP exam or finance one. It's a concurrent enrollment class through North Henipin. Um, and we actually just met last week to look at our data from semester 1 for the first two courses that we offered and do a little data dialogue about and kind of re rewind a little bit and look at where we can be better and where we're doing things well. And so that will be part of our continued process when we have students taking a required CTE course. And then teachers collaborated ACO across courses and met with industry adviserss to ensure course outcomes were
044met um to meet industry recommendations. So we had four personal finance professionals participate in working sessions and provide industryinformed recommendations. We had two high school math teachers also participate in the working sessions because math teachers could also teach these courses and social studies teachers. We had a multi couple multilingual teachers also advise our groups and two finance company site visits were conducted for Wisetta high school personal finance teachers and I want to highlight that the four personal finance professionals that came in. It was intentional not only from an industry perspective but they all four represented people from community who have various beliefs on finances based on religion or um culture. And so we wanted to make sure as educators we were aware of that and we were meet try working to meet the needs of
045all of our students that we through a required class. And so these are the new courses that we came up with under curriculum review in the middle school to the left. Some of them were new last year and then we've got some new ones coming up for next year. And I think it's you're probably wondering like how did you decide about these classes? there. They each kind of have their own story. Um the middle school classes I could say that they wanted to offer their students more CTE options and they looked at courses at the high school that were pretty popular. Like our interior design and architecture classes are really popular. So that is an indicator that that's that's something that students are interested in and it's a creative aspect that they maybe weren't getting
046in some of their other CTE classes. Um yeah and then again here are the the 11 to 12 pathways. Again these are opportunities for students to explore their interests and we have students who take classes in multiple pathways. Um and so one of the things that we've learned learning about this Gen Alpha is that they are inquirybased learners. They love to collaborate, but you have to get them to learn in a way that they can't just Google the answer, okay? Because that's not relevant. And so, if we can get them inquiring or thinking in ways that are unique and different, that will engage them. And so, our math department does a really good job, and I learned this as an English teacher, so I'm trying to learn how to make them. But this is called
047a slow reveal. I did a table. It's a slow reveal reveal table. So, I'd like to engage you in this work through inquiry. Um, what do you think, and you can just shout it out, in 2024 25 are the number of AP exams taken through a CTE course at Weisetta High School? There's no bad guess. Nope. What? Okay. Anyone else? 400. Is it it unique or just across like just CTE? Just CT. Yep. Zero. 600 CTE courses had AP options. We have a ton. Yep. We have a ton. 627. Now, we also have a lot of courses that run through concurrent enrollment. Concurrent enrollment, if you're not familiar, is they are receiving their high school graduation credits alongside getting college credits because one of their instruct the instructor for the course or one of the
048instructors is qualified to teach at the college level. So, there's a partnership with a local college or university for that teacher to teach through that college. So several of our courses in CTE also offer concurrent enrollment which means whatever grade you got in that class is the grade that goes on your Minnesota colleges and university transfers. How many dollars do you think in 2024 25 we saved our students that earned concurrent enrollment credits free at a high school? This is in dollars though, not credits. Dollars. Yeah, we're gonna go dollars, not credits. This is a This is a good question. I'm going to guess $40,000. Okay. Anyone else? 15,000. Okay. And in in transparency, what how this was calculated is we calculated the inold the total number of credits earned by Visetta students inside of
049CTE courses and then we took the state average of what a three credit class costs. That's the value back to students and families in one year. Okay. students earning industry recognized credentials. So these would be they have OSHA 10, they have C++, they have there's there's multiple more than I can industry credentials. They can potentially get a job with them. They can put them on their resume. They can put them on their LinkedIn. They can use and speak to them and their acquisition of them in an interview. they definitely would be challenged with their portrait traits in order to earn them. So, how many students earned industry recognized credentials this year? And then we have because CTE works to incorporate authentic learning, experiential learning at least at the capstone level. We find it imperative to
050work with community. We feel that it is there are teachers better than us out there in the world that can connect with students. We talk a lot about how some of our favorite teachers were actually some of those first supervisors that we had or those mentors that we had at our first job. So, we want to give our students those opportunities to connect and have a sense of belonging. If it can't be with us, let us find you some people. And oftentimes we find that our students may connect not as quickly with their own mentor but someone else's. So, the more people the more likely. So, how many mentors are working with us in CTE this year? You're close. 93. And then we also like to partner with businesses for that experiential learning, that authentic
051learning, and most importantly, authentic um real world feedback. Um authentic audiences. Um we when we work with our students with business partnerships, we never get asked, "Mrs. Johnson, what do you think I got for a grade?" Never. We never get asked, "How many points is this worth?" Instead, they say things like, "I'm so nervous." Do you think that or or they told me that I was really good at this? Like, someone told me that. So, how many business partnerships do we have this year? Would you guess? 50, 40, 11. And then overall Wazetta High School, the percentage of W alletta high school students who are currently in at least one CTE class. Half I'm going to say 75%. Close 78.4. And then the number of students I think you have to speak to this one
052a little bit for it's kind of complicated for my brain. This this one's probably a tough data point, but it does show the student interest inside of all career and technical education courses. So the number represented like a one would be a student taking a ter taking one class. So in in theory like our three guess would represent multiples because they have experienced a pretty good sampling of career and technical education courses. So hopefully that kind of helps. So one would be a student taking a course. So in in theory, we could have a student represented more than once inside of this number. But 6475. Nice work, you guys. Now you're going to remember at least one of those probably, right? That dollar amount is Heidi's like thinking about that dollar amount. Okay. Well, we're
053going to wrap it up here. We're almost done. Um, as a reminder, we already showed the slide, but we focus on experiential learning. We want students to have assessments that are authentic and real and perhaps they can leave with them. Um, in courses and programs that teach academic content as well as the knowledge and skills to be successful in the workforce. Uh, I don't know how big of followers you are of the new Riveting Inside Ways at a podcast, but um, this is just a real short clip from that podcast where Reese and Noah were interviewed. These are two students who have leaned into CTE courses. And I I want to preface this video by saying this. A lot of times our CTE students and our Compass students really shine. They shine because they find
054found relevance. They shine because they got to do a different type of learning. They shine because they get to be off campus a little bit and they're outside of a traditional classroom. They shine because they got to learn in a way that made them feel excited. That doesn't mean that that how they feel in their all of their other classes. And so they they are oftentimes challenged to take healthy risks in ways they've never done before. And so that power of pride is something that glows for them that often times we don't experience until we're in our like 20s and we have that really great first risktaking experience. So although they they they present themselves as like really high achieving students. They are. But that doesn't mean that they're high achieving in all aspects of
055their education. Um, and the reason we asked these two to be on the podcast is because they both took really healthy risks. They both had to really find their way. And Noah, which is noted in the podcast earlier, ended up taking a Compass cyber security class. His business partner was NASA. And the group did such a good job that NASA gave them a summer internship and they got to go to um Houston. And then Reese uh who would would tell you if she were here that school in ninth and tth grade was a challenge, really big challenge. But then she found some success in health sciences. She decided she really liked serving others. Took the CNN CNA program and now is working in industry as a CNA. So here is what they would like to
056tell um and Sammy would like to tell incoming eighth graders or parents about their experience in CTE. It's a real short clip. Well, as we close here, I I'll ask all of you the same question. Um, for for you know, for you, Ree, what would you tell whether it's a a student that's about to come to high school or to a parent guardian of a student that's going to be in high school? What would you tell them as far as why they should get involved with some of these CT and and other opportunities available? Honestly, it truly is, not to overemphasize or anything, it seriously is life-changing. These courses have pivoted so many people to what they want to work on, where they want to go. These courses have confirmed for me that engineering is
057the right path for me. They've given me skills that I can use in my engineering. For example, with the wood shop class I took, I got certified to run a CNC machine and learn how that works and use it. When I go into engineering, if I have a part that needs to be machined, I have a better understanding of how this will actually be used. These courses don't just build you academically. They give you skills that allow you to actually contribute to the workforce and understand how different careers operate. So when you're communicating or working with different professionals, you have a better idea of what they do on a day-to-day basis, how they work. Really, these courses, honestly, I don't think there could be much better than them. They give you credits, they give you
058experience, they give you interpersonal skills. They're just a great opportunity by Ree. I would tell families and students that the experiences that you get through these courses is so valuable and it's stuff that you're going to carry with you for the rest of your life like communication skills cuz you talk to peers that are outside of the building and I think it's very important to be able to advocate for yourself and be able to meet new people and help new people. I would just say that it's it's a great way to for personal growth and then also as we said earlier to figure out what you like to do before you leave high school because I think it's it's very helpful to know what you're going to do now or to know what you don't
059want to do now so then you don't do it later. Yeah. Think about all those eight $158,000 that someone could have spent and just to discover that that's not what they want to do. Um so when we think about our CTE programming 6 through 12 future goals and as we wrap up our curriculum review process early next fall um we want to increase student access to community resources, experiential learning and career stimulation while on campus. So the more we can do with students or the provide them with those experiential learning opportunities um for all of our students to on campus would be awesome is awesome increase opportunities for students to gain college and career credentials before graduation and continuous partnerships over the next years to come with students industry adviserss and Minnesota colleges and universities
060um to engage students in authentic experiences practice the wisetta portrait graduate traits and be postsecondary very ready for the world ahead of them. Thank you. Would you would you like to ask us some questions? Yes. Thank you. Thank you all for the presentation. Uh I'm going to let uh my colleagues ask questions, make comments first and then I'll ask a couple of questions myself. Okay. Oh, Dan. Yeah, I have two questions and um can go again later. Um I was curious, you mentioned um the course catalog and all the courses we have in front of us. Um I was curious what percentage of them go for the whole semester and then u the ones that go for one term. That's a that's a difficult blanket statement to give and Paul I don't know if you
061want to speak to this. Majority of our level one or intro courses are going to be nineweek or one-term courses and then not true for all but most intermediate and advanced level courses would then switch to a semester but not true for all. Yeah. Excellent. Thank you. Sure. Thank you for coming tonight. Um I love that our middle school and high school are able to offer this. um what an amazing opportunity um for students to get real world experience and you know just seeing that video and talking about how students passion is ignited. You know I think making that connection between stuff you're learning in class and stuff you will need in your life is so important because some classes I'm sure do feel like when am I ever going to use this? I know
062I had that feeling when I was in high school. Um, and I'm seeing, you know, two kind of opportunities here. One for students that have a passion and they know it. You know, they can take the entire pathway and get that capstone achievement, but also as you said, there's like opportunities to try things out and, you know, maybe discover that this isn't your passion and you would like to go into something else. So, um, we kind of we saw a lot of the numbers about students who, you know, had who obtained college credit and took the AP exam. Um, and I I don't know if I don't know if this was the question Dan was asking um or not. I don't think it was, but how many and maybe you don't have these numbers. when
063we look at how many students do the entire pathway versus how many take a class and then don't. I mean, we pro there's probably a lot of students that discovered that this wasn't right for them and that's important too. So, I don't know if you had if you had an idea of the kind of numbers of students that discovered that about themselves. Do you want to do this from a student perspective? Sure. Yeah. Um, for me, I know I took a lot of like they renamed a few of the courses on here. It'll say like interior design one or I know I took marketing one and marketing two. By the time it was like introduction to marketing and introduction to business and I know like after I took the course, I didn't really like the
064business course as much. I it was super cool and I loved all the people and the teachers, but I like much rather preferred the marketing class. So then I was able to take marketing 2 with Kimler and then also take graphic communications which allowed me to work with marketing as well. So even if I didn't like it, I still feel like it added relevance to works. So kind of like I agree there's a lot of students that will take a course and they may not like it, but there's so many different opportunities that you can test like test the waters, test the different pathways and that's an important um aspect too of this program. there are a lot of on-ramps if you want to try something new and and I know there was some discussion
065about what some of the intro courses were called. um they were changed. They were given numbers instead because it then like students as juniors and seniors would feel like those were classes for them even though it was like an intro course. They were they didn't think that it was just for freshmen that they could still have that on-ramp, you know, to start something new as a junior or a senior, which yeah, that was you heard that students um in within the working sessions repeatedly different student groups said intro screams nth grade. And if you just said one to like we see an on-ramp to a one level one as a upper classman. So that was a significant technical change that we were able to make based on multiple points of feedback. Yeah, I would have
066loved to have this as a high school student. So you guys are very lucky so the next don't have a question and obviously Scott and Don you probably know this. I'm a huge huge fan of this program and um every single thing that we heard today um we have experienced that uh through our older daughter again giving exposure to middle school that's awesome because I don't think that was the case previously uh but our older one is in 8th grade and that's that was really helpful for her to be that stepping stone you know in middle school and now next year that's definitely going to few things I wanted to call out and again presentation was amazing but there is there is a lot of work that goes behind the scene so really kudos to
067this team um Scott Don I mean you guys have been amazing I've attended some of the presentations how campus students they present the final presentation that is unbelievable there is no way a high school senior can present in that fashion the business case, the problem that you're trying to solve, the approach that you're taking, what is the value ad. I mean it was very professionally managed, very professionally done. Um I also talked to some of the industry experts who attended and they were extremely happy. I mean the feedback was all those sessions were conducted very professionally the just like we conduct you know in corporate world. So that shows the professionalism. So again, I don't want people to think, hey, this is just another course. No, it is not. It is much bigger. And like
068I said, we we've had firsthand experience. Um our older one wasn't trying to get into NScott. I think you kind of pulled her away from one class and talked to her and she was nervous, but she said, "Hey, I'm going to try because I think this looks good." And it literally changed her four years. I've read her applications and her essays and the whole compass experience was a pivotal point. Um, obviously there were others, but she explicitly talked about how that experience helped. Meeting industry experts, you know, going to these off-site visits, they could actually feel how would it be in that, you know, outside world and do I feel suitable? Does this suit me? And it was really firsthand experience. And one last thing I would say and again for you all just to
069prove how how these things are working. So my older one is in first first year of college and in first 6 months I heard at least dozen times when she was talking about connecting with mentors getting advice from you know professors in her professional track every time she was relating to hey you remember how it was you know encompassed it's similar but so she already went through those steps in high school and now she's continuing that in her college. So again, thank you so much. I think this program makes us, you know, makes Wisd apart. Um, so thank you for all your help and support. This was really awesome. Thank you, Felicia. I have so many notes and I'm not going to say everything, but thinking through I mean I don't really have specific questions.
070I more feel like I've seen the evolution being in the district for a decade as a parent and I actually was just remembering we had a district lison meeting. It's been a handful of years ago where CTE did a presentation and most of us a lot of us are elementary kid had elementary kid at the time. We all looked at each other and we were like how does everyone not know about this? Like we've got to get this out even at the elementary level to really show like here is what you guys get to do. And now having a middle schooler, this came up when we were talking about I like kind of the explanation of the alignment because I know it was the first time registering for courses this year that you sort of
071had to pick three areas versus just randomly picking classes as a seventh grader and that was kind of nice to identify that a little bit. Um I guess back to just getting the word out. I think um Trudy I think the social media is looking great. I've been following and loving it and I'm trying to share that far and wide. So, thank you to all three of you for sharing your information about that. And yeah, I just again, I think every time I hear about this, I want to just go back to high school. And I mean, I was one of the lucky ones that sort of knew what I wanted to do coming out of high school, but now raising a high schooler who doesn't, he signed up to do the exploring careers and
072education class because I heard that was a really great one. Um, but it's just so fun to see all the different, you know, dabbling. you know, maybe you do do a compass and the showcases are phenomenal, but if you're a kid that don't don't know exactly, you can also, you know, he's doing culinary, he's going to try, you know, it's like you can dabble a little bit and maybe figure out at least what you don't want to do or maybe just find a passion and have a couple more years to get some classes in. So, thank you all for everything you're doing. It's such a very lucky program that we have here. I have so many questions and I'm not going to ask them all right now, but um I just want to say how
073the the way that you are building this program and taking the next right step for it is really impeccable. Um and I'm very impressed by it and it's inspiring to me as well to to see how you're taking those steps of you know what are the new requirements and how can we build upon that. The idea that you can have a credential coming out of any one of these spheres or pathways is incredible. So, I'm going to tell you when I taught I taught public health at St. Kates and at Hamlin and the number of students that I had that were CNAs in order to get them through college was like it was a lot of students and that was their pathway to their four-year college. without that credential, they would not have had the
074support financially to be able to do that. So, this is a like this is a really critically important thing that you're doing to expand access of four-year colleges and beyond for people throughout the educational system. Thank you for doing that. It's really, really important. Um, and then I also just want to ask you this, you have a lot of partnerships, a lot. And that is a lot of work. And I'm wondering, tell me about how you build these, how you're maintaining these relationships. Who is who's charged with that? I mean, this is like there are if you're if you're working for like a medical device company, there are individuals who are charged only with maintaining relationships with physicians. So, I'm wondering how are we possibly doing this here? I'm guessing this is a me thing,
075but happy to have anyone join me first. It requires a lot of coffee. Yep. Coffee of Panera. You can usually find me there at least one day a week. But I would really emphasize maybe a comment that Don made early that this is this is really about involving our community on the vision of teaching and learning and partnerships range from like a a compass charter project to where are CNA students going and doing clinicals or who's willing to host an intern this particular semester. So, it's really just fortunate that for the students that we serve that we have an amazing group of dedicated professionals who are embedded in our community and are showing up every day to serve the needs of our students best. So, probably not a short answer on how we manage that,
076but it's just it's a great team to be a member of and it's been really fun to watch us really value our community and involve our community as much as possible and as often as possible. Thank you for taking ownership of this. It's It's amazing. Can I say something really? Yeah, of course. He doesn't take enough credit by the way. I can That's what I'm guessing. Mentorships, charters, and everything is Scott. And so, he does a fabulous job helping. We help him as part of our classes as teachers. We try to help him find people and find things to do and find companies to go to, but it's him. Yeah. Thank you. Can I just say one more thing? I have somebody who's my carpenter. And what's interesting is he as I was caring for
077my mom at home, he said to me, you know, I was a CNA and that's how I got my business started. So as he was building his business, he took his CNA credentials and used that as you know his income. And so there are like a multitude of ways. So you can be a CNA for a number of years and not continue down that path. And that's not to say that you don't still have those skills, but it's these are just segways into different things that you can do in your life. And so I'm just I'm just enamored. So thank you. Go ahead. My joke will be I chose obviously teaching profession and here go I'm walking on Saturday to school back in Russia. It was working day and I was thinking mine nobody told
078me you're supposed to work on Saturdays. everyone had a weekend and now I have to work. That was my discovery. So uh having an opportunity to overshadow and see how profession because sometimes we see only I mean the best part of it we don't see how much it takes to uh I mean teaching job for example how much homework need to be done how much behind the scene is happening that kind of stuff but at the same time at least uh students looks like can have that opportunity and discover for themselves ah maybe not after Not after like to be honest uh again back in my if uh country the only choice we had if you decide it doesn't work you had to reenroll again which is costly and who said that you can enter
079uh back to college I mean you have to put quite a bit of effort here you have uh right away an opportunity to see how it's it looks like and not only see feel I mean um that's I think it amazing same part I envy you to be honest. Um another one I think at uh when we heard presentation you realized um that's the most important part would be how to sell it to majority of students. this is an opportunity, come and grab it. And I believe he was saying that you are thinking about putting uh shorts like a short videos so that students can see about each classes and kind of maybe and then would be willing to try at least am I right? Yeah. We started Trudy, it's one of Trudy's charges as
080our CTE intern is putting together some kind of studentfriendly think of like Instagram about each pathway so they could see a quick some students learning by doing and then we made several um videos for students who are in eighth grade to see what CTE courses they could take in ninth grade. So that's a shared folder that all of our middle school teachers have and they said they had a lot of fun showing them because they would see their former students in the videos. So that's some of the work that also came out of curriculum review is this continuous um recognition that these are all of our kids regardless of the building that we teach in. And the more we can serve our kids as teachers, as Weisetta public school teachers six through 12 and work
081together, the more these programs are going to be accessible and we're going to we're going to be able to get more feedback from our students as we did we have started that and Trudy's working on it right now. She's got it. I think it also it's a great opportunity. I heard about mentorship. Sometimes you know relationship with some teachers might not work perfectly or you might put your judgment but if you you sometimes you need all what you need one adult one adult who believes in you who put trust in you and then that can uplift that student that's I think it an amazing opportunity so I would like to say thank you for that. Um because as I said uh I envy students. I I would like to reenroll too probably and try some
082programs. And my last one would be would you be able to explain why um what made looks like next year you're going to have aerospace and um aviation aviation program expanded. Um I'm curious uh your thought process. How did you ended up saying that we need to expand it? most anytime we're going to make a a shift in offering for students. Again, I'm going to circle back to the concept of involving our community and our advisory board and when we hear from multiple data points and or when we study a little bit around economic data for our students and what future might look like for them. So, it's never an easy decision when we're going to pursue a new particular pathway. So, I'm probably doing that thing where I'm answering your question, but then starting
083and going on a really long journey before I give you the real answer. But it's really based off of our advisory board data. And then if those two things are true and we have someone on our team who's very passionate about it and those stars align, then we are typically allowed that opportunity to again offer that back to our students. And lastly, I heard uh very good uh reviews from community about compass specifically compass program that many parents said, "Oh, mine one of the biggest thing it's my kid uh had that like uplifting experience." It's that one. That's what I heard. So, thank you. Thank you. Yes. First of all, thank you for being here and thanks for the presentation. and it was great to hear from you all and to uh have an overview
084of all the exciting things happening. I just want to share a couple things. Well, a sharing and then a question. Um I had an opportunity to visit Gonzaga University last November and in my meeting with the admissions director. I shared a little bit about our CTE program and the preliminary ideas we have about expanding and I happen to use the CNA program as an example and she commented that uh the CNA certificate or certification for incoming college freshmen is almost guaranteed employment at the hospital in Spokane. So just a little seed not only might our students save on some tuition dollars, but uh might be a a really good uh way into employment as well. So uh kudos to uh those who help develop that program. And as we continue to think in terms of
085our facilities planning, uh hopefully we're able to move forward. I'm just kind of curious if there are some creative ideas or thoughts about what types of facilities would support this. maybe a nugget or two that would be interesting for the board to hear. I can say something. Okay, go for it. Um, okay. Something that I've noticed throughout high school is like one of my favorite things to do is outside. So, I think more outdoor learning and like when these mentorships like going and grabbing coffee. One time I actually was at a Fox and Pantry like right down the road and a Compass student was sitting there and they approached me with their mentor. Yeah. with their mentor and I was working on HMC um things and she was like what are you doing you have
086a visa iPad and we just went into a halfhour conversation just about compass and the whole program but having those skills is so incredible so like the facilities that get us out of the building and get us everywhere so like that could be just outside or like places like that I think that's really important in terms of how to connect say yeah and I think to tag on to what Stella is saying, the students find so much value in the opportunities to get off campus because they get to see the real world and they get to say, "Hey, my teacher told me that I would need to do this and there I see people doing it." And that's wonderful and we love that. But in order to be equitable for all of our kids, it's
087not all easy for every single student to get off campus. How do we have a place that looks like the real world? Where students can learn by doing? Where we can have places where community can come in and potentially take advantage of or utilize the resources that our kids are for our community. They're learning and doing and our community is benefiting from it. And we think about like our Trojan Tots program. All of those students who want to learn to be early childhood educators. We know there's a need in industry for early childhood ed educators. We have students that want to learn that. How do we provide a space that where student where our community can drop off their 2 and 1 half to 5-year-olds? It looks like a daycare facility. Our students are learning
088how to run a daycare facility. They are managing um all the the aspects of that alongside practicing their child psych 2 pedigogy. um and they can do it in a place that emulates the real world without having to drive somewhere else. And where is there an opportunity for students to have a facility where it's easy for your mentor to come in and meet with you or for your mentor to come in with other colleagues and provide a learning experience for you? Um there's all if we know that the CNA program are there are there ways our students can learn vette opportunities? Where are their needs in industry for for people going into those industries and where can we provide that experiential learning on campus? If we um if if this is one of the last
089additions potentially that we put onto the high school, how do we make sure that we use that that opportunity to build facilities that are for our future kids and not 20 new classrooms that look like the way we learned when we were in school. Um, and we've heard from our students loud and clear like they all want to hang out in the new A-wing because it looks doesn't look it looks like a community college. Like they they want to be where the facilities are new and to Stella's point, they look like places that they are engaging in in the real world. So we know we that's our hopes and dreams and that it's a m a space that can change in 10 years. How can we re-imagine this space? How have we created it to
090change? Because we the real world and industry has changed and learning needs to change or the next generation wants to learn in a different way. Inside of greater career and technical education, we are really after serving the needs of whole students and every student that we would have the opportunity to interact with. And this might be one of those times where I take a couple nuggets and put them together, but really about empowering the next generation of leaders and learners to see themselves inside of career and technical education. And if given the opportunity and we take Stella's idea, plus where maybe we want to go and and we dream about how we can serve the needs of our students and communities best. Could we ever have a Fox and Pantry 2.0 on campus? And it's
091empowering our entrepreneurial students plus our culinary and foods students to really think about what could be and again how can they use their unique gifts and talents to find their home once they leave us. First of all, thank you for for the great presentation. I echo my colleagues sentiments and the praise the praise they have bestowed on you for this program. So I I'm totally in agreement that this is a phenomenal program. I also believe that kids that drop out maybe without completing that the program still benefit in their future life. Right? I mean I could be an example. I was not fortunate enough to take these classes in high school, but I did take like woodworking for example in college or machine drawing. I'm a chemist by training. So where would I use those?
092Right. I did I used some of those experiences when I was trying to finish my basement. Mhm. So so it's never a waste. You know, we can always use everything we have learned sometime in the future in our lives. I have two questions. Uh one is about capacity. Now 24-25 you had certain number of students in a program 2526 that increased and then 2627 you are saying the those who have applied or those who are on hold right now are more are we reaching are we at or near capacity right now on those do you want probably depends on what particular pathway and where it is in its area of serving the needs of students uniquely to maybe two pathways inside of health science. We have an amazing CNA lab where students can come in
093and experience and really connect with again the world outside of school. That said, it is at capacity right now as in like we schedule-wise we cannot serve the needs of any more students with the existing capacity. A a second area that is maybe worth highlighting inside of culinary arts and food systems. Right now, the kitchens again are amazing, but we are at capacity and can no longer serve the needs of any additional students. And when I was kind of thinking about Fox and Pantry 2.0, you know, just the opportunity that could exist to have a more commercial-based kitchen and again to offer students you whether that be like a a hopefully a prostart or a save surf certification as part of that programming. It would it's really about serving the needs of more students and
094at a deeper level. So there there are indeed certain certain areas or pathways that are at capacity currently. That's a good problem to have, right? It it depends because we focus some students though too. Uh the second question I have is about u these credits being transferred to colleges right so when my children went to went to Visetta many many years ago they took AP classes and those were credited in college but those were limited only to colleges in states which had reciprocity. Do these credits get accepted around the whole country or is it still Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, North Dakota? So, I'm going to lean on two of my peeps here. Paul can speak to AP classes more than I can and then Don can share, if you're willing, some personal experience around concurrent enrollment.
095By and large, the systems that we are offering credits through that we refer to as concurrent enrollment are that students are taking a high school class while someone is teaching a college level course. All of our partners exist inside of Minnesota State Colleges and Universities and that allows their students to pull one transcript when they graduate and all of their credits are there. The tough part about answering your question specifically on how those credits transfer is every, as we are aware, every college and university has its own requirement. That may be where I press pause and lean on Paul and Dawn to do a little bit of share out on both AP credits and then if you're okay concurrent. Yeah, the AP one most of the time they're going to take it. There are some
096schools that struggle taking those AP credits, but it's very few. So, most colleges will take AP credits, fours and fives, fives for sure, fours most of the time. Sometimes they'll even take threes. My kids went to South Dakota State and they both had threes in econ. they both got credit for econ. So, um, those do transfer even down to a three level concurrent enrollment. My class, as far as I know, I only know of two kids in 10 years that didn't get some sort of credit for that concurrent enrollment credit and they were outst of management like we do in Minnesota or just a business elective in general. Um, they've all received credit for that. Yeah, there's probably two misperceptions in our community around concurrent enrollment. The first one is that it's that it's maybe
097not as valuable as an AP credit. It's college credit. And in Minnesota, it all goes on one college transcript. Minnesota colleges and university. So, if you took a class at the U of M as an high school student, University of Minnesota credits are on the same as North Henipin, as Augsburg, Hamlin, wherever you went. And so we too, Scott and I have not heard of, we have not had any families come back and say really disappointed they didn't take their Compass concurrent enrollment credits. As a parent, my daughter took two Compass classes both for concurrent enrollment and she ended up going to college in Colorado and the college did not take her Weisetta AP credits and they took all of her concurrent enrollment and she took other concurrent enrollment classes. And I said, "What happened?"
098And she said, "Well," I asked them, "Why did you not take my A or why did you take my concurrent enrollment and not my AP?" And I think her AP scores were in the 30s, but they said it we it's really hard for us to turn down a transcript. So, it's on a Minnesota colleg's transcript. It's really hard. We students can appeal that and it's really hard to not accept it. So, that's my been my experience. We have more we probably experience more where we're convincing students to make sure that they file their credits with their school because you can you'll be able to register sooner. You you may you may be a little bit ahead of your peers. So because our students and some some of our community members really struggle to understand that
099concept of concurrent enrollment because they're still at high school when they're Yeah. All right. Thank you, Director Mahoney. think one addition to one of your questions prior was on are we running out of capacity, right? I'm pretty sure we have a referendum coming up and so um one of those is an addition to our high school that um we are hoping would address some of our course offerings in that CTE after a small pause, right? Yes. Yes. Yeah. So, just thought we'd put that pitch in there at this point. Thank you. Thank you for that reminder, Dana. Um if there are no more questions, no and no comments. Thank Thank you all. I think it really should be. Okay. The second and final item on the agenda this afternoon is a board report and I
100will share a new and exciting resource from MSBA called onboard you. Amy has uh shared that on the screen here. It's a new online and this is for for my board colleagues only. This is not for the public. It's for you Minnesota school board members only. Uh it's a new online training platform created by MSBA specifically for Minnesota schoolboard members built around our state's governance structure legal framework and board responsibilities. Onboard U offers practical ondemand learning that board members can access when issue issues arise without replacing MSBA's conferences or workshops but complementing them. Some courses are free, others have a modest fee as you can see on the screen and all are designed to support stronger, more informed board leadership. It's a flexible way for us to continue learning and governing effectively. I would recommend
101trying it out today. I have already signed up for two free classes. We'll see how how that goes. But there are a few more that are coming also online. All right. And then one final announcement related related to the referendum. Just so that the public knows this announcement is for the public as well. So early voting starts on the referendum starts on February 27th this Friday. So just keep keep an eye on that. And if you are not able to go and vote in person on April 14th, uh April, yeah, April 14th, please vote early and you know get your ballot in the mail. Okay, that completes our agenda for this evening. It is now just up, it's 5:25 and the Visetta Public Schools Board of Education work session for January 26, 2026. not oh
102it's today is February 23rd 2026 is adjourned so that that's what happens when