001Good evening. It is 6:30 on March 12th in the Rockford area school board room. I would like to call tonight's meeting to order with the pledge of allegiance. I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. And I'll do roll call. Very good. Uh Kevin Shadine here. Uh Chris Morgan here. Jessica Johnson here. Eric Gordy is here. Beth Prasa and Jamie Hilstrom are scheduled absent. We do have quorum of the board. I would and the next item is approval of tonight's agenda. Dr. Idle Hoover, tonight's agenda is in good shape. No needs for changes. Thank you so much. I would like a motion to approve tonight's agenda. I'll make that motion.
002Thank you, Miss Johnson. Eric Gordy will second. Any discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor say I. I. Post. Tonight's agenda carries unanimously. Looking to see if there are any public comments. And there are no public comments this evening. We'll move on to item number four, consent agenda. The consent agenda had been provided to you previously uh for your review. Any questions about the consent agenda from the board? No. Very good. I would appreciate a motion to approve tonight's consent agenda. Motion to approve. Thank you, Mr. Morgan. There's a first. Can I have a second? I'll second. Thank you, Mr. Shadine. There's a first and a second. Any further discussion? All those in favor of tonight's consent agenda signify by I. I. Opposed. Tonight's consent agenda carries unanimously. Moving on to number five, superintendent report.
003Dr. Ry Hoover. Thank you, Chery. Uh with the month of February being a short month, coupled with the change in meeting dates, our turnaround for this meeting was a quick one. This said, a lot has been accomplished in a very short period of time, and I'm excited to share that this evening. I'm also happy to report that not only do we have Rockford High School principal Paul Manard here tonight with us, we also have Rockford High School activities director Dan Pratt and a wonderful collection of winter activity participants to share some information pertaining to their most recent activity season. Before we hear from our high school leaders, I'd like to share some recent happenings from both the elementary and middle school. At RES, we had kindergarten roundup on March 6th. It was a big success.
004We currently have 65 already enrolled kindergarteners and hoping to increase that number steadily as we go through the spring. Um this week our grade four students had an opportunity to meet after school and use the floor hockey skills that they learned in FIAD class and they participated in a mini tournament. Yesterday was our fourth grade concert that included several arts troop performances. Parent teacher conference of the elementary school are both today and again on March 17th. Uh the elementary will record their all school song for this year. It is called We Are Here. that will happen on March the 19th and released to families after spring break. Uh their terrific Thursday performance on March 20th will include many student performances and miss getting silly string by a healthy heart uh the healthy heart top fundraisers.
005Uh members of built have held virtual visits with Cambridge and also um an inerson visit that will take place tomorrow in Sartell St. Steven to look at literacy curriculum. They're currently vetting two different curriculums for our literacy curriculum. Wit and wisdom they heard about in Cambridge ITI and Amplify CKLA um is being utilized in Sartell St. Steven. Uh third and fourth grade students took part in the second round of my sabers this week or I'm sorry the week of March 3rd and that is completed. at the middle school. Um, uh, they're working on a student engagement framework allowing, uh, to find a common definition of what student engagement looks like and the importance that has for the stakeholders. They also finished access testing and they're preparing preparing for MCA testing. It is that season. All
006staff were recently given a survey created by the building operational leadership team or bolt to get in input as it pertains to scheduling and how it will optimize learning next year. But we'll be looking at those results shortly using that feedback to help craft the schedule. Uh the middle school built has looked at the quarter 2 grade distribution. Um those instructional leaders are working together uh to put definition examples in studentfriendly language of what the grading codes um and grades actually look like. And on February 25th um was the middle school um battle showed 20 teams completing across grade levels um and a team of Natalie Zednik, Charlotte Bitner, and Gabby Elman were victorious. The entire school loved seeing the passion of these readers uh exhibited by the students. Uh the PLC's have been working
007to create criteria to determine summer school eligibility. uh team decided on a tiered model that focused on both fast and student grades in core classes. Um the middle school health developed and will soon implement a progressive model for responding to um acts of Chromebook misuse. As we've talked about before, uh operationally the district at the district level, planning is well underway uh regarding budget and staffing for next school year. uh consultant CFO Bridget Peterson along with director of business services Mike McNelte and I met with principles and reviewed staffing allocations to ensure that all staff and personnel were coded and allocated in the appropriate places. That was a five-hour meeting last week and it ended up very successful but it was challenging sometimes to fit what looked like round pegs and square holes but we
008did it. Um, and by the way, doing that in late February, early March is far better than waiting till June. Um, it's appreciated by staff and the principles alike. Um, as mentioned last month, we did a survey recently um with our residents asking for feedback related to our unsuccessful capital projects levy that was at the general election in November. A survey recently closed and an effort to guide decisions of the board. I will be sharing results of that survey with you a little later this evening. Um, you may also have noticed the RCC Commons area got a bit of a facelift recently um with some new soft furniture replacing the old and very dated what Melissa called cabin furniture that have been there for a number of years. At the legislative level, u members of
009the Senate and House continue their work toward passing the budget for the next bianium. I am not entirely certain as to the reason, but the bud February budget forecast was released on March 6th. That forecast um is used for the final budgetary decisions set forth by the governor and the state. Um I will share that the original forecast wasn't positive and the updated one is worse. Um forecast shows a $456 million surplus for this year. That is one-time money. Um and a drop that's a drop of 160 million from January and the general fund shortfall for the next bianium the 2829 bianium is set at right around $6 billion. that is billion with a B. Um that's 852 million worse than the November estimates. So as usual at the capital, progress is slow, but both
010caucuses continue to state they have no plans for a special session. We will see. Uh one difference this year for us is the new statutory um inflationary indexing to the state uh per pupil formula. So based on the quarter 4 CPI um with a floor of 2% and a ceiling of 3.0% 0%. Um, our school year per pupil allocation will be increased by 2.74% which is roughly a $200 per pupil increase. Um, while the budget uh forecast isn't promising, we are very thankful for those numbers and that being indexed to the to the formula of inflation. Um, outside of budget conversations, bipartisan bills have been gaining some support. Um but true to what we witnessed for the better part of the last decade. Party lines um we'll continue to dictate a lot of what happens
011at the legislature. Um we'll continue to advocate for all that needs to happen in Rockford area schools which has a lot to do with um both the compensatory formula as well as uh formula for fairness in funding. Uh for school safety, our leadership team engaged in some proactive planning collected to the new connected to the new I love you guys protocol that many members of our team have uh been attending uh these meetings. I want to thank director of technology Jeff Keenan and director of businesses services Mike McNalty for their leadership in this area. Somewhat related to this, we had our uh leadership attend our quarterly safe schools meeting. It was once again an outstanding meeting. I walked away thankful for the tremendous partnerships and support that our schools feel from the various agencies. Instructionally,
012our instructional cabinet met on March 4th as we charged ourselves with revisiting and reimagining our instructional roadmap. This work is important as the collective group will be making decisions um going forward with respect to pedigogy um both before next year and into the future. We also submitted our required annual reports to MDE related to our work in ANI or achievement integration and those efforts ensure that Rockford continues to be awarded funding via this grant. Um and for Rockford this is about $215,000 annually. Uh the continuing education committee met led by Kevin Nef um and he provided insights and direction related to the lensure items um as directed by Pelby. As mentioned in February um and mentioned earlier in the reams report, our teachers are working diligently to make decisions with respect to um our new
013literacy curriculum as they vet different options and visiting those schools. We also reached out recently to our CAI committee for their input as well. Um, as I do every month, I also attended meetings with our educational partners at MSCO, Northwest Suburban, AMSD, and staff. And in closing, we are almost at the three quarter poll of the school year. While we're abundantly proud of our work to date, we're also excited about the work that lies ahead. That concludes the March superintendent report. Is it busy? Thank you. Any questions for Dr. Nope. What else do you time for us? No. All right. Thank you very much, Dr. Idle Hoover. We will then move on to the rocket spotlight. And Dr. Idle Hoover, we'll probably be calling someone up. I am going to invite Mr. You can sit
014down. Mr. I'd like to invite Mr. Manard up as we celebrate one of our um valued members of our high school staff. [Applause] Good evening everyone. Um I am here for the first time tonight uh to honor our uh Rockford High School spotlight award winner as chosen by our building operational leadership team. And that team chose uh Mr. Paul Staria from our special ed department. Before I call him up and embarrass him, um I'm going to start by reading the nomination that was submitted. Um it was very quick discussion to determine that he needed to be our winner for this academic year. Paul has taken on the role of special ed mentor and acted as department lead, especially given the maternity leave with Madison Holm, working with our new special ed teachers at RHS. Mr.
015Staria works with the highest need students and oversees the PAR support schedule daily. Mr. Staria implements great programming with his DCD and functional students and is quick to deescalate major behaviors when needed. This is all on top of a regular case load of students, IEP meetings, evaluations, and due process paperwork. He has developed a consistent and successful wrestling program as well. Paul has been tremendous taking uh taking on a special ed mentor teacher and offers lots of great experience and wisdom for his entire department and the staff as a whole. Congratulations Mr. Star. [Applause] Thank you. Hopefully he didn't know and it was just a surprise as well. No, he said he was coming. He was coming anyway, right? Excellent. Thank you very much. Welld deserved. Well done. Thank you. Uh thank you, Mr. Star,
016for all of your hard work. Um Mr. Pratt, winter activities. All right, here we go. Let's get this done. All right. Well, also Mr. Star is an assistant golf coach and he drives the bus to the golf course in the spring. [Applause] Okay. Well, thank you for having us tonight. We have uh about 25 uh kids and representing 10 different activities and sports that are here to kind of talk to you about their experiences this winter. Um we'll let them get rolling here. I we just start over here and please introduce yourself, tell them what sport you played and a little bit about the season. My name's Casey Roenamp. I played basketball and we didn't have the most winning season this year, but we definitely focused more on the small victories that we had throughout
017our season and like our personal goals as a team to make sure that we can have more success in the years to come. My name is Sienna Thomas and I play girls basketball and we had the most conference wins in the last three years this year. I'm Eva and I'm also talking about girls basketball and like Casey focusing on the small victories. Um the first time we played Watertown, we didn't have the greatest uh score against them, but then this last time we just played them, we were up in the house. So that's definitely a success. Uh my name is Riley Moran uh with boys basketball and we end up finishing our season uh with the record of 19 and Nish in the top half of the conference. My name is Grant Close. most with
018Rockford basketball and with that record we were able to accomplish a feat of being in the top 10 in win percentage in Rockford basketball since 1978. Max Edwards. Um, one of the milestones we hit this year was playing hitting his 400th win also in basketball. Um, we struggled with a lot of adversity throughout the year, especially halfway through the season and that battle. Uh, my name is Tim H. Hotton. Uh, with our all of our accomplishments and adversity, we were able to earn a first round buy with two sophomores and junior. So like we all incorporate that to pretty good. My name's Brad the ground with wrestling and we had a pretty good season for the amount of guys we had. Got the team back in 20 something and uh not too many people but
019we're making our way back. Not a full roster but for what we have we do quite well. Mine is Marcus Dmers with wrestling. Like you said, it's hard to win a team duel with not a lot of wrestlers, but we had a lot of guys play tournaments and on an individual level this year was good for most. Um, my name is Evelyn Rodriguez. This is my first year of wrestling and I'd say we have a good support for them and um, it was good. My name is McKenna Evans. I am with the band program and one highlight that we have is that our junior Olivia Kner performed at orchestra hall for all state band on Saturday, February 15th and also that Rockford Jazz One participated in the Bucci State University Jazz Festival and also received
020a and received a superior rating at contests. Um I'm Tristan also with rock band contest. ensemble, highest rating. Um, I'm Dana K. I'm with the one act and last time we competed at Providence, we got third place. My name is John Morrison. I'm also with one act. This was actually like the first one act after a few years since I did off a while and we were able to perform at one festival and compete at Proidence and be able to learn from it and grow as people with um choir. Um we got to participate in large group contest ensemble. Um at large group we got excellent which second highest ranking and on top of the chamber choir got a superior and I also got superior for my solo. I'm Lauren Bner on top of and
021we're from the dance team. This year our team welcomed two new coaches along with four new dancers. We finally had enough members to create a fall team. At our first competition competition, we ended up placing third which started off season strong and one of our dancers who made it to all state so people advantage and that was the first time in eight years. We are currently working on our goal of making it to state and the dance team is always excited to welcome new members. We're either interested in joining the team or just My name is Olivia Larson and I'm part of the Rockford speech team. Uh I joined it just this year, but I've already noticed that it's helped with that it's helped me with speaking in public and my general confidence. I feel
022it sky skyrocketed and I'm a lot more comfortable expressing my opinions in front of people. One thing that certainly helped with that is how our team has been scoring. Personally, I've placed top eight multiple times. I got seventh in novice and then in varsity, sixth, fifth, third, and second along and I hope to continue to place along with my teammates. Um, I'm feeling second year in speech. Our speech team has progressed great when we become a much stronger competitor recently. U we got second place overall at a recent meet for the first time in multiple years. We've got a bunch of great new additions that have helped add a lot to our team and people are beginning to notice us. We also commonly have multiple people placing meets along with honorable mentions as well. Rockford
023speech team has improved a lot recently. It's been great to be part of it. U my name is Mackenzie Perry. I play hockey and I've been on the team for 5 years and we had an overall record of 1510 and one and we didn't make it super far and actually made it to the semi-finals and unfortunately lost to but we had a lot of individual accomplishments like um combined we broke four school records and two of our players reached 100 career points which is really big for our program. My name is Olivia Peterson. I'm a part of gymnastics. Um we had a pretty successful season this year taking home a couple wins with our varsities going all the way up to 128 and our junior varsity going to 121. I'm Lydia. I'm a part of
024gymnastics and our team didn't win as much, but we definitely were really close as a team and it was really fun hanging out with all the girls. My name is Sber. I'm also gymnastics. Um, this year was very successful with one individually watch and yeah, it was great. It was a good season. We had lots of fun and good Is that it? Anybody else want anything else to say? Um, I just want to point out a couple things. They're pretty modest. Lydia was a state gymnast in vault, right? You didn't mention that, did you? No. And uh McKenzie Perry was one of the kids that set records as an all-time leading scorer with the Donald Rockford hockey team and also our Athena Award winner 2025. So I want to couple you just thank the kids
025for coming and doing this. It's super important that the board hears all the wonderful things. And you know not every season's a a winning season, but every season's a learning season. And that's something that we pride ourselves after. And we uh it's enjoyable to watch the kids grow. Um and you know what? There's more than just the win losses when it comes to athletics and competition, whether it's speech or choir or band. The choir and band, they they touched on it. Some of the scores that they received are incredible and uh we'd still be here if they're talking about them because there's so many kids involved in that. But again, I want to thank everybody and thank you guys for having us. Thank you. Thanks for coming. Thanks for your leadership, Miss Johnson. Yeah. Um,
026boys hockey, we have participants in that, correct? We we have three kids, but nobody's on varsity anymore. Okay. So, we thought we'll save that for next year. Just was curious. Yeah, we do. We We do have uh hockey and this spring we'll we'll be co-oping lacrosse again. Oh, good. Like to hear that, Mr. Pratt. Thank you for your time and dedication, leadership, and I appreciate all you guys going out, right? It's easy not to do something, right? But for you guys to go do something, that's so important, right? Not only winter, but fall and spring as well. So do more, right? Bring your friends with you. Do more. It's more fun with everyone. And really appreciate those that are in the co-curriculars here representing, not just the athletics because you guys don't get the big
027crowds. But I truly appreciate you guys standing up and sharing with the great things that you guys are doing. So thank you for all of that. Congratulations to everyone on your [Applause] I have to have a picture. [Music] The king of presentations. I know, right? We have a crown. [Music] Expectations are high. I know because now applauded by all his He looks nervous. I know, doesn't it? 6B is our principal's report. So, Mr. Bernard, you're up. If you're able to follow that, we'd appreciate it. All right. Good evening, everyone. Pleasure to see you. very pleased to present our March report from Rockford High Schools. First of all, just some general updates. Um I believe I mentioned to you in the winter when I was here last that um in addition to our yearly school goals,
028we've implemented these 90-day plans to have kind of a deeper focus throughout basically a quarter of the school year. So we can focus on more intentional work during that time. We can answer a little bit more in real time the needs of our teachers and our students. and that has been going really well. So, at the end of December going to January, we focused on um semester 1 intervention. So, intervening with students who were on the quote unquote borderline of passing classes um and those who need a little bit extra time in order to reach the finish line and how to identify and follow up with students who may have been incomplete, maybe needed a little bit more time to um finish up the semester successfully. This uh quarter we have been working on then
029as we reapproach students in the second semester. Maybe it's a little bit different mixture of students in each class. Maybe we have students taking our classes for the first time. How do we reestablish those relationships? Whatever did or didn't happen those first 18 weeks of the school year. It's a fresh start for the kid. It's a fresh start for the teacher. And so how do we really put those undergurtings of support in because we really want to work them. And that's what's coming up in quarter four. um how do we understand rigor? How do we come to a common definition of rigor at Rockford High School? And then how do we move to demanding rigor? Of course, with that support um not wavering underneath. Uh we touched on uh at a recent staff meeting uh
030our focus from the beginning of the school year which was on note-taking and giving formative feedback um which was instrumental. I'll show you some of the data from that as we look at the data this year compared to last year later on the report. um looking at curricular mapping um the district initiative of mapping our assessments, learning targets and standards as well as our using our curricular instructional frameworks of IB and AVID. Um doing intervention work at tier one and tier two with a push in pullout uh method particularly for those ads reading and math students. Um and then some of the specific avid work that we've been doing some of the events our students have enjoyed recently or will enjoy soon. Uh many of our students in our theater courses attended the show Come
031From Away, which is touring Broadway musical at the Ordway right now. Um our student leadership team is planning academic recognition events or activities. Most recently, we had a secret staff dressup day called the Rockford Rosters. Um and that was Friday before the Academy Awards. There we all are in our best uh green carpet gear. Uh many of our AVID students will be attending the AVID leadership conference in New York Suburban. Um including a group today. Uh some of our AVID students hosted a little carnival in our commons for preschoolers. It was adorable. You'll see pictures of soon. Um and then of course as celebrated earlier tonight, our large group and solo ensemble contest. Mr. Mayor, before you move along, can you share the story though about what you're doing here? You're underground because it's not
032a one day thing. Yeah. So uh again culture is important and this is culture. One of the many uh Justin's Renaissance challenges they call it to build positive school culture is to have secret staff dress up days. And so we did um right before Valentine's Day I glove you day where every teacher had to wear at least one glove for the entire school day. And this is our second of five that we'll be putting on randomly in the spring. This was Rockford Rokers. And of course, if you see this large gathering of people dressed up for no reason on Friday, um you're going to wonder and some students will ask and some students will assume, but whatever student gets the correct answer first gets a prize. And so, um it it increases interaction. You know,
033they guess who you're dressed as, they start talking about the Oscars, and they can, you know, kindle a conversation without really having known that teacher. So, it's it's pretty fun. It's a way to infuse that into businesses. I love this. Um, so now we'll get into the goals. Um, focusing on our strategic directions. I came to you in the fall talking about a student achievement and growth. We had planned on um having more fidelity with our common syllabus and some of our assessment markings. Um, but as you can see, I'm going to jump right to the right. We learned very quickly and prevalently that it's so much more than a syllabus and grading. This unraveled a whole string of conversation. Uh that kind of stems back to last year where we worked really hard on
034students setting their own kind of intervention goals during rocket block where we handed out half sheets of paper to students where they set two goals for rocket block which really helped increase the productivity. Question was asked of the board about a year ago. Okay, but how are you going to hold teachers accountable? And that's what we've been working on this year. And so, um, the 90-day plans have helped implementing some of the roadmap pieces from the AVID college and career readiness framework. It all has to do with how you set up your classroom and how you talk to students and how you gradually release from that sort of direct instruction into student independent work. Whatever happens in between there is so critical and important that that's what we need to focus on. We had very
035intense intervention discussions. This was not a walk through the park. Um there are teachers who have feelings about their grade. There are teachers who are more traditional in the sense of if they didn't learn it the first time, that's their business. There are teachers who feel threatened when they have to talk to a student about why aren't they learning because that's not in their skill set or their personality. There are also teachers, as I reminded them, because now I'm all of a sudden old. We went to college over a quarter of a century ago. grading practices and research have changed and we need to as well. So, uh, what's incredible that we don't have time to go through, but in your board packet, I encourage you to click on that link, comprehensive interventions as tier
036one student support through these conversations, and I have to credit Kathy Matson and Samantha Bloom, they built what I believe to be the most comprehensive intervention tool for any teacher in the United States of America. You identify the student's problem. You go to a piece on that document and it gives you six or seven interventions to try right now with that kid. And if I'm a teacher who's struggling with what is an intervention, I thought I already taught them. Did I not do a good job teaching? I better just be quiet, let them do their homework. That's a real threat. So, I can go to that document in the dark of night and say, "Okay, this is what I need to try with Susie tomorrow." And try it. Um, we have also seen teachers that
037intervene but don't understand the vocabulary and meaning of the word intervention. So we ironically we've had teachers fight like ah intervention sounds like one more thing that sounds like an initiative that costs money. And so, um, but then we go into the classrooms and we we have some of our tier 2 instructors push into their classrooms to, yes, help the readers and the kids who struggle with math, but then they're also identifying, hey, those are really good guided notes that you have there. Or, hey, do you pull these kids out in small group during work time all the time? Those are interventions. Good job. And they they're really surprised. I'm like, really, I'm doing it. Okay. So, we just have to do that more and and point out when they're when they're doing the things
038and when they're implementing the things that are going to be critical and helping along the way. I also had a really good conversation with a teacher who said, "I'm not frustrated that we're doing the interventions. I'm frustrated with that we're intervening too late in the semester." Said, "That's a great point. So, some of the work we're doing on week six should really be done on week two. So, can you help me understand how the teachers need to understand that more on the front end than trying to play catchup on week six? And so, we're working through that together with some of these teachers who aren't always lead teachers. And so, I think that's good, too, because they feel like, wow, somebody's appreciating and listening and calling me in um and getting my opinions on these
039things. So, up next, we're going to define rigor, develop strategic framing of gradual release and insisting on rigor. We're going to map the level two work I called it. We had a great um district-wide meeting on sort of setting that instructional roadmap. I call it the level two work on the things we're doing this year. So, we've mapped our assessments, our learning targets, and our standards, but how do we prove that our instructional alignment is directly in line with the assessment so there's no surprise on the test? How do we prove that that learning target is going to lead to standard mastery? And how do we prove that those standards are being met? And if they're not, we can call what a football coach we call audles to make sure that that student can meet
040the standard in another way based upon their individual learning style. We'll also talk about grading practices and uh have a discussion around a form that will be released tomorrow to our high school teachers on basically sort of a soft entry on how do you feel about late work? Do you penalize? Are you marking zeros when the assignment's missing? those types of things to get sort of that natural feel of the vibe of the building and then challenge that and figure out where we want to go as a school. This is an example of a student uh it's basically a student achievement plan and so this is an actual document taken from a PLC. We had our grade levels meet and we took some of our students who were at high risk in math and or
041reading on the fast tests. Um we ran a forensic report of their grades um both semester 1 finals and semester 2 in progress at that particular week week. The team identified whether there were academic or behavioral barriers or both what the concern was um and then the responsive action and the responsive action plan is both at a systems level uh so what do we need to give them in terms of these test scores excuse me and then a classroom level. So all these teachers reported this is the evidence that there is responsive action and what needs to be done um to correct this problem. They're missing work. If they're underengaged, what do we as teachers need to do to pull them back? Um and it's kind of committing to that on a piece of paper
042and they'll revisit these plans as they go throughout the school year. It also, as you can imagine, as a school teacher, the following year is a great introduction. here is this student. Here's how they do. They're certainly much more than this piece of paper, but if you see them struggling, it might be one of these six things that they had trouble with all year last year. So, it's a leg up from I wonder how they're going to do. We'll see you in nine weeks. This again is another response to how do we catch them early as opposed to playing catch up in healthy and supportive environment. Again, we're taking a look through those uh uh those uh culture challenges that I referenced earlier on. Um but also some of the other um monitoring expectations and
043our student connectedness survey that we pushed out in the fall will again in the spring. Um trying to build 95% of a student body that identifies a trusted adult in the school. Um current data which is from November is we're at about 89%. We've issued surveys. Um we've cross referenced involvement in uh different clubs and activities. Um we're talking to our actual students in the student leadership team. We're watching some Renaissance leadership development videos. Um, up next, we're going to begin an identity study to try to uncover uh in terms of the verbiage of our students, our parents, our staff, what does it mean to be a rocket? So that there's a collective sort of involvement in what that looks like when you're walking through our halls, when you're showing up at a sporting event,
044when you're sitting down in unstructured time during class. U we're going to begin student training videos um creating student surveys for Renaissance and course evaluations to build up those student leaders. Yes. Uh but to also further define what an experience at Rockford High School looks like. Um conducting spring that spring connectedness survey which I think is scheduled for late April um sometimes at the end of the IB testing. So we got to squeeze that in before this year. Community school and family partnerships. Um we have uh the goal was to establish community partnerships to enhance and expand CP offerings and real world connections. Again, I'll remind you we have that state grant where uh we're charged with adding two career pathways by 2627. We have six CP candidates. Uh but I will tell you um
045as we look at they they've changed many of the CP core requirements and this way they've structured them which I think will help a school like Rockford. I think that number will probably triple in the next couple of years because of the way that we're going to structure the CP and the way that it aligns with some of the new state mandates. So, let's skip over to the right. We had a career fair. Uh we've made curricular connections with local businesses. Um we did data study on DP scores. Um looking at the the more of the diploma students, but also remember our CP students need to take DP classes and do they feel supported on that? um looking at a data study and CIS credits and um at the charge of Dr. Ry Hoover kind
046of putting together a package of what does early college and career readiness look like at Rockford. Um so we're launching uh sort of a advertisement campaign of what that looks like and it's called um Launch Your Future Early College and Career Readiness at Rockford High School. And so we're put that together and be able to have families see the advantages that they uh can afford here at Rockford um throughout particularly the junior and senior year in terms of both college and career readiness. um looking at expanding uh our CIS offerings with UNM to offer additional math credit particularly in sorry pre-calculus and um education. uh curriculum fair presentations were given. Um we we sort of restructure that so that we put all of our college career options in one bowl and we say here if
047you're interested in CIS, you have to take these IB classes. If you're interested in IB, here is the way to do that scheduling. If you're interested in career prep, here are the pathways we offer and the IB courses that would probably be easiest to take if you're going right into the career force or even leaving um for on the job training. Um and so forth. So, up next, we have to college uh package those college credit options into a clear presentation, create CP diploma pathways again with that new uh CP structure. So, um basically what we're doing is we're combining all of the new requirements of the CP into those personal professional skills courses. I think we've talked to you about this before, but basically personal professional skills is like an intro to careers course.
048And the way that our instructor Caroline Young describes it is PPS12 is how do you get the job? Job search, resume, interviewing, um those sorts of things. PBS12, she would say, is how you keep the job, interacting with colleagues, respecting world differences. Um and that will be woven into a course that satisfies our Minnesota ethnic studies guideline. That's where we're going to couch that. So, if you want to take that, you take PPS12. Um, also I'll remind you that PPS1 is a course that all students who are seeking to do work-based learning need to take PPS1 as a requirement of the Minnesota Workbased learning program. So, that's also a healthy enrollment as well. Uh, and we'll ensure sustainability through careful planning and attentiveness to student interest and registration numbers. Every time I come to you,
049I talk about how excited I am about every career pathway we can offer, but we can't have two kids in each pathway. And so um we need to figure out what our students are most drawn towards and build those up not only in terms of FTE but in terms of the resources we provide. So can I and forgive me current pathways nursing and is there another besides I mean because it said we needed six um we need two so we're going to have All right. Put in the spot. I don't mean Yeah, I know, right? So, we have we have probably five that are approved, we have students that are in like two right now. So, of the ones that are approved. Business, we don't have any currently active in business. CNA is always full.
050Um veterinary science once every couple of years. Uh we have um craftsmanship, which is what we're now called in construction and welding. Um We are adding education and I'm probably forgetting one or two but most popular right now are probably CNA and oh landscape and design was another pathway uh and so we're looking at the viability of that pathway to move forward as well just because some certification and training is required. Are there any barriers that the board is able to help with the pathways at all? I mean, is there is there anything that you're noticing in terms of our governance or things that aren't in a good place that that you would think could help your pathway either participation numbers, growth of pathway, different things like that? I think it would be helpful as
051we're talking to a student who is career-minded and super driven toward a certain industry. It will be helpful for them to understand that those other bits, the PPS courses in particular. Um they also a requirement is to do two of the DP courses. That's a hard sell for a kid that just wants to do woodworking, get their OSHA safety, and start working right away. But as I explained to a family touring, one of many that are coming from other eastern locations, um I said it depends on what you want to do. Do you want your kid to go to school half the day and work half the day or do you want them to prepare for all of the career and through a career pathway? I really believe that's the difference. Are our kids better
052welders than ones that go to write tech? Maybe not. but they certainly know the importance of selling themselves for a job interview and they certainly know how they're going to treat the HR director. I think that's important too. So I think it's just that messaging of this is career in teched that looks different because it has a little bit more of that academic twist and a little bit more of globallyminded employees. Do you find that there's a lack I is there any lack or disparity? You know, business, you talked about our business pathway, our our landscaping pathway, right? There's heavy technology associated to those objects. Are we lacking with the ability to provide with that? Are we aging out? Are we not I think is it troublesome with where we currently are in our how
053we're able to support our children? It can be, but I think we need to think differently because those programs also require huge investments, right? And we want to be careful not to build out those pathways too far. So, I think the important thing is those community partnerships. So, in any any way that we can open our doors to companies that have that machinery or that equipment to allow our students to gain access to that or bring those folks in on a somewhat predictable basis, that would probably be the answer right now. given the size of these pathways. Thank you. So, uh here is some progress um in the craftsmanship pathway regarding construction using uh CTE grants. So, not district money, we've been able to purchase a band saw, a vertical panel saw, a wood lathe,
054a router, and an assortment of tools, which has allowed us to create a safe space for our students to create different projects. This is a far cry. I just want to pause here. Four years ago, so about a year and a half after I got here and we were finally able to enter the shop full-time, um we were using wood pallets to hammer some nails into and pretend like we were making a box. And now we have some professional shop tools that students are able to become properly trained on and use them to create much more impressive products, which makes them more interested in joining those classes. Um, so especially the kids that can go like our advanced woods kids are super excited about that. Yeah. Which then creates excitement and a ground swell in
055the 10th grades are I want to I want to use that tool or I have one of those at home. I'm going to impress all of you by what I can make in class. So it really pushes that forward. We've already seen that a little bit from being able to use these. It's also opened up conversations because things break and sometimes things have been broken and there's a difference. And so there was a lot of equipment that was broken or neglected that just wasn't reported. And so now we have that open communication with our CTE teachers to say just let us know. And it's not like we're going to fix it every time something's broken, but if this was a freak accident and this is an important tool, we're going to try to find an
056avenue to be able to pay for it and get that working again so kids can use it. In the welding pathway, um uh again with the CTE grant of 15,000, we're looking at three additional multipprocess welders and we're working on a long-term plan to create more workstations in the welding area. If you recall over the last year and a half, we purchased uh four additional welders, three of which are multi-use. Um so they do MIG, TIG, and stick. Um and then we also bought additional TIG welder for our advanced metals. And and the reason that Asteris is there is we don't want to buy a bunch of welders and not be able to use them. Um there is some significant ventilation restructuring that would need to happen in order to buy those three and in
057order to have like 10 stations, right? But now we have some fully functioning operable stations that we're able to use. So kids aren't waiting to weld, they're welding. Uh in terms of landscape design and food science courses, uh we sold a lot of expired equipment and the Ed Foundation have been huge supporters. Uh purchasing six new oven, stainless steel lab tables to create workstations in food science, eight stainless steel tables for the lab work area, new materials for uh each workstation, mixers, utensils, bowls. Um, we're continuing to work with the egg and teched department on future planning for adding career pathways to this area. I I got excited because there's a state grant where you can start a butchery program. That sounds great. Um, sounds there's another one that might be a little more realistic
058that has to do with culinary skills of all kinds. Um, but I think it depends on what knives you buy. So, we'll see. Uh, but a lot of movement in in those areas as well. And so, uh, we're excited to see the possibilities that come, but certainly the existing programs will benefit from this. Uh, just another general spring IB update here, uh, in our middle years program, 144 kids in 10th grade completed personal projects. Again, I want to tell you, um, as we look at larger metro schools, they would fall on their hands and knees if they had about 50% participation. 144 is uh 99.9% of 10th graders could do the personal project. Uh we will showcase some of their products at our March parent teacher conferences tomorrow night, including two videos that were made.
059One of which is of a boy who built that cabin type structure um on his property uh that took most of the fall and winter to do. And it's sort of time-lapsed and he's got sweet narrative of everything. and there were setbacks and he was undeterred. Um so that's great. Uh the other one of equal importance is uh the checkered history of the Minnesota Vikings. And so they're both about 10 minutes. If you want to come launch them, uh it's a passion project and some of them take that and they're like, well, if I want to do it, I'm doing something I care about. And they end up being just jaw-droppingly awesome. So that's been great to see. Our diploma program, again, there's two full diploma candidates for 2025. I don't want that number to
060discourage you. I'd rather you focus on uh the 65 students that are signed up to take the 175 IB external exams. And what I tell parents that are touring, especially all those that are coming from the east, is um what they they ask what IB is. I said the hardest thing about IB is how to explain IB. So I ask if they're familiar with AP and they say yes. And I said, well, that was cool in the 90s with acidwash gen. IB um is like AP plus. So yes, you can take individual exams and depending on how well you do on a series of exams, you may get college credit or there's the full diploma option, which is not for everybody. And so two students um said that it was for them and they're taking
061a crack at it and they both were here presenting tonight and did a great job. Um but there's 65 that are taking 175 exams as well. 125 uh of those exams begin April 29th and they'll last through the 21st of May. Uh we have seven junior full diploma candidates that have begun to pledge. So as you see that number is going to go up and down. Um and uh they begun planning for their extended essay. So also as we see the program grow and mature, they learn about the expectations and they learn from the older wiser alumni that say please start the extended essay at the end of your junior year. please don't wait to do the internal assessment biology project until spring break of your senior year. So, they're being able to road mapap
062a little bit more because we can tell them, but they're not going to do it unless an alumni tells them. And uh the 10th and 11th grade full diploma candidates have had individual meetings with our IB coordinator. Again, because of our size, we're able to hand select each student and say, "This is what we believe you need to do to feel prepared and confident going into the our CP pathway. Again, six uh candidates. Um the new IB career pathway curriculum for fall 2025 which I mentioned continuation of grant 226. Ah here they are current offerings uh business CNA craftsmanship um education in theater will be new and vet assistant again building in those varieties. And I I have no problem if some of these lay dormant we happen to not have any juniors or seniors
063that want to be a vet assistant. Okay we just won't run those courses and then we'll see if any of the sophomores are interested in rekindling that. uh for our culture of collective purpose. I want to take you all the way back to um the fall again that focused note-taking. If we're taking phones out of their hands, let's put a pen in their hands and have them take notes or rather a keyboard on a Chromebook probably. Um so, how are we intentionally teaching them to take notes, asking them to take notes in a focused way, revisiting the notes to review for an exam so that they can achieve more academically? We will measure the success of this goal by comparing the failure rate in last fall and the failure rate of this fall. And if
064you look due to many factors, not just asking them to take notes, but I think it's worth celebrating. In the fall of last year, we had 281 students who had Fs. I'm sorry, 281 F marks from 90 students. This past fall, yes, by taking notes. Yes, probably by taking the phones out of their hands, but um and also through those intentional interventions, we had only 104 Fs, a 63% decrease by 49 students, a 46% decrease in failing students at Rockford. That's significant. Um and I think it is all of these arrows leading together and a tremendous team built the uh building instructional leadership team is on there. They've been instrumental uh defining purpose at staff meeting, the product shown at PLC's on Thursday, the product shared with staff following Wednesdays. Our meetings really do have
065a rhythm. So, we plan them at built. Um I explain the purpose at staff meetings. They do the work on Thursdays at PLC. We use the results of their work to then plan the next staff meeting and keep it moving. Um we meet with new teachers. that's all about retention and making sure we help them get a good footing here at Rockford High School on select Wednesdays. They took a focus note survey. Um we have exemplars of students notes that we've shown teachers and teachers have changed their note takingaking practices based upon great notes from students of other teachers. Um and then of course uh the the grading interventions that I mentioned and right now we're in relation to capacities and supporting advocating students that insisting on rigor and additional 90-day plans will be implement
066implemented next year as time and competing initiatives allow. This again is the average college career readiness framework. So when I give you these titles of these 90-day focuses, they're the dark blue. um the way that we as educators need to come together to provide the underpinning for the student success which is the light blue triangle there. Stewardship of resources, monitoring of spending, staffing, allocations of budget and total budget projection for FY25. Um this is monthly budget meetings with my secretary um to take a look at how the high school is progressing throughout the year. Um this particularly this meeting um I want to update you on uh again that staffing conversation we had recently making sure we're working with the parameters of the projected student enrollment and the allocated FTE but also to maximize um
067our priority courses which I think Dr. and I would both say we're offering a variety of electives to particularly our junior and senior students to keep them engaged and part of the school community. And then of course um coordinating with district directors regarding building program equipment needs to support curriculum. So there's anything outside the general fund first that can help supplement and support what we need in the building and then we go to the well and see what school monies we may have to support that. Then we'll finalize our FY25 orders, reconcile balances, and get ready for uh FY26. So on our school improvement plan really quickly, um our uh goal for standards learning targets assessments was that each team and individual teacher that is will increase by a minimum one level of deviation on
068the standards learning scale as measured in October, January, and May. Just to remind you what that looks like, that's this. Um, and so we wanted to make sure teachers could identify accurate starting point of where they're at in terms of their comfort with standards, learning targets, and assessments and go up by one level as a at a minimum. So from October to January, and we'll assess again in May, at Rockford High School, the teachers went from uh 1.40 on the four-point scale to a 2.38. Their comfort with learning targets went from a 1.36 to 2.43. And that was the largest jump. Their comfort with assessments went from a 1.52 to a 2.57. That's all going to drive towards next year when I talk about the level two work for this on aligning all of that
069and how can I explain to you as a parent or you as a student or you as a prospective family how my standards and learning targets are directly aligned with my assessments and I can prove it and my classroom functions in a very efficient way. student connectedness. Uh there again, that's that 90% 95% of students identify trust in the hallway. Uh we're doing this by having events that reinforce community. The say something implementation and informal data collection, hallways, lunchrooms, classroom visits. Uh again, we'll give that spring student connectedness survey later this semester. Our cucumb 30 students will show growth by decreasing risk level um from fall to spring on reading and 20 in math. Here's current data for you. Um, 30 students, uh, I'm sorry, looking at at reading, 35 moved up, but 28 moved
070down, and 186 stayed the same. So, we gained a few, but we lost a few as well, and we're not up to 30. So, more work needs to be done there. Um, 50 moved up, 40 moved down, 207 remain the same in math. So, we gained 10. We're halfway there for math. U, so that tells me something is going a little bit better in math. U and we need to try to find out what that is um as we move forward throughout the rest of the school year. I believe that has to do with some of the pull out pushing that's being done during our math adsis and math plus portions of the block. Basically what that means is we have our core math teacher teach a lesson for the first 45 minutes or so.
071Our ads math specialist pushes in and helps with tier one support but then also uh meets with those tier 2 students in small groups. And so they're able to work together and um the math access teacher will take the lesson and kind of work ahead of the students so that they know how to support um when they come to the classroom. In terms of fast reading, uh again we are seeing gains there but by and large um that's more of a pull out model and so I think if we saw that mirrored in reading we might see larger growth there. That is my report. Thank you for listening. Excellent. Thank you very much Mr. Ard. Awesome. Uh, any questions for Mr. Manard? None. I just so appreciate all of that. That's just I love all
072the things you're doing. I If I went back to the presentation, I'd point out a couple things that I would like eventually to see districtwide. One of them was Oh, let's see here. I have I think I left it on my page. Um the Oh gosh, this is called put my glasses on. The student achievement engagement evidence and the responsive action, those plans that you have per student. I would love to see that somehow districtwide because when I look at being a former teacher, when I look at this, I think, wow, what a great way to support a student and like you said, the next year, you know, being a primary teacher, how nice would that be having that kid coming in, I can look at this and say, "Oh, okay. I need to be
073really aware of these things with this student." And what a great way to start off the school year instead of finding out a month and a half into the school year and now we that kid has missed a month and a half of school in a sense in areas. I just I think it's beautiful and awesome and it's exciting to see that stuff. So yeah, it's it's been good teamwork and I I suspect you very much will see that districtwide. And uh to to your point, at an instructional cabinet meeting last week, I think it was um the the elementary school in particular was uh very interested about that piece. Perfect. Thank you, Dr. Hoover. Yeah. Not not so much a question, but one of the things that I I'm sure you noticed is the
074is the manner in which we are working towards personalization of of of every student's, you know, experience. um whether it is looking at what's what barriers they might have, what passions they might have. I mean, all of these things, I'm really proud of the work that's happening districtwide. And you know, I will say this, you know, sometimes certain schools are a little bit ahead of the curve. The high school is ahead of the curve right now. Um it's a great place to be in as they're modeling and doing some things. It's really fun to see the meeting that um that Mr. Manard referenced, um our instructional cabinet meeting. It might have been the best meeting I've ever been to instructionally in my life. Um, so good. In fact, we decided we're going to have another
075one coming up here really quick to really solidify we're doing. And the reason it was so good is we had leaders, um, administrative and and teacher leaders from throughout the system, all three buildings really coming together with some innovative ideas and and the collaboration was incredible. And I know when I really really like a meeting is when I say something that I think is right and somebody tells me they think something different and it it makes me pause and then say, "Wait a second. I think you're right." And um we have a we we've now got a system here where people are comfortable um really expressing their thoughts. You know what? Again, both both Paul and I have have and Kathy for that matter have very high school centric lenses. And when the elementary says,
076"Hey, Jeeoff, I get that part of it, but it doesn't look the same at the elementary." And then it makes me think, and I'm really proud of our staff for for being able to feel confident enough and comfortable enough to to say, "Here's how it might look. We can do something similar, but it might look a little bit different at this level." Um, and those conversations have been Yeah, I I left there with chills that day. It was it was an incredible meeting, and I'm looking forward to the next one. But thank you for all you're doing at the high school with your team. Um, as I said earlier this year, we are we have a laser focus on learning and instruction and this is just one um exemplar of that. Thank you. Thank you
077very much. All good. All right. So then we can move on. Thank you Mr. Manard. Appreciate your time and efforts. Uh moving on then to seven collective purpose. Dr. Ridel Hoover, it looks like you have a guest. I am so excited to welcome um the executive director of the Northwest Suburban Integration School District um and colleague of mine, Heather Light, uh to come with us tonight and talk a little about the happenings at Northwest Suburban. Hi, I'm excited. Okay. Hi, I'm excited to be here. I'm Heather. I'm the, as Jeff said, I'm the executive director of Northwest Suburban integration. Um and I have been there, this is my second year, finishing up my second year. Um, and I get to work with um, a lot of people in this room on a regular basis. So,
078it's really excited to see you in your own element. Um, because I'm I'm used to seeing them coming to our office. Um, but I always love it when I get a chance to come up to Rockford. It's one of my favorite drives to be honest. All right. So, I'm just going to talk a little bit about Northwest Suburban Integration um, school district and and what it is and how it works um, and where it really came from because we've been around now for 23 years. Um, so the very first And just some basic facts is that we um are based in we're anchored in two state statutes. Um and that's the achievement and integration work that was actually talked about in the uh superintendent report earlier today. Um that's a report that needs to get
079filed every year. Um every three years we do like a really nice deep dive rewrite as opposed to just slight adjustments. Um and we do that collaboratively with our seven member districts which are listed there. Henipin, Brooklyn Center, Buffalo, Hannover, Montrose, Fidley, um ISD 728, which is the Elk River area, AIO, and Rockford. Um 8% of the dollars that you all receive from the state, um you gift to us and then we run a lot of those programs that are interdist specific. So when there are um opportunities where seven the seven districts are definitely working in our district, which is part of why the funding is received, um we a lot of that work for you. So, some basic um just kind of to wrap your brain around it, I'm going to divide it into
080three parts. And so, the one that um a lot of people are familiar with with our pillars of service is our magnet pillar. Um and all of our school schools here in Rockford are magnets. Um which is beautiful. Um, so I get to do a lot little extra work with Rockford as a district than I do with some of our other districts where there might be only a couple of magnets as opposed to it being every every site in the district being a magnet site. Um, so when it comes to the magnet programming, we work on transportation. So making sure that those students who are coming in from out of district um have transportation and that the district is reimbursed for those costs through the state. um as part of the achievement and integration plan.
081Um we also do the enrollment that's a prioritized lottery enrollment. Um so it's not a traditional lottery in the sense where just names go in and we pick them at random. Um we actually have three different stages at which we pick names. Um and because we give priority to siblings theme um so that people can stay in the theme of their of their passion um and then to um prioritize zip codes um as is determined by the achievement and integration plan. So the our um seven districts decide on what those um priorities are every every three years when we revise those plans. Um and then we do a reflection or we do MSAP grant management. So, we're just coming off of a grant right now through the federal government. Luckily, we had all of our
082funds and paperwork files before anything changed at the federal level. So, we're not we're not losing a beat with regards to the grant that we're currently finishing up. Um, but the high school has been uh receiving some of those grant funds, working with their IB work. Um, and it has been um just a trip. It's been fun. Um, and then we have our reflection review cycles every three years. Each of our sites has an opportunity to have a team come and take a look at how are we doing when it comes to magnets. Are we um are we holding ourselves up to the expectations of magnet schools of America? Are we attacking the five pillars that are um determined by the magnet schools of America? And when it comes to the theme, how are we
083doing with staying tight with that theme? So for the high school with IB, for the elementary with arts, and for the middle school um with STEM, and then we do curriculum integration support. So our curriculum integration coordinators, you have one at each at each school. Um they have the opportunity to come and meet with us um once a month and collaborate. Basically, it's a PLC, a um a group of other CIC's from across the seven districts that brainstorm together. They collaborate together, they troubleshoot together, and they walk away with new ideas. Um, and so that's what we do with our magnet. So, just talking about magnets specifically, when you look at our magnet, we have three magnet themes. We have the arts experience, the IB experience, and the STEM or in some cases steam experience.
084And so, you are one of these really awesome districts. I love this. There's I have only found two other in the nation where it's a district that has three different themes. Um, maybe there's another one I haven't seen yet, but I don't think they would be they're probably not a member of Magnet Schools of America because otherwise I would have found them. So, of the schools across the nation that are magnet schools of America, there are very few districts where there's a unique theme at every level. So, I just it's one of the things that brings me joy about Rockford um is it's a unique model and it um it brings a richness to this community that you don't get everywhere. Um when you look across our map of our bar magnet schools, you'll see
085this is what we look like geographically um as far as where we're pulling students from the red um little stars which are very hard to see on this map you but you can zoom in on on the version on your board packet but um those are where our 27 magnet sites are located. So, if you have a student who is say in an Noah Henipin and they're really passionate about STEM um but they don't like the they're they're uh maybe didn't get into the STEM school in an Noah Henipin that they wanted to or um they have a conflict with a student who goes there and they just would really prefer to go to a different school but they don't want to give up that theme. they can apply and we will make sure that
086they get transported from Anoka Henipin to here at no cost to the family and the district will be reimbured for that cost through the achievement and integration plan. So essentially no cost to the district over time. Um so that is our geographic component of our magnet schools. Then we have two other pillars that we work with. So, when it comes to the services that I'm going to talk about now, they're only available to our magnet or the ones that I just talked about are only available to our magnet sites. The next ones are available to all sites. Now, in the case of Rockford, all your sites are magnet sites, but in the case of our other districts, they have some sites that are not magnet sites and they still receive these services as part of
087their achievement and integration plans. So, we have some student mentorship components that are part of college and career readiness. our Essence which is predominantly female identifying students, our stepup which is predominantly male identifying students both starting at the middle school and going up into the high school and that that's an optin piece. So not every site chooses to have those two mentorship groups um but uh Rockford has been leaning into those um at the high school level in particular and we are slowly building at the middle school level as well. Um and so that's been exciting. Um and then we have our post-secary experience experiences. So these are college visits. Um in the spring we had over 25 college visits. Again the buses the transportation to that is free of charge. It's reimbursed to the
088district because it's through our achievement in integration. So as long as they're traveling to a college visit with one of our neighboring partner districts, then we can qualify for that reimbursement of transportation. So, they're getting to go to those college visits for free of of cost to the student, free of cost transportation, so free of cost to the district. Um, and oftentimes, uh, because we are a consortium bringing, um, some connections that we already have with us, we tend to also be able to feed the kids for free. Not at every campus, but most of them. So, I love that. Um, we also have career fairs, volunteer activities that we offer. We have conferences. Um your high school principal was talking earlier about the AVID conference. So that's our giving voice leadership conference where students
089who are in AVID and educators rising, they can take their skills that they've been developing all year and they can showcase them um through various competitions. And then when they're not in a competition, there are other things that they can attend, special guest speakers and things like that. Lots of hands-on learning. Um, and then, uh, there's also a very hands-on career fair that involves being able to look inside a food truck, being able to actually physically get into an ambulance and talk to an EMT. Um, all of that, it's a very hands-on career affair that's happening simultaneously. So, that's one of our big events each year. Um, various field experiences. And then, Educators Rising is a grow your own education program um, that we support as well across our districts. And then the last pillar
090that we have is our staff support. So we have professional development opportunities that we offer. Our interd district partnerships um are just our basic uh professional developments that we offer to everyone across all seven districts. We just had one a couple weekends ago. It was our savior license Saturday where if staff came from 8:00 to 5:'lock, they could come and go as they wished. But if they came at 8 and left at 5 and stayed for every session, um they walked away with eight CEUs in each of the requirement areas by um Pelby so that when it comes time to renew their license, they're able to check off those qualifications more easily than otherwise trying to obtain them randomly throughout the the years. Um so we have a leadership series that we've been doing. Uh
091we customize sessions. Um, for instance, recently myself and Randy Cook went out to one of our elementary schools in OIO. Um, and we just did a like a reminder session about the magnet pillars. Um, and it was just kind of a fun little Q&A activity that we did and that was by request. We loved putting it together. So, we love customizing. Um, and then consulting, coaching, and thought partnerships. I was thinking about Kathy Matson during this particular piece. Um you guys recently with your elementary are working on um doing that curriculum exploration with literacy. Um in my previous world um I was the literacy director for Minneapolis public schools and before that I was a curriculum and instruction director for um a school district actually about the size of you um do public schools down
092in south in southern Minnesota. Um, and so we just had a nice u brainstorming session about some different um strategies and I was able to connect her up with a local literacy expert to help her with creating the rubric for evaluating the two curriculum. So just really excited about um opportunities like that. We also do cultural enrichment activities. Um we have a multicultural resource center where um staff can either physically come in or they can go online and browse our library or our artifact resource library um of various cultural artifacts and we will deliver them to you or they can come in and pick them up if they choose. Um and those are oftentimes used um in classes where you're reading a book and you'd like to actually physically see what that mask looks like.
093Or um you are maybe having a cultural event and we're coming and bringing a table um or whatever the case may be. So, lots of different opportunities with that as well. Those other heritage celebrations and global table experiences where people can come and and feel a culture by being immersed in it. We talk a lot in education about having windows, opportunities for students and staff to see into the world, right? We talk about having mirrors, opportunities for them to see themselves. And then we talk about sliding glass doors, opportunities for them to actually immerse themselves in a world that's different from what they live in every day. And that's what we strive to create for students and for staff. Um, we also have small event spaces that people can uh rent. And so every well
094actually they're free of charge to our member districts. So uh a lot of times people will do that especially if they want to collaborate offsite. Um, so for instance, some of our CIC's before have brought a staff member or two where they they're take doing a PD day or something like that and they'll meet with us. Then they've got us as a resource, but they're not having that constant interruption, but they still have that copy machine and all of those good things, a screen like this they can present on and so forth. So those are the services that we provide and the way that we do that is through our achievement and integration language. And so I'm just going to highlight a couple few things. So background, Northwest Suburban was actually created in response to
095Minnesota's desegregation rule. Um it was um defined in two state statutes that still exist today, although they've been refined a little bit over time. Um and the rule requires that racially isolated school districts that they have an MDE approved plan. So the goal is to increase racial and economic integration to reduce achievement disparities and to increase access to effective and diverse teachers. That's the main purpose of our ANI plans. And in order to do that, um, while Brooklyn Center and AIO were the original two, Fidley and Noah Henipin have since been added, they are identified as racially isolated. So no matter what, they have to complete an achievement and integration plan and they'll receive some achievement and integration funding. But if they partner with other districts that do not qualify as RARI, they get incentive
096achievement and integration funds. and districts like Rockford that otherwise wouldn't receive these funds at all now receive access to achievement and integration dollars. So I believe it's 215ish that's what it is that you guys get a year annually give or take. Um and the algorithm for this coming year is uh still being finalized. So hopefully maybe a little bit more next year. We'll see. Um but that then is uh you qualify for that because you are partnering with Brooklyn Center AIO Fidley and I know Buffalo Handover Montro ISD 728 and you um are those partner districts. So a couple of things that are highlighted in the achievement and integration state statutes just so you know are that we specifically work on all these other things are things that are are done in your district. That's
097why the 8% goes to us and not 100% because a lot of these are things that are happening in your sites with your staff. Um, and you don't need our coordination. But working on things like policy curriculum, having um administrators, school counselors, other advocates that are supporting that integrated learning environment. So um in including magnets um and including including that um differentiated instruction, that equitable access, magnet schools are a way of doing that. Um, in fact, it's even called out specifically later in other parts of the statute. Um, and then having rigorous college and career readiness programs. Um, those college and career visits that we have, those mentorship programs, that all fits here into uh, part C3. Um, also in the achievement and integration language, we have innovative and integrated preK through 12 learning environments
098um, that offer enrollment choices. Again, that's magnet. um and professional development opportunities for teachers which we also just spoke about. So just as a a quick overview, these are the main services that we provide um for uh Rockford as well as our other six um districts in our consortium. And I just it's honestly someone asked me the other day what I do for fun and I was like besides my work because I really think my work is fun and it's important. Um, and so I just really love what our team is doing. So if you have any questions, um, I'll gladly answer those for you. But that's just a quick in a nutshell overview. Thank you, Heather. Any questions for your slide? Heather, I I really appreciate because I think Jeff, we talked about this
099earlier about asking you to come in to explain what you are. Not you, Heather, but you as Northwest Suburbans. It's probably easier to explain Northwest than myself. Agreed. Um and and and the and we I asked about when the new board comes along, right? Because the who and the what, you know, we say, "Oh, Northwest Suburban." Everyone's like, "All right, whatever that is." But I I hope it it's evident, right? So many more things than just STEM and art and IB for our district, right? With AVID is included inside of there, right? Part of the budget to help pay, right? The ANI information, right? Those things are very important. And are we close to 20% north? We are. So, right around 20%. 20% of our student population is taking advantage of us because of Northwest
100Suburban and the transportation that's included. And it's it's interesting too, and actually, you probably don't even know this yet because it just sent it out in our in my email today, but um your numbers for next year are projected to be a little higher than 20%. We'll see if it actually f pans out that way because I don't know what your overall enrollment will end up being. Um, but if it's in line with what's predicted, it will be a little over 20%. Um, for next year and then also for next year, we're doing a little bit of rearranging with some things um like all of our districts. Um, fiscally things are going to be a challenge next year. So, we're using that as an opportunity to retool and restructure a few things. Um, and in
101that we're actually going to be be creating an opportunity for AVID leaders across our districts to come together and have a PLC time that they can opt into as well, just like we do for our CIC's. Um, so providing a little bit more structured AVID support. And in fact, we have uh two of our staff members are in Kansas right now learning all they can about providing AVID professional development. And and what I truly appreciate is even though we're small, your words help me feel that we have value for you. That that that Rockford being small is still valuable to me. Oh, 100%. And you know, it's really interesting with integration. You know, a lot of times because we talk about racial isolation, um we think that it's just, you know, providing opportunities for your
102students to see inner city students, but it also goes both ways. Um there is such an a richness of community that your staff and students bring. Um and they participate with such an energy and joy. Um sometimes our kids from other sites need to see that as well. Um and Rockford has even though number-wise like percentage-wise number of staff uh that that you have in our consortium is a small sliver when it comes to actual participation in professional development and student activities you are much bigger than a small sliver. You guys lean all the way in. Yes, sir. I'm glad you mentioned that because I think in any entity you get you get out of something what you put in and as Cher Gordy said we feel as a district we feel the love from
103Northwest Burban and and I think that that really does show with how our staff engages and and I'm appreciative and I I I sent an email to to Heather a week and a half ago. I'm there when you need me there. And um you know, our goal is to have you come back every every March board meeting and share a little bit extra and um and we're just we're thankful for the partnership. That's awesome. I would I would love to do that. And I had brochures for you, but they're sitting on my desk. So um but they're everything that's in the slideshow. So there you go. Perfect. If you really want them, email me and I'll put them in the mail for you. And Heather runs a really good board meeting. So it's it's all
104good. So when you guys can Eric wants the Thank you, Heather. I truly appreciate your time. Appreciate it. Thank you. So that way when So you're on record that we're over 20%. I just saying on record, Heather, you do not need to stick around. Okay. I might not. But thank you. Thank you, Heather. All right. Then moving on, we will go to our winter policy review final read. There are several that are included in there. Jessica or Dr. Hoover. Anything that you wish to say about those? No. Perfect. So, we have 2011 23 3.13.2 3.5 364 205 206. All of those are in our final read. They were presented to you at our last meeting. Any questions or comment? No. Cool. I would appreciate a motion then to approve those policies as listed. I'll make
105a motion to approve the winter policy that are up for our final read. Thank you, Miss Johnson. There's a first. Can I have a second? I'll second. Thank you, Mr. Shadine. There's a first and a second. Any discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor of the policies listed in our packet, please signify by I. Opposed. That does carry unanimously. Thank you so much. Then moving on to 7C uh policy 613R. Final read as well. Um cue this up. Dr. Ryder Hoover, I don't know if there's anything you need to say for this one. This one is with respect to graduation uh our graduation policy and if you remember there were some formatting issues last time, so it was cleaned up and it's here tonight. Perfect. So that's available to us. I would appreciate a motion.
106I'll make a motion to approve policy 613r. Thank you. Eric Gordy will second. There's a first and a second. Any discussion? All those in favor signify by I. I. I. Post and 613R does carry unanimously. 7D fund balance policies first read. In our board meeting we or sorry in our work session prior to this we had discussed the um need and and desire from recommendation from not only the finance committee but also district administration to increase the fund balance in our policy from 8 to 10 to 12 to 15. Um and those two policies would um cover those two things. Anything else to add to those objects? Yes. Yes, we um did discuss changing policy 701.2R section 4 um where it states 10% there. We actually wanted to move that to 15. So if we
107make I mean just this is a first read. So just so everybody's aware that that will be changed for the final read. Um so just make note of that that it will be at 15%. And I do believe that was changed or is was that changed in our packet? It's already changed. Cool. Thank you. So when we publish that will be changed appropriately. Thank you. And this will come back then next month. Um number eight staff recognition. Dr. Ader. Yeah. This one is an annual um approval from the board and this is where we will ask the board to um accept the recommendation and have an action item to um recognize staff at the end of the year with retirements and years of service um and some other leadership awards as well. So an action
108item for the board. Excellent. This falls under standard operating procedures of every single year approving this thing. So I would appreciate a motion to approve staff recognition program. I'll make the motion. Thank you, Mr. Shiddine. There's a first and a second. I will second that. Thank you, Miss Johnson. There's a first and a second. Any discussion? Do we need to discuss who's on that? Um, I don't believe so. We don't need to. All right. No, that's for the Leah, which is down there. The years of service and retirement, correct? It's on there and Yep. Cool. And so, just for mention to that, right now there's committee be infor committee be informed. Um, Miss Johnson, Miss Hilstrom, and Mr. Shadine at this time are going to be on that ad hoc committee and we'll post those
109meetings out as well. Excellent. Thank you. So, I'd like to have um Did we get a motion? Yes, Mr. Shadine. Seconded by Miss Johnson. Thank you. Uh, all those in favor signify by I. I opposed. That does carry unanimously. Moving on to number 9A, post levy survey cover page. Dr. Idle Hoverver. Yes. Thank you, Chair Gordy. Um, as you well know, we attempted a capital projects or technology levy um back during the general election in November. It was unsuccessful. Um, however, we wanted to learn a little bit about that. um in lie of having community forums of which we didn't have a great deal of participation, we made use of a survey and the survey went out to um the community via our website, social media and everyone um district resident was u mailed via
110US mail a postcard with the QR code and website as well. So again, if you remember um our capital projects levy took place in November, it was November 5th to be specific. And a little bit of information about that. We were looking to enhance our um our ability to do a few things. Uh one was safety and security. The other one was classroom learning and the other one was essential support uh via instructional resources. Um so we were clear in articulating that um as best we could uh to the community. So um this was the actual question that was on the ballot. We were looking for $900,000 um over the course of 10 years and here were the results. We were unsuccessful. Um I will share that as far as I can tell um that
111yes vote of 2848 is the highest yes vote we've ever had in this community. Um, however, the no vote also was the highest we've ever had. And I think a lot of that had to do with the fact that the volume that occurred during the general election was the highest in history of our country. Um, and I'm actually very encouraged um even though this was not successful by um the 54 to 46ish um I guess gap that we did see. It was a it was a gap of 517 votes. And I would say that, you know, doing some just assuming here on my part, we had strong turnout for those who have folks and understand what our schools need. I think we did have some folks who normally would not be uh voting to increase
112taxes in any way, shape, or form anyway, and that's everyone's prerogative. And then I think we had a lot of people that turned out that had no idea of anything that was going on and just saw the bottom of that ballot question which indicates um by voting yes on this question, you're voting for a property tax increase. If you don't know what's going on, that's likely where you're going to circle or check that no box. Um so with that being said, we did go out to the community and ask some questions via the survey. As mentioned, it closed recently, open for about a month. Uh we had 281 responses. It's about a little less than 5% of the actual voter turnout. Um, again, this isn't a super high number, but I'm somewhat encouraged by that
1135%. Anyway, um, of the 269 that indicated they did cast a a vote. Um, I'm sorry, let me read that again. Uh, 269 of those 281 said they did vote. 176 voted yes, and 93 of those folks voted no. and 12 of them said they did not vote at all or did not vote for this particular question. Um so you see this and actually again I'm encouraged um by the folks that have indicated primarily I'm encouraged by those who took the time to complete the survey that voted no. Um I wanted to hear from them. We all wanted to hear from them and so we have some information to share here. I'm going to go through this fairly quickly because this again is something that I believe has been shared out um with the board
114um so you can see this and look at it later. We are also going to use this um as a springboard to discuss next steps at our um at our meeting on um our our work session meeting on the 21st of April. Again, so the yes voters, here's how it broke down by where they reside. Again, a big percentage in Rockford and a smaller percentage in some other areas as well. Um, of those yes voters, um, 60% had kids in our schools, 40% did not. Um, I thought this was very telling. So, 40% of our families who don't have kids here still voted yes. They believe in what we're doing as a school system and, um, I believe they are well informed. Uh, there was a small number of, of folks who did have, um,
115students, uh, attending schools outside of our system. I asked the question here, were they wellinformed um by this? Of those who voted yes, roughly 90% said they felt well informed. Um a little less than 11% said they felt like they maybe were not as informed, but I think just like us a lot, so they still voted yes. Um I the next question that was asked is um you know um what did you use to become informed? And you can see the mailed literature was the highest, which surprised me a little bit. In fact, third there was social media, which I thought might be the highest, but the Rocket Report was still listed um as a very high number, too. That's surprising. Those same 176 people, I said, "If we brought this exact same question back
116to you, what would you say?" Every single one of them said they'd vote yes. I asked them about their tax tolerance next. So you'll see that top one is if we asked for the same amount, they'd be willing to do that. Asked about um going a little bit higher, even more, we're willing to do that. Um $20 a month, a little less. Um and some said they would even vote for $25 a month. So just getting an idea of the tax tolerance of that constituent. I want to ask this question next. It's something we've talked about on our finance committee. As you know that at the end of tax payable 2028, again, we'll still have those funds through 2029, by the way, but by the end of tax payable 2028, the average taxpayer in our
117district will see their taxes, property taxes, currently as it is decreased by $63 a month and $756 a year. That's a big deal. So, I ask if they knew that. Most of them didn't. It was on our presentation, by the way, and I did speak about it. as you know, thank you for coming to those meetings because I would have been really lonely if you weren't there. Um, also included in that of our yes voters, um, would you be more likely to uh, support um, knowing this? U, many of them said it wouldn't make a difference. I vote yes anyway. Uh, some said, well, heck yeah. And then some said, um, that makes a lot of sense. Um, I'd be inclined to vote yes. So again, these people all say they're going to vote yes.
118Those 176 people are in our corner and they know what we need and they're willing to um provide their own personal resources. Of our no voters, here is where their uh main residences were located. Again, this is 93 people. Um do you have school age children? The vast majority of those 93 people did not have school age children in our schools. Some of them have students in other school districts. Can you go back to that also? Okay. Uh, of those who indicated they voted no, um, I asked if they did not feel well informed. Um, were you aware of these things? And most of them had some awareness. Uh, some did not. Um, but most of them indicated 53 of the so 57% said they were well informed and they utilized one of the options
119that were that were mentioned. asked where they got their information. Those people, you could see they um they could have selected more than one place. Um but most of those folks got their information again through mail literature. So that's a good reminder to us that the mailed literature is an important component of this to make sure they were getting information out to our staff. What were all the words here? Um I have to look that up because it got cut off of course. Should only take me a moment. Sorry. I'll find it to go into the actual survey itself. But I will find it. Yeah. Let's see. I was well informed and utilized one or more of the options above. Thank you. Okay. So, they knew about it. Um, more than half knew about it.
120um they just were not inclined to support. I asked that same question to them. Did they know about the taxes going off? Surprisingly, a very opposite view of this. Um many of them did. I think they tracked this things in a more I guess timely manner. Um but many of them or of a majority of them knew that this these dollar amounts was coming up. I asked this next question knowing the tax impacts. um will be reduced again um if we were to come back with the same question. Um most of them said knowing this has no bearing on my desire to support the capital levy in 2025. So a good chunk of those folks in. However, I want to point out that um we did have a a decentsized chunk of these folks in
121that number there at almost 13% said, you know, I'd be more than likely now that I know this would be coming off. And again, when you're looking at a 500ish difference, that could make a big difference. Yeah. And then there were some people here that that said um that this was the case, they would knowing this now, they would vote yes. That number there, you know, and I know that that 82ish% is is high, but of this group, we're now looking at a number of, you know, looking at roughly 17ish% of the 19. That's probably about what 14 15 people who now say they would vote um yes. Um if it was brought again, would you um support it if you know and I I mentioned these things were if you're better informed um or
122if the request was less than I'm guessing those 17 are those same people. Um and then again you have that number of regardless of what um is asked I'm going to say no. And and I think the reason for that is um it's the only tax they can say no to. And I I'll add this and this is for a conversation on the 21st of April. Um if you look closely at the governor's budget um wanting to shrink state government um there's proposals to shift dollars to the county which they will then go back and apply towards all of our local property taxes with no vote of the taxpayers. That won't be helpful for us at all. Um, these are the folks that did not cast a vote and there were only 12 of them
123that responded to this. So, I'm actually really happy that the folks who did not go vote um took place took took some time to take the survey and I'll walk through what these folks had said. Um, a little less than half have kids in our schools. Some have students in different schools. Again, that's a really small number when you look at only 12 responses. Um, why did you not cast a vote or or this were the reasons? I didn't feel well informed or I didn't go to vote at all, which of course is the bigger chunk. We need to get those folks out. If you did not feel well informed, um, were you aware of the following items? Most of them were, or some of them were, I should say. I asked the same question.
124Do you know this was was falling off at the end of tax payable 2028? Most of them did not know that. By the way, this is both a good and a bad thing that these dollars are falling off and that's going to be a big conversation for our um our school board and uh we'll likely start with our finance committee. I've already had this conversation extensively with uh Bridget Peterson and um that will lead our lead us into a I think a pretty hefty conversation on the 21st during the work session. Again, um knowing this thing these this uh dollar figure would be falling off, would you more likely to support? Almost half of them said yes or at least 40 42ish percent. Then again 16.7 said they probably still wouldn't go vote. Fair enough.
125Um again, all these are in your your board packet to look at as well. Um, any questions with respect to this survey? Every time I do one of these, I think, well, I should have asked this or I should have asked that or I should have phrased it different. But, um, I think we got a decent flavor of the of the community even though we had a small response. Any thoughts or questions with respect to the survey? I still am impressed that we had the number that voted no actually respond to this. Those are the ones that I think we care about the most. So then you can they're giving you ideas of how to turn or what what they're interested in. And again of of that group I think it was something the lines
126of of 17% said that if it was either lower or I was more well informed or knowing now that this would fall off that we so if you take you know you took that whole number that's that's a pretty big number and it probably changes the the game. That's a larger number than the margin. Yes. On the nose for sure. drop away for sure. So again, I I just wanted you to have let some of this information soak in a little bit and then in a little over a month's time. Um we're going to have some more significant conversations at our work session about what potential next steps we might take. Also taking into account what's happening um financially, uh fiscally across our state, county, region, and country. All of those things are going to
127matter as to our next steps and the timelines of the um current um things we have on the books right now. Both our operational um referendum as well as the bond to see what the board is inclined to do. The next general election, I'm sorry, the next election um I believe we will be the only thing on the ballot if we choose to go out. Just leave it with that. And that is the end of that. And if that's true, Dr. Idle Hoover, is it the responsibility of the district then or is it since it's general election, it's still covered by state election board? Um, I'll be honest. I don't know the answer to that question. Um, I think because it is still an election, I think there will be a polling place, but um,
128Courtney and I will have to figure that out. Thank you. Any questions? Appreciate the information. It's really nice and thank you for including it. It's on the packet now. So, when you guys go. Yeah. Perfect. All right. Um, Mr. Kenitz, thank you for waiting patiently. I told him he was the closer. Uh, oh, should we play the music? You have to save the best for Absolutely. Thank you. Um, there's a couple new faces that I haven't seen before. So, before I get too far into it, I'm Jeff Candace, the director of technology for the school district. Um, just a very brief background, um, I've been doing I've been leading in the capacity of a director coordinator for over 30 years, particularly the school technology. Uh, this This coming graduation will be my fifth graduation here
129at Rockford and it is a wonderful school or a wonderful district. Uh prior I served in the military. I started as a private PFC as a RTO or youth telegraph operator and I left the service as a captain and I served in numerous leadership positions in my military career. Uh, one of them was being a graduate of the light fighter academy, the Arctic Flight Fighter Academy where we started out with a brigade which is about 4 to 500 people, but only a couple dozen of us actually graduated the course. So anyway, with all that folks, if as as the others know, if you have any questions throughout, just interrupt me and and it's all good. So tonight I just quickly want to talk about the presentation of the 1:1 handbook that you should have received
130in your packet. Uh there's a protocol statement with that as well to kind of outline some of the changes and uh procedures that I'm going to be using. Uh talk about safety security classroom learning uh some of the support services that we do and just highlight a few inter agency highlights. First up, with the handbook, uh, I went through and and revised or reviewed the handbook from last year to this year. I believe all handbooks are going up to the board next time. So, there's no action requested at this time. I wanted to give you guys an opportunity to review it and if you had any feedback or changes that, you know, we could accommodate. The big thing I guess you could say for the revision of the handbook is that I did uh we've
131moved forward now and we have enough uh of the pillars in place to create a device protection plan. Uh I went out and I talked to several other school districts like St. Michael Abra uh Cambridge um and I went up and met with my friends and colleagues and they shared me with me what they've been doing and so that we could create something that was equitable and fair and uh so that is something that's extra in there uh and that is part of that protocol which I'll get into shortly. Uh the draft that I submitted, I also submitted it to the district leadership team and so far there's been no revisions from them uh on that plan. So, the only thing left to do is to change the policy link links because I know some
132of the policies have up been updated. And so, I need to change those links to the new policies. And I want to review the forms that I use that parents assign uh for 2526. Basically, change the dates and then get them preset so that we can push them out uh through the portal in August. And then uh the other little nuance was that limits have been placed on the availability of the hotspots. We do have a few hotspots out to students because they do not have internet at home. So we are working to accommodate and inside of the the handbook I do have instructions on how they can go out. Families can go out and request a hotspot from different agencies if they're not cut. a lot of federal stuff is being cut. So, we'll
133have to see how that pairs out. And the billing of families, which was a recommendation from the board earlier, uh is underway. And just to give you a quick review on that, um, at the high school, so far, I've, uh, for fees placed, it's about $1,700, of which we received $880 back from families. So, I still have a balance of about $800 withstanding. at the middle school about $3,000 in fees were placed on families of which uh I've received $1,200. So I still want 17 $1,800 withstanding. I have another about $1,000 to apply this week from about 18 different incidences that have occurred since. And uh so I would kind of based on this I would estimate that by the time the school year is done we'll place probably about 6,000 in fees to parents
134on promo damage. So, and uh the protocol that that I've given you, you know, indicates that pretty soon I'll be putting out the 30-day letter to parents and I'll do a 60-day letter, a 90-day letter, and then we'll walk or we'll question whether or not we're going to send it to collections. I just want to share with the the board at large that and those who've been on our is since the advent of the one to one um we did not charge students families whether it was accidental intentional um Jeff and his team just fixed it. We didn't pass our tax levy. We have no money to replace any of these items. Um so we're we're being forced to go into that. Yep. The other the other mitigating factor in that was we had a
135replacement cycle where and we kept the same models where we were able to get the old machines, the screens and the keyboards and all that and recycle those parts into the stuff that was damaged that was newer and get it back out. But now with the advent of new models and different machines that don't fit the same parts, there we go. So the uh the billing and the billing protocol or the billing and device protection protocol. Uh basically we depending looking at the costs and the budgets and stuff and what other school districts were doing. Uh we kind of discussed $40 per unit per device per student with an $80 uh cap for families. And if they were uh enrolled in an educational benefit program, uh we would do have a 50% reduction on that.
136And that was consistent within, you know, a few dollars with other school districts that we discussed it with. And you know, it goes for accidental damage and etc. And that's an annual thing. So the second and third year it would be the same cost. uh we wouldn't necessarily carry it over unless uh once we start doing an analysis of the dollars. If we had an excess of dollars versus the parts that we had to purchase um then we might be able to reduce the cost or you have to increase it. You won't know until we look at the numbers. So it'll be data driven and the idea being is that it's zero level. We're not interested in making a profit. We just want to be able to get our Um any questions on the that
137part of it? Nope. So uh probably in August I have some forms to create and I have some things to put in you know create a procedural and a workflow on it yet. Uh but I my intent is to in August uh to start putting stuff out to parents and uh start collecting the fees for next school year. So, and on the protocol that you see, I referenced the state statutes that enable us to do this. The key thing is it's not insurance, it's a device protection fund and it is voluntary. So, uh any more questions on on the one to one program? Okay. So, just just a a point of thought. I appreciate the the protection plan, right? It's big thing. We've talked about this for a while, right? Um, one of the things
138that I know that is happening from talking with other districts is a straight technology fee associated to any enrollment. Now, historically in Rockford previously, we did have course fees for courses that had consumables, right? when COVID came around that time those fees fell off the books and then the fees weren't associated any longer. So that's part of you know if you look we have no fees right where we used to quite a while ago. I don't it's a point of conversation is do we come back to the consumables as well as technology to help offset some of these things that are happening. Just just a thing to think about for the future. Um I I consult or mentor another school uh near Waconia, a private school, and they structure their fees. They just have a
139straight technology fee and at the end of the students cycle, which in our case would be a six-year cycle is what we're planning on for Chromebooks for students. They just take them home. They just keep them. So whether or not we do something similar to that scenario or not because usually after six years I don't know if we really want them to be honest with you but that's what they're doing and they're doing like a four year cycle and they're just letting the kids keep them for their next adventure. Um safety and security uh we're just starting the process uh over spring break we're going to replace the fire panel at the bus garage. Uh the panel is from about 1990 and so it's due and continuing apologies to those two back there. Uh they're
140the ones that have been getting the 2:00 in the morning phone calls from the fire panel. So uh they've been super troopers in in handling the midnight crisis. So we're going to uh change out the analog lines. One of the things that the FCC has, I don't want to say ordered, but regulated, is that we change our analog phone lines, the oldfashioned phones to digital. So, we're going to start at the bus garage over spring break. And I've got two analog lines over there for the fire panel, and I piggy back it up the um fax machine. So, we're going to split it all up and and have a new day. Sandy Hook Promise. Um, on the urging from Dr. Riddle Hoover, he asked me to look into the Sandy Hook Promise program and uh
141help guide it here at the district to get it started. So, we have uh Sandy Hook, of course, was founded from the Sandy Hook school shooting. And what it is, it's it's a program that allows people to send tips in to a clearing house or and they also have counseling, immediate counseling available. They vet the tips, they go through the tips, and they determine if they're credible or not. And then they come back and we have a few different teams set up at each school or at the district level and they come back to us saying we receive this information that you should check into and we started receiving tips we were on February of this year and uh the schools we've we've gone through the staff training we we've developed the team training uh
142the principles have done an awesome job with uh student students student training and getting the students on board. And uh without going into too many details, due to privacy, we received about four harassment type tips, a few cyber bully type tips, and a couple suicide tips that were all checked out. I just want to share that this works has been working beautifully. I think it was last Friday. I was driving on my way home and I received a tip and at first I was kind of, you know, because I I only get them if they're pretty significant. And once I got to my home, I I got on the phone, called Principal Manard, said, "Yep, already taken care of." I talked to the the family, our RSRO, um, and they had all been connected. And
143then Jeff of course sent me another message later on, but um it's working and um that particular individual was um having some mental health issues and was indicating um potential self harm and I feel very good that we had the process in place and all of my colleagues in this room um were all over it. It was it was wonderful. It's been I think it's been very well received across the board and it is helping people. uh safety committee uh for whatever reason the safety committee here at the district uh hadn't met regularly for a while. So Mike McNelte and myself are co-chairing and we brought it back and we have about 15 members uh to the committee and next year we're going to probably add a bit more to it. and the safety committee.
144We've been meeting quarterly. Uh we've had very good discussions uh regarding district safety and security and and the basics. We've done and and I kind of want to use the word safety loosely. Uh we developed a volunteer handbook uh because insurance wants us to have a volunteer handbook. And so we've developed that. We've gone through our fire code issues uh as a committee as a so that maintenance could relate to the other folks the reasons why we had these violations. Uh we've gone over cyber information uh and quite a quite a bit without going into great detail, but so far it seems to becoming a more of a robust committee with good input. Uh we've also been going over uh our school safety policies, you know, our our red book and going through that so
145that not only can we help teach staff and they can work with their constituents, but we can get it up to date. So, we're planning on continuing with that uh and we'll be meeting again uh right after spring break. Uh classroom emergency communications. I was holding off a little bit on this hoping that we could get greens. Uh, as you know, we installed smart clever touch boards at the high school and the middle school like that or similar. That's a TV, not quite a full touch board. But, uh, we were hoping to finish the elementary out, but with the funding reductions, uh, that's been kind of put on the back shelf. So, one of the the things that we're going to do is at the high school and middle school is we can connect these
146to a backend application that if we do have an emergency uh we can take the boards over flash, you know, fire or uh lock down or we call it something else today. But we can send messages over and they can also send messages, you know, use it as a message board in the morning before school starts. So, we're going to move that process out. We've been in touch with the company who is helping us set up the back end so that we can connect them and that will just be an additional safety feature for the high school middle school and then hopefully when the when the sunshine comes back out on the funding, uh we'll be able to finish readings. I love you guys integration. Uh again, uh we Mike and I are kind of
147leading the charge with this in the sense that uh we met with Wright County and all of the school districts met and Paul and Christa were part of that initial training and we met them and they went through all the I love you guys.com um stuff and basically it it goes on relocation and reunification and and what does a school district need to do to uh get our collective soul together after an emergency incident? So, we also got a chance to meet the players at Ray County as well as the other uh people from other school districts. So following up on that, uh we had uh and I loved you guys Alice integration meeting here and with the principles and other key players like nursing the the SRO's and we invited the Wright County emergency
148people here and we all had a chance to meet uh and they all had a chance to start integrating and now our next step is we're going to speed internally to work out our uh emergency plans and our contact information and not so much, you know, this person is attached to this assignment, but what does this person do? So that because in in in coordination with Wright County, they said that they would pull people for us as long as we have job descriptions so that our staff can do what our staff have to do and they can help with the reunification. The other part is uh we talked with Reich County again. We learned that Buffalo School District may have some issues with us going to their schools for a reunification event. So, Right County
149is in the process of contracting with other large places that we may be able to go to. So hopefully by the end of the school year, we will have more than one location to uh possibly go to if we had to. Uh on the eastern side, uh we went to our unification site uh to the east of us without saying publicly where it's at and we met with the site manager of that location. We went through our protocols, we went through our agreements, and so that they're good with us, uh, you know, the passwords to their Wi-Fi system and all that good stuff. So, we have a complete uh map of that area and the neighboring law enforcement and we've also had a discussion with uh the emergency services so that they know where that
150where we can coordinate and set up if if that came to be. So, and then uh the next step again with that is that we're going to be meeting part with with the safety committee and with the love of you guys group or the Alice protocol group which is administrators and uh shore up those plans for safety. Then the last part is we have safe security training scheduled um next Tuesday and we have a group of people, myself included, and some maintenance staff. And we're going to we have a vendor coming in to teach us uh how to best implement our door security, our cameras, and then the lockdown controls. Uh, for example, we should be uh practicing physical lockdowns with the entire system, but we're not sure how to turn it off. So, we
151want don't want to do that. And so, we've been trained so that we don't end up going home and shame. So, so uh that tree um classroom learning real quick. Uh we're starting to work the process. We've been doing this all year, but the unfortunate reality is the person and I who was working on it, the other staff member were resigned for personal reasons. So, we kind of put it on the on the back burner temporarily, but we have interviews scheduled uh next week to replace that person. But the intent is that we've done a lot of work on employee uh onboarding and now we're going to start doing the work on student workflow processes on onboarding students. Our department has been doing more with getting the students into applications uh like the fast switch
152testing um seesaw we've been onboarding the kids in our department into those applications as well as infinite campus and Google and we've been working with Christa on new students and etc. So, I'm hoping that for sure by the time school starts, we are going to be able to have a complete process to welcome those students in with technology, show them what they got to do, how to get support. These are your usernames and accounts for all the various applications that are tied to their grade with curriculum so that we can make them feel at home and hopefully make them more productive and then reassure the teachers that they got their stuff ahead of time. Uh if in campus we're working on 504s placement in campus that's something that uh the high school is working on.
153Uh we're working on getting the standards all the revisions and standards in infinite campus uh to help bolster uh curriculum and I know that Mr. Manard wants to start putting some standards on students for remediation. So, I'm trying to get the standards into campus. It's not an incredibly fast process. And then lastly, uh Mr. Mari alluded to the Perkins grant that we received and that grant came from educational resources in Sartell. uh where I helped write the body and and Paul and Jill and Monica Pinkerman uh took it from there and they received the grant for the $15,000 which is great. Uh lastly, just or very quickly, one of the things we're planning on doing this summer is archiving starting to archive our old data. We have rooms full of paper and particularly again I'm
154going to pick on Mr. Manard. Uh his room is just full. So we're in the process of ordering some scanners scanning equipment. We are going to try and work on getting staff to be there during the summer and what we're concentrating on is with the changes in legislation with staff who receive unemployment. We're going to try and bring those staff in so that we can help recruit part of those dollars and then uh start scanning and I'm currently working on retention schedules and the protocols that we need to see what we can actually dump and what we actually have to keep and then document or tag every document as to how many years we have to keep that said document. And uh the school district is 1856. He has records in his room from then.
155That's funny. There are student records in there from I know from early 1900s, late 1800s. Oh my goodness. So, you can imagine how long we've been Wow. Well, some of it you have to keep. That's incredible. That's so cool. and and our funding doesn't allow us to contract with a software company because quite frankly when I interviewed a few companies, you know, with a long-term cost of ownership once you start using a company to start taking archiving. Yeah. And and I'm just not in the mood to have a, you know, a 10year $200,000 lifespan contract. It would be that or more. Uh so we are going to attempt to create that process on our own and create the workflow and create the labeling scheme so that we can find it. Awesome. Um how are you
156going to store it all? Currently uh we have enough space on our stand which is a storage area network. Uh I was fortunate to be able to replace our servers a couple years ago. So we are sitting good on storage space locally and then that's at the high school. We have a backup sand that we do our backups to at the middle school and those are airgapped and and timed out. And then I have a third backup up in the cloud uh using another service. So that's completely airgapped. So if we did have a horrible tornado come through that wiped out both schools, our data would still be cool. and those um this week I have an outside vendor reviewing those protocols and checking our backups to make sure that we're good and then I
157have an audit which I'll alert to later on here in April and the audi auditor I'm sure we'll check on it. So anyway, point of sale machines, just so you know, uh Mike McDonald and uh particularly Mike and Christa and a little bit myself was able to achieve getting a grant from MDE uh to replace our cash registers or purchase sale machines via the grant through MDE. So we were able to we had three units but we were able to get four units and they're wireless touchscreen cool and because the idea being that one if we need a spare but two the food truck when we started doing food truck stuff they can and hook it to our warehouse network since we have uh stuff up on the field. Uh I office of civil rights.
158One of the things we do is mark all the civil rights data for the state. Uh that's due in April. Um it's enjoyable. Uh capital projects. He's lying. I'm lying. Capital projects. Uh the only real thing that I've got going this year that I have to is replace the firewall. My the firewall that we have is only a few years old, but all of the services that are attached to it on the inside that is safe are coming out or expiring. And I have a grant that's available that would change out the appliance and give us a 60 60% rebate on that. I'm hoping. So, uh, so I'm planning on replacing the unit in the hopes that the federal government will approve it. Now, they did it the last time, which is rare for the
159government to do that. So, we're going to try and rinse and repeat and have the same wordage and language. And if that's the case, and that will save us again 60% on the firewall. The one part that I will say is that uh we have about 80,000 plus in matching grants out there and I'm going to let about $50,000 go because I don't have the matching capital. It's not there. So I cannot spend the money and get 60% back on it because we don't have it in the budget. So this year I'm going to let all 50 grand. It's what it is. Cyber security again uh we received our insurance requirements yesterday and uh we did some insurance did some checking on us in the background and it was nice to see that they gave
160us a great a great score a great credit so far. Uh we'll see what the real audit does in April. Uh I will just some of you remember that four or five years ago uh we were like in the red where we just kind of hid ourselves and said don't look at it. So so we've gone a long ways. The whole district collectively as a as a school district it's not one person or one department. across the board. Uh we've really elevated our cyber cyber stuff. So hopefully the audit in April will show that. Um technology budget update. I've kind of moved to a reactive stance and not to a you know replacement stance. And I'm shifting more to intellectual property development, creating plans, protocols, going through procedures, etc. And look like the training for
161the our current stuff and etc. Um, again, we've had a reduction in our capital funding, which means our ability to do stuff has been greatly reduced. I I wish I could be more happy about it, but we appreciate what we get, and we're going to make it stretch as far as we can. Like I said, I've been doing this for 30 years. I've had good years and I've had bad years and we're kind of moving into the bad side. Hopefully, we can stop that. So, my replacement schedules and new projects are basically have been halted. The good news is that prior to our request for the vote, we were capped at four years on Chromebooks. And the primary reason for that was the Department of Education. They demanded that we had to have certain levels
162of security on the Chromebooks and after four years they could no longer update the proper browser level and such. Google has now uh helped us out and they are now giving us a 10-year window for updates. But the reality is is now we've taken our replacement schedule and we're going to go grades 6 through 12. So, we're going to issue try and issue a new Chromebook, say grade six, for example. They're going to keep it until they graduate. And and the same with the elementary, replace it in kindergarten, and push them up through, you know, replace carts up through fifth grade. So, because now we can update them. So, that does help our budget greatly because I don't have to buy Chromebooks every four years. Now, I can go on a longer cycle. I'm kind
163of figing we keep them for seven years, which is going to be a stretch because they are not that sturdy. Um, that is going to save us a great deal of money. Uh, and then of course request movement on a technology referendum. Uh we've most of us have been through this before and as you know I'm hoping that the board will be able to give us some help in doing a another referendum coming up and for some of you you've seen this this slide before. This is basically uh from the Association of Metro School Districts. It just basically tells you what the voter approved oper you know operating levies have been and how much is geared to our capital. Uh this does not include the standard revenues or the established bonds that schools have voted
164on. Those are kind of separate. This is just kind of the sliver of the school finance. But it does give you a good picture of the school districts that surround us. And uh you know like Buffalo Handover receives about 1474 additional revenue per student uh and we receiving about633 but you do have to keep in mind that Buffalo Handover has a lot more business and a lot more tax base than we have. So I don't want to say the numbers skewed but they're better off than we are. Delano, I'm sorry I don't really have the numbers for them, but you can see that Orino, Wisetta, Wanka, St. Michael. Again, St. Michael only has a 724, but they have a huge tax base and they have more revenue. Uh about a month ago, I met with
165their technology director and chat about it and yeah, they're doing they don't have the woes that we're going to have. So, um, without going through them line by line because you can kind of look at it, you can see that the metro average is $2,84. We're at 1633. The state average across the board is 2332. Again, Rockford is about $700 per student behind. You know, Jeff and I talked about this a little bit, too. St. Michael has part of their thing is that they have a pretty substantial bond that's out on their on their facilities. So they actually have they're paying more than we are even though their number looks less but a lot of this is in facilities because they grew so fast. Um people will email me and I know they emailed Eric
166and I recently one person did say you know you always give us these numbers all these metro districts. Well we are part of the metro by the way. Um with that being said I said well let's get some other ones too right. So you look at West Tonka you look at Orino um those those numbers are are huge. They're they're almost, you know, you're looking at close to $5,000 on on one of them and the other one's 40 almost 4,000 a little over close to $4,000 combined two projects. Um the the regular levy and then the capital project. So, you know, going down to the state, I asked Jeff to put this in there. So, this isn't metro. The state has an average of 2323 and a and a capital projects of 520 per person
167per pupil. So, you know, they could say, "Well, why didn't you give us all these?" No, that's the state average. Is it skewed by the metro? Probably. Hopkins, by the way, has a $12 million a year tech levy. Yeah. Tech levy. That's it. And so, um, but by and large, when one says that, um, the might indicate that one zip code does not determine the education resources for a kid, that's not true. It really does. So, right. So, and of course, you know, we have capital capital projects or capital levy. We're at zero for that. Any questions? I mean, some of you have seen this before. So, I guess my ask is that in April when you do the work session that you just take another hard look at it and hopefully we can try
168and convince uh the folks in our district to vote yes because the bottom line is uh in about a year and a half uh we're going to be facing some pretty tough decisions just because of the way our budget lies. As you know, technology is the first to feel it because the bulk of our budget is in capital. And um so we're kind of the first department that really kind of feels the pulse of the school district in terms of funding. And there's nothing bad with that. I'm not complaining. I've done it for years. But in this particular case, my vision for three to five years out, if we maintain the status quo, is going to be some pretty decisions and we're going to have systems that just simply fail. Um, finally uh leaving it
169on a high note from all this doom and gloom. Just so you know, we're members of educational resources in Sartile St. cloud and um next month the first part of April I'll be attending two days of Google admin training to tighten our or learn about the safety and security in Google and all the operations on the admin side uh because so much has changed we're members of ECME and ECME puts on a security conference in January up north in Bra which is one of the coldest places on earth in January and uh but we have a great conference up there and talking with many school districts that attend and we have lots of vendors that attend and it's great to make connections. They also help me with the telecommunications equity access aid. I'm afraid I'm
170old school so I still call it PARP. We've named it something else that has longer initials. And uh currently we're working on we just submitted a grant request from the state and I'm hoping that we'll get at least 10 grand from it. And what this does is it reimburses. We have our rate money and we have some auxiliary dollars. Will pay us the 60% back and then we write a grant and EPME helps me write the grant because it has to be through a telecom cluster and they are so we'll get the other 30 to 35% back on the on our internet costs and then they provide cyber supports right county emergency services you know again we met three of them this past month and they're working with us on on our uh safety plans
171CISA uh this one I'm a little worried about but CISA sends me what's called NDVR are uh I have them tied into our systems and they monitor our our systems and the traffic and then they send me a report on how many threats we had on their end, how many malware attacks that they stopped and how many intrusions they stopped and then I can look back and it's still surprising how many still get through and hit my systems and firewalls. But we have a multi-layer um security out there to protect our students. And if you didn't know it, when the students bring their Chromebooks home and they connect them to their home internet, they're still going through our security systems. In fact, we have an additional layer just for students. Okay. So, uh when they
172take their devices home, uh they're covered. And uh the BCA, we've been approved uh through the Minnesota Fusion Center where if there is, uh Bureau of Criminal Apprehension DCA and they send us updates uh semi-frequently on on threats and on things happening at the state level that uh they're concerned about so that we can prepare in advance. Anyway, I hope I didn't take too much of your time. It's good stuff. So, if you have any questions or comments, what kind of firewall you got? I have a watch card. Watch guard. Okay. I had a Ford. I wasn't pleased with it. Okay. And it was expensive and I went with what the majority of banks use. Yeah. They're protecting money. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And since then I I it's cheaper and I think it's better. We
173also have an auxiliary server that I installed called Dimension and it logs every single inch of traffic that happens for about six months. Cool. So I can go back if somebody asks who's on the, you know, if they want me to find out who's on the naughty list, it it lets me go back. Got it. Thank you. Questions? Um, I don't know if I mentioned my question to you or not. Go ahead. Um, the 50 the grant that we have to let go because we don't have matching funds. Certainly. Is there any way to reach out in community to see if there's any way to get at least some of that so that we can can we do it that way and get matching funds or does it have to come specifically from the district
174to match it? Has to be from the district. Do we have to send checks from the district? Because when I request the grant money back, I have to physically prove on paper and by the copy of the check that it was all paid for by the district. They really frown on they don't want us to get it for free. So they really frown on us using auxiliary sources to get the job done. So the other part of it is yes, we have projects on deck and yes, I've submitted a few projects, but I've put them on the shelf. Uh how do I say this? We I believe it's next week is the deadline for filing what's called the form 470. And that is the form that we declare what you want to do. That could
175it has to sit out there for 28 days on the federal website. It's like a bid. During that time, we get the quotes in and we process the quotes. After that window, then I fill out what's called the form 471. We sign the contracts. We itemize everything that we're going to do and where the and then we verify that where the funding is coming from and that we have, you know, we check the boxes and then we send it out and then the work starts in July of next school year and because it's a new fiscal year and then after the work is done, usually around October, then I request the reimbursements. So, you'd have to have that file next week. And then I'm cutting it tight because it's the 28 days to when I
176have to file it and that gets kind of That's why I don't have hair. So, um, so this year, yeah, we could do it. I mean, I do have one form 470 out because I wanted to check out uh to finish the athletic fields, but again, uh I had to let that kind of sit. So, um next year hopefully that will be renewed because this year it ends on June 30th. That money is gone. Whatever's left is is gone. So, um, but if the federal government holds steady, uh, next year we're supposed to get a recap of the funds that will last for another five years. And I don't quote me on this. Last time it was about $160 per student, and I think this next time they're saying it's like almost $200 a student.
177So, do the math. And that kind of tells you how much money we have to work with for five years. Any other questions? Thank you. Any other questions? Perfect. Thank you. Appreciate it. It's just always thankful that you're always looking for money in the cushions. So, usually finding Yeah. Yes. Yeah. That's perfect. All right. Moving on to number 10. Contributions and donations. Presented in front of you are the uh contributions uh to the district. Dr. Ryver, I just want to express thanks on behalf of the district for all of the donations in both uh finances and time and goods. So, thank you to all those who donated. They're all outlined in your board packet. Excellent. This is a resolution. I will ask a motion to approve. I'll make that motion to approve the res resolution
178of acknowledge acknowledgement of contributions and donations. Very much. There's a first. Can I have a second? Second. Thank you, Mr. Morgan. There's first and second. Any discussion? Seeing none, this is a resolution. I'll call roll. Mr. Shadine, I Thank you. Or I was I was Thank you, Mr. Morgan. Hi, Miss Johnson. I Eric Gordy. I And we have two members absent. So, that does pass unanimously as well. Called them out. called them out. Moving on to 5B. All been there before. Yep. All the objects that are coming. So, facilities committee meeting Wednesday, April 2nd, 9 7:30 virtually. And that Google meet is included in the information. Also on April 21st, Monday, we will have our work session at 5:30 followed by our regular board meeting. The communications meeting is also scheduled for that evening at
1794:30. I believe those are all the corrections and additions. Yes. Very good. So with that, I will go to 10 C board committee updates. I will go first. There have been several AMSD meetings with board um board chair and coffees and conversations. One of the points that I asked about was obviously the alcohol being sold on school grounds as well as what's the board's responsibility in terms of governance for course cataloges, courses and curriculum approval. Um so we can talk about what the board's responsibility is for those things rather than the management aspect of that in the future. Uh went to AMSD with uh Dr. Ridal Hoover got to listen to some legislative updates and some fun there. So that that was all good. So uh next um I had my meeting um uh officers
180training the second half of that because I believe the other officer's training was the week before our last board meeting. So Eric did attend that with me. I was there in the board prep. Eric was there and then we had our board rep call. Um and then uh earlier today I met with uh Mr. McNelte um to review stuff regarding negotiations. Excellent. Thank you so much, Mr. Morgan. Any updates? No updates this time. No updates. Perfect. And with that, there are no more updates to be had. So we'll go to adjournment. I'll make a motion to adjurnn. Any second? I'll second. Thank you, Mr. Shadine. First and a second. Any discussion? All those in favor by I I opposed. 901. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. A lot of ground today. That was a lot of
181bunch of stuff. It was It was