Rockford Area Schools - School Board Meeting - March 18, 2024

001yes it is 6:30 on March 18th 2024 I would like to call to order the regular meeting of the Rockford area school board and we'll start with the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge aliance 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 we'll go to roll call Madam clerk would you call the rooll here here Eric here absent Jessica Johnson here Jamie Hil here excellent thank you very much uh item number two is the approval of tonight's agenda I would like to make one change to tonight's agenda I would like to transition item number five superintendent report to number six oh no we're not doing that forget it forgot that so Dr R

002Hoover said he needs to synct in his comments just going to talk until I'm done I like it all right uh then the approval of agenda is item number two tonight I'd appreciate a motion for the approval of tonight's agenda I'll make a motion to approve the agenda thank you Miss Edwards and a second I will second thank you Miss Johnson there's been a first and a second any discussion see none all those in favor signify by I I post agenda is approved uh number three is the opportunity for public comment and looking there is no public comment this evening so we move on to number four to the consent agenda the consent agenda is prevent presented to you in tonight's packets I would appreciate a motion to approve tonight's consent agenda I will make

003a motion to approve the consent agenda thank you Miss Neil and there is a first can I have a second I'll second thank you Miss Johnson there's been a first and a second any further discussion see no discussion all those in favor by I I post tonight's consent agenda carries unanimously item number five is the superintendent report March superintendent report prepared and offered by Dr ryer thank you Jer and I am going to be s s so here we go uh it's hard to believe uh we're already deep into March uh spring break on the horizon I continue to be proud of the work of our students and staff and remain thankful for the opportunity to partner with the board Community families and our wonderful staff uh we'll continue to add to that positive momentum

004that we've gained over the last several months as we finished the school year strong and plan for an even better 2425 school year Rockford High School is well represented here this evening with our winter activities celebration and recognition along with principal manard and who'll present in just a few moments but I will uh share some recent happenings and celebrations at both Reams and Rockford Middle School Center for Environmental Studies going to start with Reams on March 5th and 6th grade four had the opportunity to meet after school and used the floor hockey skills they learned uh in their PE class for a mini tournament March 7th the Kindergarten Roundup was a big success uh currently Reams has and this is probably growing I'm hoping 83 kindergarten enrolled for 24 25 and we are ahead of

005last year's Pace uh so that makes me quite proud I actually had an opportunity to attend uh the uh the Roundup and it was fun because I got to see a a mother who I had as a high school student at wisett high school with her kids starting school so that was kind of fun um March 12th uh we had the fourth grade concert uh several Arts troop performances that day uh visiting artist The Copper Street Band uh brass performed at Reams on the 13th of March and the terrific Thursday performance occurred on March 22nd or 21st or it's going to be occurring um which will have many student performances um at the middle school so principal wara said we're going to go buy the numbers so I said okay that's what I'm going to

006call this buy the numbers we had one dance on Friday 261 students were in attendance at that dance some of them by the way dressed very flashy because I saw some pictures 55% of the student body was there we had 23 adult volunteers and the student council made a profit of $1600 Bridget would be proud um we also had one amazing student council adviser that made it all happen and that is Abby Coffman big thanks to Abby uh fifth graders also had an amazing day at uh Baker park on the the 12th of March uh fifth graders showed some of their best behavior engaging in a day of learning at Baker park where they learned about maple syrup making and shelter building these outdoor education opportunities are not only a great way to learn content

007but a way to connect socially Foster Collaborative Learning and see each other in a new setting and I think I saw this gentleman here but I could be wrong Jamie Matson is a winner that's the title of this one Jamie you here yeah there he is all right um he's tur our Middle School won the cell CenterPoint Energy $300 classroom celebration drawing by registering for the think energy program that money will help cover supplies uh for the Showcase and we're excited about a robust showcase that is upcoming congratulations and thank you J [Applause] Man in other news I continue to work with schools advocating for fair funding on the process of rebranding as well as assisting in the process of finding a new executive director to take the place of Brad londell as he is

008the current executive director and lobbyist he's retiring at the end of June um so there's a job posting out there now and there will be a second because that job is being split into a lobbyist and an executive director both part-time jobs now I also participated in the most recent Masa legislative committee work attended the amsd board of directors meeting where I was this is really good I was able to personally thank assistant MDA commissioner Bobby Burnham for granting what I call uh the Rockford waiver around um science of reading uh we are the only one by the way who who's received that waiver in the state so there might be others but uh we're the trends Setters there which is actually great um it's really helping our staff because they already went through the

009training and now is not having them to go through it twice um I also learned a lot about what the legislature is calling redact 2.0 and um that is that is there's some information coming out that later I also attended the amsd Masa day at the capital where I visited with local and state leg legislators tenants of Education policy and finance hearings and get a better understanding of what's happening at the legislature this year also met with our maso colleagues last week and I attended the masasa spring conference speaking of the legislature first draft of the governor's education policy bill was released last Friday uh some areas of significance in policy that might either draw hopeful anticipation or some concerns depending on one's Viewpoint include the following a modification of the implementation of the Civic

010requirement from next year's class 9th grade class incoming 9th grade class to the following Year's nth grade class not going to affect us because our kids are already taking that course at our high school and they have for some time um language uh that will allow more flexibility and Licensing standards for special education teachers that will help us here in Rockford again those react 2.0 policy adjustments that's mostly around the timeline for those Universal screeners uh they said uh within x amount of weeks and now it's has to happened within the first uh I think it's uh few weeks of school um there's one about a book Banning prohibition that explicitly states that no governing body receiving public funds May ban any book at a public library or a school library that one is probably

011going to take uh have a little bit of uh attention from both sides of the aisle is my expected anticipation again I'm glad Rockford's not really part of that and I'm thankful for that part to um also there is some clarity around the roles and responsibilities of library media specialists if you know anything about the legislature Mary kunish is a former uh library media specialist and she chairs education policy uh education funding targets were scheduled to be released today but I haven't heard anything about that yet so probably more to come tomorrow outside of legislative happenings I also attended meetings with our Northwest Suburban integration School District Partners very happy to share that we're going to be collaborating with Fridley and Buffalo to potentially add Avid programming at our elementary level um grant writing will

012be begin shortly next school year is scheduled to be a planning year with hopeful implementation of programming pending Federal grant funds to begin in the 2526 school year which means if that goes through we're going to get some money to put Avid into our elementary school pretty exciting stuff uh within the district uh I had a preliminary planning meeting with our PR consultant Colin Sakowski who's agreed to work with us on some public relations work uh attended meetings of both our finance and operation committees met with our ad team our APAC committee which by the way is absolutely rocking it right now again thank you Jamie Manson um the Rockford Education Foundation and also the leadership for the uh 1,000 Hearts initiative that such that does such great work in our community as mention I

013participated in Kindergarten Roundup um I also got to do for the first time serve as a judge at the state Deca competition if you've never done that I highly recommend it because it was it was quite awesome also attended the State High School league individual wrestling meet uh to watch our very own Nate Woodward compete that was that was quite an experience uh Die Hard wrestling fans down there I can tell you that and I don't know a lot about wrestling so for me it was really fun to experience and to watch um so I was I was thankful to be able to do that also spent time in our schools connected with our employee groups including the very first meeting of our District's coordinating Council which I'll discuss later on tonight collaborate with our

014principes directors and I submitted our 24 25 achievement integration plan to mde that was actually due a couple days ago but we got it in a little early top of those items site and District leaders have been working closely with uh Bridget Peterson to construct the budget for uh 2425 which includes Staffing allocations at our school and District sites overall been very busy but also very productive and the work is setting us up for great things ahead before I forget I want to wish our students our staff and our families a wonderful and safe spring break which will take place next week did I make it in five minutes sure close enough but we're gonna see right now I'm gonna ask if there's any questions for Dr R on anything that he has presented and

015again helping uh support our district and appreciate all the hard work and and and and listing of what we had all right with that we will move on to letter number six student achievement and GR our winter activities recognition with Mr Dan Pratt being our leader okay well thank you very much for having us I have some uh wonderful student athletes and activity participants behind me I just going to say a couple things before we get started I know we're going to have hockey's going to go first cuz I think Ken MacKenzie's got to go so we'll start there so um real quick just in the winter we had 27 participants in um activities and Athletics uh the spring we have signed up right now as of today 284 spring is always big with track

016with over 10030 kids um as they talk the sports and activities that are represented tonight are wrestling which be on video um gymnastics dance I'm not sure if they're here or not they wereing when we came in speech boys and girls basketball boys and girls hockey band and choir so with that I think we'll get started you don't want to hear me talk I don't have too much to say so you get to go first um my name is Mackenzie Perry I'm a junior and I play hockey at Delano um I've been on Varsity since my eth grade for since I was in eighth grade and this year we had a um record of 16 and 11 we ended up losing in the semi Joey Evans Jun um second year or third year playing in

017Delo I used to play Ina so uh it's fun playing in Delo and we ended up losing in section sem okay then we'll start back up here okay I'm Hayden representing the band program a couple things I'd like to highlight is the jazz band uh we were rated Superior at contest and we took a trip up toi state for a jazz fest in February uh and then large group also were gr Superior and our Winter band concert is tomorrow and is featuring all three um High School ensembles as well as copper Street brass I'm AR and I'm also representing Rockford High School band both seniors and um we had Sol Ensemble contests on February 12th which is very exciting because brockford was the host site so everybody was really excited about that um we've had

01828 total entries two of which earned a superior rating and six of them earned an excellent rating so that means everybody received the two highest scores that you could possibly get um and then there were some best in sight honors I was one of them um Sophia Grim Elizabeth Smith and me U we came duet and then Elizabeth Smith played a solo and it was beautiful so then we also had our allate band performance um February 17th in Orchestra Hall I participated in this as well as a summer program that extends into the winter and all the All State best of the state get to play together it's very and then we have our band inquire tour which is to Louisiana New Orleans specifically we're going to be able to play in the Armed Force

019retirement home in Mississippi and other performances all right I'm and and I we're representing speech um high school middle school speech team um I'm a freshman and this is my third year um I'm in Duo and then next but oh couple highlights I think we've been going on for a while um we especially with the different events that are like manyi inside speech and so we all contribute to our own events and we've been placing really well this year um some the finalists some who are just trying the best which is great and so overall it's like speech is really helping advance and change the way that people can VI on life and how they can get their ideas and view points across without being disrespectful and it's just really fun to grow in that

020my name is mie Lockwood I am a freshman this is my third year in speech I am in do interpretation with my sister Natalie and we are out of students in speech for uh middle and high school uh we have been promoting speech for the past three years to our peers and it is a great opportunity to be in because it helps you with understanding with public please speaking um I have this issue and now I can uh publicly speak to all of you my name is McKenzie I'm in seventh grade it's my first year in speech and I'm in Duo not interpretation humorous interpretation as a middle school student speech has helped me express my viewpoints effectively so I can make a statement while I'm still pretty young I feel like most teams try

021to fit in we are all obviously made different yet a lot failed to embrace it because we're scared to be ourselves speech has helped me express my gifts and talents to the world around me and I hope that as I continue participating in speech that speech is just a stepping stone to becoming confident in all that I try during my school years and more years to come yes this is fishing up the spe season we're coming up with sections um coming back from Spring Break and we're really excited for that [Music] yeah next year speech goes last it's all about and I've in choir since middle school and I've always I've always loved doing it um it's more kind of like a family there because everyone who signs up wants to and it's a really

022inviting environment all right I'm Emily rice and I'm also a sophomore I've been doing choir since elementary school and this is my second year in the High School choir and the Chamber chire oh um my name is Sarah I'm a senior this is my first year inquire and I'm actually just in chamber but I've been wanting to do choir for a while I just put it in my schedule so as concert choir we went to large group contests in Howard Lake and when we sang there we ranked excellent which is the second highest ranking that we can get which we're extremely excited about because we worked very hard on that song sure um we had solo and Ensemble contest in anadale and we had 10 entries performing a either a solo duet or our small

023group which is a chamber nine out of 10 rank Superior and it's the highest R possible and then one entry got excellent which is the second we all got and chamber so our final concert of the year is Tuesday April 9th and I feel really excited about that concert because we have been working on these songs for a while and it since we get to pick our songs um for chamber choir and for regular choir I just I like to sing them more because I don't know it's just more fun to do when you have some choice in the matter and my last thing to say is we had right County Honor Choir January 6 and six of us choir students went there and we were represented we represented Rockford and we were chosen to

024perform there and we performed just some amazing songs that kind of blew our minds we actually U performed one of them in contest and we were The Sopranos percentage and that's everything we' got I'm this Jake and T we were the three seniors for the Rockford basketball team this year uh we went 500 in the regular season and got three rounds in the playoffs before getting knocked out by Minneapolis St yeah and I think a big part of our success was just our preparation for the season so we put a lot of work in in the summer and just having guys in the gym like working out and looking to get better and I think in practices we just like built that environment of like coming to practice work and just like pushing guys like

025past their limits basically competing with each other to get better and I think that's kind of what drove our success this year um I'm Ellen gy I'm Sarah um this year for basketball we had a new coach Kirt Thomas um our record wasn't too good but we had our first seal home game um unfortunately we lost on second round but overall our talent on the team was very good yeah our record match the talent we had on our team um something we enjoyed about this season was the culture the girls created and the family we all made together um the off and expectations are and were helpful in furthering our basketball skills which was nice and we ended we were enrolled in a shooting club and that helped us become prepared for and that's helping

026the younger kids become prepared for that I know all right we picked the right night for most expensive Tech techu is here push that button love he's like I got this love it all right we have to re start it over I'll start it over okay here we go there we go not on the on the TV can you turn the volume on the TV we're getting the remote battery died volum is volume on the side techn difficulties unfortunately this TV doesn't have buttons on it cheer Gordy would you please give us a recap of the wrestling season um yeah so those are the three seniors that were there there was one manager that was a senior um so William Brony Hunter hgraph and Nate Woodward are on the screen Bradley grony was a or

027sorry Bradley Gussy was one of the managers as a senior um there no no um there were out of the nine kids that wrestled at sectional six of them made it to the the second day which is a good thing there were um four of them placed with Nate Woodward plac in second at sections made it to the state tournament and separated his shoulder within the first minute of the match at State unfortunately coming down on top of the kid so he would have wanted in my opinion um and next year They're bringing back a good group of kids and they're actually going to be hosting of Varsity duels um in January so progam will be is growing getting better thank coming from a a team of one seven years six years ago it's okay

028will s that out it's it's thank thank you all I was going to mention Nate you know going to State a couple highlights and the other highlight I think you guys offe one uh McKenzie left but uh McKenzie is our only female hockey player she was all conference but wasn't just all conference she was actually got the at large All Conference which means all the coaches had to vote on it and so um super talented young lady who um is going to be forced to be reckoned with next year so I just want to bring that up being a a former hockey player it's uh kind of exciting to see the three young men involved now they've left but um Mr Pian is a is a from a family that has not played hockey organized

029uh in this District until he he's the first one and it it if we get more of those kids playing we'll have a lot more kids over at Delano we'll have our own H we can have our own then right that'll be a that's hard but yeah those those kids those they're they're tremendous hocky players they just don't they don't play uh competitively on a team well I want to say thanks for organizing getting the students here and their families and also thank you for your leadership in activities area Dan because um it's it's it's going incredibly well in all of our activities both the Athletics and the the other activities and these kids just speak to to that and thank you great so easy to work with thank you I don't know about the

030other board members but I absolutely love having each one of the groups come in and talk I just yeah I it's huge it's nice I wish the community could see these kids present or just just sharing with us about each of their activities because it just makes you so incredibly proud to be part of this community and it's it's so nice to hear them speak of the Season that I've watched all year they're so h honest you know they're so honest about it you know what they have to do and what they've done and their season and maybe it's not that great but um it's a lot of growth from the beginning to the end thank you thank you Mr PR um moving on to 6B then is the High School principal's report we will

031call up Mr manard and is gigantic water good evening everyone it is my pleasure to visit you tonight and talk a little bit about the happenings of Rockford high school so uh when I last visited you earlier this winter we talked about in progress goals um for our school Improvement plan for this Academic Year and I'm here to give you an update on those same goals today the first goal deals with um exploring and developing two additional career Pathways in our IB program and increase access towards certification for all students some of the things that we've done both in and outside of the school is really take some visits and do some research on um the best ways to start small and focused in terms of building Pathways that will lead students to confidence on

032the job and in our research we found that that welding is probably the number one industry right now in the Twin Cities that is hurting for help um everyone we talked to said there are two or 300 welders short in their industry just in the metro area surrounding Seven Counties and so it's our hope that we can um get students interested and skilled um in that trade specifically as our next pathway as such we've invested uh funds into two welding machines that we have purchased the first one arrived yesterday and so that will be almost immediately used by our Advanced Metal students and we're continuing to reimagine the space um to create um literal space but also um different skills that they'll learn in that Metals room uh so not just welding but fabricating and

033laser cutting and those sorts of things so we're really excited about that and I'm learning fast because I have a very limited knowledge of the field so learning right along with them we're also entertaining pathway conversations in the woods construction area which is right adjacent to the metals lab as well as educ pathway that would lead students toward a par professional certification graduating from high school much research has been done in the industry with unions welding companies agencies Community Partners uh We've really hit the pavement visiting with um different uh labor organizations and learning a little bit about some of their preferences for what makes kids industry ready and there are a lot of different opinions and so we really have to pick what we think will be the desirable experience for our students particularly

034in their Junior and Senior year at our school we have also had over 12 field trips and guest speakers related to the trades and labor industry so whether folks are coming into our doors or we're going out to Career Fairs to handson um different activities I I personally took a group of students to construct now um that is a very Hands-On trade fair that you can practice you know working with mortar joints and you can walk on an ibeam and see if you can carry a big uh heavy thing um just a lot of really really that's the technical term the thingy um but it was really cool and and just wanting to get kids to think about Industries or career options that maybe they haven't thought about yet um and so taking them these

035Career Fairs and these job fairs and having folks from the industry come in and actually talk about what it's like um the way that they're able to progress in their field the way that they're able to go from field to management um it's really fascinating stuff and I want them to have a full knowledge of many different types of Industries uh not just you know that four-year robust option um it's the idea that anybody can be successful and if that's where your passion lies or your interest lies Why not start there and so uh really passionate about that and uh as a reminder that um State grant that we have explicitly says that we're going to explore um two career Pathways over the next well two and a half school years now so well on

036our way to one and again um kind of dreaming up what that second one or even third one is going to be we uh have built our building leadership team and student leadership team to create a positive and welcoming environment some of the things we've done recently we attended a regional um jost's Renaissance conference at shock High School uh we took a handful of students in some of our staff members to kind of get a little bit better knowledge of what Renaissance is where do you start how do you make the biggest impact early and one of the things we learned is some of these they call them High School cultural challenges which is an interesting term for me um but what that does is it combats negative culture in schools and so some of

037the things that we've done is our students came up with a thank you campaign to all non-teaching support staff and so they delivered gratitude cards in the winter time um we had teacher shout outs that we gave to teachers this past month we had a while your awesome campaign where you would sneak a QR uh code and then you'd type out uh why any one of our students or our teachers are awesome and I'd send a little message back um saying hey somebody thought you were awesome today um currently We're Dreaming up what our wall of fame will be and that could be anything um what what was interesting at the at the conference was though students can be of high school age um sometimes they still really appreciate little things like one of the

038ideas was a birthday calendar wall and the student gets to take their name on their birthday and have a little poster note um that somebody's thinking of them another one was um if you were present 90% or more from the previous month you know you were part of a picture collage and maybe it's the Rockford R made up of names of students who made a commitment to attend school regularly those types of things are what we're exploring um we're really excited because we have a teacher participation campaign coming up after spring break I don't know if you've heard but kind of sweeping the nation a rock paper scissors tournament and so that's going to take our Rockford teaching staff by storm after spring break that's possible we also have um been noticed regionally uh across

039our R County area um we have a safe schools meeting every other month where County officials law enforcement and administrators meet to talk about the State of the State of the school district and as these same folks go from District to District they were really taken about by some of the work that I and my colleagues are doing um really K through 12 in um taking a look at some of the behavioral skill deficits of our students and working with them on skill building plans um I'll be honest I had my doubts because you know when when a students in trouble maybe their ears aren't working as well and so what we do is we sit we talk about the skill deficit we don't necessarily get right into what they did wrong which is what

040I like about the conversation it's what thought pattern were you missing when this happened happened or how did emotions get in the way and it's really changing the conversation right when we receive that student from an error in judgment and so we work with them for about a week on a skill plan and if they graduate from the skill plan that's great and maybe there's another skill we have to work on um later on in the year but this is really paying attention to the right things I believe and so do other people from the county and so they've talked about what we're doing what is our model they want to learn more and they're very eager to share it with other area schools so proud to say that's working really well uh we use

041a cross cutting approach for all of our meetings focusing on common language that idea of student agency where they can practice Independence and quality instructional strategies so uh three of the skills and if you remember um in Avid instructional strategies there's an acronym called wicker so we worked through three of them this year talking about specifically how teachers use collaborative strategies organizational strategies and inquiry strategies in their instruction how do you use it what do you call it and how do we know when a student has mastered those skills and that has really changed the way that we approach meetings so our pedagogical team which is required by IB meets and we talk about these strategies so that's what I mean when I say cross cutting there's this agency we're involved in called Avid another

042agency called IB how can we work together with the structures of IB to fit in the strategies of avid and so we have Wednesday meetings we work in PLC to collaborate on some of these different wiers strategies and then on Monday our pedagogical team means to kind of loop loop back and how do we know we make progress and how do we need to push or let go of some other things um as the year goes on and as we're seeing some of these needs either um need greater attention or we've got that we can move on um I also do walkthroughs of classrooms where I look for certain wicker strategies and if I see it I Mark a yes and if I don't I Market no and that will inform um a lot of

043the goal setting that we'll have in future years as we take a look at further wicker strategies um training more of our teachers in those Avid strategies and so forth one of the things that I'm uh most impressed by is if you just look um since the beginning of March we did notice that there was quite a spike in failing grades and uh our counseling team runs a grade check every three weeks so we have three times during each quarter to check on student grades um it really is just sort of a a temperature taking what we noticed was that there was a significant amount of FS early in the second semester more so than the fall and so we took a look at our rocket block and what um structures we have in place

044right now how can we make our intervention more intentional it's not enough to have a kid sit in a room for 42 minutes four times a week and say get stuff done um some can and those are the ones that are succeeding but those that can't we wanted a lot more touch points and so uh hats off to my counseling team they really are working on intentionally scheduling these students with the teachers they need to be with to raise the grades it's a lot of internal tracking it's a lot of planning um it's a lot of me going in and making sure that the students are working and that the teacher is holding them accountable um some of it's very high tech there's charts that speak to different tabs on the document and some of

045it's very low Tech a student walks in gets a half sheet of paper and there's two lines and they have to write what two things they think they're going to get done and it's working very very well so students use that planning document I call it sort of a a personal evaluation right like how am I doing my work and then the teacher is the shift supervisor and they're evaluating well you weren't particularly effective today so maybe you didn't get those two things done um what we've seen is March 1st we had 330 students that were failing one or more classes today we have 134 so we've cut that number almost in 2/3 in two short weeks the idea was to push to Mid midterm which is right now um so that they're in the

046best possible situation going in the final nine weeks so they've got a shot at classes and we couldn't predict how well this would have worked but um with making some of those sections smaller putting them with the right teacher who knows the assignments they need to do and probably the priority of those assignments placing them down on paper making the Student Self accountable we're making huge gains here in the month of March um our final goal is to have students and teachers name multiple wicker strategies used and those with which they work best given the environment subject matter and learning style so um it's the collaborative strategies it's quite literally the Wicker walkthrough form that I use this is how we should be referring to things it's our instructional and curricular framework model so for

047the first time we're saying that IB is our curricular model Avid is our instructional model and where those two things coincide those wicker walkthroughs that I mentioned and I'm becoming actively trained uh later this week I head to Minneapolis for my third of a five-part series of training where I learn how to be the district director and Avid not only programmatically for the building but also digging into those classrooms and seeing how it's affecting our student learning um and ADL 4 then the fourth of five will be this summer the final training then is next fall which healthfully uh coincides with some of the things we might be working on at the elementary school as well our Avid site team continues to work on how to push into other classrooms that maybe have teachers that

048aren't as familiar with Avid to help Shore up their learning as well just kidding I one more po um we'll increase broadcast and two communication quality so as you know we mov to a monthly newsletter a lot more robust um a lot less repetitive information so hopefully you do read it which also naturally uh was a push for more social media presence and a push for relevant website updates constantly and we have worked on that on the back end as well that also means that we need to ratchet up our teacher Gradebook expectations our lateb expectations so that when we tell families no matter what the modality is that's what we're doing and that they have Clarity and transparency in that we also spend intentional time reaching out to families updating grades and developing tools

049and strategies to mechanize this process so it's it's an effort of increased involvement no matter what so um that is actually time that we took this week where I didn't have a full staff meeting I had a building leadership team meeting but that that was their work is they had to reach out to additional families that perhaps didn't have a chance to come to conferences they had to update their grades um and what I mean by that is we might be getting the new work in that we've graded but what about that student who's making up work we had to make sure that on the on the back end they were putting in the late work so that the student could see their grade rise which they have done in this um unified effort over

050the last two weeks specifically speaking of our International baloria magnet programs uh in the middle years program that's nth and 10th grade all of our 10th grade students showcase their personal projects at parent teacher conferences I do invite you to come to the high school in that front foyer we do have a window that features a lot of great personal projects um and again this is a personal passion project so we had students who did photography we had students who did stitching we had students who um painted a a sculpture of a dragon um it's really specific to the individual and um if it's something they're interested in their results blow us away and they did again this year um two teachers are able to attend the myp IV training through the mni IV partnership

051for a low cost so there's a State Minnesota IV organization that helps um aler us of trainings and um they're doing a much better job in the state partnering with um other IV schools to offer more localized training uh which saves on costs of sending people places all NP teachers revamped or rewrote their unit plans as part of the focus area in the fall moving over to the diploma program we have eight candidates this year they're involved in basketball golf gymnastics soccer tennis band choir musical Deca student council um they are involved because they have to be involved and again a requirement of diploma program is some of those core projects which include creativity action and service so you have to be using your mind creatively you have to be in sports and you have

052to give back to your community 74 of our Juniors and seniors have signed up for 175 IV external exams and the IV Grant covers the cost of those exams this year the external exams begin April 25th and they last through May 16th and another reminder um as a precursor to those external exams they have to complete internal exams that are graded by our Rockford high school training teachers those are happening right now and so students will engage in the internal exams uh as a preparation for the external exams coming up in about a month in our CP we have five CP candidates this is our F first cohort of the two-year CP program and again um taking a look at the reboot of the welding program the sale of equipment allowed for the purchase of

053those two new welders the partnership with link and electric um they will work with us to develop welding curriculum and training for our teachers and we have donations letters sent out to Community Partners to assist with the welding program if you recall um Jill and our counseling office sent out um a request for donations for our CNA program and we had multiple thousands of dollars of equipment donated so we're hoping we get the same thing from our career parners on a way to boost that um again a little bit about uh Minnesota IB in provides PD on all the IB programs through roundtables usually hosting the Twin Cities workshops and training throughout this partnership all of our teachers counselors coordinator and principal are able to access support either in person or digitally it continues to

054evolves an institution by creating more opportunities for discussion on engaging more students in the DP courses expectations on higher riger for our students and creating better systems for our teachers and students new this year um as a result there is a new partnership between the Minnesota Department of Ed and Minnesota IB then we're able to send all of our teachers to round tables excuse me and collaborative workshops during the school year for free free all IB schools in the metro area are able to benefit from the 3-day myp trainings for staff at a much lower cost we did just recently send two teachers and they'll have a Summer Conference which will be a mixture of IV training sessions local workshops and roundtables Leadership sessions and some other collaboration opportunities so it'ss on a few different

055levels someone who's new to IB that needs training someone who needs another collaborative partner and working around a a round table um and some folks who need learn about the recertification process and other sort of leadership aspects of the program and that is all I have any questions for Mr manard I have one um going back to the um beginning of second semester when you said that there were uh 300 some students that had were failing at least one class that seems like a large number to me or a large percentage of our students at the high school um is that average is that normal are we did we see some kind of uptick of um hard work or difficulties or or anything like that it's a high number um which caused us concern enough

056to kind of change the structure of how we talk about intervention specifically to Rocket block adding more structures in place for the kids that need it I would say that um it it garnered enough attention where we wanted to know what needs fixing we didn't want to ignore the problem and say hopefully they're doing better in nine weeks so um we added those structures into rocket block but also upon learning um if you dig a Little Deeper at the data it's a lot of our underclassmen our nth and 10th grade students who are experiencing yes a harder semester of high school possibly for the first time uh we also saw a little bit of an attitude change that I hadn't seen more and that was something to the effect of I'm not doing well in

057February so I'll just take this class the twoe version in summer school and I'll stop working right now and so I met with every kid we were able to identify that may have been near that remark and we talked about not giving up we talked about setting realistic goals we talked about choosing the assignments of greatest impact because it is disheartening to see a 33% wonder if there's daylight and so now a lot of those students that were at 33% are sitting maybe at a 3% so they're not quite past um that passing line but they're getting there and they're seeing gains and we're hopeful we can continue the same efforts into the fourth quarter because it's helping and I think it's also changing their Paradigm a little bit like don't give up now and

058we're not sure SCH is going to be successful if you haven't been able to practice the skills during this 18 week semester thank you my question at the same time um because it just seemed like a very large percentage of like like large like um 75% of the kids yeah about 60 60% yeah so thank you for helping to course correct that for those kids my question my second question that I had written down is um you had mentioned that for the IB program the kids are able to take their tests now and it's covered currently by the IB Grant um just as we think about our Runway going into next year um are those anticipated costs that we're going to need to be thinking about budgeting for for IB Grant you know this year

059it's awesome 175 kids are trying to which is like righted like that's good um trying to take that um test to get credit what are we going to need to do for next year or future years to help support that we've talked about that a little bit typically in most schools if someone were to be taking an AP test that cost would get generally passed on to the student who's taking a test we haven't made that determination how we're going to do that yet um there's obviously a sliding scale with you know students might qualify for free reduc lunch um most districts don't take on that that entire cost or maybe there's a a cost sharing if you will on those assessments we have not yet had that opportunity to talk about and I know

060we we've talked about that it's coming I know Jill's been involved in that conversation Paul and myself uh we haven't landed another place yet okay and I will add just in terms of financial structures with the suns setting of the Federal grant which will be September 30th of this year there are actually opportunities we haven't been able to participate in terms of reimbursables from the state and so that doesn't necessarily directly correlate with testing fees but it does for training and travel and some other things that we have used the grant because it's sunsetting um but to look at those opportunities and those reimbursables to fit them in where they make sense got it got it that's actually super helpful to maybe hear again or differently that there's new funding sources that we can apply

061for come after okay perfect thank you so what just one one question you put a lot of work into the kids was there any conversation with our staff members about maybe your practice needs to change as well that is the other part of the conversation yeah um we are using some data visualization to identify where a lot of these Trends are occurring at a higher rate and those will be conversations that we have those teach thank you thank you that's good yeah both sides of it two sides of the story exactly thank you appreciate it any other questions for Mr manard if not we can go to the next more fun thing which is the uh course change if you're will more fun more fun more opportunities so um what this boils down to is

062one specific course change um we want to add a course option um underneath uh this slide says new additional courses read plus you've already approved that at a past board meeting but I'm asking for your approval tonight for a course called math plus it will mirror the read plus course but essentially what it'll allow us to do is offer an elective course one in the fall one in the spring to intervene with our most struggling math students in a way we do this already um there is a course that's geared towards guided study credit recovery and that is currently being taught in a one section increment typically both semesters sometimes just one and what this will allow us to do is access some of those Adis dollars so that it's not 100% on the back

063of the district financially excellent does anyone have any questions from Mr Menard about what is being presented I just have a question um the the are do we already have the read plus class this year or is that coming next we have it this spring semester okay and how many how many kids are in it what's the it's in the High Teens okay would you anticipate the same type of number for the math plus we would try to keep it small and in fact looking towards next year the structure would be um a small group of students in the fall a smaller group group of students in the spring and then also uh a pullout model that will be be use utilizing some FTE from another teacher for that thank you for bringing these opportunities

064forward for our kids does anyone have any other questions from seminar before we take action so this is an action item for a request to I have one question because you kind of answered it but maybe just a little bit more um like adding in the math plus and all of that we can do this what you're presenting with our kind of budget constr resources moving people around all of that I would say that in a nominal way it's going to save us money because right now we're paying a teacher FTE to do the same thing got it thank you where you said it's going to be supplemental with what we have in the ads the ad formula yeah excellent thank you thank you so much this is an action item presented to you so

065I'd appreciate a motion for the 2425 course request I'll make a motion to approve this thank you Miss Johnson and a second second thank you Miss Edwards there been a first and a second any further discussion seeing none all those in favor signify by I I post and that action carries thank you Miss very much Mr manard uh moving on next we do have Mr Huber in the audience I see I'll bring him forward for the DECA field trip request came alone today yeah nobody no assistance never have too many kids so yes awesome hi good to see you guys again it's been uh nearly a month since I've been here so before I dive into my request here I want to share some highlights from our state request that you guys so graciously granted

066a month ago um here is a list of all of our state competitors you can see in that big selfie there with taking that that's everybody who attended State there 41 students um and then up at the top there on that top portion you see all the students who finaled um they made it to the top 12 within the whole state which goodness it's a it's a an accomplishment to make it to State not to mention to the top 12 in the entire State and then of course I'll share some really significant wins here on the next slides starting with I'm extremely proud of these two you saw Ain just here a moment ago speaking on behalf of band she's our NHS co-president she's in a million different things uh but obviously a high achiever

067here she got fourth place overall in the State uh for her experience in Quick Serve restaurant management um essentially running what it what does it take to run a fast food type restaurant so she's given a role play She performed really well in that that in accordance with an exam that she had to take so that exam score plus that role play she got to Fourth Place overall as well as Mr Eli Von Holton who got second place in personal financial literacy again second place in the entire State uh certainly those two are deserving of those big honking trophies I've never even my biggest trophy I ever got was a little participation trophy got KCK ball and I wasn't even good at kicking the ball um in addition to that so these guys I highlighted

068on the it's first ever Rockford Nationals qualifiers we've had people qualify for Nationals through other avenues before you can write a big huge hunk in paper about the school store um there's there's other ways that you can make it there um last year we had a couple who qualified within the top 12 but then we have people above them elect not to go so then they got bumped up this is the first time Rockford's ever had two people not one but two people qualify by being a top four competitor in their event so that's big news for usol in addition we do have some of those other ways that people have qualified so Anna and Chloe over there on the left they wrote that big honken paper about the school-based Enterprise and is actually our

069vice president of sales this year meaning that she ran the school store from the student perspective so she did a lot of partnering with the boosters she was the one scheduling people making sure training was in effect that we did inventory um just a lot of great work from her and and Chloe working with her on that paper on the right side the emans Hannah and Sophie they wrote a paper about our Thrive efforts which we talked a little bit about last time this was the first year that rock R Deca has taken on the Thrive campaign um which is a huge undertaking and I don't even want to bother going through all the different steps we had to take to achieve that status but it is something that only 18 schools in all of

070Minnesota achieved and that also uh Nets us some Nationals allocations uh our role-play top 12 finalists we have Gwen Keller Tristan Faber and Anna again um for marketing for her um Tristan I'm really proud of because he knew absolutely nothing about accounting before coming to my accounting class learning everything that he did and still made it to top 12 in in state so that's very uh gratifying for me as a teacher um in addition to role plays uh we had students who completed projects these SE are not only 20page papers that they had to write but they also had to complete a full project so they were doing things like Gant charts and um uh risk management uh analysis so it's big projects uh across the board and we had so many make it to

071the top 12 uh so really proud of these guys for their Community giving project their sales project and then more project management Business Solutions and Community awareness that Community awareness team on the right Jo jine even Emma they are particularly impressive as ninth graders they've never been in Deca before they knew nothing about Deca not only did they dive in with the into the deep end by taking on a project but it's their ninth grade year they've never done this before and they made it to top 12 so super impressive um they will for sure be Nationals qualifiers in the future um a couple other special Awards Kennedy and Grace they were my President and Vice President um so every year we get to nominate uh outstanding students from our chapter and so the amount

072of work that those two have put in it's been um just incredible they're they're terrific leaders they've done so much and they've they've placed in state and did did really well from the competition side as well and then if you'll excuse my wonderful Photoshop Photoshop skills on the right there that's uh that's my award that I I snuck in there I won an outstanding advisor award one of I think six advisers the state to do that so it's been really gratifying over the past three years to build this up from like what am I even doing with DEA to okay let's build this a little bit and now the third year to be recognized for my effort so little little shiny moment for me too so the reason why I'm here um ICDC International Career

073Development conference this is nationals for our Deca campaign there's a few pictures of us last year at Nationals on the left and some of our winners from this year who will be there um this is is going to be in Anaheim California uh our chapter the Minnesota Association is charted to stay at the Disney's Pixar Place hotel for five days and five nights um while there we will compete in all of those events that I just mentioned a moment ago and due to our success with our Thrive campaign we'll have students participate in the Thrive Academy where they will um pair up with other um Thrive award-winning chapters and share best practices so hopefully they go to that they learn some skills it'll be led by some longtime TCH advisers too who will share some

074ideas and Thoughts with them as well and then our team that wrote the school-based Enterprise paper they'll go to a separate Academy for school based Enterprise stuff and try to take some lessons back from that too so really great event that we're able to do some best practice sharing and glean some good ideas to hopefully bring back to Rockford um our Awards ceremonies and competitions would be at the Anaheim Convention Center Center um included in our registration is two nights at Disneyland and then I'd probably on one of the nights that we don't go to Disneyland schedule some sort of all day Excursion maybe swing over to La which isn't too far away and hit up some of the hot spots around there we'll see we'll see how how much energy we have by that

075um from a funding perspective here's a bunch of big numbers that uh you don't need to know too much about uh the big thing that matters is in the bottom left no cost to the district so we will will go around and do a big round of fund uh fundraising here to uh try to solicit some funds overall I anticipate the chapter through our fundraising efforts contributing around 7,000 maybe a little bit more and then each individual student uh probably somewhere between $600 to $900 that they'll contribute but of course then the big message to you guys no cost to the district if that sounds good go ahead and take your vote otherwise if you have any questions straight to the point does anyone have any questions from she um looking at I'm just pulling

076up the district assessment calendar sure oh yeah so there's one thing that we did work around um IB testing um there's an IB test just the moment the day before or the day we would leave and an IB test the day after we would uh or the day we would be getting back and so I'm timing the flights so that we will be able to take our IB assessment in the morning on the 26th and then in that afternoon or evening we'll fly out and then for the one possibly two students taking the IB exam um when we return we're working it out so that they can maybe leave a night early and come back and we'll set that up with the parents make sure that the traveling is all set up and I'd be

077driving them to the airport getting them hooked up with the airline and the airline would take them from there to make sure that they get to where they're going to be but that way they would get back a day before so that they're not rushing back and trying to get to the test scene and be exhausted and time delayed and all that stuff thank you with Mr berard's 175 kids right like High Flyers High Flyers the these are kids that are going to get A's in every class no matter what you do to them you can put them in a iron maiden and they'd still find a way to get an in the band I I don't know if they could play instruments in there maybe some of the flute type ones all right so

078there there is a uh action item for us the IC DC trip request um I would appreciate a motion I'll make a motion to approve the DECA ICDC trip request thank you Miss Johnson there's a first and a second second thank you Miss nean there has been a first and a second any further discussion or question see none all those in favor by I I opposed motion carries thank you very much in in question I thank you uh next item is the Deep Port field trip and Mr bson all right there we go uh well hello again um here again this month uh but this time I'm talking to you about deepage uh deepage is the experience that our sixth grade students at for I believe this is year 27 if I'm not mistaken we're

079one of the highest um longest running trips up to depage um this year's trip is scheduled for September 23rd through 25th um we always go the third week of September we have the beginning of the week because Royalton has the end of the week and we've asked a number of times we still can't get that Wednesday through Friday so that's why we are Monday through Wednesday um this is just a little bit about deep Portage um deep Portage is one of a number of different um Outdoor Learning Centers in the state um why we landed at Deep porage a long time ago um was a b kind of so us on the experience um why we've stayed there is it's really the right size for us um I'm very protective of the fact that when

080we are at Deep porage we're the only school there um when you go to some of these reg facilities and Bluff a wool fridge our side School we'd have two or three different schools there it's it's just a different experience so when you're there if you see a came in the hallway he's the rock from trip um St member so on and so forth um trip details so we leave on a Monday morning um early not early 8:30 we stay Monday night Tuesday night and then return home on Wednesday we're here by 3:30 it's after the bus has come um but that's kind of the experience we do since 199 97 everyone is welcome and everyone is encouraged and this is um a challenge it is what I spend a lot of us spend a

081good part of our September doing is figuring out all the barriers um to get these kids up there and these barriers could be Financial it could be a kid who's never left home before it could be um some medical issues it could be I don't like the food you name it we have seen it and probably have dealt with it um that being said this is in my opinion the Cornerstone experience of rocker Middle School um it is easily my favorite part about teaching hair period um and it's something I'm pretty passionate about um but it does have um some challenges along with it while the kids are up there um 90% of the time is outside there's nine different classes they take I won't go through all of them some highlights are canoeing um

082CH base is a big one um they learn how to use a compass some of them learn how to use a compass uh they learn that together kind of list in directions kind of don't and then they're kind of sent off on their own with a radio and a compass to find points in the on um those who have listened do really well and find all the points those who don't listen um may not find all the points um may think that they are super lost and they're never going to see home again also we can usually see them from where we are um but it is it's um this will be on the next slide but we call it challenge white choice and I think that's a big part of this um it's a

083big part of pushing kids just a little bit out of their comfort zone um in a safe Manner and I tell the kids are you can find me if I'm lost like you'll find your way back don't worry and we could walk right to you if may be um the rooms are dorms uh dorm style there's always question like the the kids kids can be T it's not um it's kind of a college campus but not like a super awesome college campus um the rooms are anywhere some six to 10 bunks in them um there's always a lot of questions around is there a a private bathroom yes is there a private shower yes all those have doors on them um but those questions definitely come up and then meals and snacks are included um

084meals are no more of a challenge than they used to be um we are dealing with a lot more just food sensitivities and food allergies and all the things deep Porters has always and just phenomenal to work with on that so um that hasn't been too much of a barrier yet um student expectations while we're up there um follow School District policies regarding behavior usually usually behavior is really well um at deepage um we talk a lot about this leading up to the trip I don't want to call your parents at 12:30 I don't want to be sitting there when your parents have to drive three and a half hours of dep Portage to pick you up because you made a p Choice um we've never sent anyone home don't tell the kids um it's

085recording right um but there're it's definitely um they do a good job up there um challenge by choice again rock wall is another good example sometimes you'll have a kid literally just put the harness on cool some kids climb to the top with a blindfold on as fast as they can um it's kind of all over the place um more of a challenge um not just at De forage but just in school in general cell phones um I'm pretty insistent cell phones stay at home we have phones up there there are ways for parents to get a hold of us if they need to there's phones of deep Portage um there's just no reason for a cell phone in a students pay period that being said it is always a challenge um to try to

086keep them from not coming up there um non-negotiables these are my non-negotiables so rule as you may um school nurse um I'm pretty insistent upon bringing a school nurse up there it's worked out the last couple of years that we've had um the last two years we've had a parent um who was also a nurse employed by the school district attemp um the year before that we had the actual school nurse so having that system built in for me is phenomenal um our nurse back here Natalie and then Becca they prepare a huge binder for that whoever the travel nurse is to take along with us with all the meds and all the things and everything that we need to be successful up there um especially with you end up having some high needs medical

087kids um I just I really lean on that school nurse being up there the other is a school counselor um both Molly and Ellie have both gone for the last couple of years with all the things that come up up there whether they missed home or this or somebody took my camera not actual camera the disposable cameras that wish they still didn't bring up there um they're they're immeasurable um help up there it really is um so my non-negotiables but that's I'm pretty bushy on uh now we get to funding this is another challenge and it's we've been trying to put some stock gaps in the last couple of years on this um so for the students they can fund raise themselves um for the butter braids and then just recently um the Education Foundation

088their spring catalog fundraiser that that money those students earn go directly to their steep forage account so this year's fifth graders whatever they sell to educate from Foundation that goes to their own deep forage account which is awesome um we currently have um on a separate account this was a fund to need last year at the foundation dinner there's about $7,000 in scholarship money available in that also um the have the outdoor school for all bill passes which is just recently starting to get a little bit more attaction they have I just checked it a couple days ago um they have people that have now signed on it for this year so we'll see where that goes um that being said think it's on the next slide here oh do I have it on that

089it's we had to raise amount this year so in the last two years it's gone from from 150 to it's 180 right now um deep porage last year was 135 their cost to us we haven't received the amount yet for this year it's going to go up I can almost guarantee it and at um that will cover most um will probably still have 20ish per of kids on some form of scholarship could be a partial could be make payments could be a full scholarship it all depends um and Paul wara handles all those so um this will continue to be a challenge on the funding I was really excited to hear um they have the opportunity to fund r or themselves through the Educational Foundation so we've had kids sell I mean I told them

090if you sell 30 Butter Braids your paid for uh butter is a great fundraiser by the way so um this was actually left over for when I um present to the families um again the cell phones please leave them at home um I have a phenomenal staff that goes with us it's a staff that's gone up to De Forge for a number of years a very strong sixth grade staff um we have parents that go with us um we bring along eight parents usually it's usually eight groups next year um the number number should be so we 94 96 fifth graders right now we're hoping to bring 110 maybe 120 we'll see how it lands um with sixth grade next year but that will still be well within de portage's um capacity so to speak

091so with that are there any questions um related to deage any questions Mr no very good uh thank you very much appreciate your work and effort on this um this is an item for action for the Deep Portage for field trip approval I would appreciate a motion I will make a motion to approve the uh deep Portage field trip for the Middle School excellent thank you so much Miss Neil and had a second second thank you Miss Edwards there is a first and a second any further discussion or question seeing none all those signify by I I the post and I'm going to an exstension thank you very much and motion carries can I make a comment absolutely having had the privilege of chaperoning a deep page trip for one of my kids it is

092a pretty amazing experience and the amount of growth that you see in those kids from day one to the time they all go home is like it's exponential like you can't like recreate that anywhere else so thank you for your dedication to making this a thing a real thing for our kids in this community and accessible so thank you excellent thank you so much appreciate it uh next item letter 6f learning and Innovation report um for the month of March and Dr rid Hoover I'm going to ask Miss Jill Gordy to please come forward as Jill um has been selected as our summer school coordinator board this year oh wow all right so I'm in a different role than I have been in the past um so as of last week I uh accepted the

093job to do this for the district this summer um so I'm just going to run through quickly and Jeff jump in in case I say something wrong we'll do um Okay so part of our rationel or purpose for summer program continues to be to serve our best students um as of right now we will be just uh using targeted services to identify our students K8 um and then at the high school level grades 9 12 we'll be using summer programming for credit recovery um kind of a historical I think you saw this in maybe last August Mr Daner presented our numbers last summer for um summer school 122 um so hopefully we can get that a little higher this summer um just to jump forward here actually go backward just for a minute so part

094of what we're doing um in a short time is I've been meeting with each building um and some representatives from each building to identify Point people to help identify our students um so my goal is to have all of our summer school programming numbers identified by mid to late April um that selfish on my part because we start all of our testing in late April so I need to get things uh moving um one of the things I talked to Dr Ry hoer about this year is to um try to line up our summer programming as as best as we can so as of right now we're looking at the high school the middle school and the elementary lining up um our summer programming in June um uh same times at each building we can

095have school on June 19th the federal holiday of juneth um I did not get an opportunity to add Maple Hills on here before I sent this to I did meet with them on Friday and we'll continue to run our programming out there in July so we did that L be similar last year um July 22nd through August 15 and we'll do that from 9 to 11:30 this year um they're super excited to have us again and I don't know if any of you have ever had the pleasure of going out during summer school I have and it's um it's super rewarding and the kids are so fun um staff gets really excited and there's a lot of volunteers so Jill is really thrilled to be working with us again um we will run Middle School

096out there as well last year we ran it from noon sorry noon to two the same time frame on July 22nd for two weeks so we'll work on getting our numbers for that as well so we'll still be um looking at that esy and special Edward meeting this week yet so we'll have some some of that information to you next whenever wants to have us talk about that um here too far please yell at me if you have questions um for me next staff uh next steps is still ongoing conversations um meeting with former staff who taught summer school um that's going on this week my goal is to also send out information to our District staff this week about identify people who want to teach summer school for us and then um excuse me

097finalizing our summer programming late April early May so we can get messaging out um for our families um that is really the quick and down and dirty summer school programing that I have for you right now questions that you have for me and I can certainly jump back if you have questions the slides not so much a question but thank you for taking on this role um for those who may not be familiar we um we don't have our own targeted Services Program per se which is school year um intervention work um generally after school um our fiscal host is is uh right Tech if you will and so all the money gets funneled through there our student generate Revenue in the summertime um we are looking next year to um well I I led

098this work as assistant superintendent MSU so um so I'm pretty familiar with it but how we work around uh what's called state approved alternative programs um we don't have our own um operational ALC per se so what we need to do is we need to partner often times and this is what's happening in Rockford so um we're going to be investigating some things there um to see how that might how that might work to bring things inhouse for us to do more with interventions during the school year and if we do that we'll have less kids need to go to summer school that's the Hope um you know ideally you'd like to put summer school out of business per se um most schools districts have not done that we have not done that um we

099want to provide some really robust services for our kids and it needs to look and feel different than the regular school year so more of the same is not necessarily going to get kids past the finish line so what could that how could that instruction look differently feel differently for our kids um and I'm thankful for the partner and Jill to uh take this on so um we'll be working with this together I know the principales are are um are partnering as well um then we're going to see what this might look like for us as we progress into the summer of 20 F I just have a question I know it's still super early but uh have there been any staffing you foresee have you noticed any staffing like that we're not getting as

100much staff that want that are interested in teaching it because of the unemployment I think we're hopeful I don't we haven't really um Jill's getting ready to send out those those inquiries I think from a license teaching perspective we should be fine our biggest concern is going to be our support staff IE par of professionals because of the summer unemployment um we're hopeful that they'll still want to work but that is a massive concern Statewide is can we get people to support our kids that's it's it's it's a concern at the general education level but it's really a concern when it comes to our special education students who have required minutes and um higher needs per se so I know that um that Emily siter is working uh working on that I think we're meeting

101tomorrow so um it's a great question uh we don't know yet but we're anticipating some struggles in the support staff area any other questions just a comment thankful to see this in March thank you excellent if no other questions then comments very good we will move on to 7A the current work in the healthy and supportive environment Dr ID hoer I have a hodg podge of things actually to talk to you about today so um bear with me as we go through these uh here a little bit um first thing I want to talk about is some school safety updates and then I want to talk about um implementation of rock Fury school's coordinating Council we have at least two members of that team in the audience today um besides myself and then student mental

102health which is a passion of mine uh for a number of reasons uh particularly spending two decades serving in school um schools as a teacher and an administrator and a coach and that is a um a point of emphasis for me always is is taking care of our kids um start with this one keeping School safe you probably have seen this but I'm going to say it anyway um we had a um I I'd say a really big breakthrough in the last couple of weeks here there's now Clarity around the law um around the SRO and it really goes back to um Minnesota statute and I'll just it's 60606 and this is a statute that's been on the books for some time um and it really clarifies what a peace officer uh can and cannot

103do it it it clarifies a lot of the law saying we're not going to do what was put into the law before we're going to go back and and go to this so our our SRO are going to be able to act and serve just like they would before and or if they were um patrolling on the streets none of our sro's by the way in this District anywh else have ever worked have ever been wanting to go put hands on students or to you know put in a headlocker or whatever it is but it's um it became a a pretty big issue and you know for our school district being the only District um in um hon County with with our with a deputy from henan County Sheriff's Office we're thankful um officer Burley

104could not have been more amazing for us um as a school system in what he did he he just said I'll I'll keep peeking around corners and showing up where I can um and he's a huge asset to our system and we were thankful of that but now um there's a statutory definition of a school resource officer they're implementing Statewide uniform training for SRO um they're calling that the peace officer standards and training or post because of course they got to have an acronym of course and that is going to be funded um uh by the state not in education funding but through Public Safety so we're happy with that you'll see that it did pass the house by a wide margin uh last week on the 13th and then again in the Senate on

105the 14th it was pushed back uh for more conversation with some amendments that were added one of the things that was put on there um and was removed was uh the idea of that staff had to just stand back and um watch kids break things and they did take that out of Statute but they said it's still something that can be done um where we don't have to sit there and watch um a student break uh a television set or a computer which prior to that people were afraid to do anything and it was clear the room and come back in their sheetrock missing and things like that it's not specifically stated in the new statute however common understanding amongst uh legal Scholars from what I just heard uh from the lobbyist for massp uh

106State principal Association is we won't have to sit back and just watch that happen anymore but there are some things to be aware of Governor signing the law on the 14th um I pretty much had an immediate conversation with uh Sheriff Whit and her office um to draft a prated SRO contract we actually did not draft it prated we just because we had paused the one we had we just restarted it effective today so um I worked with Mike mcel um myself and we worked with the sheriff's office down there there um really happy of how that played out really happy so we will um from a standpoint of the district we actually saved some money this year because we did not pay for our hen County SRO um both of the elementary and the

107high school uh we'll just pay the duration from March 18 today through the end of the school year which I think is June 4th and then next year business as usual um and we're good to go there um I copied Bridget on those emails so she was aware of that from a budget standpoint but all in all we're pretty excited that this has been been taken care of um and we're we're happy to we keep continue to keep our kids safe and with bipartisan support yeah like it's nice to see that yeah it's it's uh it's unusual too but we'll take it right um I'm only going to show this slide briefly here and it's not so much to talk about Alice per se because it's been in the district for a while but I

108just wanted to talk to the board a little bit about fact that we are a district that's engaged in um uh the the allot uh train Alice training our kids are aware of it as well um we're dedicated to that we work with our liaison uh police our sro's uh and and and members of other jurisdictions in our in our counties um really teaching our kids what are the the ways in which we can keep ourselves safe in the event of an intruder I also want to share on the bottom right hand side there uh the kind of drills that we do we obviously have fire drills annually uh several of them SE severe weather and then safe secure uh lock down in Alice as well so um I'm showing you this primarily to just

109to remind I guess the board and those in attendance here tonight um that we um not just the SRO piece which you know obviously um our sro's both of them um they're they're role is to keep you know our kids and our staff safe um but we also do a lot of things around school safety um that we don't always talk about but it's it's in existence and we're we're practicing those things on a regular basis um want to talk about this uh and we talked about it a little bit in the work session but this is something that I have um if you remember the the gentleman Dan H who worked on a strategic plan is something he put into place um um in a school district that I I worked with him there

110and this is a small group of people who get together to solve problems proactively before they become problems and so I I really call it the rise of shared leadership we met this week um it is our EMR leadership are building principles myself um some other folks in the in the cabinet if you will Kathy Matson um from uh learning Innovation and we really got together and talked about how we can do things um proactively and solve problems together before they become problems but even more than that creating really cool things so um again there's the reactive versus proactive but what we did just the other day is we talked about our building instructional leadership team job descriptions came to agreement so when we meet in that room for coordinating Council first thing I say

111is nobody here has a title um we're here to work together on an agenda and so speak freely and so that's our building instructional leadership team and our bolt we put together the job descriptions for both of those things um we put together an application and a selection processes obviously internal postings for people um so we're be looking for some building leaders and building capacity in that way um professional development approval process we talked about what that's going to look like um and the um the leadership and decision- making that our teaching staff is going to have on on the professional development that we Implement in the school year so um often what we hear is that wasn't worth my time you know somebody with the suit on said we're doing that today and it

112wasn't worth anything we have our boots in the ground and we're not doing that so um the worst thing you want is when you're when you're a teacher is to walk out of professional development saying that was worthless to me it can be a very expensive waste of time and we're not going to have that because our our teaching faculty is partnering with our Administration to work on um what activities we're going to be doing in in in the professional development we also talked about something called the professional day and this is fairly unique so I know that there's folks that say yeah our duty day is this to this or this to this and one of the things that we talked about is um you know and I'll say where this came from it

113it um you know we we talked about hey can we get together and have a meeting on it was a special ed thing we need some teachers to stay after school and you know they visited with Emily and said well you know it was like 20 minutes are we getting paid and um I just said I said um I want to ask you a question and you know has there been days where you've had to leave early to get your kid or pick up an appointment and maybe there's 20 minutes there I said we've never taken away any money and I said what we really want to get to is here say we're all professionals now if the people are asked to stay after for 2 hours for a training of course they're going to

114be compensated but we trust our staff we're not watching the clock we're we're not um you know doing those types of things and in coordinating Council we said let's do this um let's happen be professionals most of our teachers by the way I would say could be almost all of them work far more than what's required of them on a daily and a regular basis and so uh we're going to give this a shot and we're just going to say we're professionals we're going to be taking care of things in that way that was a discussion that we had um in that group so it was very productive um and I thought it was a great meeting uh we're going to meet quarterly and um all the notes and everything is available for our staff

115to see if they want and I'm pretty excited about it so that's coordinating Council in a nutshell sometimes there might be stuff that come up at coordinating Council like oh we don't like how something's happening at our school well there's a place to let the air out of that balloon right they bring it to gordin council we talk about it um before it becomes a grievance or something larger than that so let's figure things out together um again I I stole that from from my mentor and it worked well where I was at before and I think it's going to have a lot of uh a lot of legs here so um that's what coordinating council is and why I think it's important question yep the scope of coordinating Council just because I don't know

116all the people like who else on it is it just is it for teaching right now it's just for our liced teaching Personnel um I have toyed with the idea of expanding that cuz we have uh some other uh you know uh you know professional groups in our in our system as well the the hard part of that is a lot of stuff we talk about is instructional related and so we don't want to waste anybody's time got it thank you again this is the the the last thing on on my agenda here kind of on this hodge podge of things underneath healthy and supportive environment and again I I spent a lot of time in several different school systems and unfortunately have have been exposed and have experienced a lot of tragedy and heartbreak

117and so I prefer to proactively look after kids um versus to say boy we should have done something um want to share this with you I think you probably know that uh Cognito training is through the Department of Health um it's actually going away they're transfering something different and I'm talk about that a little bit too but that's a professional development tool used to assist in the identification of student mental health indicators all of our licensed staff engaged in this training um at the beginning of Workshop week this year very proud of our staff for doing that uh again but that that will be um the product is actually sunsetting it's not the Department of Health would like to keep it but the people that are running it are no longer going to support it

118so um that is going away however um um we're going to do some other things this here is a a uh this is in our our high school and this is a new uh Banner that we had sent to us so there's a gentleman um out of cental Minnesota named Scott reader his son uh Jackson uh uh he he committed suicide several years ago and so he started a foundation and Scott and I have become I'd say pretty good friends and we email and collaborate regularly and there these Banners are hanging in about a thousand uh different schools around the state of Minnesota but really none in you know this area or even in the Metro so he called me and said hey would you like one of these signs he sent us two actually

119and so we're one of about well I don't know a thousand schools we're talking schools all kinds of schools elementary schools middle schools high schools um but most of them are not in again in this area we have two of these these signs and and really what he's doing is pictures at all the schools and he's making a collage so proud to say we have this one hanging in our school um for any students who might have U you know thoughts of of suicide or uh any mental health or emotional distress then another opportunity came my way so Department of of uh Health knows that this is a an important uh topic for me so they contacted me um a couple weeks ago and said that this is a national um initiative here called Behavior

120works for schools they actually do it for a lot of places this is their segment around schools and I said you know tell me more in some of the states out east they're actually using this Statewide um it's just getting started in the state of Minnesota um and right now this actually gets connected to your student information system so in our case it would be infinite campus um and they've used it before this is completely optional nobody has to participate if they don't want to it's aligned to mtss um it also connects students and families with uh Mental Health Providers and school link Mental Health Resources what it does is it screens for those topics um listed there below so depression anxiety uh and so forth um it's a pretty neat tool right now because

121it's in a pilot program it's um this is year one in the state of Minnesota those three school districts at the bottom again a very large District a smaller one and then U springly I consider them somewhat of a middle middling if you will they're piloting this year uh we have been asked if we'd be interested in piloting so I'm going to be meeting with folks and representatives from Behavior Health uh works for schools here in the next couple of weeks it is free to us uh throughout the pilot program so again we'd have years two through five so four years of this in our system to see if we like it and so I'll learn more um no decision has been made yet on it um because I do want to learn a little

122bit more about it but if you had the opportunity to you know do a search on this you'll you'll find that in in many states in particular Pennsylvania this is being used all over the place so it's it's kind of a cool cool thing and there's a lot you can find on on the internet big thing I'll say again is this is um completely optional uh families um are well aware it's not something that it's done without families consent or anything like that so um it's a partnership or another opportunity to bring this form of of mental health to our our students and our families and that's what I have for today excellent any questions for Dr No excellent thank you so much great great information we will move on then to number eight with

123the steward ship of resources and we will call uh bridet Peterson and Mike mcnalty to the table good evening um I'm here this evening to present to you the fiscal year 2324 budget amendment uh you know each quarter uh budget review provides the district an opportunity to review budget variances um make amendments um as new information becomes available to us so I have taken a lot of time over the past few months to do just this um so I'm here this evening to present um my findings I guess if you will and make some recommendations to you on um what those amendments are for the second quarter ending December 31st 2023 so I've taken um the activity analyzed it and tried to do some projecting forward around where I think some line items will um

124come in to play so I'll walk through um that with you a little bit in your packets this evening you do have a um raford budget uh Amendment summary which highlights a little more in depth I won't walk through all of these with you this evening rather I will just highlight the high level uh findings both on the revenue and expense side so uh beginning with the revenue side I'm recommending that we revise the budget by uh 97,5 196 how did I get to that number there's a lot going on uh in Rockford's Revenue area remember there are four major revenue streams state aid tax levy federal dollars and then of course local dollars which are you know fees donations miscellanous revenues that type of things so I really focused in uh on the state

125aid and and the taxes so uh in the state aid my my first place is to review enrollment which you you've heard us talk about that a handful of times uh unfortunately for rord enrollment is down this year compared to where our adopted budget was last spring so last spring we um adop a budget of 1,591 kids I'm revising a revenue budget down to 1,557 kids for the school year so that's a reduction of 34 kids which is approximately $340,000 reduction in state aid um there's also another component though a rather large component of our state aid where I did increase the budget uh somewhere around 400 to 500,000 related to the Cross subsidy uh new funding stream and special education so at the time when we adopted our budget we knew nothing about uh

126what the legislature was doing related to that so I'm happy to report now all the new funding reports from mde show Rockford getting like I said somewhere between $ 400 and $500,000 so you can see in your packet where you know I'm saying we're going to reduce state aid about 19,000 but please know that there are a lot of things and a lot of variables a lot of specific line items that are either going up or down depending upon new funding streams new information um or uh reductions for for the the reduction in ADM that's the formulize based on um student numbers uh and then the other area is the tax levy that I'm asking to reduce tax revenue for us for about um $78,500 again most of that is related to uh some adjustments

127that are are frankly hard to project um that could be from fluctuations of enrollement in Prior years that uh we just can't control um and then other things could be overspending in Prior years or under spending in in Prior years so that's what those Levy adjustments are so overall like I said um asking for an amendment this evening to our Revenue budget of about $ 97,5 196 and then again as we flip to the expenditure side like I said I spent a great deal of time trying to project um where I thought these were going to um you know these line items were going to end up if we continued on our same spending Trends not all those line items did I project six months um some of them you know that I'm asking for

128your Amendment this evening um we we just know what what that number is going to be now because new information is available so after reviewing all of the expense line items or as many as I could U because there are a lot of individual line items but as a a snapshot in a point in time like I said on 12:31 I would ask that the board increase our expenditure budget by about $575,000 760 this evening leaving um our uh difference this year or our profit and or loss at um $386,500 we are still within our board policy range um by even reducing um an deficit spending this school year any questions on that was really high level like I said you have a lot of details or high level details in your in your packets

129and just want to reiterate that we did have uh time in our work session to go in detail um and Bridget I appreciate you providing us more detail at our work session that we had just before this meeting started as well so thank you any other questions or any questions I should say um or comment okay very good just thought someone was about to say something uh again appreciate it and and do like to highlight you know we thought we're at 20% fund balance going to 17% I mean so we're still there opportunity for back remind this would also be it's going next absolutely thank you Mr mcnalty so this is an action item to approve the re new or the revised budget for the 2324 uh budget so with that I would appreciate a

130motion I'll make a motion to approve thank you Miss hilstrom there has been a first can I have a second second thank you Miss neilan there has been a first and a second any further discussion or question see none all those in favor of i i i i oppos and the revision does carry thank you so much moving on than you thank you uh 8B technology report Mr kenet thank you for sitting through the rest of the meeting Mr good evening even there we go I'm going to try and move quickly through this so if you have any questions just feel free to interrupt um the things I want to talk about this evening are the one to one handbook and the fiveyear technology plan uh the results of and cyber security audit a real

131brief update on current projects that we're working on and the discussion of 5year Technologies planning in terms of funding so first off with the distri uh the one to1 District issue handbook is on the school website the link is up here in the technology Tech plan sections if you in case you want to review it uh and the technology plan is also there I intend to update it in the near future with new numbers in the back end of the tech plan to reflect inflation and Etc uh one to one repairs currently we've been doing a lot of the one the repairs to our Chromebooks uh inhouse and we haven't been charging for that the reason is because we've had plenty of spare parts and personally ethically it's difficult to charge somebody if we haven't

132incurred a cost however uh in the near future we're going to have to start building these repairs out so we're going to create a bucket in Infinite Campus for behaviors or Etc to uh report breakage uh so that the principles or other people can review it uh we're going to build the school store in campus to deal with the parts that we can build it in campus and send it out through the portal and uh start billing for parts so I'm guessing this summer or late spring will devise a parts list so that you guys can review it ahead of time so and then April end of April May I'll begin the parent Communications uh so that they're well aware of what the costs are and Etc and the final part is permission forms and

133documents are generally signed ahead of time so parents have signed that they agree to this when they get the Chromebooks uh we're going to ramp that up and review to make sure that every has seen it so cyber security highlights uh in the past we had um we had secured do our cyber security audits that was rather spendy believe around $330,000 so we and that was just every other year so we've joined a Cooperative called ecme at a great at a reduction of at least 50% of that cost and we get to do the same exact audit uh every year including we also get a lot of tools that help us to uh work the audit in June of 21 we had our first audit this was following uh the data bre and we received

134a very poor ranking uh there's a scale from about 3 to 300 to 850 and they gave us a 500 on the score but I think they were generous and uh which basically said that we had 20% more risk than the average U people doing cyber which is anyone else in America and so one of the things that resulted of course is that our cyber expenses the insurance premiums went up and in 2021 uh I think I applied for 13 different companies before when accepted us so anyway we set the goal for 619 and we had a minimum the company secure wrote out that we would need a minimum investment of 372 hours in addition to what we're doing today to do it and at that time the industry standard was 619 and a half

135so we did initiate a lot of cultural and systemic changes here at the district and when we had our audit recently uh the audit did bring us up to that industry standard of 2021 of 6 26.5 so we've made a lot of progress in terms of a change in the culture uh and generating less risk So currently a little unfortunate reality is the new industry standard is 660 because of all the things that have happened in the world since June of 2021 but we are still 1 and a half% less than the standard in terms of what they got so A Brief Review uh in 2021 there's basically four big sections that we look at and you can just see at the bottom of the chart that uh we did poorly so our highlight was

136physical controls and I hate to say that a lot of the physical controls is beyond our control it's how many tornadoes we get and bad weather and snowstorms and and the police and the crime and all that put into physical controls and and so across the board we have a lot of work to do and in 2023 the one part that we still do need work in is Administrative controls the big stuff I think we have covered but primarily the administrative controls that we need to work on is business recovery we need to we need to look at our backups which we have in the cloud now and separated but we need to actually take those backups and wipe out a server and rebuild and make sure that we can actually recover from a backup

137and to make sure that we can have another day so and not pay the ransom so uh and internal Technic controls are down a little bit but uh that's because we still need to work on some patch management and some other stuff so overall my goal next time is to hit that blue line at 660 across the board uh so you'll see some more cultural change and I just the other picture is just a brief representation of cyber security it isn't computers that much anymore I mean it's still a chunk of it we still have to protect our data coming in uh you know with firewalls and and how the traffic goes but it's really a lot of the the behavior of people in terms of password management how we secure our data uh when

138the auditor came through that person was looking at people's desks to see if sensitive data was laying around on the desk desk and you know papers and things like that and uh would write us notes to say hey we need to talk to these people how our stuff is shredded all those boxes of papers that we have that we need to start digitizing all of that goes into the cyber security audit so just some quick notes any questions on our cyber audit okay uh legislation some Penning legislation that that you may be uh interested in is that uh HF 4749 is picking up steam I got an email from oal schools tonight before here discussing it and it sounds like this one is going to have a good chance of passing and that all cyber

139security incidences that we have will have to be reported to the Bureau of Criminal apprehension um within 72 hours of occurring that's going to create paperwork us uh because we're going to have to start reporting and writing all this down and so far the incidents could be something as simple as a student comes into our office says I think my the student next to me took my password and logged into my account that's a breach even though it's pretty simple we would have to report that so things like that another HF 4581 is a bill that would mandate school boards to create a school cell phone policy and basically take cell phones away from kids during the day and the last one that I just was noting was HF 3492 which seems to be gaining

140mustard is a program for uh to promote mde to promote computer education programs which will uh which means we're going to have to invest in more technology down the road and then finally uh part of the infrastructure plan is the whole of State cyber security plan which Minnesota has just put out and they're creating a cyber security plan in line with the federal government we are included in this and the federal government includes us because we are considered critical infrastructure so uh there's a link to the very bottom of that plan if you're interested in it just some of the projects we're working on is we're working on onboarding right now it's one of our big projects we're working on when a staff comes and goes uh when they resign when they're hired Etc and

141we're looking at the whole process of what they need to become a successful employee or move on and uh we're hoping to finish that up this week and get it out uh staff handbook m not he stepped out uh he's been helping spearhead a new District handbook I put it in because technology is part of that staff training uh we started we've been doing a lot of work in Aristotle K12 which is student it's what helps manage the student CH books when they're off campus so that uh they stay in line with what they're supposed to do and for example in the middle school we have a practice of pretty much blocking everything except curriculum but in the high school and Elementary it's kind of flipped so we have the ability to do that Vector

142which used to be called sa School is something that we started in the past year and we are mandating staff is it 6 hours was 6 hours this year I think it ended up being two two okay so we assigned training for staff and we made it mandatory for all staff this was like mandatory reporters uh and Etc bloodb pathogens bloodb pathogens so because we have not really doing that very well but this year we did it and we monitored and we got 100% when it came time for reporting at the mde uh we've been doing a lot of uh MCA training we've had to uh incorporate Adobe or adobe licensing into it because MD switched to an adobe based learning system which forces us to uh license every staff person to get into it

143and F Solutions is a product that we use to train our tech people uh so that they can take classes and courses and uh saes money so they can go on and learn it instead of hiring somebody to come out and show them we also give it to teachers and such too and students if they ask uh we're in the process of website upgrades with Courtney leading the charge we just put out Raptor visitor management system recently and we plan to do a test on it on Friday on the emergency side uh to see that everyone gets an emergency call uh and what I mean by that is if someone were to come in and the person at the front desk needed help help uh there's a button that they can push that people don't

144see and it calls people on the back to get help including the SRO uh this year and the past year we've done a lot of work on EDI conversion and with Christ help and Cindy's help and myself we've done Perkins MCC Stars act we've been doing we've been requesting uh act reimbursements from the state and have been getting some funding back for act tests early childhood and several other reports uh the last couple years have been the first years that the district has fully reported data to the state mde so that is a good thing and I know as a result our uh I was told by the state that our Perkin spending should go up some because we were actually reporting all of our perin stuff which we hadn't done in the past so

145we've made a lot of Corrections to our data and our databases for that and again a lot of who those back there to Christa helping delete that charge uh data retention and rules formation that'll be part of the data governance that we need to work on in classifying our information you know is it is it secure is it public is it confidential Etc that's something we're going to be getting into to cover that lapse that we had in our in our score as you probably know we have to change out our phone system our old phone system will offline on June 30th or a little bit before uh we did sign a new phone contract and we plan to cut over on the 10th of June uh Network partial replacement one of the projects I

146have to do during the near future on the new phone system is I have to map every single port on the switches into where it goes in the walls because part of 911 is to put it in the ports so that when it calls it tells what port it's coming out of which then gives an address this room for example to the dispatch for 911 currently we do not comply with 911 if somebody calls 911 all it gives is the main line the number to the main phone and they have to show up on front and ask where to go uh backups to the cloud uh we have now put our data backups to the cloud uh local data backups as well as local so we have two complete backups that are air gap uh

147in case we get another bre and then this in the recent past I also rebuil Burr which is our transportation database so that all the bus routes all the addresses all the kids are current uh so that we can uh streamline uh transportation and I don't know if you noticed but all of it is in the portal so the parents can see what time their kids get picked up what bus they're riding the alternate routes Etc it's all on campus now and then the last part that we have to work on is the the new FCC rule which uh tells us that we need to start getting rid of all of our old analog phone lines which is called pots and old telone service so all of our alarm panels our gas meters you know

148we have phone lines on our gas meters so that they know how much gas we use every month so every building has a gas phone line and every alarm panel has at least one fire panels have two pots lines so we're not going to take all those pots l convert them into digital lines with their new phone system and that cofl will save us at least $10,000 a year in Revenue all right oh it almost worked we got one that kind of messed up just to kind of give you an idea with budgets uh I looked at our budgets for the next five years to give people an idea of what it's going to take uh to drive the technology in our district and overall and if we go out for a levy or if

149we ask for help or when Bridget starts to budget us closely uh you can see that generally not including salaries and other things which I'll get into later uh the sum is around $4 million over five years which is about $820,000 a year in in technology to run the schools the curriculum side and the operation side the $446,000 that I had earmarked for this year however I had to divert over half of that about 2third of that money I couldn't spend it because we were in shy in our budget so the interactive boards that were scheduled to go into the elementary we had some bunch of Chromebooks PA system repairs cabling Etc uh I am trying to push up in 2025 which will make that cost go up and Etc all right there we go

150so overall just so you can look at it quickly it should be in your packet as well uh on a fiveyear cycle this would be the general areas that I looked at in our district uh and the costs that it's going to take to continue these Services over the next five years so if by chance we go out say for a 10year levy um double it um the most expensive part of course is our one: one program and the one: one if you look back you can see in a couple years here in 2026 that's about $1.1 million and primarily that's because we have about 1,200 Chromebooks coming out of service so that and our PA system at that time will be in a position where we're really going to have to do some Investments

151all right real quick uh sustaining one: one uh again it's about 800 and some thousand over five years it's not all just Chromebooks it's also our software that runs at Google for Education uh Infinite Campus I think it's a dollar 50 per student uh and I put a little bit extra in there for messaging and Etc interactive boards about $140,000 to finish the elementary we need about 44 boards to finish that project out and once we do that uh we can also use those boards districtwide as an emergency so we could take the boards over and Flash something on it if there was a problem uh phones again we're going to switch over we signed a contract and uh that project will hopefully we're going to seriously work on that in April and May and

152the goal is on June 10th the Monday after School's Out pull the plug on the old system and get the new system up uh a breakdown of costs if I'm going too fast please let me know classroom amplification which is the public address system uh about 10 years ago the district invested in this when they had a bond that came out or or that they sold and the system is now about 10 years old I've got uh we have them at and somewhere up there it says how many classrooms 4 classrooms I believe and if there's 140 classrooms uh they do want to expand the program into other spaces like some lunchroom areas the cafeteria gym Etc uh however I have several that are down about 10 units down now and we've actually had to

153take some a of some special ed rooms and some other places uh to fill in because they are part of the classroom amplification program so this one we're really kind of getting stuck on uh server infrastructure the good news is a couple in the summer of 23 uh we replaced our primary mean server with grants that we received back and uh but we have some secondary servers that we're going to need to replace in the next few years so I try and get at least seven to 10 years out of servers we have a possibility of going up to AWS you like Amazon or something to put our stuff up in the cloud but I don't know that's cheap because our bandwidth goes up we have to pay more you know there's other costs so

154that'll take some really thinking to do uh as you know I got a grant to purchase all the staff laptops and replace them in 22 and I figure about seven years for a laptop so in about five years we're going to have to replace them so that'll be about 260,000 uh when we look at the laptops and some other devices uh again uh access Point there's one right there that we installed this year for this space and so that's extra um we had about 116 access points out I expect when we did a new audit of the building with the classroom changes and reconfigurations we're going to need about 130 to get our wireless across the district uh our licensing is about 47,000 just for the pleasure of turning it on over five years and

155then about $100,000 to replace it the good news is I can use federal funding for that so we can get 60% of that funding back if our freu numbers stay up uh currently we have about 40 switches in our Network that operates everything uh again about $400,000 for replace the switches I just wrote a grant today and posted it uh for $75,000 uh to replace 14 of the switches so if we get the grant which I hope we do we should uh our final cost for that would be about $28,000 instead of 75 so hope we'll cross our fingers door controls when I talked to the vendor and looked at the costs over the last five years uh they estimate that we would need about $66,000 a year to maintain and to continue our doors

156and cameras and Etc throughout the district and then finally our hopefully finally uh our cyber security costs a lot of this stuff is a lot of it's you know stuff that we have to do that's not funded so all of it is a lot of it we have to do not funding but we have to do it for different laws and mandates from the federal government so when I go through the whole thing it's about $281,000 and then oh finally uh I put down it if we had a per world it would really be nice to be able to put about $20,000 in a bucket for direct student involvement like changing out some of the lights in the theater they also want to have theater in the middle school and in the elementary school in

157their gyms having the ability to buy sound systems for that you know portable systems uh some robotics art software Etc throughout the entire year there's always things that we're purchasing and but you always have to find the dollar store you know so it would be nice if it was a perfect world to actually set aside some funds for it so again this is just the final review uh again you should have a this in your packet and uh this does not include salaries which I kind of calculated uh to be about 625,000 a year that includes myself two and a half support staff Mars coordinator the data specialist and then uh there's generally administrative costs to manage all of this uh this doesn't include all of Infinite Campus bedforms our business software applications and it

158does not include all of our curricular software I did do the gaps gabs 96 process this year it's a new accounting rule that we have to do so I do have a good spreadsheet of all of our contracts over the past several years of what so I could add up all that software that we're using in the classrooms and then when I interviewed uh buildings and ground uh James he had like15 million dollar with the stuff that that was some tech direct technology related that he was kind of hoping for then I guess the last little part that I missed that I just want to touch on is is the revenue side uh we did have a lot of funding reductions in the past year or so the IV grants uh are wearing out for

159the technology side so we have to fund it out of our budget ever you know relief funding of course is gone our enrollment is down uh because enrollment is down and our pre-introduced meal count is down a little bit uh my FCC my federal grants are down uh and of course inflation uh in my Department we did reduce the staff person a half% or 25 so we have been shrinking down sort to speak and and trying to save that those dollars copers uh we saved 60 about 50 to 60,000 by redoing our copier or contract early over the course of the new contract the phones uh it was an opportunity to redo the phone so we're saving about uh about $10,000 a year on local calls uh another 10,000 just on the cost and then

160Etc so I'm hoping to save at least $25,000 a year on our phone costs uh fishing uh we're spending about 7 to $10,000 on fishing which is the emails that people send malware by uh the federal government has agreed to allow us to convert to their system so i w have to pay the private company so we're going to switch over to that again we switched the F secure to ecme which saves us about 15,000 a year and we turned down a lot of accounts uh T-mobile we were spending about $15,000 a year on hotspots and I was able to cut the contract early uh reduce it down to about 25 hotpots which we use for business continuity if we have to B and uh not charging us unless if we stay under so many

161gigs a year so that saved us about 15,000 and this year I by the time the school year is done I think I'll bring in 60 70,000 in Grants that are not tied it just goes into the general fund hopefully I'll get it back but most likely they'll cover deficit um are you ready for questions cool you know I just want to thank you for first for everything you do in this school district because you you are a jack of of all trades and I've not met anyone who looks under more rocks for for money and and things that we can do to cut costs it's fair to say from from reviewing this and and we kind of knew this was happening we've seen other districts still we've seen other districts you know go and

162and and look at their their Tech needs you know I was just doing some quick math here it's it's clear that between um you know kind of this fiscal cliff of of of IB Grant you know Co dollars going away um you know things of that nature and the overall cost which is around 7% of our total budget is in Tech some way um including the salaries and so forth of our staff um if we're going to provide the things we need for our our kids it's safe to say that we're not going to be able to shift all of that from general fund so either we need to find another source of Revenue Andor um we won't do things okay and and Jeff the information you gave us the numbers you gave us right

163800,000 over $800,000 a year over five years also does not account for inflation and costs of items going out correct it's just correct um those costs what I did when I worked it over the last couple months is I went out and got quotes and I asked the vendors to give me quotes if we were to do these today and then like on the Chromebook side you know we got more than one from vendors uh so that we could get a a composite dollar sign so that we could move forward with that so the costs that are there uh isn't other than a couple small items like that 20,000 at the end that I threw out there uh it's really continuing what we have it's not adding to the mix it's you know it's allowing

164us to have another day as is and and our students are doing awesome and I think we're getting a lot of uh return on that investment uh the hard part as you know is technology is part of the infrastructure so and it's often taken for granted so when it comes time to replace it it can be difficult so I totally understand that and obviously a complete Delta between what we currently budget and what's going to be necessary moving forward right not not expecting the number right we all you know we can look at the budget sheet to see what we budgeted for technology going forward but obviously doesn't cover what is necessary moving forward so you know I think in the end it's certainly going to be uh a lot of reflection some right sizing

165and uh uh figuring out an additional funding source or two so that we can cover that Gap but as you can see the unfortunate reality is that I have a gap and it's coming up and so we're going to to figure something out so and I'm willing to work both ends and what I'm truly appreciative as well is it's not just asking for it's keeping going what we have as well as auditing what we are and making sure we're not continually putting money into things we don't necessarily need any longer and that that was a very helpful um thing to see and hear so I appreciate that and I also say the another unintended consequence right of free meals for all the amount of free and reduced lunch forms that haven't been filled out by

166any every member of our district right to receive it or not affects not only our title money but also our technology money right so I just needed to share that for all the folks listening to make sure you tell your neighbors to fill up the free introduce lunch form yes it's Christen nods her head people don't realize that b technology but it does and other programs I'm aware of school districts that that's a required form for every family we um Krist and I have we put it into online registration uh we put it into the portal uh We've added it to a lot of different places we've automated it and of course uh she gets the serves stuffs as well uh the direct Sears which is very helpful so any other questions comments or yeah

167this appreciations yeah no just so much gratitude so this is my second uh listen to this because we had the opportunity to hear a little bit about the at the operations committee so it was super helpful to get a preview from you Jeff on that I think a couple observations that I have one is that you know the 4ish million dollars you know um in additional let's see $4 million over the five years or double it for 10 or whatever you know really only 20% of that is is the one to one everything else is just truly infrastructure that's needed to keep the district coming so I think that was like one of the observations that I had of like oh yeah like this is this is just this is truly business as usual my

168second observation is you know as we think about about getting our kids prepared for the future like this is how it is like this is what this is how they will be and how how they will interact with technology when they leave our you know community and and go on to into the next thing so I think all of this is super important it surprised me um just the the expense of cameras and door controls annually is you know $66,000 a year that was that surprised me as like whoa that is not a cheap deal and I and I did learn uh in talking with James lure yeah that I neglected to include a 15,250 additional charge per door because he's been hiring another contractor to come out to drill the door frames you know

169to put the enclosures in and all of that so that 66,000 didn't reflect so if you were to take and add 10 doors you know additional doors you know for the card swipes um that would be an additional cost yeah and then um the other thing too because you had mentioned it just in as an aside you know the what you presented obviously it doesn't include the salaries and things like that if we did go to Alternative funding we can pull those things into that bigger picture conversation um you had mentioned kind of as as an aside buildings and grounds had some technology related operations that are not included in this to the tune of a million some odd so it'd be helpful to know and understand what that might look like to yeah for

170example uh there is a lighting board at the elementary that helps to control the lights low voltage type lights and apparently that board has been able for the last couple years and the replacement cost for that board is like $400,000 to replace that system so um that was one of them uh our building control systems are just called Compass uh you know to replace those and we talked about the sensors you know electronic sensors for the fire system uh the fire panels some of them are in excess of years you know things like that and it's all technology so yes but I do have a list that I can certainly you know include that in I didn't have time to fair enough there's a lot I just think yeah it would be helpful you know

171as we continue this conversation to kind of understand what the what the comprehensive ask might be and needs might be and I think to yeah looking at it it's like wow there's there's a lot of just um stuff that might be just at the cost of doing business for lack of a better term so thank you for this I appreciate it and Dr idah Hoover I will guess our our next steps are further conversations about what is the ask and hard decisions on how we fund or how we ask for funding to to support these things yes so uh plan is for Jeff nid provide some potential Pathways for the board um sometime here in the next couple of months and um decide if we want to you know tackle anything such as a levy

172or te Levy or Capital Brer project type of a thing um knowing the threshold for the community and and the desire to do that so thank you thank you any other questions for uh Mr Kenan no just the only other thing as you guys and I know you know this but as because we talked about an OP but as you continue to puzzle over all of this you know the risks also so understanding the risks with the choices and all of that like we can have a path of like how we technically could consider alternative funding sources I similarly would want to understand the risk of you know not doing so or not achieving uh a positive result and whatever that that fing kind of in that same ve just knowing I mean like the

173onetoone devices those were paid for out of Co dollars but some things like cop you know we've been paying them it's cost of doing business so knowing what you know what of those things are used out of GED usually in the cost of continuing to do it that way or you know finding another funing source that's an excellent point and I think to to take everything and say we're thrown at a levy would not be realistic you know there there's there's fund cost to this IE the cost of doing business and so what are those things that we know that we we might need to make choices on and potentially ask the community to make choices on as well um for what we want to provide you know for our kids and for our staff

174so that they have the best opportunity to have the the best future they can I'm I'm trying to present you an overview of all the cost and that you know $4 million over five years isn't outside of our budget I mean it's more than what our budget currently provides but you know we're absorbing a lot of it but I do know that some of those larger capital projects like the PA system that's coming up and Etc I I honestly I'm not sure where that funding is coming from and I hate to take out a loan for it so to speak because we end up paying more money in the end with interest type of deal so I want to be proactive and you know be mind so that we can get the biggest bank for

175the speak excellent thank you so much thank you all right moving on to 8C uh superintendent Mo MOA this is a continuation of our discussion at the work session uh to include a a siphon with a memorandum of agreement uh with the superintendent for additional duties taken on overseeing the department of teaching and learning as well as other uh HR related tasks any questions or discussions related to what we have presented in front of us just this was a discussion that we had as a whole during our work sessions and is also reflected in the budget uh revisions and and and information that was presented to us by Bridget as well so excellent so seen none that this is for Action I would appreciate a motion I'd make a motion to approve the mo MOA

176for the superintendent thank you Miss Johnson and a second second thank you Miss Edwards there's a first and a second any further discussion or conversation seeing none all those in favor signify by I I post and that action carries unanimously moving on to nine a Communications report Dr R yes I I'm really pleased to introduce Courtney to share um for those who may or may not be aware um Courtney doubles actually probably triples in a few different jobs here but but uh one of the things Courtney and I talked about when I first got here because you know I've come from larger systems where we have a public relations person and then oftentimes an assistant public relations person well we don't have um we have a what has now a Communications committee and Courtney and

177I and then we rely on a lot of other people and Courtney has done a wonderful job of taking the lead on a lot of things that uh people are seeing but they don't know who's you know often times doing the work behind the scenes so um I ask Courtney if she would please be um willing to come and share some of the communications work that she's been been doing since uh really since summer and I think it'd be a nice uh overview for the board and all the wonderful people in attendance tonight and listening uh our listening audience to hear a little about so Cordy if you please take it away yeah absolutely um actually super excited this year has been a lot there's a lot that's been happening and it's been really fun

178um so I got a few different kind of categories that are my main focuses social media is one of my main things obviously we all know social media is King now um so some of the new things that we're doing this year um I actually went and spoke at each of the buildings at their welcome back meetings this year here to really get my face out there remind the teachers how important this is of not only just sharing what's happening but really praising what's happening in our schools um and part of what I did with that was and I have a little one here um I created these QR code stickers and they're very intentionally this size so they fit on the back of badges um every teacher and every staff member was given this

179it's a cute little it says what it says there sharing your story one rocket moment at a time and if they scan that QR code it automatically pulls up an email they throw their pictures and a little sentence in there and it comes directly to me so it makes it super super easy for them to share those things and or leading into the next thing time spent in the events it gives them an easy place to go they don't have to remember who I am it goes to social media email and they send me saying hey this is happening if you want to come over this is happening so I get the chance to get out and into the buildings which I've found is really great also to get my face out there and I

180run into teachers and they're like oh wait I have something to send you where do I send it and so I remind them whatever but it's I think it's made a big difference in the amount of stuff that I'm getting um the last thing is a new thing that you've probably seen a few of is we're trying to do more videos videos are super super popular so just the little video clip that Jeff had done for the um Kindergarten Roundup we did one um sending off our wrestler off to State they blew up it's great so we're I'm wanting to do some more of those just little clip videos that take no time to do but make a huge impact um with that I threw in some stats so the big thing that I'm watching

181is our reach so really what we're posting on is Facebook and Instagram right now I do hope to or hope to expand that out to other avenues in the future as well but the big thing like I said we watch is reach so what reach is is the number of unique views unique people seeing these things that we're posting so as you can see I through the numbers on the left side there from 2022 through 2024 we've made a huge difference in the number of people that are seeing what's happening in our schools and I track this every month and my own little chart I do obviously I get all the information right off of meta which is what we use um to control everything basically but it's making a big difference you can see

182the huge jumps the one like in June there is some discussion of that might have been a weird glitch thing but the one in November that might not have been that was I believe a post um for one of our football players going to some St and these reach numbers actually include people sharing and stuff like that so the more shares you get the more reach we get so it's really awesome awesome to see those numbers really changing and this is something that I do hope to share with staff as well to be like hey this is what you're doing by sending me these little things it makes a difference and the consistency in posting makes a difference so I try to post at the same times daily at least if not multiple times um

183I also threw some interaction on there that is a newer metric that is being measured so on the Instagram one I don't have that other than for this year um but you see there is an increase in people interacting with It sharing it commenting liking all the things so overall it's been really good I did also want to share our two top posts on Facebook this um in the last year here actually so like I said we had that November post for the our football player there um kudos to Stacy and Dan for sending me that um and then Gerald on the right of course B there's all sorts of stuff band he is amazing for sending me things all the time um he is probably one of my top contributors of just stuff um

184but those are some big numbers there 15,000 people saw just that one post which is huge um and great for getting our name out there in the schools World Instagram we do have a lot less reach on Instagram what I will say um Facebook is more of the like I'll say parents demographic the 30s to 50s is our like Peak demographic in there Instagram is actually more the high schoolers and you can they only go back to 18 but let's be real high school and just after um so we don't have quite as many people on Instagram but I am seeing that Instagram is where our videos go crazy so um obviously our top post was that video of us sending off that wrestler it was super fun to get to participate in that um

185and that was an invite Paul Bernard sent me an email saying hey we have this going on tomorrow if you want to come out and I said Absolutely I'll be there and it was great to see um and then of course our football one again that that has been a top one and that is where that sharing comes in handy we don't know exactly who shared it but there's a high chance that the um High School Football League shared it out and that's where a lot of that comes from I think it's just his family at that you know what that is very possible exactly huge so it the sharing makes a big difference um website um Paul actually got to touch on this a little bit and so did um Jeff and his we've

186done a lot of work with the website this year um we Kristen and myself actually have done a ton of training for the buildings the secretary specifically to help build their confidence in working on the website updating things because it can be confusing and it can be overwhelming um the main things that I have them focusing on are the popups the um they're using those for conferences so when you open up the high school page conferences are coming up is the thing you click on it's right there and you have to close it out to get it to go away so they're using that more for events and things like that same with the news yeah Kindergarten Roundup was one um news um they're just kind of little like news blurbs um we actually are

187using one of them that's stayed on consistently and links to the new monthly newsletters so it's right on the District page which also goes to all the pages there's different categories that we've showed them so that way if it's something like Kindergarten Roundup where she posts it on the elementary page but she also thinks it needs to be on the District page she can have that where it goes to the District page but not to the high school and middle school because they they don't need to share Kindergarten Roundup necessarily um calendars it's fairly easy but it can look a little overwhelming so they got some training on how to update the calendar so everything's on our district calendar and the building calendars which is super nice and the big thing was updating photos they

188are more consistently updating photos now on their banners and kind of all over the place which is a lot of fun and we've found some creative ways to make it a little bit easier because it was a little tedious initially when we were learning how to do this um and we've all been learning together on all of this um one of the other things that I've been working a lot on and then the secretaries have done some in their building Pages as well as a general cleanup of the website there was a lot of information out there that was outdated um links that weren't working anymore different things like that so there's just been a deep dive into cleaning up the website in general and then the exciting um Jeff had mentioned a little bit

189we are going to be doing an update to the website hopefully this summer uh it is not bad but we want it to look more flashy more fun more engaging and a little bit easier to navigate so I've been doing a lot of work in um trying to figure out what's going to fit our district best and I'm actually working with different people in the buildings both secretaries that are working in it every day but then also I'm trying to include teachers and different just different people to get their opinions and I'm looking to get some input from outside community members as well of what's the easiest what is going to be the easiest for navigation what are the things that you want to see is the top things like is it this type of

190bar bar or is it this type of menu or different things like that so I am super excitedly working on that um and hoping to have it kind of ready to go and hoping to launch uh just before the start of next school year so we've got a lot of work ahead but I've also been working with Mary and technology and she's been a huge help with all of that um so yes so there's a lot with the website going on but it has been really good and it is it's looking a lot better already other random things that we've had going on monthly newsletter he touched on um we are I actually asked the secretaries to send me numbers and we are seeing more views on that monthly newsletter than we were on the

191weekly I think just because it's more prevalent information and less repetitive like he was saying um and then we did a lot of work too to make it easy to find the links to those newsletters so those newsletters do go on to the website they stay on there they'll stay on there for the full year and through the summer and we've got it like I said Linked In A News Post on the main page for the district and all their Pages we also actually created a linked post that is pinned on our Facebook page as well so it's right at the top of our Facebook page it stays there so if a parent or whoever wants to go find it they can just go right onto the Facebook page click on that and it takes

192you to the pages that you need so we are trying to make it as easy as possible for anyone to find this information and actually look at these newsletters so um rocket report changed a little bit this year we had been doing three rocket reports previously we decided to cut that down to two this year um we do one early in the school year and it's more focused on what's coming up for the year so it's more to promote what's going on and kind of get people excited for the rest of the year and then of course we'll do one at the end of the year with our graduation and highlighting kind of more of a highlight of what we did this year and then there's some stuff of course for coming up for the

193summer and then we did I know Jeff this Jeff had mentioned previously we had done these postcards this year which has been really fun I got to help design these and every student is getting one of these a handwritten postcard from a teacher Elementary obviously it's easy it's their teacher but even high school it's one of their teachers that writes out a handwritten note specific to them it's not generic I do peek through some of them from time to time because they do come to me and I keep track making sure that we do have all of the students included um so I've gotten a peek at some of them and they are all different and they touch on different skill sets that each kid has which is super super nice um and they'll get

194mailed to the house how cool yep so which is also kind of fun because let's be real how many of these kids get actual mail and the the cards are addressed to the kids it's not to the parents I mean yes the parents are getting them and seeing them but it's to the kids it's recognizing what they're doing which is awesome um and we are almost done with them we've got a few stragglers hanging out there they probably got lost in the bottom of a drawer or something so we are getting those back now but um and then last thing is just we're doing a lot more collaboration this year both inter internally and externally like I said getting feedback on website um social media has has been a big thing that I've been pushing

195internally I need people's help because I can't be at everything all the time um as much as I would love to it's probably one of my favorite things to do is getting out there but um I've just been leaning a lot more on a lot more people and then the communications committee has been a huge help as well for kind of building that up that is everything I had any questions feedback suggestions I will take it all that's just awesome nice job yeah I'm really appreciative of this being taken on right before we had the rocket pride which serves a purpose this is so great to have the district being able to lead and post and get those things out so thank you I have seen a big uptick on it really a focus yes

196thank you for thank you very much uh moving on then to 9B policy updates final read uh Dr ID Hoover or the policy committee does the policy Comm you want to go we I sent an email out today essentially we have several for a final reading we have one for a first reading which is uh non-substantive change from msba but those are the um the policies we'd like to uh move through tonight excellent so there are there is a slate of uh 41016 uh 506 5094 and 34r 534 R available for you this is uh action item to approve these this evening so I'd appreciate a motion I'd make a motion to approve the Slate of policies under our final read in 9B thank you Miss Johnson there's a first and a second I'll second

197thank you uh Miss hilstrom appreciate that just Mak sure yep co uh there's been a first second any further discussion or conversation yes Miss Neil in our packet um there is um what looks like two policy 416 forms I'm wondering um if one of those is supposed to be labeled something different or if it's just a it doesn't look like it's a duplicate I or is it just further information like background on it is a multiple they're it's two different ones gotta okay I'm good with that there you go excellent thank you very much much so any other discussion or question see none all those in favor signify by I I post uh those policies do carry then 9C first read for policy 406 this be an opportunity for you to read and go through

198that uh we'll bring it back next month and and any conversation or comment on that one the only change on that was uh to include staff vote was in Personnel I that was a suggestion by msba thank you so much so we'll have an opportunity bring back then next month uh moving on to 10 resolution of acknowledgement of contributions Dr R yeah I know this has been an evening we we were looking for a short board meeting tonight this has been an evening of presentation so thanks for everybody for bearing with us it looks like we're down to just the stalwarts here we got two of our wonderful employees in Mark who um man I don't know how you sit to this whole thing but thank you it's nice to having you here um I'll

199just share real quick here um because I want to get through it Rockford Education Foundation is absolutely awesome and um they have donated I won't go through all the funds you can read them there but general fund for um for theater and staging skirting uh sensory table drying record preschool uh you know the RMS inter Research Unit supplies for CNA ET sketches for the art room more CNA more CNA IV biology project more CNA um and I'm just thankful to them I also want to thank the Rockford area Athletic Association or Raw um that's a big ticket item 110,000 for the softball program for dout you know I was just I leaned over and said this to Jessica earlier today um this is a small but very Mighty community and people here Step Up um

200in so many tremendous ways and I'm going to say this thing things you don't see in larger districts happen here and it makes Rockford special so um on behalf of the district I'm just very appreciative of these donations and I um uh so I want to share that with with the board thank you very much and and echoed this is a resolution item so I appreciate a motion for the resolution I'll make a motion to approve the resolution of acknowledgement of contributions and donations as presented thank you Miss Johnson second second Miss Edwards thank you any discussion Madam clerk please call the role Justin Johnson I Amy Edwards hi Eric Gordy hi Jenny NE hi Jamie hilstrom hi res res resolution carries unanimously thank you so much then we move on to 10B uh Board

201of Education work session Monday April 1 6:30 in the district office boardroom regular Ed board regular meeting of the Board of Education Wednesday April Wednesday April 17th 6:30 at corkran City Hall I'll will repeat that Wednesday April 17th 6:30 at corkran City Hall excellent do we want to also add the policy committee meeting which would also be April 17th 5:00 here here yes correct please add that in all right so then the policy committee will meet uh Wednesday April 17th 5:30 at the Rockford District 5 o' 5 o'clock at the district office 5 six and then we'll head over to cor thank you very much uh can see board committee updates any volunteer to provide update on their actions miss nean all right um kind of short and sweet but we um we had a

202meeting of the finance committee on February 29th um went over um a lot of the things that we heard here this evening uh we had an operations District Operations committee meeting last Wednesday um heard a lot of um um previews of tonight's things as well um I went to the chamber meeting uh this past Thursday which was um very informative and it's always a delight to hear Sheriff daringer speak and to speak on topics that are important to this community especially um he touched uh not touched on but he a probably a third of his speech was on the SRO um deal and it was it was minutes before it was being approved um but um so we were able to talk about that and I was able to thank him personally for um keeping

203our Sr in our right County School our right County school um also he he spoke about some other things that um have to deal with the county as well but it was just a great meeting um I also have been still volunteering with the safe routes to school and helping our kiddos get across the highway than great job any questions for Miss nean appreciate your work here any next person please I'll go next thank you Miss Johnson I have nothing to report good for you I think first time ever in so just we just wanted she just wants to go home I went on my calendar I'm like all right I I my moso meeting was the day before our last meeting so perfect so go I'll hit I'll hit youall up with the next

204one so uh I had finance committee meeting um then I also had an additional meeting conversation with Mr mcnalty and um Miss I just bridg Peterson miss Peterson um identifying and trying to figure out uh our MOA for for Dr rle Hoover um then a board of directors uh meeting for amsd uh School Board chat with msba uh board prep call with uh Dr idah Hoover and Amy Edwards then went on to The District Operations committee where we were able to have a preview from uh Jeff kenit of our session today and then I also had pre meeting information with Northwest Suburban uh board meeting which is coming up so that's me cool thank you yep so uh pretty light month as well just board prep with uh Dr Ryle Hooper and Eric and then

205the District Operations um committee which we really truly it was a preview of the technology discussion so I think that's going to be part of the work ahe had for the Ops committee to keep talking through some of our strategies for funding and whatnot and bringing that back to the board I know we'll also probably be having some facil these meetings uh in the future too um as it relates to our elementary roofing project um and then just the only note um I'm on the finance committee but I did not have the finance committee invitation for the first one of this quarter um totally fine because I'm new on it but I'm just wondering if I could get um like the materials from the meeting sent my way just so I can review whatever was

206discussed and then be ready I do have the May one on my calendar so I'm good to go can I add one thing sure uh Saturday I went to the district uh dance recital supporting some of our uh adult staff members and some of our children um not as a parent so it was fun to see all those people there so all right uh me um I attended an msba Officers Training um for clerk um that was up in St Cloud in person nice to be person um I um also went to I've been going to a couple msba copy conversations and the Friday legislative chats I figured out what I've been filling my time with that's what it is