July 10, 2023 School Board Meeting

001are we good okay we'll call the meeting of the uh Brainerd ISD 181 Board of Education to order and we'll start with roll call here here thank you and let's go to the Pledge of Allegiance please foreign so we have an amended agenda tonight uh we have three things amended one is an attachment in Marcy's presentation on the uh uh um long-term facilities thing later on in the presentation and then uh board under the list of policies under the consent agenda we pulled two out we pulled out 524. which is the internet acceptable use and safe safety policy and 601 the curriculum and instruction goals at the requests of the directors Don the linger and Heidemann uh respectively they want to take a deeper look at those so we didn't want to rubber stamp those

002tonight Sue those are the only changes to the agenda I will entertain a motion to approve semester yes director Heitman uh one other I guess it's more of a question to Heidi I was going through the newsletter that we got from msba on policies that were changed because of uh legislation and we did not have on this list uh critical yep so there's four policies that aren't on that list that were on the msba list and we move those to August some of which because it's a brand new policy that needs to be adopted and they're all going to require more than one reading okay thank you that's why thank you Mr chair director Ward also um uh prior to the last meeting I had asked that we have a director comment at the end

003of the end of each meeting on the agenda and I don't see it on the agenda but we had it last time under a committee reports um not all but my my my request was to have each director have an ability to make comments at the end of the meeting remember that yes and so I don't see that on there so I'd like to have that added for tonight yes yeah for tonight [Applause] and I I wanted it as an ongoing I didn't want it just last month I wanted it as an ongoing I thought it made that pretty clear ongoing kind of agenda item and the other thing is on a on the consent calendar I want to pull uh I was going to wait until we get to consent calendar wait until we

004get to that when we get to that section very good that's good thank you on the comment thing uh my understanding was that when we discussed that at the board level that we were going to talk about it as an action item as potentially a standing agenda item but in my mind that was a board action thing that we would decide on not something that I would have just arbitrarily add to the agenda but maybe I didn't understand you when we were speaking about it so if you want to move on it we could yeah I'll move on okay do we have a second so would you formally move so people know what you're going to move that uh to add it to the agenda uh we have uh each director have the opportunity to

005make comment at the end of the meeting give feedback whatever they want that's my motion second okay so we have a motion from director Ward uh to add a section at the end of tonight's meeting and ongoing meetings um in the at the end of the session during like the updates for each director to give a comment seconded by director heidman did I say that correctly director Ward yes okay is there any discussion is that in addition to the committee meeting updates yes what are the comments for excuse me what's what's the purpose like what do we talk about if you don't have if you don't have a committee report then you then you aren't able to give any comments you could say something if you want no right right sat on it worked well

006and I think that each meeting we should have a opportunity to give some input or ask some questions or whatever when you know at the end of the meeting you know me I like to talk I'll I'll find something to say you don't have to tell me that I know that I know I'm not opposed to it I just like to have some procedure around it like objectives for it outside of the you know because we're taking time also to do the board working sessions for the Retreats and so understanding the difference between that time and this time and the committee time so just being really clear on what those are I don't I don't know that I would be in favor of it tonight as it stands what it is without putting some parameters

007around it superintendo do you remember when I made that yeah am I clear on what I the request that I made yes and then what was added was the committee reports knowing that each board member participates in a committee monthly right every committee report so everybody had an opportunity this this month we don't correct so that's exactly why I met asking that so I understand that directly speak to what you're saying uh director or uh chairman I can say I would like to give you a little bit of latitude uh in that if someone goes off the deep end that you could possibly ask them to end their comments I'm I'm not I'm hoping it's not going to happen I don't think it's going to happen but I I understand we're we're uh Vice chair

008of Spears coming from as well uh and I don't think that's going to happen it's it's just to give people the ability if they want to say something about something they can they don't have to they're not required to so I would I would add to that you have the option to say okay enough if you so choose to you got the gavel I do indeed I'm sorry so I would just I just wanted to throw that thank you yeah any additional discussion or comments for my part I'll vote against it I I think there are ample opportunities when there are agenda items that are specific where we can address those to have an A La Carte one at the end for me is sort of a license for somebody like me who really likes

009to pontificate um who's gonna gavel me down director Heideman uh I would limit it to three minutes okay so there's no different than the public comment it might be less but uh I wouldn't let it go more and I would like to call a roll call on this if I may vote absolutely any further discussion on the motion that said as requested roll call vote please no beer no more yes Kevin Boyles no motion fails now with that said I think as we get a better handle on how we handle board Retreats and work sessions and we continue to refine that process I think it's really important that we have dialogue I just I think in in as much as we've tried to balance this being a business meeting with some of the other things

010I think that was my rationale behind it but thank you for bringing that up director Ward yep uh that will move us along oh sorry I'm still waiting for the um the uh director Ward chimed in I had a I had a motion from director spear to approve the amended agenda and then somebody else like shotgun right after no 12 seconds okay thank you so we have a motion from director Spear and a second from director Heideman to approve the agenda as amended any further discussion hearing none all those in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed same sign no motion carries five one move along to public comment so just my little Preamble that I always get to read before public comment a member of the public can address the board during this time

011comments will be limited to three minutes complaints are allegations against students or employees may not be discussed due to data privacy complaints or allegations must be submitted in writing to superintendent Han the Board of Education superintendent will not converse with guests to address the topic discussed at this time given the number of public comments I have 20 cards in front of me tonight folks and we have this District business I am going to be ultra strict on the three minutes tonight so the hammer is going to drop at three minutes so um stay personal don't care what you're up here to talk about three minutes is three minutes and if it's going to be fair everybody only gets three so with that said we will start it off with Sally booze please hi okay I

012am Sally Boos and I taught in the Brainerd district for 34 years oh sorry this better yeah I don't no I don't think it's on I don't think it's on with us either now is it working yes yes okay I'll use my teacher voice caught in the district for 34 years my entire career was spent in this District my two adult children graduate from BHS and have very good careers one is a gift and talented teacher in the metro area the other is an executive for an international firm in New York City I'm here to encourage you to not allow a small group of extremists tarnish the Legacy and the reputation of the Brainerd Public Schools you have policies in place I ask you to support those policies and your staff thank you thank you

013Sally Misty job good evening I also have a teacher voice so I'll use it as well as this microphone which is not great my name is Misty Jobe and I appreciate the opportunity to address the board today I am the proud mother of two Warrior alumni who both received an excellent education in Brainerd Public Schools I've also been an educator in our district for 19 years 18 of them teaching 8th grade English first at Franklin Junior High then Forest View Middle School like many I was alarmed at the excerpts from the books that were read aloud the last board meeting over the course of my career I've had roughly 3000 13 and 14 year old students in my classroom including the children and some some of our board members today many of those kids have

014been lucky to grow up in loving stable engaged families but this is not true for all of them I've had students who have experienced every kind of abuse you can possibly imagine I've had students who struggle with drug and alcohol abuse I've had students who have been trafficked I've had students who have experienced extreme neglect pregnancy scares poverty and questions about gender identity and sexuality and yes I I've had students who are already sexually active in Middle School a part of my job that I take very very seriously is connecting kids with books that can help them make sense of the world in which they live adolescence is a very very lonely place to be and books that reflect the same challenges and issues that they face can simply help them feel less alone in

015a world that is confusing judgmental and often unforgiving all of our students deserve to find themselves in the books that they read and for many of our most vulnerable students school is the only access to books that they have I urge you to trust in the process that was established years ago regarding access to books with mature content in our school libraries while it is easy to cherry pick the most shocking passages for reading aloud at board meetings it is also incredibly lazy when you consider the depth of thematic content that exists in young adult literature today I believe it is naive to think that sexual content in books would be particularly shocking to most 7th and 8th grade students any kid with a phone a password to a Netflix account or a computer has

016already been exposed to visual sexual imagery that make the passages that were read aloud seem tame technology has changed the information the kids could access at younger and younger ages and what they read in school library books with parent permission should be the least of our concerns when we consider the Myriad of complex issues facing our students in schools today I'm also always perplexed why so many people default to outrage over kids having access to sexual content while ignoring the significant impact that violent imagery has on our culture I've yet to see anyone Express concern about the violence in a book leading me to wonder why violence is okay but sex which for most people becomes a normal healthy part of adult relationships is not also it is a disingenuous to express concern for student

017access to sexual content then make the decision to read aloud that same content at a public meeting which will now be accessible online to all children in our district and Beyond without parent permission in perpetuity this issue could easily have been addressed in a thoughtful mature way that didn't lead to that outcome thank you yeah um I I've heard it said and heard or written in the dispatch that this uh removing pornographic books are about me and Sue uh absolutely not this is not about me and so this is about protecting the children and that's not my job that's you guys's job to protect the children administrators and teachers and you are there to protect our little ones um I've been teaching children for about 38 years I I'm an educator too in community forums

018that were held in public public input on how to stop what I would call hemorrhaging of students from the district you know this is one of the reasons is when you have things like this where parents are looking at what's in the school they want to yank their kids out they want to homeschool they want a private school they want to do anything uh that was one of the things that was brought out during that public time the public forums that they had because I know I wrote about it I wrote on the put the little sticky pads up the main way to protect children is not by stealing their innocence but it's enforcing the statutes I believe the community deserves to know who put these books in the school and why like Sally Bowie

019said I agree with Sally enforce the statutes you have state statutes you have statues that are msba and statutes you guys all approved to protect the children from this you have statues I agree with Sally enforce the statutes uh policies these policies that are in place uh their state and msba and local so protect the kids thank you thanks Doug [Applause] Michael Erickson it doesn't start till you start talking but since you said that I started it thank you um my name is Michael Erickson I'm a retired school psychologist I graduated from Brainerd in 1974. I've just got an email that said my 50th reunions coming up I can't believe that because I'm not that old [Music] um like I said I was a school psychologist for um worked out to be 41 years so

020of those 40 plus years I've seen a lot of change in public education some of it good some of it bad one of my main concerns is safety of children so I agree with everyone when they say their concerns is for children's safety okay but I guess I view it from a little bit different perspective um I have a tattoo that says your story isn't over yet you know it has a semicolon for writers in the room semicolon means you can end a sentence or you can continue the sentence okay so many of our kids think about killing themselves okay they have a choice of putting a period there or continuing their stories many of these children have been abused many of these children are transgender many of these children are gay lesbian whatever they're

021the kids that are On The Fringe um if there's a book in the library that helps them feel comfortable that help someone accept them and I think it belongs there I think it does a real disservice to them their families if you choose to ban that book thank you [Applause] little Smith foreign good evening before I start I want to pose a couple of internal questions that I would like you to think about and answer do you believe it is okay internally to expose our children's success to sexually explicit material and what more importantly is the value add of exposing children to sexually explicit material when our job or your job in the teacher's job is to educate and increase our scores in Reading understanding the English language mathematics how does sexually explicit material value

022add to that no one here or well I should say I could only speak for myself I am not saying banned books Banning books is a gaslighting term that people will use to try to throw shade at the other side publish what you want write what you want read what you want at your own house but you have to think again what is the value that you add to the educational system by the books that we have accessible to students the National Institute of Health has multiple studies out there that show that children young children exposed a sexually explicit content develop sexually aggressive behaviors develop sexual addictions develop more and more sexual problems and are you adding to that problem of sexual violence or are you helping to protect the children and society as a

023whole by keeping the children not exposed to that [Applause] all right so we're going to hold the Applause for the rest of the meeting or I'm going to take us into recess we're trying to get through 20 public comment cards I know we have strong opinions on both sides or all sides of this issue rest assured there's lots of people here that agree with you thank you for your adherence Absolutely I'll I'll gift you back uh whatever I just did 30 seconds and when we're talking about the material that was posed I just want to say that the material that was written in the textbooks and since we do have young children here I'm not going to repeat it but the letter to the editor that was actually written by Dottie Smith no kin to

024me an onion shape form or fashion the Brainerd Dispatch found the language so abhorrent that they changed the letter to the editor so if that letter to the editor using the terms used in the textbook was so bad that they would they changed it from adult consumption where we as a school district allowing our children access to it using the excuse that it have to have a parental permission slip signed before you check it out really I know how this works and I'm old my mother or somebody else's mother is going to sign the permission slip I'm going to check the book out and that book's going to be passed around more than a joint at a Doobie Brothers concert that's high school that's junior high so what I urge you to do and I

025ask that the administration the school board members not display cowardice and appalling lack of leadership by appeasing anti-intellectual groups that say that we're trying to stifle Free Speech or banned books but do the right thing and protect our children thank you thank you [Applause] I will clear the room this is a school board meeting not a rally next up is Elsie Houston hope I said that correctly foreign quick comment first on the last we are not speaking about textbooks and let's be perfectly clear on that I commend you school board members for your respectful and time-consuming attention to this issue I think I speak for many many district 181 citizens when I say I know you are not trying to subvert the morals of our students in the district we know that you do not

026deserve the accusations the blame the threats even made at that June meeting as a former library media specialist and director of media technology in this District I know there are several ways that this issue could have been settled very simply on a building level with everybody's satisfaction or should be without making it a public spectacle yet here we are the irony of the situation is that I think most Forest View students would never have seen these books however now that it is so public their interest has been peaked aha now they want to see them and they don't have to go to the library to check it out all they have to do is go on the internet click into YouTube and have read to them the very parts that the concerned citizens are supposedly

027trying to protect them from perhaps this issue needed a little more thought and a little more common sense thank you next we have Bruce Smith foreign my name is Bruce Smith I taught a health class to sophomores at Brainerd High School for 30 years I coached and I taught a church youth group I'm here to talk to you about the sexually explicit books in the Forestview Middle School library my three most difficult units to teach in high school were the sexually transmitted diseases teenage pregnancy and mental health unit and we had an epidemic of suicides during that 80s time so it was very difficult according to UNICEF and many other sources children exposed to pornography at a young age May and do often lead to poor mental health sexism sexual violence and abusive relationships the

028sad part of this is let me come to view these things and these behaviors as normal and acceptable they're not I find it horrific that you are school board and administration allow this pornography at forestry you shame on you and shame on us for allowing this to happen in our Middle School I cannot imagine how anyone with a child's well-being in mind could ever find one thing of value in having this kind of a book available to our 10 to 14 year olds there would be a downside would there be a downside that these books were removed Who would know what harm would it be we talk a lot about the physical and mental health challenging our children today we hire counselors teachers teach classes on it uh we bring in professional speakers to promote

029better mental health physical health for our children and then we allow this kind of crap in our library could you please explain to the parents of District 181 with these middle school students how sexually explicit books improve their child's mental or physical health especially as we're seeing again now in the rise of suicides STDs teen pregnancies as long as young as 12 year olds this topic is on your agenda and we hope I come in here and make it our concerns known to you that they are the concerns of the community as well and we are not thinking the only people who will look at these books we have some in the elementary schools so I hope we look at all of this kind of curriculum that's getting into that curriculum sorry books that are

030getting into our school so thank you thank you Bruce Amy gundlach there's two of us so I get six minutes right that's how this works I'll give the baby as long as he gives me right okay my name is Amy gunlock and my husband and I have called the Brainerd Lakes area home for the last 10 years I'm beginning my eighth school year with ISD 181 it's an early childhood speech language pathologist I work with the youngest Warriors children ages birth to five and their families tonight I am not only here as an employee but more importantly as a parent of three current and one Future warrior I am here to express concern regarding the effort by community members to ban books in our school libraries I attended the meeting in June and while it

031was wonderful to see people engaged in school issues it was disheartening that those who expressed concern about the content of books then chose to get up and leave the meeting immediately following public comment ignoring the pressure pressing issues that were to be addressed in the real business of the school board meeting our district deserves to have people engaged in real advocacy for the actual pressing issues that are currently impacting our district that those of us who work in the district and or have children attending schools in the district witness on a regular basis issues such as improved literacy outcomes retention of high quality staff increased inclusion opportunities for students with disabilities mental and emotional health for students and employees and overall budgets and policies that meet the needs of all learners my understanding is that

032the books with mature content at the middle school level are only available to 7th and 8th grade students with parent permission I understand and agree that parents have a right to determine what is appropriate for their own children I also have that right and I am not interested in other people determining what books my children are allowed to read let's trust the process that is already in place and not become distracted from the real issues let's use our time and energy to work toward improving our district in the ways that will have the most positive impact on kids thank you to the board for all that you do to move our district forward for the betterment of kids the thank you next up is Jessica Ma I'm going to say it wrong Milady milady not

033like disease no no no like yeah I you know I'm very nervous um so my name is Jessica Milady I have students going into second and fourth grade at Baxter Elementary this year you may have seen my daughter coming home with a kiwi pack ripping at the seams in an additional pile of books in her other hand I also uh I'm a former High School teacher seven years in St Paul Public Schools I frankly believe this is a topic this topic is a complete waste of your time there is already a process in place to keep mature books out of kids hands second honestly if our true motivation here was caring about our children then we would be focusing on the approximately 50 percent of our kids in this District that are not proficient in

034Reading they can't read the mature books um that said I have to be here so that it is clear that the newest fleeting activism trend of banning books is not the opinion held by the larger community students have the internet at their fingertips and we literally cannot censor that information they come across in fact I think that is indeed the issue here because the people in our society are constantly bombarded with information our job as Educators parents is to teach critical thinking how can I Wade through this information and ask tough questions and decide on my own where to land how can I find all the important information about this our job is to help children make good choices with information not carefully curate the information they are exposed to their education should not be

035a filtered Facebook news feed that only provides them information that further Stokes their siled opinion both of my children are skilled readers I believe very strongly they should be able to choose books that interest and Inspire them also as a working mom it can be challenging to get to the public library for why swaths of time so my kids rely solely on the books that the schools can provide to them I hope that the schools continue to provide a wide variety of books for my kids to expand their world view to inspire their interest if the only risk they take in middle school is choosing a controversial book then consider me delighted also if the only chance might the only time my child hears about sex is in a fictional book I am of doing

036my job wrong as a parent please give our kids all the books and the skills to read them thank you Shirley Yeager [Applause] my name is Shirley Yeager I worked in the media center at Franklin junior high for just under 10 years a Content rating system for movie and television is widely accepted and yet none exist for books there is some help available online from sites like Common Sense Media and book looks neither are interested in Banning books they are informational for example a book read to you at last month's meeting The Kite Runner is listed on both sites one gives it 505 rating for educational value but also for violence scariness and language although they consider it educational it is not recommended for children under 16. the other site gives a similar rating of

037four or five saying no miners under 18. neither recommends it for Middle School students I want to read you parts of a report put out by the American College of Pediatricians in June of 2016 titled the impact of pornography on children when young children are exposed to pornography it often results in anxiety and depression children report feelings of disgust shock embarrassment anger fear and sadness afterwards they may become obsessed with acting out adult sexual acts in summary it says because of its harmfulness to Children pornography should must never be used as a tool to teach children I was going to read two excerpts from additional books from the library tonight but because there are small children in this room I am not going to do that because I don't think they should be hearing this

038at all and the two that I was going to read both had sections in there that required the one partner to draw blood on the other person and I think these books are attempting to normalize what I would call rough sex possibly abusive sex I personally do not believe children should think drawing blood on your partner is a normal part of sexual intercourse the author of these two books Sarah J Maas has at least 11 different titles in the Forest View Library all with the same type of content if professionals clearly know that this type of literature is damaging to children and you yourselves have made policy against it why are there so many of these books in the school library thank you Rick felt [Applause] I had every inch I had every intention of

039reading this tonight but in but in view of those two little kids up there I was going to finish up my comments on the importance of protecting innocence that first one that you're looking at right there talks about in incestuous relationship and if Sheriff claim can protect you who could um let me know if I'm wrong but incestuous relationships are against the law and if you want to teach your kids about incestuous relationships in your own house you do it but do not let that be available in the public school system when I was in Germany I visited daco concentration camp even 40 years after that was over when I walked into that gas chamber you could still smell the death in that room you could still sense the evil and what I did not

040realize was that even 45 years after I visited that camp I can close my eyes and I can still see those pictures of the horror of what I witnessed at that camp but what I didn't realize is that I did a lot of research and what they found was how could those men do such a horrendous thing what they found and who has been scientifically proven that because of the desensitive sensitation of viewing it every single day it only took two to three weeks before they viewed it as a normal eight to five job and that's all documented by by science I absolutely believe that our children are being desensitized at an enormous rate all of their little games and everything that they play on their phones they're shooting everything and they have no idea

041that when they pull the trigger on a real gun what's really going to happen I believe that it also desensitizes them to the to the sexual content and we have 400 to 800 000 people sex trafficked in uh the United States nowadays the the movie that just came out on the 4th of July talks about that whole issue and will this will keep and and you guys have been talking about bringing the students back that have already pulled out is this gonna by keeping these books in is that going to build up restore the trust and the parents that pull their kids out does it does it build up a moral character all throughout Germany there was warning signs over and over and over for people to stand up and say enough is enough but

042the moral people nobody stood up and over six million people were exterminated we have a moral obligation and a constitutional right to protect the innocence of our children you are not the parents you are the Guardians and a guardian protects the innocent that is the number one reason why people will pull their children out of school Pete manzi hope I'm saying that one right too uh hi my name is Pete Marsh I've got a upcoming third grader and upgrade coming first grader but sorry I got I got a third grader and a first grader and we'll take them out so everybody can say whatever they want to say in front of everybody that's fine um I didn't mean for them to be a distraction but I do know that they're voracious readers and in our

043little town of Nisswa uh I just think that that books are there to open the door to the world and I I don't want to close those those doors to these kids there's there's too much for them to see so um I think it's absolutely the responsibility of us as parents as as Educators to help guide our students and and explain things every every night the best the best thing about hanging out with my girls is reading and if there's something they don't understand or don't you know can't wrap their little heads around the most beautiful beautiful thing is is seeing seeing them start to understand that and conversing with them and so like I say I think any opportunity we have to open our doors rather than than close them down is is a

044good opportunity and let's let's take it that's all I wanted to say thank you Pete Teresa Famoso hi good evening um I had something a little different prepared to say tonight but just kind of hearing the content pivoting a little bit um mostly I guess I want to say that I agree with a lot of what Jessica shared already I am a mom of two students in isd181 and I really appreciate the current system that is set up especially at Forest View Middle School with the books um and the checkout system there I have had to sign a permission slip to allow my daughter to check out more mature content it has been a struggle to get her to her reading level and get her interested in reading so the fact that she found a

045book that she was interested in Reading elated me um my son was a little bit different when he was in second and third grade he was reading at a ninth and 10th grade reading level and so I had to take a much more active approach to make sure I was very involved and knowing the content of what he was reading it's very hard to find appropriate reading material for a second and third grader when they're reading at a 9th and tenth grade level so that was my responsibility as a parent to make sure that I found something that met his maturity and age level so um I just want to say I appreciate you being here listening to all of this and I think the current system at the middle school is very effective so

046thank you thank you John Sylvester foreign good evening I'm Major John Sylvester U.S army retired and I'm here because I care I care deeply about our students being that I'm a father a grandfather an uncle and a neighbor and a member of this community you say these books are considered mature reading why does mature reading have to equate to pornography what is the value of having these books filled with sexually explicit content in the children's libraries what is the upside of this it's bad enough these young children are allowed to read about explicit sexual intercourse let alone describing the texture of the skin and other body parts before and after penetration the state statute was provided to you and is clear providing sexually explicit content to Children is against the law it is illegal to

047show this material to children for a reason it's wrong and it's harmful if there are parents who wish to expose their children to this type of material let them but not at the expense of taxpayers not in our schools not in 181. we all support age restrictions for driving a car voting or buying alcohol why because children are not yet mature enough to handle the burdens and responsibilities required that's why but suddenly sexual exploitation is suitable for young children are you out of your minds why don't we put in cigarette vending machines in a beer keg if you need additional data put a referendum question on the next election ballot it could State something like this vote Yes if you approve your tax dollars being used to purchase sexually explicit books to be provided to

048ISD 181 students in school libraries you think for a nanosecond this would pass wouldn't it make sense to tell the public that Brainerd school district has been made safe for your child to attend here and parents wouldn't need to worry about their children being exposed to unnecessary to sexual content being found in the school libraries and curriculum as chairman Boyles has indicated the district has been hemorrhaging enrollment decreases for many years aren't we all interested in increasing that enrollment let's be first school district to announce that we have taken action to remove unnecessary sexual content from the district now that would be something the parents could get behind and make efforts to enroll their child in Brainerd School District I have to ask on which side of the fence will you land as a fence

049isn't going to be going to work voting present is the same as voting against the kids and their parents if that's your plan who will protect and who are you protecting the kids and parents or those that want to take advantage of them the choice is yours be prepared to live with your choices actually are watching and wondering your next move next up is Barb mccogan probably have that right do I Barb is that right okay my name is Barbara mcclogan as you said I've been a brilliant resident for 47 years and I have two sons who graduated from Brainerd High School and just because I am bold enough to get up here and speak or many of us are does not make us experts and I think someone said earlier I'm not sure why

050this should be happening there is a system in place if a parent if individuals had problems with these books why did they not just bring it to the um Library people to the principal here at Forest View and that would take care of it and I can't help but ask the question because for all the years I've been here this has never been an issue but suddenly it's a rabble Rouser someone referred to book Banning as being gaslighting well I think pornography is used extensively in this group too and so if if it can it can just be dealt with simply why is it that it's being this big issue um if we think that 13 and 14 year olds don't think about sex well I think we're wrong but it's in my mind is

051not the right Avenue to choose to have a few loud parents or loud Community individuals make the decisions for all the other parents I think if there's a criteria in a system then that should be visible everyone could see what that criteria is and I do know having spoken to the people who are involved in um the move when they came here to Forest View they went through all the books and there were many and like they you know they're human and they have said sometimes one is comes up and someone complains then we deal with it so it seems to me this has been blown way out of proportion I do have to comment on the man who's talked about being a dacho because I was in Munich three years ago and I went

052to Dhaka when I went to the museum there and you know what I saw at dacao I saw people who were gay were put in a concentration camp people who were different were put in concentration camp anything we don't talk about we put they put him in the concentration camp and you know what their slogan was make Germany great again and I am not lying that is what the tour guide told us was the slogan so I just um think that you can see it from either side when I went to the museums in Dhaka what I saw was book Bannings were part of that process that just got worse and worse and worse and he accepted it a little bit and nobody wanted to okay I don't want to say too much I won't

053worry about it and it went on and it went on and so I I can't help but find it fascinating that um what the gentleman's perspective from DACA was as compared to what I saw there so I do not think books need to be banned I think there is a process if that process needs to be amended fair enough so that um you know it's transparent people know what happens if a parent or an individual has a concern they should take it to the proper authorities and I would wonder how many people in this room have actually read these books other than little paragraphs thank you thank you Barb Dottie Smith something my name is Dottie Smith I was born and raised here in Brainerd for 28 years I was privileged to drive a school

054bus while that might strike Terror in the heart of many I thoroughly enjoyed the task along with all the challenges that it presented I used to tell the teachers that they can't do their job until I do mine which was to deliver the children to school safely I also taught Senior High students for a number of years however it was not in a public setting I'm here tonight for the sake of the students I'm embarrassed and appalled that I have to be here and do what I'm doing before the community and the school board I'm going to read an excerpt from a couple books the first one is damsel by Elena Arnold on page 107. this book was purchased by the middle school Forest View Middle School in 2019. but when Emery tugged up at

055the Hem of Amman shift bouncing the fabric at her waist and running his hand first across the dowey nest of hair between her legs and then pushing his fingers inside of her opening her in a way she had not known she could be opened sorrow glowed once more Emery's hand froze fingers knuckle deep in a Maw and then slowly he withdrew it leaving her bruised and undone the second one is from a book called tilt Ellen Hopkins page 401 he pulled me into his lap licks down my neck to the curve of my shirt take it off he says and as if he has hypnotized me I do exactly as I'm told that's right my pretty little girl he moves to kiss my nipples and though I want to say no I can't it feels

056good great amazing beneath my skirt I feel him grow hard against a thin bearer of my panties I like how that feels too but I'm still not ready stop he says why all innocent then he says we can do something else here he lifts me up and does his zipper when he frees his erection and shows me exactly how to use my mouth to get him off I wish I could say that I don't like it but somehow I do getting off is easy you don't even need two to make it happen the proper grip with a slippery fist whoopee there it goes but man does not live by ejaculation alone there's a whole Pursuit thank you Daddy Marty Halverson I guess I shouldn't have touched that I'd reset it to 13 minutes I know

057Marty would use it okay my name is Marty Halverson and I thank you for this opportunity to speak today we're very fortunate in Brainerd School District 181 we have professional and seasoned teachers and administration with an exceptional track record and an elected School Board which takes its tasks seriously and does its work thoroughly one example of this is the staff's foresight in its attention paid to library materials recently a minority in our community have objected to the inclusion of certain books in the library because they do not fit with their individual philosophies a policy was in place where the books are included in the library and the parents have the right to limit their students access to certain materials isn't this a win-win the very precious right of free speech is maintained well parents who

058find certain materials objectionable can limit their students access however this cohort of the community seeks to go further they not only want to protect their children from certain books but they want to limit all students access to the material when we have tenured faculty who sensitively select material for our students education how is it that some want to limit all students access to Quality materials Albert Einstein's educational philosophy is as follows ideas and solutions come not only from logical systematic thinking but also through imaginative and out of the box thinking he believed in Innovation creativity and his vision of the world where learning is all about chasing one's curiosity asking questions thinking out of the box and experimenting rather than mugging up facts if education is all about discovering new facts to influence our futures

059why would we ever want to stop free speech limit reading materials or tell our students they can't explore new ideas what in the world are we afraid of thank you Martin Nick Hillman good evening my name is Nick Gilman a concerned Citizen and a father a taxpayer of this district for clarification purposes I want to make certain you're all aware that there are many and I mean many more books in the school district's libraries that contain sexually explicit content Way Beyond just the two which were mentioned last month and the few that were mentioned today based on how the Brainerd Dispatch reported the last meeting it is entirely possible the people who spoke at the public forum perhaps weren't specific enough however on another note following the last meeting the dispatch reported that Mr mertha

060stated the two books brought up are both on the mature readers list in the Forestview Library meaning they're only available to 7th and 8th grade students who have signed the permission slip from parents first off where does the school have the right to even have a mature reader section with this kind of content in any school K-12 let alone a middle school so is the public supposed to believe students in the library are monitored so closely by The District staff there's no way at all the student without parental permission can't take one of the books off the shelf filled with explicit content read it while they're in the library also are we supposed to believe there's no way at all that a child that does receive parental permission won't share one of these sex-filled books

061with another child who doesn't have their parents permission also is a public supposed to believe there's no way at all that the child won't take pictures of the sexually explicit content and share it with other children that don't have permission I have a few questions does the director of teaching and learning approve this type of material for 7th and 8th graders and a broader question is who specifically has the authority to seek out purchase and approve this type of sexually explicit material for the students and for what reason I also have a reminder for this board in ISD 181 as a whole you are not above the law and supplying this type of pornographic material to our kids is vile evil unethical immoral unsuitable and most of all criminal you are preventing you are perverting

062the minds of our little ones the state does not own our kids they are the parents kids the Bible says in Matthew 18 6 but who shall offend one of these little ones which believeth in me it were better for him than a millstone were hanging around his neck and that he was drowned in the depth of the sea crimes against kids are an unthinkable act in the Bible and what more is under attack today in America than our kids and their young innocent Minds being indoctrinated by our Public Schools another thing to take note one day all of you will have to bow your knee to God whether you believe in him or not and you'll be judged for what you've done and what you don't do thanks Nick Sandy gunlock there's a gun

063lock or gun yeah it looks like gun lock Sandy sorry if I butchered that one too well my my name is Sandy gunlock as you mentioned I've lived in the Baxter Community for two months that little boy in the corner there is one of my grandchildren and so I'm glad to be here and be a part of other Educators and his siblings educations as an as a concerned grandparent I'd like to thank you for adopting a policy and procedures allowing for public participation in school board meetings I think that's a real important thing that you're doing here thank you for having Claire procedures timelines Etc but at your June meeting which I attended several community members expressed their concerns about two Forest View um books library books that they believed should be removed and otherwise

064banned I think from the the library the two books in question at that time were Kite Runner and what girls are made of but apparently there are more that they have concerns about I'm here to share a different opinion I have learned in the past month that the district has a polis already has a policy um what's that keep going already has a policy that exists within the Brainerd school just public schools that requires books with more mature content to be located in the mature readers section of the library limited to access and students in grades seven or eight and most importantly allowed only for checkout upon the receipt of a written parent permission I believe that this BPS policy already provides a smart reasonable and functional Middle Ground compromise to this topic I've also

065read your BPS policy 606 which is in your board packet for tonight I believe it provides clear procedures and policy on the topics of that for guiding your staff that addresses the topics of resource selection and evaluation and really in my short period of time coming to and from this District since my family has lived here I feel very confident that the people you have employed in this District are honorable and knowledgeable they care about their students they care about education and they care about your community they are competent professionals who are up to the task of making good decisions based on on the needs of your kids I have one last point though at last month's meeting I believe policy 414 titled mandated reporting of child neglect or physical or sexual abuse was cited

066as a means to ban books the policy makes clear that statutory requirements of school Personnel to report suspected child neglect or physical or sexual abuse this is an expectation of any and all people of course who work with students as a person who has worked in the fields of both public health and education I believe that this is an extremely important policy for for protection for student protection issues however I believe the policy is diminished when it is used as a means to ban the use of a school resources that we may disagree with thank you in our last public comment for this evening Susanna lamuska hello I'm Susannah lamuska I'm a concerned parent of two young girls in our district a Community member and an advocate I just have a few thoughts I'd like

067to share with you guys tonight um I don't believe it's a hard decision whether our district should have this kind of graphic sexual content available to our young kids because because it has nothing to do with educating our kids I am a firm believer and advocate of age-appropriateness I believe in bringing Solutions our Public Library offers the book what girls are made of and many of these other books for free in digital and audio format removing books like this from the Middle School access does not ban them it puts it just puts more control in the hands of parents to be involved in what their kids are reading parent involvement is key especially with these topics I would like to remind everyone what middle school was like a long time ago even without checking out

068a book kids still read it and when they find something of this sort they tell others go check out this book page 92 for an example and now with social media everyone's fingertips it makes it that much easier for kids to view it I do understand our society is getting to the point where we cannot say no to anyone about anything but in this situation is this the direction we want our district heading the graphic scenes written in these books are not a part of any education and education is key here I do not believe context means anything when talking about child graphic sexual content please don't help take away even more innocence from our kids I am all for sex education but education is the key word here not books or scenes we're a

06910 12 13 year old can take a rape scene for example and do with whatever they want letting their imagination go wild and also maybe thinking it's okay to be raped violated or taken advantage of because there is not any education associated with it I don't believe it's a coincidence that human and sex trafficking is quickly surpassing the drug cartel to become the number one Money Maker in the world our kids being sold into sex slavery please think on that for a moment where does this end if it comes down to policy or rewriting policy I would ask that you take a look into our book fair volunteers and make sure they are all upholding the policies in place so there's not just one following policy while the other eight are looking the other way

070and allowing the kids to check out whatever books they want this has happened there's a big difference between a book ban and eliminating access to this material these books haven't been properly reviewed or they would have never been in our libraries I appreciate each and every one of you here I know your heart is to do your very best for our kids families and Community thank you for your time thanks Susanna and thank you to all 20 of you that spoke and to the rest of you I appreciate these a large number of people here with some pretty strong opinions and I appreciate the decorum and the adherence to policy that said we'll move on to the approval of the minutes from the last board meeting the June 12th board meeting awesome oh second we

071have a motion from director Donnelly over the second from director Brecken any discussion hearing none all those in favor say aye aye opposed same sign motion carries we'll move on to the consent calendar make a motion to approve all second we have a motion from director spear with a second from director Brecken uh as as noted uh two amendments to this particular section of the agenda policies 524 internet acceptable use safety policy policy 601 School District curriculum and instruction goals have been removed we will review those at a later date Mr chair director Ward I'd like to also pull staff changes leaves and gifts and grants to discuss individually is that in the form of emotion yes well can we have a motion with an emotion we're getting I mean three layers deep into Robert's

072Rules here I've had a rough night on a previous board that I was on you know when the uh send item got pulled the the elected official got an opportunity to tell why they where they why they pulled it and uh then the rest of the agenda the consent agenda was voted on and then those individual items were voted on individually all right I'm assuming that that is the same process under Robert's Rules is here fair enough then we'll proceed forward director Ward with the admonishment that there are certain topics we're not able to discuss as it relates to the departure of Staff correct fair enough correct proceed to go to consent first and you want me to do first go Mr chair okay so on the uh leave leave uh staff changes and and

073leave I just want to acknowledge well all of our employees are valuable and appreciated and respected and do great work for our children how we got two people that are leaving and we and we also um respect and appreciate all those that serve our district and choose to leave for whatever reason but I want to acknowledge tonight Beth Cooper and Candace Burkhart for um who are leaving our district and in my opinion have a significant loss for our children and our families and our staff and our uh uh community and I want to thank Candace and Beth for what they have done uh for our district uh and our children and uh they will surely be missed and we wish them the best as they go forward thank you Mr chair thank you director Ward

074on the gift and uh Grant um this is a opportunity every month that we as board members can see the people that give gifts and grants to our committee and then superintendent Han and the administration send thank you letters to all of them but I did want to call out one tonight because I mean first of all we appreciate all grants donations um monies that are given to our district for our children um there's a significant one tonight and I wanted to call it out individually and uh that's the Nisswa Lions gave nine thousand twenty nine dollars to miss Elementary School now the rest of these folks strobables and mcdonoughs the msaa Essentia Health Riverside PTM Brainerd JC's also gave but when somebody gives uh over nine thousand dollars I think that deserves a little

075individual recognition as well so I just wanted to point that out to our district community and and the board that's great thank you director Warden any further discussion on anything on the consent calendar all right hearing none all those in favor of approval signify by saying aye aye opposed same sign motion carries [Applause] moving to presentational Julie Chris from partner Ed with a strategic plan priorities presentation hey Julie good evening everyone thank you for the opportunity to speak oh thank you [Applause] and it's not in presentation mode hang on just one second there we go okay I'll just scroll yeah okay all right I have my phone here because I'm watching my time so I'm not reading my text messages just so you're all aware uh Just for kicks is not using this room tonight

076so okay okay do your worst all right um well first of all thank you for the opportunity for partner Ed to serve the Brainerd Community we've we've been extremely impressed with the dedication of the staff the students the community members the board members I mean you've had significant involvement in this process and so I hope that what we're bringing forward tonight as recommendations for you and the background information that we're sharing with you provides some context as we continue to move forward in this this process we had a team of four individuals that were working on the Brainerd project and I'm Julie critz um the second person there director of superintendent relations for partner Ed but Denise pontrelli Paula O'Loughlin and Jennifer Pelletier have been working on your project as well know that um the

077the idea of a new vision for education and a blueprint essentially for the path going forward for school districts is really important to talk about periodically um because it's really easy to assume that what's happening one year should roll forward to the next year and roll forward to the next year and every once in a while it's good to take a pause and say are we doing the right things are we making sure that our students are prepared for their future and that's essentially what this process has has been about so tonight in this presentation my goal is to make sure that school board members are informed of what the process included and how that played out for the Brainerd School District that we review some of the input and the data the themes that

078came out of some of the data I'd like for you to understand the evolution of the Strategic priorities and what we what we're bringing forward as recommendations tonight and that you consider those recommendations at the end whether you choose to act on them tonight or delay that to another another meeting will that will choose to we'll we'll see at the end here um we started with the overarching question how do we ensure an excellent education for our Brainerd students now that prepares them for a successful future and we spent some time talking about how quickly the world is changing how rapidly text technology is affecting essentially every single industry and so we know that what was once okay in terms of education is is no longer necessarily meeting the needs of students for their future

079so that was our overarching question when we got started here is a timeline that we followed we started in March with some listening sessions and I'll talk a little bit more about each of the processes as we went along but we we had listening sessions there were surveys we were on site and virtually doing listening sessions with the community um then we had on-site meetings with Community stakeholders we had two of those evenings we've met with Heidi and the administrative team you had a little bit of discussion I think at The Retreat this last month about priorities and now we're we're here tonight to to give you an update on where we're at during the first stakeholder meeting 61 members of the Brainerd Community were invited to be part of this process so who makes

080up that 61 of individuals you had three school board members that were part of that director Brecken dondlinger and Speer um so three board members that were there at every meeting I believe all three of you are made every meeting and director Boyles we were there to greet people periodically which was wonderful but we also had we invited parents from preschool elementary school middle school high school community members that didn't have children in the school senior citizens parents of recent graduates staff members at all levels so we were really looking to have a well-rounded group of individuals share their input and thoughts about our process going forward we started by taking a look at the past with uh looking at a collective timeline about some of the things that have happened in the Brainerd School

081District over the course of the last 15 to 20 years and one of the things that was notable is that um I believe it was in the 2008 to 2010 Range there was some significant budget reductions and as we looked at some of the programs that had been reduced over that period of time there hasn't been an opportunity to look at adding some of those things back it the the budget has continued to be an issue most years so you're you've been watching your dollars and that's been an important thing but what we heard is that some of the reductions have had a significant impact and continue to to be so so we looked at the past there was a significant amount of information shared about the state of the district I'll get to that

082in a minute and then we also were talking about Mission Vision and values so and the process for the Mission Vision and values piece we started with input from all the stakeholders were at the meeting we came back to the with a small subgroup of folks that met in between I believe there were board members staff members and community members as part of that work and so the the definite the defining of your mission vision and values is continuing at this point um and near completion but not quite ready to be presented yet in the state of the district this was superintendent Han and some of the team members they shared information about student enrollment about student achievement some of the current programming and opportunities that are offered in the the district numbers of participation

083and so forth both on the academic and on the co-curricular side there was information about Staffing the numbers of of members that you have we talked about openings wages comparable wages and so forth and information about your financial situation budget and the Brainerd facilities so that was that was all all of that led to the idea of helping everyone in the room understand the current state of Brainerd Public Schools when we got to the second stakeholder meeting we continued to talk with um and and share information with that group about the feedback that we had from our listening sessions and from the survey and I will share that information the feedback um for with you here in in just a moment and then we moved to focusing on the future so with the focus groups

084we had staff focus groups we had an administrative focus group we had a number of parent and family community and business partner focus groups as well as staff surveys so we have themes that came from that we met with students as well and they also shared information through a survey so here's what we saw some of the feedback that we saw the questions that were asked are what are things that you like about your school district what are things that you wish about your school district and what are some things that you wonder and as we sifted through the data we grouped that into two sides in in some cases the I like most of those most often they were strengths the I wishes were areas where there was opportunity for growth in the district

085or perhaps a challenge and sometimes I wonder was simply just a rhetorical question and other times it pertained to one side or the other and we tried to make sure that information was reflected so this first slide is the themes that we heard from staff so this is combining both our staff in-person listening sessions and what we saw through their online survey we saw and we're again I'll just say we're looking for themes and so there certainly was lots of information and we're trying to look for common themes to bring forward um on in this area of strengths and we heard this tonight I think from lots of people who spoke we know that we have caring supportive and welcoming staff members and yours your staff felt that way as well um they felt like

086there was lots of opportunities for programming in a variety of ways for students they felt that most staff Embrace change and are willing to make adaptations as needed and that the staff Embrace technology some of the things on the challenges or the opportunities for growth I I'm not going to read every single line um but I'll highlight a few I think we heard that consistent Behavior policies practices and systems was important that was something that was called out as maybe a higher level of need and and really the the background information on that was that some students may may be have a consequence one way with one teacher a different way with another teacher or perhaps administratively we don't respond to concerns in the same way so we did hear about the need for more

087consistent and well-documented procedures and practices not only in the area of student Behavior but in some of the other things that we discussed as well and and you'll see that emerge as a priority here a little bit later um there was some discussion about Staffing and not having adequate Staffing in every Department not because you haven't approved the position sometimes but because you're not always able to fill those positions they they end up being vacant and the pressure that book puts on other staff some talk about making sure that staff were treated respectfully both within the school and outside the school from students from parents community members and and actually within you know staff member to staff member as well um trust within and outside the school was an area that they felt could be

088improved and improving student achievement outcomes the administration they too were complementary of the staff feeling like they were highly skilled very supportive they're committed to students and to students learning they recognized that the facilities that Brainerd has are second to none and that that those facilities provide great opportunity not only for your students but also for your community members as they're able to tap into some of those new facilities and programs that might be available as a result John the challenge side again you'll see consistency with systems procedures and policy where we're just we were hearing that we're we're not consistent not only like I said in Behavior but in other in other ways as well safety access to buildings those are just some of the examples curriculum it was an area of some inconsistency

089as well um School Safety and Security was one of the challenges that was highlighted here mental health was another one and behavior was so you're starting to see some themes that we saw the same with the student group as with the or the staff as we did with the administration here in the area of student themes they appreciated the diversity of classes and the number of clubs and programs that were available so all students could find a place to belong they liked the advanced learning opportunities that Brainerd High School offers them they felt both Athletics music and arts were strong and there was a lot of school pride from the students on the challenge side they commented on the need for some cultural awareness additional languages perhaps and adding some curriculum options lots of discussion

090about career related opportunities and and having more real-life learning opportunities for for all kids we know that there were opportunities for students who are choosing that through their electives but I believe that the conversation was really about should that be something that all kids experience not just those who choose an internship kind of an elective so there there may be a way to do that safety improvements for the school district through policies and student expectations expectations for Behavior came up there to the facility improvements that kids are impressed with the facility they were asking for more access equal access and I think the example was if you are participating in athletics you have quite quite good access to facilities but if you were not an athlete that you may not have the same ability to

091use some of the nice facilities that you have or if you weren't part of a organized sport also that some of the women's sports didn't or though the girls felt they didn't have equal access I'm not exactly sure what that means but something to think about students were asking for for increased voice that they'd like to be a part of some decision making both on their own for their own program as well as decisions in the school and they they wanted to make sure that they were prepared for their future and their their careers and they really had questions about that to say I wonder if we are if what we're doing will prepare us Community themes um a lot you'll see the very similar strengths with opportunities quality staff passion and commitment for student

092achievement facilities again both for athletics and and activities passion and pride and the community really feels that Brainerd Public Schools have a reputation of excellence and that's that's pretty cool to hear that we heard that multiple times on the opportunity side um other than the need to prioritize students and the student needs to make sure that we're challenging them and teaching critical thinking skills so students don't feel like they are not challenged in their classes and it's um I don't want to say boring but that you know these they need to be challenged and have the ability to have greater rigor and critical thinking skills in their class balancing in the budget was a a big thing and we had a good discussion about that student outcomes and that that really is about the test

093scores that we've been hearing about you heard about it a little bit tonight we certainly heard about that in our sessions in the community breakout sessions that we had as well as through the surveys as well so concerns about how students are performing with reading with math with your science and and other other curriculum areas students emotional well-being is there better transition between schools and what that means is is making sure that we have a soft handoff between Elementary and Middle School when kids are going to middle school have we planned for a nice transition and the same thing for when students leave the middle school and go to the high school and I know that you have things in place but it was an area that was recognized by the community here more civility

094between students staff in the community again you see the consistency piece around student behaviors curriculum is there there was discussion about the Middle School experience and and I can share that we we've done a lot of strategic planning in many school districts and the Middle School experience comes up in many schools if not every school it's an awkward age we I applaud the staff who love to teach middle school because when you get that right person that really connects with the Middle School child that's exactly what they need but it's an age that in all of our Lives is a difficult difficult one to to make your way through so I'm not surprised to see that and in no way am I minimizing that so um if if if that's something that you can figure

095out um how to improve I will I would love to continue conversation with you about that so and and I know that you're you will address it so transparency and communication is on here and again trust so as we moved into focusing on the future we watched a provocation around will our students be ready and it it showed this video shows thing the advancement of Technology the robots the robotic the automation the um essentially the the changing Workforce for our kids we looked at a future ready framework that talked about more than basic content that kids need to know as they're preparing for their future a personalized learning framework and we also looked at the economic forecast and then we moved into all right given all that you know and all that you've heard what

096are the priorities for Brainerd and the focus areas that we should be looking at um so we we did a mind map activity and you'll see that there are dots on these slides so as ideas were generated by people in their tables we put them up on the chart and and worked our way toward prioritizing so if you look the top one says accountability and part of that was parents and caregivers being accountable that the system needed to be more transparent and that trust was really a part of that too so you see from the Mind map that there's some additional explanation around that but the number that you see by accountability is 19 and the number you see right on the left in the middle is 43 and that one was student behaviors so

097we had these four charts everyone was given four dots so they had to choose their top four priorities it in no way did that mean that the other things weren't important it simply meant they could only choose four the top the things if they said our school district needs to focus on these four things what would they be at the end of this process um we realized that a couple of table groups didn't didn't know that we had moved we had four charts that we'd spread them out and they weren't in the same area so it was we knew that it was possible that some of the votes the the dots might not have been in the right spot so we sent that we followed up the next day with a survey out asking these

098same questions with the same priorities and asked folks to to give their top four votes their choices so the again you're going to see accountability curriculum connections those same things we only had 33 responses of the 61 so about 50 percent of the people responded but you can see how the the votes in in prioritizing four areas turned out and then the school board at your Last Retreat had some discussion too so here's how it shakes out when you lay these side by side um the key Community stakeholder group that's the Mind map with the dots so the top six items were student behaviors expanding student opportunities safety and finance and budget had the same number of dots so they were they're both ranked three and mental health supports and accountability was for so those

099are the top six that came out of the the Mind map activity that was in person the middle column is from the survey that was done online and again you see student behaviors as number one number two was finance and budget tied with accountability and then addressing Staffing systems policies and procedures and connections and relationships and in the last column is some of the discussion that you'd had as a board identifying that the the budget is a significant concern that literacy and specific and so I put literacy with curriculum if that's okay that could be something that you make a change on at a later time but right now that's where I grouped it is is with curriculum and then the student behaviors would have been the board's third priority after the looking at the

100data now from these three data sets we your administrative team talked about all those priorities and um and they really were trying to connect what are the current strategies we already have in place um I know that superintendent Han in her first year here has begun some new initiatives so there are some things that are underway we wanted to make sure that they are married with the new initiatives that will be um that may come forward through these uh priorities so we needed to have some discussion about what are those things that are already underway are there some things that can go off the plate are there things that need to stay on the plate but become less have less Focus or less time and then what are those things that need to rise to

101the surface where you're spending the majority of your energy and so these are the recommendations that um essentially we're bringing forward the first is to increase academic achievement and and I'll get a little bit more detail for you here in a minute the second is around ensuring safe school facilities and this one is more about standardized procedures practices and resources Equitable resources so it's really about the physical plant how people are getting in and out of the building are they checking in at the front door are there doors left open so from the physical safety part and do we have standardized procedures that everybody understands across the district the third here is around the financial position of the district and the fourth is around establishing a learning and working environment where both students and Staff

102feel supported and encouraged to thrive you saw that the terms accountability transparency and Community Partnerships those connections were important and and and in visiting with superintendent Han we felt that accountability needs to be a part of every goal rather than making it a goal in itself that's that has to be a high priority for everyone measuring accountability is hard to do measuring a goal is um definitely what we need to be doing as we we look forward being transparent about the goals the action steps the progress that we're making communicating with the public communicating with parents and staff that transparency is is what will help to build trust as well and continuing to expand Partnerships on the learning side so getting parents in your community involved in your school can be embedded really into every

103one of the goals that we talked about so in this first one um item the goals around so underneath the priority are some potential goals so these are definitely not solidified these are just some possible ways to work on student achievement one is to address the multi-tiered systems of support for academics for all academics so that would be your reading it'll be your literacy it'll be your science and and what the multi-tiered systems of support means just for the sake of everyone that may not get to this question yeah go ahead so you said that you want to be transparent yes why don't we say we're going to improve academics why don't we say that we're going to get Behavior under control why is it a multi-tiered system of support I thought we were going

104for a strategic plan not education wording strategic plan so should you plan in my mind is that here's where we're going Heidi her team can figure out how we're going to get there if they want to do their multi-tiered systems of support and they can accomplish these goals then I mean I just don't think this is transparent at all I think this is confusing educational wording from what I see I wrote the same things done you did Julie you're a little I can't believe you had the little dots up there I was pretty I couldn't believe it but student Behavior won by a landslide yeah double so we've got a multi-tiered system of support for behavior that doesn't seem like a strategic plan or am I just way off base because I'm not so rum

105dumb no you're not absolutely not a Rum Dum or way off base well now wait a minute um the the you're right multi-tiered systems of support is not a layman's term I mean yeah it really isn't so that's very transparent for the parents for the public for the taxpayers that pay this tremendous deal for this school right it's a really big deal like Heidi needed this to get the job she wants this yes why don't we make this really simple is that what we're going to end up or is this just like a this is just sort of melding this thing together like when we're done is it going to be simple it could be it could be more simple than it is right now it's gonna need to be to get my vote I

106can tell you that much right now well to that point I mean I I think there's nothing wrong with these terms these are the tools in the toolbox but it's not the building that we're building right people that understand yes they're going to contribute to it and the reason that we put the term there but we we can figure out a different way to say that the idea of of the multi-tiered thing is that the first part is what does every child get so let's talk about behavior in the classroom what are the expectations for everyone and then the next tier is kids who are struggling with the rules that go for everyone that need maybe some additional support what does the next tier of support look like and then there's a third tier for

107kids who need a lot more so it's that idea of not not everything gets an intervention sometimes it's about all classroom expectations that affect everybody the curriculum that affects everyone is the first tier it's so when you're looking at addressing achievement you have to really look at all three you got to look at the Core Curriculum that everybody gets and then you need to look at and then what are the extra interventions that kids who need more are getting do we have enough of those but sometimes the the change needs to happen in the classroom with everybody it might be everybody change versus a a small pot of kids change does that make sense it does I hope you guys are really concerned about this Behavior because behavior and safety are are are two winners

108right and so I'm worried about teacher safety administrator safety yes children's safety and from what I understand things are a little wild these days and so I hope that that becomes you know I don't know it has to be a number one thing although I think it should be because it wins with the students it wins with the staff it wins with the administrators so I would hope that would be our number one thing and when I look at these two of your top four at student Behavior Finance student opportunities and safety well you put safety and student Behavior together I think you kind of killed two birds with one stone so we're kind of hoping we can kind of put all that together yeah true the we debated about where should the student Behavior

109part of safety go does it should it go in the achievement part or should it go in the building safety part and it can go in either place so to your point we could certainly move that around um the desire to ex to enhance career Pathways for up you know that was part of the real life experiences that kids need to be out working in um the dealership and having a chance to see what some of those things are really like trying some of those things out that all kids do not just a small percentage of kids who are taking an elective that gives them that opportunity so that was part of the really we still have to make sure they're prepared for the future we've been talking about I looking at a portrait of

110a graduate what that means are what what are the skills or attributes that you want kids to have that you might want kids to have besides content like it might be things like communication skills it might be you know that what are those soft skills so to speak that as an employer you would expect kids to have when they come to you so so that that process right now we're kind of slated for that yet this fall at some point this fall but we need to manage the capacity of your system and we'll see when what time what timing works best for for you to do that um there there was this a thought about standardizing the process for decision making around academics around co-curriculars about special programs I think the example of adding lacrosse

111is as an example of that when do we add programs when do we take programs away are we looking comprehensively at if we add whatever the activity might be what are the effects of that does it reduce the numbers in other sports and so that's about creating some processes that that you can come back to over and over again and looking at student participation now again the goals that are listed under there are things that surfaced but they don't if it's too much it's too much you can say nope some of these have to go away we're just going to do three things what you know what are those three things going to be the second one is about school safety so it's about looking at your your District safety and crisis plans it's auditing

112what are you currently doing and where are the gaps where do we need to shore things up to make sure that the buildings are safer we need to create a consistent process protocol and communicate that to parents to community members to to everyone so we're we're doing what we're saying we're doing that that we follow what's documented and on paper as far as the process to keep people safe and the communication part of that I think is a big part of what we heard that parents didn't feel like we were communicating enough about things that concerned safety so um that that's why that's listed there the financial strengthening the financial position of the district part of that is about communicating part of it is about auditing current practices we did talk about that too how

113many of those things are rolling forward because we've always done them that way that there may be there be there would be some efficiencies we can look at doing some things differently um to find some dollars to seek some efficiencies and then creating a multi-year plan and the operating Levy is listed under there because you it's hard to say we feel like we need an operating Levy and we'll do we're going to do it right now I mean that's one of those things you need to plan and communicate and and work for a longer period of time so if the multi-year financial plan ends up with an operating Levy so be it maybe you'll solve that in a different way and the operating Levy ends up not being the solution to that but it was

114that's that's where it would fit if you wanted to have that in there and the last priority was about the learning and working environment um improving a sense of belonging and well-being we did have some staff who said they feel under appreciated certain work groups felt underappreciated even within the their buildings and so we know that everyone works better when you feel like people around you appreciate you so improving that sense of belonging for staff as well as students expanding opportunities for parents and Guardians and community members some of the people that were in the room that are in the room that participated in this talked about that they they realize the community they can be a part of the learning they they don't just have to be a part of a book fair they

115can be a part of the learning experiences in classrooms and have meaningful impact so looking for ways for them to partner is a possibility to we needed to look at recruitment processes because the Staffing concerns are real training and development processes for staff I think bus drivers with one of the examples I appreciate the lady that spoke tonight that's a bus driver and we we're just hearing that are they well enough trained is there do we have enough systems in place to support bus drivers it's a difficult job that's just an example there's other staff as well that we want to make sure are adequately trained um create they're making sure that we have a supportive and responsive community and that we have mental health supports for students and staff so I really those were

116the four priorities that we grouped together but um I'm I'm going to stop talking and ask that you share your thoughts um so I believe some of your committees have talked about this but looked at potentially these priorities maybe not let me direct this um superintendent on and to you Julie just to be clear the action item for tonight is to approve the four macro bullet points not any of the stuff underneath them correct just identifying these four priorities that's what we're going to vote on at the end so as you saw there's lots of competing priorities and lots of interests that came from all the people who wait in the goal is to narrow that Focus down on the four priorities the goals under those priorities the outcomes the measurements we can't really start

117on that work till the priorities are identified and approved so that's what's happening this day this evening or if there's more time like Julie said there's lots of different pieces to this you the board have to approve the Strategic priorities foreign having been part of this work I feel like this is a a really good way to group some of what we heard throughout all of those sessions and all of the feedback and make sure that there are multiple ways to approach some of those for example behavior that there are a number of different areas where we would approach that with different approaches and and different objectives so I appreciate where this landed and I I like the priority areas that we landed on I'm excited to see where we go with the goals and

118I think too DJ's point you know this is an internal working document right now it needs to be actionable for the folks that are going to take action on it within our district we need it to speak the language of multi-tiered systems of support and at some point we do need to paraphrase summarize to be able to share this in a real way with with the community the vision statement the mission statement we kind of worked on it I saw some stuff flying around on it the one was about a paragraph which I've never seen anything like that before in my career um who okay is that is that part of our thing that we do or is that how's this work you will need to approve that so who's working on it who's on

119the committee to work on it we've had a smaller committee that came forward and we've had feedback from different individuals together in June on June 20th coming it's kind of so that's where it's at right now because the other thing is strategic priority should align so we want to identify those but the ultimate decision on what will be the wording or how you want to work the vision the mission and the values beliefs will come before the board so are you going to share that with us before we get to a meeting like this so we can kind of hash it out tip four yep I mean I can get back to Heidi and say yeah I've got to tighten this up is what I think Kevin can say what he wants Sarah is like

120says what she likes you know all of us Michelle don't you think it'd be senator next time so the next steps would be to approve the priorities and goals and that's really the role of the board to do that to finalize the Mission Vision core values it starts with the subcommittee that's working on it but eventually it comes to the board for approval and then creating the Strategic the final report that's the work the partner Ed will do along with your superintendent is that we're putting it all together based on the priorities that the board agrees on we would we would put it all together into a into a final report and the action plan part is the detail the how to get it done boots on the ground so to speak that takes place

121and that would happen with your leadership team and then the parts of a graduate process is something that you've you have expressed interest in and something that we'll we'll want to talk about the timing and what makes sense with that Mr chair director heidman I didn't leave because I didn't want to hear what listen uh or saying I just needed to uh uh take a break take a break I had the opportunity to to visit with with Julie we we had quite an extensive list that you guys have talked about and uh we uh we paired it down a little bit and to um director donlinger's Point uh we need to use the the kiss formulas far as what I feel with the Strategic plan uh keep it so simple you thought I was going

122to say something else didn't you but the simpler it is the better to understand and uh I think I think we're going to get there this has got to be molded and shaped a little bit but I I really like what uh what we're seeing well the internal document will need to be much more detailed but ideally there will be a visual a one-page visual that your community should be able to understand that you'll that would be something that you'll take away with a lot more depth underneath for those who are carrying it out yeah I'll just uh for you Heidi at least from my standpoint um the mission statement I don't know who's been working on it or massaging it or whatnot but as far as I'm concerned everybody in the community needs to

123know what the mission statement is and when they walk into any of our schools if they ask any Administration or staff what is your mission statement if anybody looks at him like a deer in headlights we haven't accomplished what we wanted to accomplish so to me it just needs to be really simple and bold so we can't afford to nibble around the edges we need to get bold in some of this stuff too so I think we're gonna I think we'll get there this board I think uh working with Heidi I think we're going to have a we're going to have a pretty doggone good strategic plan when it's all said and done so do you think that anything will be measurable at all right now I mean and we had this conversation to say

124that we're gonna we're gonna increase academic achievement so what is that we got to add gold one percent better is that 10 better or is that state average or what are we trying to get to I mean I just hate goals that aren't really goals it's like we're going to win some basketball games this year but I mean are we going to get more rebounds or what are we going to do are we gonna I mean I don't you know we can't get in the weeds and all that stuff but will there be like this is Success like Heidi's got three-year goal and wow she knocks it out of the park she didn't too and it's not just Heidi I understand it's all you all you know all Administration and teachers and it's a team

125thing but I mean is any of it measurable or is it just a feel-good document that we can say that we're working towards it has to be measurable because that's the only way we have accountability built into it that's the only thing that's the only way we have accountability as a board um for the work to be done so there had that that has to come with it but we have to pick up and again first so that's the work to be done well I like that makes you feel much better and I think you want to talk about what is that to your point what is the measure of success with student achievement is it only MCAS is it acts is it what is it going to be what will be the things that

126you're going to look at are there other things you want to look at that make that are maybe perhaps more well-rounded than a test score but that's that's part of the discussion that you'll want to have here and that you build toward well good I'll make a motion to approve the strategic planning identified priorities with work yet to be done second have a motion from director Spirit II from director Ward to approve the strategic planning identified priorities as presented eloquently by Julie kritz thank you any further discussion or questions for Julie or for administration what's chair a timeline do we have a timeline of of the feedback you know of action and things as such or whatever I think over the course of the next month and and I'm looking at superintendent Han to clarify

127this but um we we'd like to have the action plan the measurable goals and action plan done within the the next month or so is that is that I would say probably closer to the end of August knowing when the key players are going to be doing some of the work July is prime time where most people try to take a little bit of a break so if they have the right people at the table to continue that work and then I guess they'll be closer to the end of August I'd also like to suggest that when you go into your board retreat that finalization of the Mission Vision Values I think that would be significant work for the board to discuss and do on a retreat and then we have a a large we've

128had a lot of input which one you take say keep it simple make it bold that's much more complicated than it seems which is why it's taking time but I've appreciated there's many people in this room who've been part of that who've given feedback so I think it'll be important for the board to put the final touch on and say this is what we're doing thank you any other questions any further discussion director Boyles yes I I just need to kind of take you back on What DJ is saying too I think I mean this is really for me who has been in education for a long time this is encompassing everything it's very it's it's not clear and concise and so I still don't really I mean the priorities I'm really good with but

129how we're going to get there I I really feel like we need more work to do in that department I would say everybody agrees I would say I mean for me what I was looking for tonight was the architectural rendering of what the house is going to look like I don't need the blueprints yet okay right Blu-rays the blueprint's coming and I think that's what uh Miss critz did for us is she she did all the listing and all the synthesizing to say under these priorities here's lots of options that were discussed now as a board and as a leadership team if we say we're going to do these two because they're the most important that's the the work that's coming and you have to remember too there's going to be year one year two

130year three and we'll move forward that way okay any further discussion hearing none all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye aye opposed same sign motion carries thank you very much Julie you're welcome thank you thank you thanks Julie I make a motion we take a five minute break oh now you do it oh I can't stop us for the role do you want to make the announcement about a couple things so we will take a uh we'll take a seven minute recess because the number of people we have Men's Rooms because of the Just for kicks event are okay foreign thank you foreign thank you yeah we are back live so we are reconvened so we are moving on to the next agenda item which is the presentation on the update for

131the 10-year long-term facilities and maintenance plan uh Mercy Lord read TC so those board members that are new we currently have or every year the board has to approve a 10-year long-term facility maintenance plan this has been presented at the finance committee the first document is the revenues so we put in in fiscal year 25 I put in the adjusted apus or the student count essentially for fiscal year 25 which then calculates what our Revenue will be for that year and going forward um if you look at the very bottom of that there's three pages uh fiscal year 25 were projected to have around eight hundred thousand dollars in Revenue um and then this document is reviewed by Ellers who's our financial advisor and then we have to look at the expense side so on

132the expense side there's another form in there that summarizes a projection put together by buildings and grounds on what our expenses are anticipated to be in several different areas um it's called in safety deferred maintenance and then we also put in what the projection is related to blueprint 181 with the from ICS their projections so all of that is combined into this one document the board approves and then we send it off to the state has to be approved by the end of July so you can see in the expenses we are projected to go deficit at about fiscal year 28. obviously we'll have to reprioritize and look at projects and reassess and work with what we have but this is what we have based on anticipated and expenses going forward any questions on that

133I know that was very quick where are you showing us going in the blackmars so if you look at the expense summary on the total ending fiscal year fund balance 01467 fiscal year 28 we go negative 444 522. are you on the revenue or the expense document well maybe I'm on the highway I'm on the revenue I'm kind of a guy I'm always trying to fix the revenue so our this is based on student council as student count if it goes down our Revenue goes down it's also based on the average building age so once we did all our blueprint 181 projects that is going to bring that age uh down a little bit it was around 46. you can see in here we're at like 38. so it it it was a part of

134the plan though I don't want you guys to think that that wasn't right but the the the building age calculation um As I understood it uh coming in after a lot of the blueprint 181 programming work on the front end of the levy um even the improvements that we made to District buildings and Marcy correct me if I say something wrong here but um that the age calculation that you see on that spreadsheet we're still getting maximum funding so the the age of our buildings uh the Consolidated age of our buildings all the renovations of all the different editions and all the um original ages and all that stuff it still keeps us at the maximum funding amount it's just that to do a lot of blueprint 181 as well they did take ltfm bonds

135out which does lower how much money we get back from a state level as well because we're paying that money off to approve the 10-year updated ltfm as presented second we have a motion from projector spear with a second from director Ward to approve the 10-year updated long-term plan as presented any further discussion hearing none all those in favor signify by saying aye aye post same sign motion carries thank you thank you Reid thank you Marcy thanks you guys all right Mr murtha with handbooks everybody's favorite okay uh what I'm presenting to you tonight is the second final reading of the handbooks for each site uh school there have been no changes to text or to Major content in any of the ones as presented in the June board meeting I do believe we changed

136the picture of one Elementary School that was on the cover and that would be it I'll make a motion from director dondlinger with a second from director Brecken to approve the handbooks as presented any further discussion Mr chair Mr chair uh director Heitman okay um two points that I have um did we update the handbooks for the new legislation uh that came out under that would have been under policy 515. no not at this directory information no we did not okay we might wanna we might want to take a look at that um because that was something that uh we've got an msba newsletter on it and there's a there's a new policy for directory stuff uh Mr murtha so I don't know I'm aware of the tunes but I think the the implementation time

137doesn't mean it has to be ready for this fall okay and I'm not uh that would be what I would double check okay okay and the second thing I have is uh you know one of the things that I heard a lot from uh teachers uh and staff when I was in uh doing subbing uh Etc was you know we can we can exercise some control while the kids are in school okay I agree with that so I would like us to start taking a closer look at some of the things that we can control and it's in the area of Technology information looking at the elementary schools handbooks by the way I read through every one of these suckers except the high school one didn't have time but we make a statement uh ISD

138181 org accounts restrict access to social media sites and gaming insights as much as can be reasonably maimed chained well I know when I was working in Private Industry there were websites we had no way we could get to I don't know why we don't put that into place here I don't know what the cost is going to be I don't know what's involved but you know if they're using School District issued Chromebooks social media and gaming sites during the school hours I I I'll be honest I have a hard time with that I have a hard time with it [Applause] and then when you get um let's see here once this was this would be at the high school we don't restrict anything we don't restrict anything just you know let them go let

139them do what they want with social media sites and gaming sites just have a hard time with it and the only way anyone would have known about this stuff is it get a rabbit I'm not looking for a pat on the back I just like to do some reading once in a while I get kind of bored and I'm just throwing that out uh director Martha I think you know and I know teachers don't want to have battles with kids you know let's let's you know but I just think golly it's it's our Chromebooks it's our technology can't we restrict some of it somehow some way that's all I think it's a fair question I'd have to defer the technical aspects of restriction to the I.T Department correct it is a philosophical debate within the

140business about what should be open and what should be tight in terms of what are you so it's the same conversation that we're having on other resources as well yeah yeah no I I I'm not gonna I don't want to yeah we're not going to get into a long time but I mean I think I think that's a great Point did you make it what what what is the benefits to let them like this at the high school what what's the benefits of it to leave it wide open because I know when I got a tour of the school from director TC over there we went and checked out one of the classrooms and we were behind the kids and it was like those big desks in there and I don't know was it have

141you probably didn't even notice read but I did it was like 75 of them are playing games I don't know I mean as teacher was up there talking so I was like I mean that's what I would have done too by the way I mean I'm not saying those kids aren't normal I would do the same thing I'd be checking my football scores to my passy football lineup baseball you know whatever there was to do is there a benefit to the to the kids because I mean that's kind of what we're here for right how we have restricted uses and block usage yeah we currently do have filters in place it blocks categories um it's it's impossible to block every game of every site of every everything um we are I don't know what you

142specifically saw and if you want to have a private conversation we can have that but um you know it was just it was just a general comment I mean I'm looking here and I'm just thinking golly the only thing they got gaming sites and they can do this and they can do that I just I don't know do we have more power and control over the Chromebooks we can have more power and control but it comes with a cost of money okay so I mean you can lock them down to the point where they can't really get anywhere and we do that in some situations um we have sandboxes we call them where if they get in trouble they get placed into that they're very restricted they can access Mr murtha's curriculum and that's about

143all they can access but it becomes very restricted for teachers at that point too because they can no longer access online curriculum as well so if your teacher to answer your question director donaldinger if the teacher is using a game as an instructional tool for practice okay that in and of itself might not be a problem what's else is in that corner of the web that might be the problem but if you block that then you're blocking the other so that's why they say it's a balance between loose and tight that you're striving for and you try to do it in a graduated way where you're tighter early looser at the end so by the time they're in high school there isn't much they probably haven't been exposed to so we tend not to worry

144about things other than the core categories that you would have seen like in the uh the video content stuff of policy 606. those sorts of categories would be blocked but other than that we want them to look at Wikipedia the teacher may be using that there might be something in Wikipedia that some people are uncomfortable with but that's the resource they've chosen to use but we can safely see if an inappropriate website is accessed it's brought to the attention it's immediately blocked by District media so nobody has that yeah I do believe he gets a fair number of calls yeah so there's a list of URLs right yeah we do have that yeah it's ever expanding so then director comes down to identifying specific things because what happens is that you're always trying to build

145a better mousetrap because these new these new sites pop up right no no I I I think we're a little sensitive tonight because of the the meeting that's coming up but I'm not concerned about the sensitive stuff I figured you guys had that block I'm more concerned about I don't know Snapchat right Facebook uh Ryan your hair looks like hell why'd you wear that shirt you look terrible all this mental health things we keep hearing about I went to school there's a lot of fun that goes on there and there's a lot of BS I mean I remember we used to pass notes you know it's like hey get down on Randy you know I'd be flipping down the deal and teacher wasn't looking well now if I could just sit here and type this

146stuff to you I just seemed to me like I may not even be paying attention to what's going on because I got a whole conversation going on with my buddy who's over in a totally different building in a different class because I could do that right that's the part that I thought you were talking about Randy I wasn't thinking about the rest of it but I'm sure it's another issue I don't know well I guess I'd argue too that I mean you can you could go deep down this restrictive path right but in the end you'd lose you'd win the battle but lose the war because every kid's got a phone so if you're going to look at it from that perspective we haven't talked about cell phones right so I mean and that's not

147for tonight necessarily right that's I think something that's on several of the board members minds and I'm sure on the administration's mind but I mean you know the idea that okay so you restrict Facebook and Snapchat and tick tock on the Chromebook they can't get to it but they can sure get to it on their phones I just wanted to bring up the subject and I knew other people would have comments and thoughts and you know I don't I'm not a know-all when it comes to it tell me that I mean I know how to turn them off and uh if I have a problem the first time your VCR is still flashing zeroes when I call someone for I.T support they ask me are you plugged in that's the first thing they ask me

148that's how much I know about it I just wanted to bring up the subject that's really all and other comments were made and um you know it's they're in school can we control some of their activity because we're here to cheat you know we're here to we're here to educate not it's not play time gotcha so director Ward thank you Mr chair um Mr Martha I just want to know one of the things that we continue to hear in the Strategic plan from community members is consistency of Behavioral policies throughout the district no matter you know from elementary to school to elementary school to the to Forest View to high school so are the handbooks consistent with each other within each other on discipline policies and behavior policies and you know all of the criteria

149that we need to have to uh run a district so the the child that Baxter moves to Harrison Harrison and is that going to be consistent within the handbook it's more consistent now than it was five years ago we still have some differences in vocabulary particularly corrective vocabulary or goal or goal vocabulary that different sites use some of it's tied to the social emotional work that they do whether some sites are doing responsive classrooms some sites are doing zones of Regulation so their expectations are common but the vocabularies are using they are not yet common that's part of the work that we're doing with the mtss team at this time is trying to standardize that vocabulary for Behavior attendance was the first thing that was worked on Dr Burkhart and her team did attendance work

150on clarifying what are the acceptable tones of language for recording excused and unexcused absences all right the next one they have to do is behavior and the principals want to work on it well thank thank you for that and and um individual school also has unique characteristics and unique students and maybe do some unique differences within within their own building um but I just wanted to make sure that we're getting to the point that we have you know especially behavioral consequences or academic or attendance consistency throughout the district and as you said we're working towards that we're not there yet but you're working towards it correct correct okay thank you you're welcome Dr Murphy uh before you go to sit down I'll give you this sheet this is the newsletter for the uh I've got

151it okay you got it okay good any further discussion or questions for director Martha hearing none all those in favor of approving the handbooks as presented please signify by saying aye aye aye opposed same sign motion carries thank you thank you Tim next up is the first reading of msba policy 516 on student medication we should have a policy on board medication yeah that should be handed out for nothing sorry I did not come with that today all right so as part of our three-year cycle of reviewing all of our policies student medication was up for review and since as you'll see later on the agenda we're talking about overdose medication I wanted to make sure that we were checking this policy while we were doing that overdose medication policy so there's really minimal minimal

152changes to this it's just some updated statutes that are referenced within the student medication policy so open for any questions you may have about it motion second okay we have a motion for director Donald your second by uh director heidman to approve the 516 student medication any discussion Mr chair director Ward this is the narcline the is that in there so Narcan isn't a separate policy that's going to be later on the agenda 516.5 so it's going to sit next to 516 around medication but it is separate thank you yeah we'll get to that okay any further discussion hearing none all those in favor signify by saying aye opposed same sign motion carries next up the approval of the second reading of msba policies spot 427 workload limits for certain special ed teachers and 503

153student attendance no you brought these last time would you like me to speak to these or you can't I've received no feedback since first reading it I haven't either exactly as we saw them the first time they are I make a motion to approve second uh what are we approving the workload limits or both of them both of both of them so we have a motion from director spear with the second from director Ward to approve policies 427 503 second reading as presented any discussion hearing none of those in favor I was just trying to get to it here take your time so um this is with regard to uh student absences so I see we took out um the following reasons shall be sufficient to consider constitute excused absences we took some things out

154but then did we put them into is into that last Point well just kind of Consolidated is that what we were doing exactly so um for example uh physical emergency or family emergency that is now under that Guardian request category so that would still be a valid reason for an excused absence we just Consolidated that into Guardian request we tried to there were disparate attendance codes at every site so for example the high school had 50 codes such as like hunting and fishing and things like that so we just tried to make that a little more streamlined into Guardian requests along with some of those other things you see that we're struck but now moved they're still all excused absences per statute thank you thank you for the discussion questions I spotted that last time

155hearing none of those in favor of approval signified by saying hi hi opposed same sign motion carries all right so now Paul Harvey page three getting there so now we'll come to that overdose medication policy um if I did my stack here so this is a brand new school board policy in Minnesota so this was recently passed in the Minnesota Legislature and is a required uh it's required for districts to stock Narcan in all of our school buildings we need to have two doses fortunately the district had actually already been meeting with a group of community stakeholders about this very issue so we have had a group of Jessica Schwartz from Essentia Health who's in the room who was very helpful in putting this together Dr Andrew Bader folks from buildings and grounds so Jeff

156Layton principals Jessica hoppachoki and Amy Jordan our district nurse Courtney hogstad um and then officer Drew from Brainerd High School so we've been meeting actually to talk about this and review this and have come up with a process that will will fit with this policy so this is that first reading since it's a new policy for us all right I will entertain a motion to approve policy as presented I make a motion second we have a motion from director Bracken with a second by director Heitman any discussion hearing none all those in favor signify by saying aye aye aye oppose same sign motion carries thank you Candace thank you next up discussion item policy 606 textbooks and instructional materials to make an emotion to approve the policy number 606 as it stands today I will

157second okay we have a motion from director spear to approve policy 606 as written seconded by director Brecken I imagine there will be some discussion yes director heidman I guess I'll I'll kick it off um a lot of discussion and uh it was it was good comments made by the public regarding uh library books unfortunately in my opinion policy 606 is absolutely miserable in talking about library books it talks about curriculum materials and if you look and I challenge anyone on in the room today if you look at 606 I don't see any place where it talks about library books now I know I'm kind of narrow-minded sometimes but I'm even trying to see where it says anything about a library book and there's nothing in 606 that talks about library books look at look

158at D excuse me um D under selection of resources it explains what resources needs Michelle I'm sorry director what was that again um if you look under um part one selection of resources item d [Applause] it clarifies what resources means and includes all resources within the district including textbooks and library books [Applause] um okay I'll I'll I'll give you a little bit on that okay thank you [Laughter] remember something so is it maybe your point that maybe just something that calls out library books as drawing them under under this Umbrella by naming them by name oh no oh no oh no no no my personal belief is 606 needs to be if you look at the msba policy and they have a policy on 606. it's two pages long this monstrosity that came out into

1591980 uh 1980 1980 is when it was adopted but it was this was adopted in 1980 well content's nine pages but your Point's taken yeah well okay the rest are permission forms and stuff correct and and there's very little in there about library books at all and if if you really want to get into the weeds of discussion the only thing that we have in here that talks about uh materials we have the movie uh rating system okay what was that does that rate books too library books you want to go there want to have that conversation I don't think it does we certainly can because uh some of the books that were found in Forest View uh probably don't even wouldn't meet much to hear if they were if they were if we were

160using this rating system um they shouldn't have even been in there so I mean I'm just I want a state of policy because that's what we want to do tonight correct we want to talk about the policy and everyone's saying that we have policy we have a policy that tells us about the library books well in my opinion we don't we don't have anything that talks much about library books and if I was to uh if I if I was King for a Day I'd send it back to staff and have staff maybe take a look at maybe rewriting some stuff and doing some stuff and adding some stuff about library books and uh and bring it back to us and well we can talk about it but as this sits right now I'm a

161no vote Mr chair director spear Randy I can I can or director heidman let's just get rid of that director I can see your point that this doesn't directly refer to library books as policy it says any materials or events with instructional content or function that is available or unavailable for formal or informal teacher learning purposes so I would say this is an informal teacher learning purpose all of the resources that we have available in the school district should be evaluated with this with the same reevaluation process the same access we should be taking the same stringent look at all of them and I believe that we're doing that and I I think it's enabled through this policy and I think this policy is airtight in doing that and I want to go one step

162further to say I'm going to steal words that I heard tonight that I am embarrassed and appalled I love the school district I love this community that people would blatantly disregard this policy and then we sit and listen to people ask for consistent well-documented processes that aren't being followed and I'm irritated by that okay let me ask a question how many books do you think have gone through this process and and have been pulled out of the libraries how many how many books have we library books that we've done director spirit I don't know that and I what I like about that question though is there's a way to make that happen and the other thing that I find really insulting as a former former language arts teacher is that we have professionals that have

163dedicated their life to looking through these materials to making sure there's content they know the difference between smut and pornography and actual learning and literary materials we've got some we've got some small if that exists in the library there are teachers bringing it Forward there are students bringing it Forward parents should bring that forward it should not be in our library if it if it isn't a value but I'm going to tell you right now and I've used this example that if I was going to Mount Everest I wouldn't show up at Mount Everest and climate without doing some research without looking at somebody else's experiences and we're asking our teenagers to go into life without any of these experiences to draw on how are they going to manage through relationships through being in you

164know put in situations that for the first time now they are experiencing it and have never read about it I I I trust our Professionals in education that what we have in the building makes sense for our students and I'm going to say I have an eighth grader and I want to decide what my eighth grader reads and I think we're in a violent agreement that you should decide what you your 8th grader reads and I think that there needs to be room for that in the policy and I think there is and I think that teachers see 120 8th graders every day I only see my one they have a broader spectrum of understanding of what that population needs what they're experiencing and what kind of Life events they need to walk through we

165make moral decisions every day in school so for someone you know to say well we can't be making moral decisions for other people we can we do it all the time I think we learn violent agreement do we I don't want to make moral decisions for anybody do we do we do we have a liquor store in in the school because damn it we're going to teach kids how to drink because when they go out in to college we don't want them getting hammered or understanding how they get hammered I mean the point is and I'm sorry I don't I shouldn't be raising my voice to a a director because we have got uh good decorum and we get along I I just I just do you do you believe this movie died then director

166Spirit should be it's the only thing in the policy should we be using that to judge library books and if we do what rating would you give The Kite Runner would you give The Kite Runner a PG uh PG-13 would you give it an R what would you I mean and remember in the movie ratings it doesn't take much to get a movie to R-rated it doesn't take much a few swear words here sex scene here and boom she's an R-rated movie and I'm not I'm not a book Banner I'm not a banner of books I'm a school book Banner maybe but I'm not a banner of books because that means the book was never published and no one can read it and I think that's where we conflate that's where we get into some

167of these issues uh so I apologize if I got a little intense no you you're definitely entitled to that and to to refer to the the movies um I think that's a completely different genre than books and access to it and I I I like that we actually have access to a rating system like this that's really cut and dry that folks can use and how do we rate books then you know in the policy because I want to talk policy how do we rate books in the policy I don't think we need to rate books in the policy I think we've got Professionals in the buildings that know Child Development they know um the leveling of the books and uh what what the spectrum of interests are for the kids that are those ages

168and make that available I think we have a procedure for marking off those mature books within the library um for but what's a mature what's a mature book I think you can evaluate that through what's in the actual content of the book and we've got Professionals in the building that can evaluate that we've got systems and and Library systems and rating systems that can help us with that then how did some of these books get in our libraries if we got professional and I'm not downgrading our staff how did we get how did these books get in our libraries then I think we've taken pieces of books and not read full books and some of those have I would argue literary themes that need to be acknowledged and examined there are kids in our schools

169that need access to those that are having those experiences and need to see those experiences for themselves through books I I would argue that if there is a book out there bring it and have it reevaluated if it's smut or pornography we don't want it in the school and I think there we have professionals that can help grade level what those books are well they see those kids every day they know their reading levels they know their interests they know what they're mature enough to handle these folks have dedicated their life to understanding that and I'm not going to come to somebody else's job and stand behind them and say you suck at this you don't know what you're doing let me do it and I heck don't want you to do that for my

170kids well then you can you can go get those books for your for your child I want to go back to what that uh uh Mr Bruce Smith who taught in the school district I think that's where kids learn about sex and some of the problems that come around with it I don't I mean with with with all the addiction and the mental health I mean I made this comment at another board meeting we as parents sometimes we're our children's worst enemies sometimes it seems like um you know they sometimes they'd be a lot better off I think sometimes if we if we just let them be kids let them be kids let them I mean I see the kids running around in Forest View they're having fun and they're laughing and they're you know

171just let's just treat them like kids and and we don't they don't need to read this stuff and I'm I'm getting off I'm getting away from policy I'm sorry Mr chairman because I I know we want to stick to policy well yeah we can we can explore whatever conversations we need to explore because it Bears on the policy you don't need to apologize for anything I just 606 is not a very good it's not it's not written very well it's not it's not in my opinion and like I said it was 1980 is when it was adopted and I don't know how well 1980 I can't remember how old I think my biggest issue is it was last revised 2014. yeah what's going on I can't even hear you because we have so many people

172talking over on the side again sorry I should have gaveled um on that let's let's again you're here to observe all of us are here to all of us except the six of us plus people we call on so please recognize and respect the process that we're trying to go through here I think I don't want to hog this discussion but I I would like to see 606 um and I'll be quiet and let the other director speak I would like to see us uh uh uh add some language where the school board uh if presented with some smut and we're talking smut and we're talking pornography we as a board can mix it right then and there or at bare minimum that book goes into what I would call a penalty box and we

173have a further discussion about using some of this stuff in 606 and it comes back to the board it's going to come back to to the board regardless director steer it's going to come back to us because we're we're the elected officials we're we're the we're the people that either have depending upon what side of the issue you're on you're either a good guy or you're a bad guy foreign I don't disagree I think you're probably right director Hyman that it will come back to us but the thing I like about the policy is there is consistency in how that happens it goes before a group from the community of parents of curriculum director and teachers and board members so that there's conversation expert conversation Community conversation we're in the room as well that there's

174a there's a whole book study everybody has to read the book and understand the themes and the and the merits and the educational value of that book before we bring It Forward because I I don't know that we as a group represent that we don't represent the teaching professionals the curriculum professionals we certainly recommend you know can we represent the community but I I think we have to have that conversation first before it ends up at the board well I just think 606 is lousy so I'm going to be quiet let you guys stop I bogarted in enough time like well here's what I think I think that uh nationally certainly in the state of Minnesota and certainly in Brainerd Minnesota the public schools are losing enrollment and covid peeled the cover off the ball

175and people saw what their kids are being taught people are mad about it and they're running for the doors and we're down four or 500 kids in the last four or five three four years and when I do the math on that that's six or seven million dollars and with six or seven million dollars we can do a lot of great things in this school and director spear I agree with you and I in all passion you are about English and literature but we make decisions on everything if we have to close an elementary school because we don't have enough kids you're going to have to make part of that decision and we're gonna have to decide to cut teachers and staff and administrators and all this stuff if we continue this bleeding I really

176feel with what I'm seeing you know I mean I don't know if you know this but Minneapolis schools are about to go bankrupt Isanti schools are almost underwater all these schools are having these troubles right and it's because of the people are flocking out of public education right we need to I think this is an opportunity for us to put ourselves on the map to just be Progressive if I you know I talked to Michelle today she taught me a lot there are kids that need these books exactly as you say but they've probably gone and talked to a counselor and we could probably give them the name of a book that would fit their circumstances instead of just having it available to everyone I think it's this the 606 policy I hate to I

177mean it just seems like a waste of time to even talk about it to me is so ridiculous that we've got 14 000 books in the school so are these people are the parents supposed to read the 14 000 books because I don't want my kids seeing that stuff I'm wonderful that you think your kids should see it and that's okay you know my kid I had him jumping off cliffs on skis at 10 years old you probably would think that was crazy for your kids I didn't think that was crazy for my kids so my kids are my kids your kids are your kids but my point is is that how on Earth are you going to find this stuff the kid's not going to come home and tell you then if you told

178tell it we get to go to this committee what makes them experts guys you gotta keep it quiet as a board member I feel like this is one of the reasons that we were elected you were elected you were elected director Warren was elected Kevin was I mean we're all elected right we have to make these hard decisions so to me it's like this is our opportunity to say we've got safe libraries we've got safe schools you don't have to worry about your kids being exposed to this I can't imagine that people are going to go running for the hills because we didn't Supply a book with the graphic stuff that we've seen in the last two meetings it is pretty wild stuff um I don't think this was in our school 25 years ago

179uh Heidi told me that you know when I was in Middle School same kind of stuff was in there I I we we we looked around for about whatever we could find in that school at those ages and I couldn't find anything like this good uh you know you had to wait till someone stole their uncle's stuff at the old deer camp and it's like you should see what I got in my tree fort and read stuff like that I mean it was pretty crazy I think it's pretty offensive I don't think there's any educational value I think that we're trying to make I think that that education especially public education I think that the great thing about America was is that it didn't matter if you had two nickels to rub together or if

180you were the most wealthiest people in the county everyone got the same education I don't think this happening right now we're trying to make schools everything to everybody I mean I don't want to go off on tangents but there's this there's there's some things out there that they want to put you know vaccine services are going to be in the school and obviously mental health is already here and and you know it's all getting loaded on the school and so then uh superintendent Han is supposed to try to manage that you know think about it if you were superintendent in schools 35 years ago you didn't have Pre-K right now all the state mandates Pre-K so look what's happening we just keep adding these products and I think you can't be good at everything you

181know I mean we don't ask the punter for the foot the Vikings to be the pitcher on the twins you know we're doing so many things and why do we want this distraction I think we could rewrite this policy and come up with a better one and simplify things and maybe we start to see some respect and some confidence back in these Public Schools soartel's got the same problem I'm sure you saw that stuff I mean I don't know if you guys did or not I wasn't going to send it out to everybody because you guys will think I'm crazy but sartella the exact same thing happened at their schools they wrote a new policy um you know Utah has got policies all these different states are coming out with policies because this is not

182just a Brainerd thing and I hope everyone that's here understands this isn't just a brainerdeal it's not like we have evil people here that are trying to get this in our school it's just kind of how it is going and I think it's time to pull back take a look and this is our opportunity to maybe make some changes I don't think we're going to make them tonight but I think maybe it's worth digging into and doing some more research and possibly coming up with a better program that would make a lot more people comfortable with what their kids are seeing I I totally agree with with a lot of those speakers I can go back through some of them that you know if you were a kid once I think we all were I

183mean John were you a kid once so the deal is is that it's just like a few of them said if I can get it checked out then guess what I'm gonna show it to Kevin and then Kevin's going to give it to Sarah is this going to go around the room till I go turn it back in probably can't find the book sucker's still going around the bus someplace you know I mean it's like I just think this is really an opportunity and I'd really hate to see it slide away from us where we didn't at least take a look maybe research what some other school districts have done see what's out there maybe there's a happy middle ground that keeps Randy Happy me happy these folks happy those folks happy Sarah happy everybody

184else happy and I think it's worth the time because I think it's a really important issue um I don't know if you've heard but like Lake Region's got an extra 50 kids this year they opened up 50. we're down 140. we have the finance meeting we're on 140 students for next year already that's two million dollars I think maybe we should get some positive news out there to make people feel confident they can send their kids to Brainerd schools and not have to worry about these sorts of things they still got to worry about all the other stuff that goes along with going to school and going to middle school and you know it's it's scary stuff can you put your kid on the bus so did I um I just think it's an opportunity

185for us to maybe get some credibility back with part of the community it's for sure a high percentage I don't know is it 50 I don't know is it 80 I don't know is it is it 20 I think it's higher than that I don't think it's going to hurt us I just think that that stuff's available I didn't even realize it was available online from public library for free until tonight uh one of our one of the speakers said that and a lot of it makes it easier I thought you had to take go to the library or be able to afford to buy the book but it sounds like you can just get access from the public library and they can just read it online at home or on their phone so I

186don't know what the big hardship is to yeah give ourselves something to brag about at the other schools can't brag about man I don't think people I can break a bar I don't think Crosby can break about it I'm not sure I would argue first of all I don't know who is going to be choosing these resources or who is going to be deciding what resources okay and what resources and I mean we do have a policy in place that says that the professionals who have specific training they're experts in the field are selecting these resources so then if we're not going to let them select and we're going to go through all these books who is going to select the other thing I would like to say is I disagree I would be I

187don't think we would be doing better by starting to limit resources for me as a parent that would be a deal breaker I would not want somebody else just want somebody else deciding for me what my children should or shouldn't read would you be okay if we went with like the state statute on a Saturday I know it doesn't count for school so don't so the state what they consider obscene like if you own a gas station you can't sell this Vegas you can't sell that book to a kid that's you don't think that's but your definition of morality and mine I'm just going through the state calls have seen in pornography I'm not going with what I think but context matters and and some of the books that were referenced tonight the context matters

188the context is you know you've got kids who are maybe involved in activity that is that is um dangerous and scary and they read this resource from the beginning to the end and they're empowered to make better decisions about themselves and their bodies so context matters so I I we get these little Snippets and it doesn't matter to me because I need to read the whole book well my question okay I don't argue with you but what about movies what about movies then how do they rate them rated R like Randy said how do they make them PG-13 system for books I mean when there is professionals purchase these books there's a rating system s out that I mean they've talked about that and they books are rated mature or for you know fourth to

189sixth grade or whatever there is yeah I mean some that are resource materials for professionals inside the schools that like our forest view media specialist uses when they look at something so they kind of know ahead of time when something gets here but even then it's not infallible so something slips through and you don't know until somebody brings it to your attention it's what this is here for and I understand that so on the other hand then you have um the folks that have been reading to Sarah's point I anybody that read the entire what girls are made of books stand up from cover to cover got a couple right right all right most of the people that read the content got it from a website that ranks those books now it's not a website

190that I would use but it's a resource and it's available for people so you know good for them for using it I'm not trying to belittle anybody that didn't read the book that wasn't my point at all I'm not trying to lean into that big time I'll get to my piece in a minute but I think you know there are resources that are used but even so it's a national resource so what happens is based on that stuff things get in and and and they're even missed at that National level so I guess where I'm at with the policy is the minute somebody finds something I don't get anybody in this room can challenge anything in our library it's that easy I I I was on the other side of that process in 2014. I

191came into a room and I spoke in defense of a book that was trying to be removed I won't go into all the detail but the point is I was part of that process and it seemed pretty good to me because you had as public we could show up we could speak there were two public meetings you had in you had school district professionals on a panel you had a DAC representative who represents the community on the panel and anybody from the community could come speak and even then if you didn't like the outcome as the person that levied the complaint it's right here section c page nine appeal to the school board and then it comes to us so to your point director heidman here we are we're the Arbiter same as uh the

192president can stay in execution same as the Supreme Court can overturn an amendment or a piece of legislation or a executive order by the executive branch that's why I tried to keep my comments towards the policy but I think the policy needs to be Rewritten there could be some things added to it and it's a single book ratings again I'm not B rating professionals I don't know who orders books who orders books in this in this uh uh uh I mean I've got I've got two uh uh Kingdom of Ash and Empire of storms written by a Sarah Moss Kingdom of Ash summary of concerns this book contains violence mild profanity explicit sexual activities and sexual nudity and it's not rated for minors out of a rating scale of five it's a four the same

193author see and I'm not a rocket scientist I'm not a librarian but if I see a pattern of author I'm going to start questioning how come we're ordering these books who is this Sarah Moss well she's got another one called the Empire of storms this book contains explicit sexual activities sexual nudity violence and profanity rated four out of five pretty bad stuff pretty bad stuff and director Hyman this policy you have the ability to bring that forward and have it reevaluated as a resource so I have a question how do you find in the first place why are we spending resources on it in the first place I don't I haven't personally read it but it might have literary value it might have themes and pieces that are that are relevant to the experiences of

194teenagers they can learn that in in Bruce Smith's class director Ward you haven't been heard from yet thank you um you know first of all the public comments tonight in this discussion have all been respectful in my opinion so far from from opposition and agreement whatever it's been respectful and thoughtful and you know what we're all living our own values and and things that we believe in no matter who you are or what you believe in you're living your values and you're speaking your mind and the and the military gentleman that got up here fought for those freedoms of all of us to be able to speak our mind no I'm speaking ma'am and the fact the matter is the elephant in the room is the sub subjectivity of this discussion because somebody says this

195is terrible and somebody else says no this is okay or you can't do that to my child but you can do that that person's child it's all subjective and that's the problem in my opinion that's the problem here is that we we have we fight for freedoms and for up allowing us to speak our peace and values and beliefs but somehow we have a process that if you don't like it then you follow the process to get it changed you follow the process to get a change you don't put on you don't make a plan to somehow get it changed by by being um put by putting putting on a show or whatever side you're on I don't care what it is I don't care what it is you you have to respect you we

196have to build on respect on thoughtfulness on our ability to believe in our values and our systems and unfortunately it's subjective and this is a hot button topping whether you want to say it is or not it is and it's a lot of the things that come before boards and elected officials are just that there's a process I like the process I believe in the process there's a way to do that now to to change the process to change the policy and somebody somebody tonight talked about age-appropriateness and I believe that's important for us all of us and but you know what that's subjective as well because my child this is appropriate for my child but maybe not for director heideman's child it's all subjective folks and so we need to work together to try

197to come up with a solution and if we don't like the policy then we as the board need to listen to you to try to make a change and um we can't sit and you know um you guys are over here and you guys are over there you know what when I was one of the things that irritates me with the with politics is they do the same dang thing in the federal government and the state government all the Democrats over here all over the Republicans Republicans sit over there what if you what if you went to Chair by chair and chair by chair and you actually hadn't talked to each other for crying out loud wouldn't that be something and you had to compromise and agree once in a while wouldn't that be something

198then we might get things done so let's get together and try to figure it out rather than keep Batman with each other for crying out loud that's my opinion and Mr chair I I stated how I felt about the policy and if if some of us don't like that policy on the board then we need to listen and then try to adjust it try to change it try to make it because there's been a lot of people that have given their life up so that we have that freedom period all of us thank you thank you I kind of feel like that's what Randy's asking for my question is to director Spear and you director Ward and I guess you too Michelle is we make it sound like this is such an easy process so

199if I'm a parent Heidi can I come in the school then and come to the library and sit down and start reading to these books you know I could just walk in the door whenever I feel like it and just swing on into the library and sit down check out some books or do I have to catch my kid with this book nope you have access to strict materials or do you have to do a data request no you're going to have access to District materials you make a request those materials can be laid out you can make it to your building principal you can make it to direct your teaching learning you can make it this is kind of my point this doesn't seem like a very easy deal it just seems to me

200like we just put some filters in like R-rated PG-13 and just kind of I I don't know I guess I'm confused what's easier than four different ways that you can ask for access and they can't take their kids to the public library but I guess they do have the time to come in here most of them are online we did that two years ago to make them accessible Library we can't I mean obviously we can't get all the library books online but again there are online resources where people can research I think that's what they've been doing so we've heard from five camps I'll finish I'll finish up with my thoughts on this all right so the first thing is that for me there's several layers to this and the first one to me is

201you know what we've got in my opinion going on here is a little bit of a force for the tree syndrome where we're so focused on the tip of the iceberg that's above the water that we're forgetting the entire picture of it all and our job as a board in my opinion is Forest management we are a governing body we are a board a governing board and to govern we have to govern through policy that's how it works now is the policy perfect to director heidman's hasn't been updated since 2011 by my Reckoning that's 14. oh yeah for 14. so nine years the last A lot's changed in media A lot's changed in our culture A lot's changed so I'm open to the idea that it could use another look from a fresh set of

202eyes within the district okay I'm with you what I don't want to do is I we're in the business of forest management I don't want to go around looking at individual trees myself me either and what offends me as a board member is when not only am I not told about a tree I have somebody come show me the tree at a board meeting with no Advance warning right nobody emailed me about the book what girls are made of nobody called me about that book nobody ever contacted me about that book nobody did anything all of a sudden somebody shows up and reads to me from that book that's my first exposure to that book that's not process that's drive-by e that's not how we do things as a culture plain and simple so now

203I have to fight through my bias that builds at that point to try to hear what those folks are saying because I've already sort of got a problem with that process right now I hear there's 25 more books that we may have a problem with okay challenge the books challenge them it's right here our job's to clean this up yeah maybe make it easier your job you don't like it challenge it then it shows up here and we'll do it I wrote letters to the board when I was a Community member I did the exact same thing it's a process so to me there's layers to it there's a layer where again the for lack of a better word theatrical element of this does not impress me it doesn't make me want to make a

204decision any different than I would have in any other way you know you can try to embarrass me all you want my wife will tell you I'm better at doing that than any of you could ever be so I think I can even get to what's appropriate what's not appropriate and what my interpretation is until we finalize the framework and have an intelligent discourse around how we process it and what is our role in that and what is your role in that and what is your role in that but if all you're trying to do is look good for the cameras I'm sorry I'm not going to take it very seriously that's my take so with that said um I kind of feel like I might be the Swing Vote in this adventure tonight um

205so let me State this that I'm open to the concept of sending the team back to look and see if there's some things they can do from 2014 to 2023 to make some refinements to this but in terms of its basic flowchart on how the process works I got no problem with it challenge the resource some of the some of the most involved parents that I've dealt with that are in our school district and they just happen to be Elementary School parents I met them because we sat across the table strewn with materials that they were challenging and reviewing and looking at and we were completely on the other side of the table from each other I'm like there's no way we're moving all this stuff and they were like well we want to burn

206it all and I'm like and now these people are participating in our strategic planning because we sat down and we talked to each other to John's point we sat down we had a dialogue we made everything transparent and available to them so they could review everything and then we had a dialogue about each and every item and they had the opportunity to challenge they had the opportunity to do the process sometimes they did the process sometimes they chose not to do the process but email them me three books isn't going to do anything I'm only one of six people anyway and then one final point is I don't know I don't think we all get the same emails right I'm told not um I'm based on what I've gotten on every Paramount issue that's come

207before this board since in the two and a half years that I've been doing this for masks to this to whatever there's this perception by people that they're in this massive majority and it happens to both sides of the thing and the reality is we're kind of split pretty well down the middle on most of this stuff in this community so I think as long as you start from that mentality that you're not part of this raging majority on anything that that I've gotten way more emails in the last three weeks talking about protecting the resources not about getting them out now that's an informal poll there's no science to that zero none so I don't put any stock in it but what it tells me is there are alternative voices to what people think

208they're hearing I mean if you you know if you sit in a room full of Seagulls you're only going to hear that kind of chirping that's just how it works and I do it to myself all the time and we create our own Echo Chambers it happens I get it but the reality is this community is way more diverse than we think it is or some of us think it is and so to Sarah's point if we have kids who have a a parent group we have people that will pull their kids out if we start locking up resources or I know that sounds absurd to people that don't believe that way I get it but I promise you it's true and listen I grew up my mother I went to Pillager so forgive me

209yeah so but my mother I mean you know when we had sex education classes showed up for the sex education classes and sat in the back it was a fun day so I enjoying band um so I'm not I'm not immune to the idea that we want to protect the kids everybody here wants to protect the kids there isn't a bad heart in this room right now not one everyone at U has the best intentions in your hearts I get that right it's the execution and the deployment and the definitions like John said that's the elephant in the room it's subjective um again you know a book a book uh that's been in curriculum for over 80 years you know Some People Want it out some people want it in I mean it doesn't matter

210where we move the line the argument is going to keep happening the next time we move the line it's going to be the next line of resources somebody will find something else so you still have to have a process for it even if we removed all 25 books that they want removed can we agree that those books would not have been in these schools 25 years ago I think the cultural equivalent for the times would have been I I didn't ask that I just asked that those books are in there I'm just wondering why our school's shrinking and I'm just trying to find reasons I don't think the teachers have changed I think they still care about the students I don't think the students have really changed and I still think the parents love their

211kids so what is the problem well we fundamentally disagree on this right I mean I've heard it's kovid well that's over we are not making people wear masks so why aren't they coming back and I'm just concerned about it and I just don't know where are we starting where we stop with the cutting you know we just got rid of all the parents and the from K through second we've been through this it's like we've got to get some people back in the school and this seems like a pretty small little thingy thingy just to look this policy over and see if we can't tighten it up a little bit figure out who's ordering the books do you know Horrors books I don't know you know what I don't think maybe you do I mean

212I just like who who decides who are who's the wizard behind the curtain who's The Wizard of Oz who gets to pick what's okay and what's not okay um you know I mean it's it's serious right right it's probably professional I believe it but no one knows who it is I'm sure someone knows I mean I understand but the public doesn't know I don't know and I just feel like it's worth taking a look at to make sure that we're not making mistakes because no matter how smart you are or how talented you are people make mistakes you know and it happens all the time it happens to doctors Architects I mean Bridges collapse I mean Engineers it doesn't matter what profession you're in it doesn't hurt to have another set of eyes looking over

213your shoulder I don't care if it's me you whatever you know I mean you know you're in business it's okay um I don't think it's an insult I just thought maybe that there seems like I like the idea that there's 10 000 eyes looking over the shoulder that's what the policy is there for it empowers every single citizen of this school district to challenge anything they want to yeah I don't know how much easier it can get well I don't think we have a list of books we want that are everyone wants gone I mean is there new books we should bring in I just thought maybe we could look this policy over my Granny says the msbas is two pages this thing's nine why is it nine why is it so complicated maybe it

214was you know originally written in 1980 I mean maybe it's time to take a little peek at it and spend a little time on it and see what we can do maybe we can do a little better job I don't I don't know well I I agree with you I think it it includes a lot of the procedures so I mean we could split it to policy and procedure split it out so that there's two pages of policy and five pages of procedure I think that's fine too I became for that director Boyle the original uh policy 606 which was shared in the the board packet explains that in the policy the process has to be defined so that's why your policy went from two pages from msba's template to nine pages that the district

215identified and processed because msba doesn't identify the process that's District specific they leave that up to the district and so again that's so I've heard that question multiple times why two pages to this that's part of the original if you read the original policy template it says that you have to put your process out so the public can be clearly aware of what the district identified process is just for clarification if that's the case I I do like leaving this in the policy I think it reinforces our own policy you like leaving the procedures in the policy if we say it has to be made public and available I think this is the best way to do it Mr chair director Ward dependent Han this sheet that the board has I mean that's that's pieces

216of 606. okay correct that was a question I got a lot because I don't have that in the specific right this has actually been up so one of the questions I'm sorry go ahead I'm sorry one of the questions asked was for clarification that was clarification of how they were ordered so that's what you have okay yeah so thank you superintendent Han so um Mr chair and and community members and board this answers a lot of the questions that have been raised tonight and it's in 606. it's in the board policy if you've read the board politics in 606 with a number of a lot of the questions have been asked tonight I also want to just and commissioner commissioner uh the director donlinger you are correct and we we as a board have talked

217about the the decline enrollment and um we talked with um Mercy about you know we we've lost this number of students um now what now what are some of our gains what are some of our gains and we we haven't talked about that tonight yet but we do know we have some gains but and we do have to in my opinion we do have to address the declining enrollment and um and and try to get our try to bring students back in or whatever whatever we need to do um but this isn't just as I think you said director donlinger this isn't just Brainerd this is Nationwide this is a thing that's going on Nationwide so is this stuff in the libraries well I I wanted to say it's not just about um sex books

218in the library kids aren't leaving districts just because of sex books in the library obviously not okay there's many factors we can agree that there's many factors like kids League districts and you know some kids get recruited to leave for crying out loud as as if you don't know that in the state of Minnesota you better you better open our eyes I guess but my point is there's a number of issues that we need to look at in order to retain and recruit not recruit retain our students um and and and make sure that they stay within our district and when we are when we aren't working together to build our system up then we're tearing it down if we are not working together to build our system up we're tearing it down and that's

219one of the reasons our kids are maybe leaving too and maybe our parents are saying you know what I don't like what's going on with all that stuff so I just wanted to make that point a couple of those points thank you I don't know I just I think we need to look in the mirror you know I mean quarterbacks throwing interceptions gonna blame the line the coach the receivers the this the that you know I think we need to take a closer look at what we're doing if you want to stop the bleeding yeah as a business guy it's just you know I don't disagreeing companies go down look at Sears cheers that 85 of the market they have like one percent huh well Sears Sony Kodak Kodak that kind of got worked out

220of a job right but Sony 53 player took them 60 of the entire music library in the country and yet Apple outplayed them why because they didn't look to the Future that's why all those companies failed well it's not because they looked at the past that's true and I think that you know you DJ see this as a win by removing some of these materials I see this see that as a loss Lots I've heard it I've heard it from other people don't worry right so know what is the win is a loss and we got to keep in mind again you know this is off topic just slightly but it's germane to what we're trying to get at which is enrollment nationally in public schools has been declining for well over a decade it

221is it's everywhere and you want to know the leading group that's currently homeschooling kids accelerating over what they were doing before the pandemic African Americans which really isn't an issue for us here in the Brainerd Lakes area but they're outpacing every other group homeschooling their kids and pulling them out of public education it's a whole bunch of different reasons for it and you can pick the one you like the best or the you know whatever but you know I mean this is not because of books this is not because of mass this is a whole bunch of different factors that are playing into it the reason we're pulling them out is because they can't read could be safety could be because they can't read could be because the curriculum doesn't represent their kids because of

222all different things you know but and I think we got to start picking away somewhere we gotta start picking some battles we are just gonna be able to be middle of the road and this thing's just going to fix itself you know it's like sooner or later we have to make some decisions maybe this isn't the one don't die on this one there'll be plenty more and this doesn't even bring up the issue of uh policy 524. yep which can intertwine into 606. I think the plan there director Heideman was to have that brought forward as a separate line item like the other policies that we see so we can ask those questions about that and then there right I think giving this other document that we were given and maybe you know another a

223nice informational piece for the next board meeting would be to have whoever our subject matter expert is on resource selection come in for a q a and presentation for us that seemed like a good idea because I think that way then we can ask questions I mean a document sometimes it's kind of cold and you can't really maneuver your way through just different things but but um so I think if we did that but um if I may you know sort of bring us back to the question at hand which is the policy itself I think meanwhile until we've done that and done more research let's let's make sure we have a policy in place I'd like to call the question okay we have a motion to call the question what's called a question call

224the question is stop talking and vote well I'd like a roll call book then be good do we have a second on the motion to call the question yes so we have a second you don't have any second question okay so then secondarily we have a motion to make it a roll call vote and the motion is yeah and director donlinger's requested a roll call vote which I don't believe we have to have a motion for that can just be a board member request do you know Janet yes too bad John Erickson left we could get all the info we need pretty sure it's just requested all right I'm sure we'll hear about it tomorrow but for now we're going to go with a roll call vote and call the question based on well first

225we have to vote on the motion in the second to call the question those in favor saying aye call the question yes is done of a Peruvian policy 606 as written that is a standing motion right now yep is that what you're voting on yes okay are we voting on the question well we're voting on the question first who's called the question to vote on that thing because it's a secondary motion it's like I had to do this at the diligence so we don't need to vote on the call the question well no we have to vote on on the call the question we have to approve it so those in favor of the motion to call the question signify by saying aye aye aye opposed same sign now we're back to the original motion

226which is to approve and retain 606 for the time being as written today and director Donnelly has requested a role called votes we will go with a roll call vote no yes John Ward yes yes okay motion passes as indicated foreign we are off to committee meeting updates [Applause] uh let's start with benefits and Personnel director Ward actually you're the you're the man well you came and shared that Mr chair yeah I did show up for that um yeah and who are we missing from that one which one no the personnel and benefits one I'm sorry John was on this one so I honestly didn't prepare to talk about it hi do you want to help me out with it we have the minutes posted a lot of what was discussed was where we're at

227with current hiring and postings um so that was reviewed uh the additional thing that was reviewed and I'm looking at I think she's here I know she bought a new car there's director Bennett director Bennett um reviewed where we were at with negotiations in which group were up for negotiations just to make the board aware where we're at in the process and the steps taken there that was pretty much the full extent of our personal benefits committee meeting at that time director Bennett is there anything you'd like to add that I may have missed [Music] thank you I missed a part yeah so we talked through some more about the medical leave act and medical medical even and all that stuff and I believe minutes are posted I'm looking at it more we've posted minutes

228so we continue to analyze the impact of some of the legislative stuff at the Minnesota level on unemployment compensation and medical leave and all those different things so Marcy's tracking that we've posted minutes from the Personnel benefits committee yes okay well let's move on to the finance and legislative then I believe this one I will firmly place on John it is thank you Mr chair uh we thought we talked about the west west of nearing completion um hopefully by October board meeting we'll Mr cheesy right but maybe by the October board meeting we'll be ready to move back in for the for the board and prior to that other folks will be moving in as um as it gets towards completion here uh then we talked about the fund balance uh Marcy um you had

229you know we've we as a board have asked questions about the fund balance and um to try to clarify that you know what what we can use uh for Reserve unreserved that food you know whatever uh Community ad whatever so Marcy is going to uh look at changing correct me if I'm wrong Miss director alord but uh um Marcy's going to look at the description of fund balance summary to help identify the different fund balances for board members okay so that we know what the reserve fund is an unreserved and Etc or whatever um then we talked about enrollment we had a healthy discussion on enrollment as well um we and just uh director Donald as as we as we talked about um the the client enrollment uh what can be done about it um

230then we also um talked about the gains that uh that will come uh at a later date with that on that uh then we reviewed the long-term facilities con maintenance plan um which by the way is ltfm uh so when we when we uh talk about ltfm I learned that that's long-term facilities maintenance I I didn't know that until that meeting or whatever um and then there were no updates on the Strategic plan for finance and legislative and then we changed a few meetings a few Finance legislative meetings um we made those changes superintendohan correct correct we did them the line so they're right before a board meeting so we went from um September 11th September 11 to September 6th correct I'd have to ver I don't have it right in front of me but

231I know we moved it around the board and the reason we were doing that is because we wanted to have finance and legislative meeting prior to the board meeting okay that's why we did that so the September sixth meeting was changed in September 11th and the December 20th meeting was changed to December 7th um that's the report of the finance legislative committee thank you director Ward excuse me meetings for these committee meetings are posted on the district website thank you Janet all right um then we move on to informational uh Sarah with a yes so bpsf group did not meet but I do have a couple of updates to share we wrapped up our collection of gently used Warrior gear so that's going to be washed and tagged it'll be available at the visit Brainerd

232store the money raised from that is going to go to the food pantries last year they raised two thousand dollars with that they also co-hosted the retired teachers luncheon in partnership with the school district on June 15th they had about five attendees at that and then also just I wanted to extend a huge thank you to District staff who participated in the annual giving campaign financially supporting the mission of Brainerd Public Schools Foundation about twenty eight thousand dollars was raised so it's truly a generous staff thank you great I'm Michelle with an equity Task Force update um we did not meet in the last month the last I heard there may be a presentation before the board in August I'm not sure Candace if that's still planned salt yeah yeah so anyway we'll we'll get

233an update on what the equity task forces um recommendations are for the board great thank you all right Marcy with the Business Services report and this was another amended agenda item because we changed and it eliminated an attachment to what do we do we added one we added an attachment because Marcy why would I ever think you would eliminate um so the financial report is what was in there and nothing really to note on there but just wanted to note that there will be no report for June we wait until we close out the whole book and the books and the audit is done before I present June so next month you get a month off um the report that was presented at the finance committee is the first page so it residents enrolled elsewhere

234we've got the last 10 years and you'll notice the top is a summary so Charters options elsewhere tuition and then we actually I break out the charter and the options elsewhere because the tuition is just I mean it's around 30 kids the highest it is so under the charter the orange highlights and below is if it's a greater than 10 adms and they have an online school so this means that their kids in our district and they're going out under the options elsewhere those are all the public school districts that they're going to so for example the first one is Aitkin Public School District there's 18 and that's adms so it's not necessarily student count it's how many days were they here converted so if I was a student at Aiken all year it's a

2351.0 ADM just want to explain that and then the report that John asked about was what about the kids that are coming in so this is information that the finance committee didn't see we got we ran that today the non-resident report so same thing tuition and options and then we break out the options so the yellow again is any school district that has greater than 10 in 2122 so for example Pillager School District we brought in 165 kids that are pillagers resident districts but they're coming to Brainerd so then at the very bottom of that report is non-resident versus resident meaning the net of the two so when you look at 2122 the kids going out and the kids coming in we net a negative 253. so any questions on get more kids coming in

236no by the way the other way around okay yep okay yep 253 in the ditch okay that's how you see in the car business okay yeah and there was discussion at the finance committee meeting about you know what can we do and that's why they wanted this data presented here as well just to kind of if the board wanted to discuss that further leaving it out looking at the finance any members if there's any other questions and this was something that was started last year it was the first time that I presented and we did it at two different meetings and I um I do think it's a little more clear when we present it all together because there was question of what the net number was so I'll probably continue that where it's both

237words yeah I can't even remember the answer that's how 9 30 hits me appreciate the ADM player reporting because it ties directly to funding [Music] um is it like trying to solve a Rubik's Cube in the dark to also get this report like with heads I'll have to get back to you on that because I think that's the other burning question everybody has is like you know if we're looking at us versus Pillager being probably the example because my own friendly rivalry with my former home um you know we'd like to know what is the net student flow right what does that really look like because adm's distorted a little not a ton but enough that it would be interesting to look at it and then even further if we could break that down because

238I think yep you know I mean I know at some point one gets converted into the other so it seems odd to me that it's so hard to find the other number but um you know what do I know yeah all right I will get back to you I'm gone not an earth-shattering need but it's just kind of one of those if it's an easy thing to compile it would be fun to have charts on that kind of stuff when we do a state of the district thing yeah anything other questions from RC okay thanks Marcy have a good night um superintendent's Report with Dr Han yeah just the last couple of things so we have wrapped up three weeks of extended school year services and all of our buildings as well as targeted services

239and Credit Recovery as you walked into this building there were 800 students that you had the privilege of being around so the buildings really never sleep and we're getting ready we have Early Childhood programming going on and then we'll be entering into what we call jump start which is an opportunity for our students transitioning from middle school into high school to get an opportunity to get to know staff they have an opportunity to earn some credit priority even starting high school so that'll be coming up as well I appreciate director Ward did a call out to some staff I know Dr Burkhardt who's still here thank you for staying through the whole meeting Dr Burkhart entered into a position that was brand new to the district this was a position that never existed before and

240it was created it also ebb and flowed as positions were eliminated and roles and responsibilities had to be assigned and can this did an amazing job and I'm appreciative for her service and I wish her well Beth Cooper you mentioned as well we have some very talented staff that are moving on to some leadership roles which has always said to see them go on but I'm very excited for them to have that leadership opportunity and the other thing I'd like to add is I agree that we all come from differing opinions but I appreciate that people were respectful this evening the one thing I do know and love about Brainerd Public Schools is that it takes a lot of courage to come up and speak what you believe and think what you believe and I

241think we have a board and Leadership that's reflective so I thank you for that input and feedback and for being able to do that collectively together thank you Mr chair director Ward thank you superintendent Han um just two two questions and a comment first of all the comment um thank you and the people that walked with you in the Fourth of July parade I was supposed to but I couldn't I didn't but thank you for um being out there visibly and um and giving out 150 Year celebration stuff so I know that uh you know the folks that volunteer to do that um kudos to them because it wasn't it was a extra assignment and so thank you for that I also I'm wondering if um I I submitted uh to you and I think

242others about a trust for public land grant for playground Renovations that are available in the state of Minnesota right now um up to I think 500 000 bucks or something like that it's 150 000.50 um sorry to interrupt you but we have that but I'll let you finish sorry interrupted so we we got it no we haven't so what we're in the middle of and it's going to come to you at the August board meeting one of the things we we asked was that we have a full audit of our playground equipment done specific to Ada um so looking at our accessibility that study should be wrapping up we'll have the results to ring back to the fourth or to the Fourth of July I wish that was really fun which by the way we

243need a homecoming committee to start talking about that um but we'll be able to bring that study back to the board because one of the requirements of that Grant is having a plan for the TPL Grant yes okay and it involves having to have it led by by a specific School buy a committee within the school yep so we are really waiting on that data you know I have a one school in particular that I know we have a dad who's ready to lead the whole charge but we need to have all that data to put into there so okay thank you for that that'll be coming to the board in August I know um Susan Schmidt personally so I you know that would be good too if we could get the get some input

244there that'd be good okay we might stand a pretty good chance of getting some some dollars there yeah I think director TC's in a lot of work when you look at safe school stuff puts us in the running too but we need to have that data and we don't want to do just one we want to have a plan to yep 9 30 I'm gonna lose my ability to speak to be able to respond to each playground because we do have some significant deficits with accessibility thank you great question thank you any other questions for Dr Han all right so we have our next uh we have policy and community community relations committee meeting on July the 19th and on the 26th long range planning committee meeting and student support activities hey those are all

245ones I'm not on again um August 14th is our next regular board meeting and we have a tentative date for our board retreat but that's not final yet right correct all right so that is motion second so we have a motion from directors here with a second from director donnellinger to adjourn any discussion hearing none all in favor say aye all right same sign for adjourned