Belgrade School Board - June 9th, 2025

001All right, thanks everybody. I guess now that we've done our awards, let's continue with leader reports. Carrie, did you want to start? All right. I uh I know we So this week we down earlier later on the agenda we're going to be looking at auditors to hire. We do this about every 3 years. the current auditor we have has um retired and so his clients have been acquired by another um company that was created with one of his employees who is fabulous and has actually been one of the ones we've worked with the last few years and so we're going to be recommending later in the meeting to go along with that but um just wanted to let you know that um yeah Bob Denny is like 38 years of being a governmental auditor So,

002he's been around. Then, um I'm going to be gone the rest of this week due to the MASBO conference and also I'm going to while I'm there be attending some workshops on the Montana school insurance trust. And there is some information in your packets about the new health insurance trust that got adopted last year. I think it was House Bill 332 in the 2023 um legislative where they're trying to create a pool for all the school um employees for health insurance. And they have to have it created by next July, July 2026 in order for um it to to go. And it needs 12,000 lives in 150 districts to be viable. So right now they're in the process of um still creating it. They'll send out information. I think the letter said Jul August and

003September that will tell us kind of what rates would be and then we have a deadline that we'll have to sign up by um to get that up and going. Otherwise, the $40 million that the legislature um put forth towards that program won't be available to schools after July 1st next year because if we can't make the pool. So yeah, they're working very hard on it and it it I think it's going to go. I think it's going to be great. Um the big thing is some of us double A schools um participating it because we have the most lives to offer towards the program. So the 150 districts I think is going to be an easy benchmark to make because there's what 400 districts in the state of Montana. It's going to be the

00412,000 lives that are going to be the the crutch for us. So, but I think we can do it. So, other than that, that's all I have for you guys. Any questions for me? Do you offand know how many teachers are employed in the state? I don't. Was curious. Okay. It's probably a lot. Okay. Thanks, Carrie. Uh, board report. Does anyone on the board have anything they'd like to share? Rocky, would you like to begin? Yeah, I'd just like to uh talk a little bit about two two things. One is the uh senior awards night. Maybe that's being talked by Shanner, somebody else. But from my perspective, I just wanted to uh congratulate um the school for uh putting together uh a really nice program first of all. Um and uh secondly, uh the school

005did uh got quite a number of scholarships. Uh Dee gave me a total before we when we got here of $21,500 for for uh from the school from the schools in Montana or wherever uh for our kids. So that was that's quite good. And then the uh Belgrade Education Foundation came back with uh 57,500 on scholarships. 16,000 of that was uh trade uh scholarships for five for five kids. So I'm not sure what the ratio was here on the schools piece, but um anyway, I just think it was a nice group. Uh and you know we have some folks in our in the family here at the school that contribute a lot to uh the Edward scholarship is the one I'd like to highlight that contribute a lot to uh these kids as they're going

006up. The other thing I'd like to mention here is because I did see a lot of these applicants, the their qualifications and all the things that they're doing, the community service, the dedication they have to their um education. We had a number of um uh all state academic uh kids uh that um in multiple in multiple sports in multiple years. So, it's a pretty amazing thing with respect to that and uh you know I do and and we get to see all of that and see all of them with their cords and the things that that means to everybody. Um the second thing I want to talk about is the graduation. Um again uh an amazing uh overall uh presentation. did hear some people complain about it being too hot in this in the events

007and I won't say who those people were but but uh anyway I um you know again I think the only thing I would say is that it would have been good to hear a little bit more about these kids as they came up uh kind of some of the things that they did or where they were going and things like that. So that would have been that might have been a nice addition to what was done. But the national anthem had me balling and um it was quite quite a nice overall. This is a celebration. In fact, the fact that it's really hot in there probably speeds it up. But we need to enjoy enjoy our time with these kids. This is it for for them and uh you know a lot of really special

008kids on this. And congratulations to all the uh educators from elementary all the way through high school for your dedication to get these kids to the finish line. Anyway, that's that's me. Thanks, Rocky. Did you have something you wanted to say, Linda? Okay. I already commended her, but I went to the eighth grade graduation ceremonies today and so did Jesse and it was very fabulous. Also, um just to watch the beginning of this freshman year coming up and the new little group of babies that are coming into the high school. I think they're going to be a great crew. So, good luck high school. And thank you, Miss M, Miss Michilele, and all of your staff for bringing them to this point. Anyone else before we continue? Sounds good. Let's move on to uh principles.

009Start with the elementary. I believe I saw Ashley here. Nope. Yes. Good. Are you presenting or is anybody or I'm just going to go off this? I can just talk through it if you want. Okay. Because I think you guys had access to it, right? You could give us a quick sum summary. I'm sure I had some questions. Okay. Awesome. So um I'll start with reading. So K first early reading. This is where they um evaluate skills like concepts of print, phmic awareness, phonics, decoding, things like that. Um kindergarten had a pretty strong gain mid year from fall to winter. Um, we decided not to have students partake in intervention kindergarten this year and give them time to just acclimate to kindergarten. And it was a really positive experience. Those kids went from 59% to

01074 in the winter. So, that was a cool thing to try out. Um, they did have some regression in the spring. The fast words assessment introduces new skills like site words that they don't quite learn or finish learning till the end of June. So, to be expected. Um, first grade had minimal growth. After winter, we looked at that and we ended up expanding our M-class interventions. So, after students were pulled for title and academic intervention, we went back to the teachers who have those win groups, those lower groups, and gave them some more resources to better serve those kids. So, we only were able to do that from about winter to spring. Um, but we'll see kind of how that goes moving forward. And then in the spring, just K1 really K4 in general, we

011had some staffing challenges. We had some teachers have surgery and all those kinds of things. So just kind of went without intervention here and there and I think that that shows. Um but kindergarten did meet their year goal and um first grade was really close. So that was exciting to see. Um first through fourth grade we assess CBM so proficiency with fluency. Um, let's see. First grade had some small gains. Uh, reflects that their foundational skills are still we're still working on them. Um, first grade did a really good job this year of trying to differentiate individual kids. They had about 12 to 14 newcomer L students just in first grade this year. And so, um, that does impact our data. However, those 12 to 14 kids grew at least one to four percent on

012the WEDA in their um language acquisition. So, while hurts us a little bit in FastBridge, they they still made a lot of great growth. Um second grade had some slight winter growth, some spring regression, again, staffing gaps, working on MClass training with those guys to try and help those lower kids. Third grade um was pretty steady in reading and math. So, I thought that was pretty interesting. Um, they made strong improvement with reading accuracy, but not quite in fluency. So, reading quickly, but their accuracy in their words was really good. So, we're getting there. Um, fourth grade had stable performance. Their spring scores actually improved. They met their goal. Um, again, most of those students made accuracy in CBM, um, but haven't got their rate of fluency yet. Um, we had about 40 kids take

013the WEDA and about 74% of them made the average growth rate or above. So, that was exciting to see. So, looking ahead just in reading, we're um looking at digging into MClass more for our teachers, not just our interventionists. um and then using skill-based groups instead of before it was just fast bridge groups where now we give the MC class and it gives us a little bit more information on their skill deficits to give them more um direct intervention if you will. So that was reading any questions on that. Move to math. So math uh K1 takes what's called early math. This looks at the relations of numbers and operations and numerousy skills. Um, kindergarten also met their goal here for this year, which was exciting. Um, first grade took a dip. FastBridge ends up

014assessing story problems at the end of the year, and so students have to hear the problem, solve it in their head, and then give the answer. So, working on that. Um, it gets taught a little bit more explicitly at the beginning of second grade, so hopefully we'll see some improvement there. um first grade next year, we're going to give the bridges math place assessment to students who don't qualify for title or academic intervention so we can give them a little bit more strategic intervention. Second through fourth grade take a math, so it's a little bit more in-depth. It assesses skills like counting, operations, geometry, and measurement. Um second grade made some strong gains from fall to winter. Um they almost met their goal. Third grade stayed pretty consistent again. Um, kudos to third and fourth

015grade. They take a lot of tests between fastbridge and the mass testing. MAST is the new ESPback and they take that test upwards of six times in the year. So, it's a lot of testing for third and fourth grade. So, the fact that they stayed pretty consistent I think is commendable. Um, fourth grade um almost met their goal by 1% they were off for math. So, again, looking at next year, we're going to kind of look at title intervention first. will pull those groups and then try to make more skill-based groups for those kids. Any questions on math? I'm sorry. Oh, go ahead. Somebody said something. Anybody? Oh, it was me. Um, I was just curious like for math why you think it, you know, it starts out lower and then it gets strong and

016then it kind of drops off again. Yeah, I think spring is a hard time to test one, but we also test in the early May and students are still in the midst of learning all those skills through June. So, I think that there's a lot of things that kind of happen in the spring just as far as timing of testing, wrapping up a school year. A lot of those endofear tests are building on going into the next grade. So, um, we're working on trying to align bridges, which is our curriculum or a resource to then taking the fast bridge. So, I think it's just a work in progress of what students are being assessed on and taught and trying to make those things align. Does that answer your question? Yeah. Okay. All right. Um, and

017for the follow-up question, which is how you track it from grade like for example from second grade to third, what is your idea for that? I have a really great spreadsheet for that. Oh. I'm kind of a spreadsheet nerd. Um, so we have all students for reading and math and so it shows their growth colorcoded. So a lot of students actually make growth. It's just not the growth that would show up as a huge percentile gain. So it's really cool to see that actually a lot of first graders made growth but maybe are still high risk and didn't actually move to some risk. So we try to keep track of that and still celebrate those wins because a lot of kids started really low and maybe are at the top of being low instead of

018being at the bottom. What what uh happens between spring first grade and fall second grade? What kind of you have a measurement for that? So what we lose over the summer? I think first grade just in general is a whole thing to be totally honest. um going from kindergarten to having so much support and you know kind of handholding to first grade is a lot of on your own more independent and then second grade's very much so that way. So I think we see actually a dip at the beginning of second grade and then we start to see it get better again. Yeah. How do these numbers compare to previous year's numbers? Um I think we've made it it's like this. It es and flows based on the kids that we have coming in. I

019think Saddle Peak is a little bit unique in the sense of I think I looked at our mobility rate for school of character uh application and it was around like 2%. So it's about 75 kids come that came and went this year which is a lot. Um and about 40 to 45 kids who speak zero English that we got this year too. So it es and flows based on the kids that we have I would say. Okay. Is there a way to break the data down between kids who are consistently here and ones that aren't? But yes, because I think it's important for us, like I said, Saddle Peak's just kind of this we're just our own place and so we see a lot of different needs in kids and in and out. So, um,

020yeah, we have some some things to look at that. We have to wait until next year for that. I can send it to you. You just let me I've been chopping at the bit to see this. I think we all have Yeah. What do we compare with like n national averages? I don't know. I'd have to go back and look. I can't think off the top of my head. But know we're not as high as Story Creek. I'll tell you that. But we're going to get there. Any other questions about that? Okay. Attendance. Um so the first semester we had an attendance average of about 92%. Our goal for the year was 94. Um so uh what the counselor and I did is we met every six weeks to look through attendance and see we

021flagged students initially who had been gone six days in the first quarter and then kind of added three days after that every six weeks. Um and so we sent attendance letters home every quarter. We had attendance meetings with parents and students to work through barriers who had been gone 10 or more days. Um the mini jobs have been a huge success for getting kids to come to school. When you give them a responsibility and you expect them to show up, most of them do. Um and then we ended up meeting with Thrive and uh Courtney Ozanne, our McKenna Vento um liaison here every other week to talk about all of our kids who um need more support because a lot of them just couldn't get to school. So, we were able to kind of work

022with them to get those kids here. Um, which helped address some of that attendance. So, for the second half of the semester, our attendance did go up from 92.02 92.37. So, um, but as individual grade levels, they all went up. They were at about 91% at the end of December and at the end of May, they were at about 93. So, I still think we made some pretty good progress on attendance there. Any questions on that? Okay, last behavior. I do have a question on it. What are the reasons being given that the students are are not attending? Uh most of them are unex a good majority of them are unexcused. Um some of them say just per mom like they don't give a reason. So we just try to meet with any of them

023who have had a significant amount of absences to try and figure out why if we can help. Does that make sense? I guess. Yeah. Yeah. It just depends what the parents are willing to give us when they call the secretary. Yeah. Thank you. Okay. Behavior. I think I'm the most excited about this one to be honest. Um we had a 37% decrease in behaviors from last year. So we had about in total 195 students who participated in one of the different events such as disrespect, physical aggression, all of those things. Um whereas last year I think we had double if not more than that. So, um, we're really big on behavior, hence our school of character initiative. So, all parents are contacted. We follow up. We follow our tiered behavior system. Um, and I think

024that that's paying off. Um, some other things our school has done is we do monthly schoolwide character initiatives. So, bucket filling with some February was our best self. Um, May was perseverance. So, kids get recognized every month for just doing the things, not with things, but certificates or shoutouts on the announcements or things like that. Um, we started doing ruler Fridays once a month. So, just an extra way to build in some SEAL. Um, my counselor and behavior interventionist do social skills groups. Um, and then we have what we call a pause program. So, the big green pause. So, students who fill their chart in class get a big green paw every other Friday. If they meet their goal, they get a pick out of the treasure chest. We make it a whole deal. And

025so, um, I think it's been really positive. So, any how many students are multiple events? A lot of them. A lot of them. Yeah. It's usually a good chunk of the same kids. Yeah. Anything else? Any questions for Ashley? Um when there's a behavior uh event um and you're following the follow-up communication and all that stuff. Uh who at your school is the main one in contact with those parents? Depends what the incident is. So if it's not major, it's my behavior interventionist. If it require if it's major then I call. Yeah. Yeah. You're welcome. I wasn't sure if the board wanted to ask the other principal specifics about their statistics. Did we want to bring them up or did you have any questions for the any of the other two principles? Well, we can

026they can go they can all Yeah, that's my point. Did you want to have them come up individually? Yeah. Yes. Then we'll do it. Okay. Any other questions for Ashley? Congratulations on that. Oh, thank you. Appreciate that. Ashley, thank you. Okay. And I guess Natalie's next since you're second on the list. So, a lot of what you will see in our is very similar. Um, so we can start with our kindergarten and first grade early. um we saw kind of a similar gain from uh fall to winter for kindergarten and then a dip again at the end of the school year. So one thing to consider moving forward is we're going to start our kindergarten intervention groups. Um we like we're going to have a meeting to talk a little bit more to talk a

027little bit more about that because when we start interventions we're important for our kindergarteners. Um our whole first grade class did in class. So I know Ashley talked a bit about that but uh typically we would just have students in intervention doing in class but we had all first grade students try it with their teachers and then we were able to create groups based off of much more defined based on skills and just where kids bridge would have placed them. My first grade teach swapped students and next year all of our grade levels will be swapping students. Um even though first grade did not meet their early reading goal, they all did they did demonstrate growth throughout the school year from um fall to winter to spring. Uh in kindergarten there was that initial growth

028um of 16% which is huge and then there was that we need to work on that to figure out what might have gone wrong this year to try to help out her next year. We also um like Ashley shared we lost an interventionist in the spring because she retired and moved prior to the school year and it took some time to fill that position. So we lost about I'd say four to six weeks of intervention with training someone new to do the testing and all of that took some time. Um hopefully we'll have that for next year. The other thing that I just like to point out with our reading is that this is our first year here using our resource which is CLA and typically it would take about three years to see the

029full potential of that program especially as young kids start and are familiar with the language and the way it's taught and things like that. Moving on to first and fourth grade or first through fourth grade. Sorry, moving on to first through fourth grade CBM. Um, first graders don't start taking the CBM uh fast bridge test until the winter and they did demonstrate growth between winter and spring. Um, again, the first grade was swapping students for that win and we feel like that was beneficial for them. Um, second grade is very efficient. You'll see that they met their goals pretty much across the board. they are very efficient with using the district resources. Um, and like that group of teachers is just very dedicated to making sure that they're using resources uh with integrity. Um, third

030grade was almost at their goal at winter and then we need to make sure that in the future they don't regress like they did this year. Um, just kind of a summary for our students who are learning English as a second language. We had 13 out of 15 students made the expected growth of at least 0.5. Um the average growth that was made by our students was.993. So much greater than that 0.5. And we did have two students who tested out of uh tested out of that program based on their WEDA score. I have a question for you Natalie. Only Laya understood what you just said. Can you elaborate on that statistic? Yes. So basic basically when we uh have students who are learning uh English as a second language uh we pull them during

031our win time or intervention time and to either uh newcomer groups or just kind of like more groups working on their language acquisition. Um and so this test that's specifically given to those students is called the WEDA. And so that's basically how we determine what level they are. And so we had two students who basically have shown that they are proficient enough to be to no longer be pulled out of out for those groups. And then um again that that growth is expected to be 0.5 and then a lot of ours made the growth of.993. So just like more than what we'd expect to see in a year. The highest is a one. Yes. Thank you. Okay. Uh kindergarten and first grade early math. Like Ashley said, that's the the test that our um little

032ones take and then the older ones take uh a math. Um this is our second year using bridges. So like I said with our CQLA for uh language arts, this is our second year with bridges and again we'd expect that to take about three years. Um I used to teach with bridges and I know that it's there's a lot of language and stuff that changes and the way that the program runs uh is different than what was typically used um by many school districts before. And so having that time for them to work on workplace games and um and doing number corner and things like that builds yeartoyear. So I'm hope I'm really hopeful that in the future we will see um a greater impact of the program. the skills assessed in the fastbridge test

033do include more word problems like Ashley shared and then and then in the spring and um that could be part of what led to this just it's um something that our sack team plans to talk about and also our um earlier there was a question about like how do you track kids who are consistently um not meeting grade level expectations and whatnot. Another thing is uh the SAT team. So teachers are very aware of where their students have performed in the past and then they bring them to SAT if they're performing under the 20th percentile. And so then we can really work on that and we keep uh documents going from year to year to help support these kiddos. Um in the second through fourth grade math, our second graders and our fourth graders met

034their goals for math. The third graders came in um with many of them at or above grade level. And then there again was that dip for attendance. Um many of you probably remember back in November when we had to close for neurovirus we had a few barriers to our attendance this year including um we had quite a few cases of influenza A later in the winter and spring as well as pneumonia. We sent a few kids up to the hospital who were even admitted for pneumonia this year. Um to answer your question about what do parents report to us typically what we have reported to us would be illness. Um, I did get some push back on the attendance letters we sent. They're like, "Well, you want us to stay home when our kids are

035sick, but you're now sending us these attendance letters." Um, and both can be true, right? We do want kids to stay home and also we are going to keep sending the attendance letters. I know for my own kids, they got in uh they got neurovirus, they got influenza A, but they were also at school majority of the time and did not meet that threshold for attendance letters. Um, I think it's when families start to um plan trips or outings and things like that. One thing that's always hard for me in elementary school is attendance matters so depends so much on the parents and so it's it's just really important to get them to buy into that attendance being important. Um we would have frequent meetings with our school counselor, our behavior interventionist and myself to

036look through the attendance, see if there was anything going on with specific families, maybe there had been a death in the family, maybe someone was moving, things like that. And then we would look at ways to support those students. Um, so in for example, we had some transportation accommodations made for students, special bus routes, things like that. Um, we would also work with our SRO and homeless liaison to support our families. Next year we will have Thrive at our school as well. And so I'm really eager to work with uh our Thrive parent liaison to help support families and make sure that attendance becomes um an important um part of our school. Uh on behavior, this was um the first year that we tracked as many behaviors in Infinite Campus as we did. We had

037two when I ran this report, we were at 259 uh events, separate events, and that involved 172 students. So earlier I heard a question about are there repeats? Yes, there definitely are students who have multiple reports, especially um with only 172 students involved, but with the 259 total. Um ways that we support these students, we have our tiered behavior system. Um, so like if it's a tier one behavior, typically the parent, the teacher would be reaching out to the family. Tier two would still be the teacher. Tier three becomes uh myself and our behavior interventions and tier four would be myself as and usually our behavior interventionist is with me and or the counselor to help support students. Um, that also falls into our ruler which is schoolwide. Uh, and so that's like our social

038emotional pieces and we have our um classroom charters and we're talking about our expectations around school. And then our social skills groups will be done with our counselor and our behavior interventionist. Uh parent meetings and then our roar paws. So honoring students once a month. We pull a name from each grade level. They get a t-shirt. Uh today we had a principal for the day and he got to deliver the t-shirts for the end of the year to each of the kiddos who won that. Um and we announced the Roar Paws daily on the morning announcements and so they're always really excited to hear their name. So any questions? I know there's a lot of repeat from what Ashley shared. So you guys are all using the changes in infinite campus. It's consistent across all

039elementary schools now using what infinite campus a campus. Yep. Okay. Yeah. I just know at one time I think Ashley was using it a little bit differently than the other schools. And that was one of our challenges for the behavior community was to roll that out and make it consistent. Yep. And so when you look at this the 259 events those are the majors that are reported by either our behavior interventionist or myself. So we're the two that would put those into the um computer and those would be the bigger ones. those are not the teacher managed or staff managed ones. Um that would be more uh but if it's a repeated staff managed behavior then it would get logged as one of these behavior. I was more interested in consistency across the elementary schools.

040Similarly with Ashley's spreadsheets that we'll be looking forward to. Should have never mentioned those. So you like similarish spreadsheets. So yeah, similarish I think. So same basic data. How many behavioral interventionists do we have across the district? one at every school. Okay. And the value of those is they're in the elementary schools. Value of those we're real comfortable with. Yeah. Okay. I currently two of the three are certified positions and one continues to be a classified position. Many moons ago, we started switching over to certified positions, but we still have one that's classified. We're hiring for one next year. if you know anyone because my current one my my current uh behavior interventions is actually going to be our thrive parent leaison and that's like her dream job that she's always wanted and so she's

041really eager to start that. Hopefully she will stay in our behavior committee. God bless her. Yes, I hope it will. So um because I asked Ashley this uh when you're doing your parent contact and follow-up communication, what is the process at Ridge View? Ours is very very similar. So again, if it's a tier one or tier two behavior, we're asking teachers to reach out. So if someone's like repeatedly creating a small disruption in the classroom or you know, things like that, we would ask the teacher to reach out because that's who has the main relationship with the family. Um and then once it turns into a like a more intense behavior, that would be the behavior interventionist teamed with usually me. Um, and then if there are some other pieces in there, like if we

042have a student threat for example, we would bring in our school counselor as well, um, in order to support the family and what might be going on outside that would have led to that. Um, so it's really a team like our school counselor, behavior interventionist, and myself work very closely together to make sure that the student is supported. And then also the for the family of the student who's been hurt, um, same type of approach with them. If it's a, you know, your kiddo just got bumped in line type of situation, it' be the teacher reaching out. But if it escalates beyond that then that would be behavior interventions and myself. Yeah. Do do you guys watch that? Do you pay attention to that behavior data at campus? What do you do exactly? Can you

043explain how you look at it or how often you review it? Um yeah we and especially through this process um just meeting with um the um principles on that. Um I don't know what just looking for progress like how you tell what we're doing as well. Oh yeah. Uh what we're doing now is really trying to set up those systems. So looking at it from a systems perspective. So but I that's part of our next steps is us having a team that's looking at behavior across the district. Okay. So you have the the infinite campuses set up to be consistent. Now you're looking at fine-tuning the process. Yeah. Exactly. It's also helpful to see like what type of infractions they are or where they occur time of day because then we can make adjustments within

044our building. So like for example, if a lot of the infractions have to do with disrespect, then we can focus more on that during our ruler time or have that be more like we have our daily um our positive practices for the each week it changes. So we could make that part of it. So it's like really beneficial information for us to have. I appreciate that. Thank you. And Ashley gave two other numbers that are interesting to me. um number of students I guess I don't know what you call it transit in and out recycle rates say it's 75 or 72 students that moved in and out of the school I don't have that number off the top of my head but I can get it for you and non-speaking English we have the 15

04515 y how many students do you have now about thank you yep thank you any other questions okay Lori Next. Yeah, that's great. I'm glad I could find you an HDMI cable. I wouldn't really glad she didn't go first when it wasn't working. I knew there was one in there. Um, go ahead. Oh. Uh so again, we're doing um our uh school improvement plan. Um we'll start out with our K1 for early reading. Um our kinders and first grade came in um not very proficient in uh early literacy and but we left um made some good gains at 68 and 66%. We had some ambitious goals. We didn't quite hit our 70 and 71, but um my teams really want to get closer and closer to that 70 to 80% proficiency rates. You can keep

046going. Um again, with the CBM, we don't take it in the fall for first grade, but as you can see, um in some grade levels, there was better growth than others. Um yeah, look at our ambitious goal. My second grade teachers thought for this year that they could get them to 80%. So, it's ambitious. Um, but we still made some nice gains there. Um, we we don't tend to see as much gains in fourth grade with CBM and that's, you know, a fluency piece because you start getting to the speed that you're probably going to be reading at. So, we look at more like comprehension and analytical thinking and and inferencing and things like that. So, um, second through fourth is a reading. Um, and so, um, that I mean it changes. There's a lot

047of different vocabulary with that, too. But it's always just a snapshot on how we're doing. And, um, you know, my my third grade team did, uh, pretty well, and so did my second grade team kind of flatlined on fourth grade. So, early math um we the kindergartenner teachers um and um they came in pretty strong with the 70% and then they dropped to 58. So, we had a nice conversation in the winter about hey what are we going to do like let's look at the data let's make an action plan. um they went to work. They went worked hard, worked with the coaches, worked with me, worked with the other even some other grade level teachers that have more experience with teaching math and things um to come up with a plan. And um I

048was proud that they got to that 75% proficiency rate. Um first grade plateaued, but I from my find out there's a lot of story problems in fastbridge for spring, which is not taught exactly like um Bridges is. And so we might have to look at that and see how we can improve some of those things. Um oops background. That's okay. Um here's a math. Um that's for second, third, and fourth. Again, I had some ambitious goals hitting over 80% but we didn't quite hit that. Um and um we have some work to do. Um I was kind of uh curious how we'd do this year with a third new certified staff in my building. um third of them learning a brand new um ELA and math program and it's only our second year in our

049math program. But um we still had some some pretty good results. One of these years we're going to get up to that 80% in all categories. I'm we're thriving for striving for that. Um our behavior like you guys had been talking about um we hadn't had a minor behavior tab until this year. now it's called staff managed and so we need to do some training with my staff on that. Um and so we're in a process like Dee said being more consistent of what everybody's putting into the system and things. Um but overall I think um some different things that we have in place. We have a lot of supportive measures that we work on with the counselors, with the teachers, with um our behavior intervention people. Um and um we're seeing that some really

050good things with having some small group things, some skill building groups. Um some, you know, kind of like mediation um you know, we really believe in restorative practices and stuff and um being able to retach. I mean, it's a lot different if a kindergarter is misbehaving than a fourth grader depending on what because the kindergarters just want to all dog pile with each other. It's a teachable moment. um fourth graders still do want to do that too and when football seasons around but um overall I think um we've had some good parent input um you are ask how we get a hold of parents if it's a minor I believe in the chain of command so if it's um first of all the teacher um has to be the the first thing I should not

051be the first person to call that parent on some behavior thing unless it's big and it's out of the norm um if they're a little bit bigger than that where they need to have some support by someone is typically our behavior interventionist that will call or email. But if it's something that you know they're really good at looping me in on things that I need to be involved with and then I make those calls. Um would you classify as a really big well that's there's a lot of things. Um something that was very if it was too violent or a fight or you know something like that then I get involved. Um if it's more chronic smaller things um it's either the teacher or the behavior interventionist. Um we have some different programs in our

052building and so you know sometimes the case manager is the one who reaches out um in conjun conjunction with me or Mary Farber. Um and so it kind of I don't have a bunch of exact examples. Um, this year I've had to make less calls because we've really try to rein in some of our universal expectations. Um, but I still talk to parents every day. Uh, like a suspension, you would be the only person that would reach out for that. Um, I'm the one who uh sometimes because I don't I'm in the middle of an investigation. I'll have like the secretary say, "Hey, that you need to come." Then I'll meet with the parents. But yes, I'm the only one who suspends kids. Do you feel like the parents work well with you? Yeah, I've

053this year has been really good with working with the parents. I mean, you always have some that are are difficult. Um, but then us working as a team to um help those parents that are, you know, have some struggles as well. So, okay, attendance. Any other questions for Laura? I got one more slide. I'm sorry. One more slide. I do though. I was kind of disappointed with our attendance this year. I really thought we'd hit that 94%. Um, and granted this the overall numbers have our our special ed preschool. It doesn't have our EL4s. I've got to work with Rick and see how we can that be better. Um, but I was trying to think, my team was trying to think, my um, school advisory council on what what's going on here. Um, we had

054some big illnesses and weird stuff this year like Ridge View did. Um, but I don't know of a year I've had so many parents leave the country for a month. Um, or take multiple trips during the year. Um, or you know, when I had a family move here, they're like, "What's your attendance policy like?" Because they traveled for the three prior years around the world. So, um, I never did that when I was a child. So, um I don't know if we're we're going to deep dive into our data on Wednesday when the kids aren't here and and look at um some different things, but I mean 92% 91% is not horrible, but it's it's not where we should be. It should be higher than that. So, any questions for me? So, I guess that

055leads me to just just looking at the numbers before the first two schools tracked kind of to each other. yours seem to start higher and for the most part not fall as far which may be a function of their starting higher. I don't know but spring seem to be better across the board for you. Are you guys going to take a look at that? Oh, absolutely. We we work together a lot and to see what we can emulate from each other's buildings like how did your grade level that's part of our PLC process um is what are you doing that I can emulate and looking at all of our data and stuff. We're actually even going to a conference to make our PLC teams stronger um this next week. So you look at like family

056demographics and that sort of thing as well, family demographics, age of teachers that are average in the school. I mean is there I'd just be curious to see what the impact of that was. Yeah, the biggest thing um that has the biggest effect size for um uh achievement is um uh your collective efficacy um and how your teams are working together and looking at data. And so that's a bigger predictor of um achievement than social economical status. So we've got to look at all of it, but we also um need to have that mentality of we can and we will and we'll do whatever we can while the kids are here to get them to grow as much as we can. Thank you. Okay, any other questions before for the elementary school teachers before we

057move on to Dave Middle School? Thank you for providing that information. We'd like to see those spreadsheets. Okay, I guess we are done with elementary. Now we'll come to the middle school. Dave and Julie and Jessica. All three of you are here. All right, we'll start with the first slide. Okay, so I do have to commend the English department and the math department because they did hit their goals. oftentimes we go from um spring of last year to spring of this year and so they increased to a above grade level benchmark by 1% but then um 2% from spring to spring and with our math and there's reasons why that I'll talk about here a little bit later they had some really great growth um and there's a few reasons like I mentioned as to

058why they increased by 2% from fall of this year and 5% from spring of last year so in one year's growth they grew by 5% % and from this year uh fall, winter, spring by 2%. So, good job on their part. So, next slide, Carrie. So, overall as a middle school, we grew by 2%. Um, and there's always considerations when you when you are looking at all of these kind of scores, but this is as a middle school, we went from 72 to 74, but in the fall it was 73. That stayed stagnant or um we didn't grow from fall to to winter. and then by a percent 74 in the spring. And there's always and we'll talk about some of those considerations, things to think about as we move through. For example, um I

059guess let's look at let's look at all the grade levels first. Okay, so grade five had some really nice growth um after this being their very first year in ELA with the new curriculum. And it's really nice now that everyone is on the same page with the common curriculum K5 and then six 612 with the curriculum as well. Um our sixth grade didn't do quite as well from spring to spring. Um they dropped two percentage points but stayed fairly even throughout this whole year and grew by a point. Seventh and eighth grade um same thing. They they grew by a point. spring to spring they lost but stayed at about that 75% mark um throughout the year and our eighth grade had a a huge growth um throughout this year and um and we're looking

060at all that data as well so that they had a nice they had a nice growth spurt so with considerations this year some challenges we always have lots of challenges and we look at all of our kids um and who we can service through title and all those kinds of And this year in fifth grade we'll we'll lose all of our fifth grade teachers um just because of circumstances. So this year we're starting all over with new fifth grade staff. And so along with starting all over that means literally starting all over with training with new curriculum from teachers that have already been trained in that. And the good news is is we've got staff in the building that are trained and especially an instructional coach which is so helpful and we're we're so thankful

061for that. But along with that um are some of our other considerations um to think about that in the reason why things eb and flow and I think one of the elementary teachers mentioned this a little bit before that's common that happens depending on all of these variable kinds of things that sometimes we don't have any control over. Um oftent times I know somebody asked maybe the question was why is it that there's always a drop in the spring for the middle school our drop typically is because not only are for example our eighth graders taking the mast the mast window is open the fast bridge window is open our sback is open and so they are getting tested all in the same chunk of time that we have to administer those tests and sometimes

062they just they get burnt out of it and so we try to work on incentives to keep them focused and steady and so that's helped a lot. We've tried to we've tried to bribe them a lot this year which has helped a little bit. So we we won't stoop through anything but so that's helped some and so those are some of the things that we are trying and with that's some of the English language arts pieces. anything that you guys have to add? Okay, moving on to math. Let's see, Carrie. Okay, overall the middle school um we grew uh by five 5% and once again I I give accolades. I believe that is we are in the second year of the math program and some of the teachers that are teaching math piloted it for

063a third year. So some a couple of the teachers had it's the third year now and and others this is the second year and I do believe that that is that that's very helpful along with some other considerations. one being um one of the changes some of the changes that we address in our schedule and so those kids are getting more minutes and when you have for example with our title kids and now that we do have a chunk of time we are we had more kids that needed to be serviced or that were at a lower percentage than English and so English were able to intervene and give those kids the attention they need with the fifth grade or the with in math we're not quite there so we bumped up are we bumped

064up our title from um our percentage from to 30%. So that what we are going to do now is we need to service some of those kids more so in the seventh and the eighth grade and we are going to service the sixth graders in our win time in part of that intervention time with fifth grade. So we're trying to get really creative with our schedule so that we're addressing all of our kids and making sure that none are falling through the cracks and getting them then the the help that they need. And then some of the challenges that we do have is and elementaryaries probably would say this too and I don't know that it happens as much at elementary as a maybe does at middle school. After a chunk of time when students

065have been receiving title services for a period of time they get to middle school, fifth, sixth grade and parents opt them out and parents do have the right to opt them out of um extra intervention time or title services. But with fifth grade it's built in. It's already built. And next year also with all of our um we typically had 47 minute class periods and we increased we did increase our class periods to be 50-minute class periods and so we are getting good chunks of instructional minutes for our classes. Um so now next slide grade five had a growth of 12% from spring to spring 59 to 71%. And what's nice is again um now that the three elementary schools are all using the same ele the same curriculum then that comes to us with

066the same and that's very helpful instead of different things um um coming from sometimes in the past that we may or you know um that we did see and not that um I don't want to say that they all weren't using the same curriculum but it's very nice that now it's consistent and then fifth grade is included in on that too. um sixth grade had you can see they have a a bit of a roller coaster um go up and down and that es and it does flow and they they did have some good gains as well. seventh grade a positive gain um from in the spring of 67% to 71% um this past year and 8th grade uh did drop a little bit and grew by one point throughout or one percentage point throughout

067the throughout the school year. math. Um like I me like I mentioned um we are working we are those students who are testing below the 30th percentile in math will receive 30 to 50 minutes of an additional math intervention through win their their win time or title services and we widened that window from the 20th to the 30th percentile to address some of those older students. before we just could not address all of the kids that needed all the help with intervention unless we chose in our schedule to do another math connections class. And oftentimes um parents for the most part were very very supportive um to support that having two math classes or um possibly two English classes, but oftent times it's ultimately their choice if they choose to opt them out of that

068service. No, you're good. I was just I was just looking at the big picture things. If there's any other big picture kinds of things, I have teacher movement. Six out of our nine teachers this next year will be moving into new or different grade levels, a new maybe a new subject matter or um a different grade level. And so there's always little things to consider those variables that we we address. And oftentimes we start working on that as soon as we know and try to get them the the necessary uh professional development that they need and whatever else they might what whatever whatever we can do to support them. Questions about that? I had a question about let's back a little bit. You said you people could opt their kids out of these when training

069people could opt their children out of these. What's what kind of percentage of that happens to the kids? I would say the majority of our our parents are very supportive. Um it depends on I would say probably two hand probably 10 you know out of out of the whole building fifth through 8th grade it would be a matter of 10 students and I can get that exact information for you. I we have all those statistics all those all that data those a small percentage of the total. Yeah. I was curious why somebody would choose to do that. I think by the time they get to sixth, seventh, and eighth grade and if they've been in title services, it would take up one of their electives and so then they wouldn't be able to participate in

070maybe something else that they wanted to participate in. And um and I believe that it's we're the district is doing we're doing a great job now of identifying and addressing those kids earlier and earlier. And like I said in our ELA, we're able to intervene for most of our students with math. We weren't quite there and we're getting we're getting better. It's we're able to address that much better. Julie, I got a question. I'm looking at these numbers here, but you know, they're numbers on a paper. What were the target numbers that we were actually shooting for? I know as high as possible is what you want, but do we have a set goal? Did we meet our goal? Did we fail to meet it or we did we did meet our goal. So, our

071summary was we wanted to grow by two percentage points. um in our English and our math data for this year and we did hit that goal. Some grade levels we hit those as built as a building. Some grade levels only grew by one percentage point. Um and you can go back if you want to and I think you can see that. But that was the the goals that our department had set forth. You think there's a peak like a peak uh goal? You know, our what's your top like you know 100% right but yeah that's unrealistic. I mean that's a that's an ultimate ultimate goal. We would love to get to that 80% mark. Okay. Yeah. Absolutely. And and work from there. Am I looking at this right maybe and recollecting right? If I did,

072it looks like you guys did a hell of a job because if I'm recalling from previous years, fourth to fifth was like a cliff and then last half of ETH was like a cliff and there isn't I don't see any of this. If I'm trying to tie it back to theirs, it looks like you've just had continued success. I hope so. And and this is this is just the the second year. That's a snapshot. You know, the the middle school has been able to collaborate with the elementaryaries. That has been huge. We have had a common curriculum. That's been I think another big piece. Um, so I'd like to ask a question about that. Sure. Um, in the past it's that was one of the things with the important to get all the fifth graders

073in the same school because they're not in the same curriculum track as one through four and that isn't working. Seems like that's not a point anymore or as much of a point. Yeah. Yeah. So um sometimes we don't get to decide how the world works and the way the world works is fifth graders are in with the elementary curriculum with all the big curriculum companies. So it helped make that decision of you know we're going to go K5 with this program so that we're consistent and then six through eight went with what what's in the high school. But it seems like it's worked. Yeah. I mean like and you know they changed schedule to give kids more minutes of math time. They are collaborating with the you know elementary school and the more years we

074use this program the more the kids are familiar with the language and the way the program works. So we're hoping for even bigger right it was if I'm remembering it was disturbingly evident. Same. So, we won't I think what Frank what you're saying, correct me if I'm wrong, but is we're not really going to be able to as this continues to get better and better because we're already seeing it a big improvement. That's maybe not going to be a bullet point for us to use for pulling fifth grade out of middle school. Yeah. Well, certainly wasn't my biggest point out of that, but it's noted. Yeah. And we hope so, Steve. We hope we you know, this is this has been I know it's one year. It's a snapshot, but Yeah. It's just that's the

075first time we've seen promise in those numbers in a long time. So, congratulations. Yeah, I think this is the first time we've seen data with this granularity. Yeah, it was very nice to see. Mhm. I was curious how many fifth grade teachers you lost overall. You said you lost everybody. Oh, man. Um, what is that number? Help me out you guys. That was for English. Just for English? Yeah. I thought it was the entire class. I was terrified. Well, yeah. Let's imagine English is fairly terrifying still. Changed the time of the sessions from 45 to 50 or something. 40 50 and did your teachers find that any problems filling that 50 minutes? I mean, they were used to doing it as for a shorter period of time and now they're doing it the longer. I

076think because the curriculum matches the amount of time, it that wasn't an issue. So the curriculum matched the the number of minutes that we allowed for and we actually will have they'll have more minutes now. So they'll have 140 minutes and I I don't think the requirement the requirement isn't near that much. So fifth grade will have two periods of 50 minutes for for their math and for their math inter. So they were 45 minute periods this year and they're going to 50 minute next year. 47 47 47 this year going to 50 next year. But the math the math kids got a double double dip of math this year. 90 minutes. Yeah. Fifth grade. Math. Yep. Yeah. And I and I think my last question, but I I think um how many instructional coaches

077do we have in the middle school and just one? We have one angel. And what what is the value of that position? Very valuable. and thank you for that because she will be busy now. Um we're able to get into classrooms and we can monitor and help coach and do all those things. And this year it'll be a huge a big difference um with our teachers that will that are brand new now that she's been through the she's been through the training and been through the process for a year. It'll be very valuable. Okay. That's important when we do negotiations every two years and look at the value of those positions. So good to hear. Yeah. Thank you for that. I have a question for the administration in general. I'm glad that the curriculum is

078working. I know it was very expensive and we used our funds to pay for it. When does it expire? When do we renew? And are we planning on that for consistency sake for another pandemic? We have measles. So, so a typical cycle would be every seven years you would take a look at your program and and make a decision about whether you're keeping it or you're moving forward. I mean, that's kind of the cycle of, you know, when programs when the curriculum companies would update their programs to make them match what we know then about learning and learning style. So, Carrie's obviously budgeting for that. Okay. I'm going to talk about our behavior data. So, our behavior goal this year was to enhance school culture and climate. Um, and we really wanted to involve our

079students in that goal. So, we conducted multiple student surveys and gathered some feedback from them. And one of the or two of the questions we asked consistently all three times we took the survey is, do you feel like you belong at school? And do you feel like in general the school culture is positive? So, these stayed pretty consistent throughout the year. Um, you'll notice that did you feel like you belong at school? uh 81% of students said yes, they felt like they belonged at school. The important piece to this was the feedback they gave. When we look through their feedback, um they really talked about having students and staff who made them feel like they belonged at school. Um as I was at a school safety training a month ago, that was the big push

080for school safety is students feeling like they have a trusted student or staff to talk to at school. So, I felt like that was a big percentage of our students. The question, do you feel like in general school culture is positive? Only 62% of our kids said that it was positive. That number went up around Christmas time and then back down in the spring. I don't know if that's like kids just happy in happier in December. I'm not sure. Um, but we definitely need to work closely and look at this a little closer with students and support how they're feeling um about fostering a positive school culture and just make sure their voices are heard. Um, so we will continue to ask these questions next year. Our goal for next year is to increase student

081involvement in creating this positive school culture. Um, and then we also are going to continue, our counselor did, our one counselor for most of the year did a really good job with managing peer conflict. Um, and so we're going to work with her to continue to create scenarios where kids can practice that peer conflict. Um, and then continue implementing the ruler lessons to foster emotional intelligence. Um, we also had an MTSS group that got to travel to Helena. I think we brought them earlier in the year and chatted about them at a board meeting, I believe. Um, and they are just a group of leaders. Um, they get to apply for that and you take kids at all, uh, grade levels and different academic ranges to that. Um, so for the 2526 school year, we're

082going to continue to collaborate or continue to work with kids in that MTSS group and try to get some more kids to join that group and really be the leaders of our school as far as coming up with ideas and strategies to get their peers involved to increase this positive school culture. That was our main goal. I'm going to talk to you for just a second about our behavior data. Um, I will say having the elementary interbehavior data is going to help us at the middle school immensely. Um, then when we have a kid come in, we can see what's been going on the last few years and not just surprised by a behavior that happens in fifth grade. Um, but we had 290 behavioral events this year which involved 158 students. That decreased slightly

083from last year which was 294 events involving 165 students. Um that number is a little bit higher than the two years before because those were COVID years. One year was COVID year we weren't in school. The next year we had kids in those cohorts where they didn't get to see their many of their peers very much and that helped with peer conflict. Um prior to those years the numbers were in five in the 400s to 500s. So we have seen a decrease in behavior referrals in the last couple of years. Some questions for me. Yes, you've seen a decrease. And I guess the question in my mind would be is the staff, your staff, your teachers putting in concerns when they come up. Do you are you fairly confident that you're covering everything in Infinite

084Campus that happens? I think the last two years it's been even better because we have added that minor behavior tab and so it allows teachers to put in any behavior they're having in their class. We don't count those in these major or office referrals um because we didn't have that before to look at that data and compare it. But yes, I think staff does a better job and actually they were able to put in an office referral to us where before they would just like call or email or come down a couple days later. Now they put that in immediately and we see that office referral still. Do they have the responsibility to communicate to Yes. parents? Yeah. Kind of same as elementary school. Those minors it's up to the staff to communicate. Um we

085get dings come out from the middle school. So if they put in a minor within an hour a parent gets whatever they've selected on Infinite Campus, a text message, an email, a phone call that their child received a minor behavior referral. Sometimes parents will call the school right away and want to talk to whatever teacher that is. Um, but you know, it's just a quick communication about what happened. Only minors go home like that. We did have to train our staff about how you enter those to make sure information's not going out about other students or anything like that. Um, I'm looking at this here. Do you feel like you belong at school? 18.3 out of 50% out of 533 responses is 92 kids. You've got 92 kids telling me out of 500 that they

086don't feel like they belong. And and I hear this this was actually something when I was campaigning that I heard a lot was the bullying problem that Bgrade Middle School's got some real cultural issues. And I'm not trying to attack you here, but we've got to talk about it. And when I'm when I got 90 kids, 92 kids out of 500. That's the numbers. Jessica, I have a question actually on that too that I want to know. Is it 92 kids or is it 92 divided by three cuz you did the survey three times. No, that's 92 for this spring. Okay. So, the spring, the number of students that took it in this spring, that's a troubling number of out of 500. That's, you know, one almost one in five that is not doesn't feel

087like they belong in school. And I know middle school years are really tough, but I also I've got parents pulling me aside all the time going, "Hey, I want to talk to you about Bgrade Middle School." And you know, my son's not in Belgrade Middle School. I got one kid pulled out because he was struggling. Um, we've got to fix this problem. So, you know, I guess what is the, you know, you say you're going to work with the kids some more, but you know, that's a that's a troubling number. 92 kids that don't feel like they belong in a 500 kids school. Well, out of 500 uh responses, you want to address that? Yeah. So, there's a couple of things. I know that um I know that there's perceptions and there's reality. And so,

088that's what we're trying to get our perceptions taken care of as well. And some things that we want to address are communicating better with our parents exactly what is happening in the middle school because oftent times people's perception is their reality. But sometimes that isn't the truth. Sometimes that isn't the true fact of what really is going on. And do does the middle school have bullying? Absolutely. Absolutely we do. And so some things that we want to do. We can always be better. We want to look at this con conflict resolution piece like we talked about and work on some of the perceptions of of what the community might have. Yep. Okay. That's a goal. Those are those are a couple of goals that we want to address for next year. For sure. Those are

089some good questions, Walt. And I think when we assign committees, we can get you in a place where you can really help with that behind the scenes. Okay. Yeah. And then I look at the other one, the the the other pigraph you got there, 37.6. I haven't done what the raw numbers are, but if you got over a third of your kids that don't have think that the school school is a positive experience, that's something else we need to, you know, look at more in depth because I, like I said, I'm I'm I I'm not trying to attack you, but I'm troubled with these numbers. So this is part of the reason we did we did this was to see what our kids are saying and and the pigraph is just a small piece of

090it. The comments of what kids made you know on that to tell us what kind of things can we do what should we do moving forward. Um can I speak to one other thing about your comment is that I Mr. Smith and I do a lot of the calling of parents when it comes to behaviors and I would say that most of the conversations we have with families end in a very positive note in that if we know what's going on then we really do try to make changes make changes in for individual kids or group groups of kids to try to increase this these numbers. So okay I'm I'm a I'm troubled by the number of responses. How on earth do you only get half the kids to respond? The spring was tough. Um,

091when we took it, there were like there was a eighth grade track me two days that Lord trying to get it really is just trying to got it. So, they took it during their advisory. Um, some kids didn't didn't take it. Some kids got to the end. You can I can go back and look and it doesn't put it complete. Some kids didn't want to do the comment part. So it didn't record these ones at the end. They did all like the yes no at the beginning. That makes sense. Yeah. It's a Google form. Some of that was eighth graders. Yes. By this point they were like Yeah. I think it's good you're collecting it. Well, we don't know what to do until we can see what kind of data we're collecting and this this

092is why we're doing this so we can make some decisions and and move forward. It is a good starting point. Yeah. I don't want to discredit concerns, but it'd be important to look at some of the responses as well. And there's a whole range things like they have great ideas or you know I don't know all those those kinds of old middle schools I'm getting bullied. So sometimes you see uh you know a pretty small reflection of people that generate the majority of the events that you have. This is something we talked about in behavior committee and that is we oftentimes kind of try to isolate that on on one one person. But the thing that is troubling is what is the effect those specific highf flyers have on the population in general. the people

093that are really the kids that are really having to deal with uh this uh you know have u performance or behavior and I think it's becomes an issue starting in middle school but it go carries on into the high school as well. It's one of those things that we have to figure out what other damage what other collateral issues do we have as a result of the some of the specific activities Okay. Any other questions along the lines of behavior? You know, uh, can you hear me? Yeah, Joanne. Okay. You know, I I just, um, surveys are very like interesting like consideration, right? I I appreciate that you're discussing, you know, um, with the students, you know, how they feel about school, where they feel that they belong. It's incredibly important topic, right? But when

094we interpret results, especially coming from surveys, we have to consider like the data, right? The one of the big things in any survey, whether we're giving it to middle schoolers or adults, is emotional variability. We consider middle school as a like a rapid time of emotional development. So their sense of belonging or what, you know, what they feel may fluctuate depending on friendships, classroom experiences, even you know, that day, how their morning started, right? So, we have a lot of confounding factors that these one-time survey snapshots, you know, may not um capture. If you had a student like if you g if like someone was given an individual student ID that was obuscated, so not linked back to them and, you know, across like, you know, multiple survey things, they continually put that they don't

095feel like they belong. I think that would be a very interesting data point. But I think when we don't, you know, aren't really able to attribute this to specifics, it's much harder um to rule out any level of response bias, right? And and even things like interpreting the question of like what what does feeling like I belong mean, right? Feeling connected, right? What does that mean to them? Um I would be interested to see, you know, some sort of response of well, if what what does belonging, I feel like I belong at school mean, you know, could it mean with their friends? Could it mean in a learning environment? Right? And then the other thing is like you know we may have a discussion of like you know anonymity or trust maybe students maybe there's

096more right because students may not trust that their answers are truly anonymous. So, so you know I think it's good starting point data but I think it's really important to listen to take that data and then listen to these these admin who are in the school saying you know um you know the perception is not reality right and so you know you may see these numbers say oh gosh that's a lot of students feeling like they don't belong but you know the nitty-gritty of reality and what's happening in the school is really coming down to taking that and then the feedback from our admin which I appreciated so I just want to give that word of like caution in so far as like thinking of survey data as being like the most robust answer saying

097our schools must be a terrible place because of this number. I don't think that's accurate. I think there's a lot of confounding factors, a lot of additional things that play into how a student may have responded on a specific day and because we are not, you know, tracking with some sort of unique ID that's obuscated. We don't really know if this is a trend on specific like a specific student or specific groups of students. We just know at any given quarter or semester this percentage on that particular day was filling this way. Sounds like we'll have a lot of interest in the behavior committee and possibly another committee. Did we have any other questions along those lines? No, I think Joe just made a really good point though. I would like to see if we

098can track that. you know, if you do this Google form, but I do know, I mean, I have two boys in middle school, so getting information is so hard unless I ask them something so specific. So, I think Joe made a really good point of like maybe that's something to take into consideration with this moving forward with the feedback that you've garnered. So, this is a great starting point. Thank you for bringing that forward. I had a quick question on the testing just kind of for everyone if you guys don't mind me changing gears here. Some community uh community member had reached out to me wondering if there was a difference in performance between kids who just had a typing computer versus one who might have a touch screen. I can't say one way or

099the other because I'm not sure how those tests work. Is everything done with a keyboard advantage if you could push it? Well, I I think depending on the content of whatever it is that you're doing, for example, if it's a math test and they they do have to learn how to manipulate um all the key, you know, they have to learn how to do those kinds of things. Um are they using their own Chromebooks? So, if they do have a touchscreen Chromebook, which some of our kids do, then they would be testing on Yep. Yep. unless they have a a mouse, which you know we can give them to, which they would, you know, if they prefer that. So, we're um checking to see if we can get a good number of what's our percent

100of touchscreen to not touchreen um so that we can figure that out. And then had the conversation of maybe that's more important for our elementary through middle school students and by the time they're in high school hopefully they're able to manage a keyboard. But um you can I would hope they would. So we're getting more information on that. I don't think they get a choice. They are, but that doesn't work at their when they get a job. Schooler handle these. Okay. Any other questions for the middle school? Oh, I'm sorry. Sorry, Dave. Hi, Dave Smith. I'll speak to attendance, too. That's another way that we can measure whether students feel welcome about coming to school. We did not meet our attendance goal this year. We on the five-year school improvement plan Oops. We are trying

101to get over 95% definitely over 94%. The good news is that we are over 90% which national studies do indicate that if you're at 90% you're on track to graduate. So, I know that the lower elementary schools were also saying, "Hey, we didn't meet our attendance uh criteria." We didn't either. The last I checked, we were at 93.08. We were trying to be at 93.6 this year, and we'll still keep trying to beat that by next year, but we do have good attendance. And I think that attendance numbers like that do indicate some of the positive culture in the school. And I would invite you guys to come on into the school and and see what we have going on. I know that, you know, I take what I do pretty seriously and and definitely

102very personally and we have tons of room for improvement. So, um, looking at one window of data doesn't tell everything. You know, we can also say that our our numbers of discipline referrals have gone down too. So, those are some positives. Do we have bullion and do we need to improve big time? So, we'll continue to work on that for sure. Our attendance is the third area of focus, academics, behavior, and and attendance. So, we'll continue to look at attendance as well. We have an attendance committee that meets once a week. And the second semester, we track 354 students. And the way that looks is once they've reached 5 days of either unexcused or excused absences, their advisory teacher calls home. It's just a check-in, quick communication with the family. Hey, how are things going?

103I see that Johnny's reached day five in absences. How can we help out? Is there anything that we can do to improve school? And usually it's just a trip or somebody was sick for a few days, things like that involved. The committee looks at all those, make sure that it's happening, and then if a student reaches day 10, then we do send an attendance letter home. the administration calls at that time just to have a further discussion with the families to see what's going on on in that attendance track. We've identified students of special education uh students with 504 plans. It's also helped us identify other students like hey this students really struggling here. We may not have picked up on that without these weekly meetings without the attendance tracker. So, it's also helped us

104identify students that would qualify and meet the criteria for a 50 or four plan for more support. And even though the efforts haven't made a significant increase in overall attendance scores for the school, it has improved a lot of our high-f flyers. And I don't have those numbers for you, but when you're looking at um maybe 40 kids that are getting 15 to 40 absences a semester, 50 absences, those numbers don't change. 975 students a lot. But we have made significant roads on I'd say about half of those students. Some are really really tough to to get to come to school for various reasons. But it has opened up that individual communication with families about why so that we can troubleshoot so that we can with whatever resources we have available um try to meet

105the needs of those families. And I would also say that if you look back on on that graph here along with behavior attendance we're we're facing a complicated world out there. If you'll notice that before co we were at that 94 plus percent. And it was wonderful. I always saw that and I thought boy this is really good. I'm so proud of that and great. Ever since co I think those two co years are almost we need to dismiss those in a way but after that we dropped not to 90% but right into that n upper 92 into the 93% and I don't want to be optimistic too much but you can almost see a little bit of a a trend going in the right direction there. So as we do this we're getting a

106little bit better about that. We're trying to make the school an inviting place. We're we're opening up opportunities for the kids to have a voice and we're trying to look at all that too. So we'll continue those efforts. How much um looking at this here do you attribute to the fact that people are postco you know used to be if you weren't dying you were going to school? Yep. And do you think that that you know now if you got a sniffle you get to stay home. Is that do you attribute that to some of this? I I do I and I don't think Belgrade Middle School is alone. It's a national trend. you see a decrease in student attendance and it's it's opened up an opportunity for families to those families that struggle with

107student attendance, it didn't help. So, they struggle even more. So, we're trying to figure out how can we get those kids and those families the support they need to be in school. Also, it's it's probably um without a doubt, it's showing that there were other ways to educate students. So, some of those families did go a different direction. I'm sure that's some of it, too. But that but that would that show in in the actual attendance numbers because if those families went another direction, they'd be out of our numbers, wouldn't they? Right. But that's one of the reasons that the national trend in attendance is down. Yeah. I think it's really good that you talk to the parents after five days and then follow up after 10 days because um you know we need to

108have their help on attendance is one of the key ways we get better on attendance is to work with parents and I think if anything that might have been where we lost a little ground after co is that people really you know lost some confidence in sending their kids to school and we just need to re you know re-engage both explain to them how important it is. I I know the state believes that we need to do that to keep things going in the right direction. So I, you know, thumbs up on that. I hopefully your numbers will start to move up. I don't know. I would use 95 as my goal, but I certainly like the idea of using like one or two% over last year as your, you know, it doesn't look like

10995 is in the cards for next year. What's that? And I I should remind you that's part of the fiveyear plan. Yeah. Kind of kind of amazing what we are shooting for half a percentage. Yeah. No, I just Yeah. It's it's u I don't know. I just think seeing improvement is a positive thing. That's what we want. Yeah. Yeah. And that communication is so important to find out why. Yeah. You know, is it because of behavior issues going on in school that we don't know about? um or is it other issues? So, thank you. Thanks, Dave. Thank you. Thank you. Any other questions for these guys? Thank you, guys. All right. And last but not least is the high school. It would be helpful. I I don't need to refer to it. Um, it was

11018 slides long. So, um, I'm info in that one. Yeah. So, I'm just going to keep it to some some notes that I took, but I'd be happy to answer any questions. What's that? I was wondering who that interlocal was that you had behind there. Moved up backed up to his house. Yeah. Um, you know, first Rocky, thank you for the nice compliments about graduation and our awards ceremony. Those are some special times for our kids and our families. So, uh, we really try to make that special like that. Um, Steve, and I'm sorry I stole your speech at graduation, but you kept it under two hours. So, yes, exactly. That was important. Um, we're going to break this up just like the middle school just like the middle school did. Um, I'll speak a

111little bit to our English and math um, data. Keep in mind that there is a huge shift at this point from elementary and middle school to high school data. Essentially, we have the ACT test and students take that when they're a junior. Um, so that's what we based our goals on. Um, but then the goals really trickle to little goals that end up impacting um our attendance and our behavior. So, it will look very different. Um there's not as much data, but we've tried to put it together in summaries with years and um and national averages. Uh the state ACT scores weren't available at the time that we had to have this um report submitted, but I will get those and and make sure to present those. I've broken this down into departments so you

112can kind of see a little bit of the work that we've been doing over the course of the last couple years. um when you have one test their junior year, nothing seems to happen very fast. It's all very an intentional process and you have to really look at what you can plan to see some sort of result uh at the at the end of the school year. So with English, um our other points of data are the STAR testing and that's benchmarking progress monitoring. Um our goal with STAR is really to get the fidelity and the testing. What was happening is um we were having students test fall, winter, and spring on STAR. However, we weren't have sen having seniors tested because seniors weren't in a math class and you take STAR for math and

113reading. Um but you they weren't in a math class. So this year we really tried to attempt to have all seniors test uh in the STAR. that was more difficult when they're not in a math class. So, we really started to hone in on how we can use I IG to identify all students that are in a math class. Um, seniors also weren't tested in English um because the Acts were over uh we weren't placing kids in support classes like media um lit essentials or math essentials. So, we really want to have some better data to look at and figure out how we can strengthen um our star scores and then that will impact our ACT work and our ACT scores. Um also in uh English uh we have study sync now and we're really

114focusing in that department on what does study sync how how consistent are our teachers uh in using study sync for their instruction meaning that we really need to establish a baseline of consistency because we have some teachers who are using it more than others. some teachers are using more supplemental materials than study sync and we're starting to see that there's a a bit of of off in those classes from those teachers. So, we want to establish which consistency is most effective for student achievement. Um, and that's a that's a pretty long process, but we're we're starting to go through that as we've just had study sync a couple years. Um also with the star testing um we have start done an overhaul of how we test because what was happening is the window will be

115open for each of the fall winter and spring. However, if a teacher doesn't test until the later in the window and a student is absent then the window closes and that student doesn't have an opportunity to test. So we're structuring each of the windows where we will leave at least a week and a half of that testing window for makeups and they will everyone will test and everyone will check off that they tested in that time. But so that's another effort that we've made to get better data from the testing. Uh we're also looking at study sync for our at ACT standards um assessment and we're looking at study sync and we're picking those out. we're picking the ones that maybe aren't there in our study sync in our English curriculum. So, I think you'll

116see uh for science, math, and ELA mainly, we've really dissected all of our curriculum to make sure that we are preparing students for the ACT all the while meeting all of the other standards with our standardsbased instruction. And finally, for English, we have our universal grading where um as a school, we took standardsbased instruction and now we're using our universal grading, which means that you have a certain percentage for assessments and a certain percentage for practice. We've given departments the flexibility in that though PE is very different than math. So for PE, it's 20% assessments, 80% practice. Um, but we've given the departments that flexibility and worked through it with the departments what's going to work best for them. And now at the end of the school year, that will be our work is assessing

117how effective that was. Um, making grades meaningful in the sense that our feedback to parents and students is is what they need to continue to achieve. Uh also across the departments, we have um some numbers from our ACT tests. Students can take their ACT over again. It's not on the district. We don't pay for it, but last year we saw that students retook the ACT. This year from last year, their scores went up an average of 1.86 points. That being said, we're really pursuing researching, if you will, the preac. that would also be voluntary for our students. But with the um the numbers that we're seeing of improvement after retaking it, we're we really want to look into that preac. Next is math. Carrie, this is slide four. Quicker. There's going to be more slides

118than There we go. So, in our math department, and I presented this at the um at the board meeting um a while back along with uh Mr. Johnston, um math has done an incredible amount of work on identifying what is actually tested on the ACT. What we found out is that in our current math curriculum, which is an integrated math system that and that means that geometry, statistics, and algebra are all interwoven into the curriculum. Um, that ends up being problematic from what our research shows us. Um, transfer students come in. Most transfer students that come in, they're from a traditional math curriculum, which is algebra 1, algebra 2, and geometry. The other thing about that is our ACT scores. The ACT is heavily uh filled with geometry skills. and our students aren't getting to

119the point in the school year where we're reaching geometry that they get this those uh the skills that they're taught those skills early enough on the year. So, um, and I think you'll see with this year's ACT scores, with some of the, um, curriculum modifications we made later in the year, our math, um, ACT scores did go up, uh, plus 1.1 points this year from some of those things that we've been doing, even um, diving deep into the curriculum. Math also is um working tirelessly on common formative assessments as is English. That's one of the things that for our common classes, these common formative assessments are giving us better data to look to um what skills are we still missing? How can we make sure that on our assessments we're finding areas that um do

120not match or are not on the ACT? Um, for instance, when I get to science, I'll say science on every assessment and practice that they have in their classrooms and that they have an ACT assessment with that. So, we're able to make sure that all of that is in included in that. So, math, uh, back to math, um, what we're going to do is, uh, we got it approved to go back to a traditional math curriculum that will only start with freshmen next year. So freshmen will be in an algebra 1 class. Is that a typo then? It says fall 2026. So we wait for next year. Yeah. So they they'll be in the freshman will be in algebra. So if that is a is a typo then fall 26. That's what I was asking.

121Wondering why we wait. Yes. Thank you for pointing this. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But it will only be freshmen. So it will take us a couple years to see the results of of changing this. Um and then they'll go to algebra 2 and then to geometry in in their junior year. Okay. Uh questions on math or ELA? I'll move to science real quickly. Um, science is another one where we've really dissected the curriculum. When we're talking about ACT scores, we only require two credits of science for students to graduate. Um, the ACT, they take their junior year, their third year, and um, they may not be in a science class their junior year. They have may maybe have met the requirements in their first two years. Um we're seeing that as something that we would like

122to investigate more. Um also in science, what we've done to make sure that in the two years that we're preparing um our students for the ACT and to meet our standards, um we have curriculum review worksheets. We did those for every all of our courses. Um what do we have? What do those mean? Um it means that all ACT it ensures that all ACT standards are in our curriculum when the topic is introduced and when proficiency is expected. That gave us some great data to look at um is is two credits of science enough. Are you giving our credit uh kids a opportunity with only two credits? Uh we're working on um now uh improving science reasoning skills beginning with our ninth graders. Um that's one of the main things on the ACT. Uh and

123again pre preac um we're researching and looking into that. That's in in math, science, and ELA. Those are some things that we're really seeing stand out stand out to us. Uh across all departments, um we have our common formative assessments for our common taught classes. We have our universal grading and we have our instructional guidance. And I bring up the instructional guidance here because we have a lot of data from that and that's really how we go to support our academics is um how are we using that instructional guidance time to support some of these goals and to gather information and feedback from students on on where they're at or how we're how we're missing a couple um things that they they really need to know. Finally, um we have a dean of students. Thank

124you for that, by the way. That's we're really excited about that. He's here tonight. Mike Corsick is here tonight. Um and we're we're thrilled about that. And I'll let Mr. Horsesley and Mr. Miller speak a little bit to it more specifically in behavior and attendance. But one of the things we want to focus on that we've seen data wise student achievement is uh freshman transition. we can really see that eighth graders coming into the high school need more support, need more specific support. So, Mike is going to be working on some freshman transition things because if you when we get to the attendance uh and behavior data, a lot of our behavior data is from um some freshmen, new freshmen that are struggling with transition at high school. And it's very understandable. Um it it's

125it's different. So, I think that we can do something um maybe in IG, but we're really going to focus on that freshman transition, even the studying skills, even the organizational skills. Um you know, with our IG right now, um the kids uh rotate. So, like um they went from if a teacher had seniors last year in IG, this year they had freshmen. Um so, it's a battle to figure out exactly what we're going to do. Some teachers are like, "No, I want to roll with this class for four years." The other teachers are saying, I will get to my point here, I promise. Um, the other teachers are saying, "No, no, no, no, no. I want to be an expert at this grade level." So, when I talk about freshman transition, I'm talking about if

126teachers want to stay with the freshmen, they understand freshmen, they they respect freshmen, and they're having great success in their IG classes with the freshmen and relating to the freshmen. So, that's where we're at on that. But we we feel that freshman transition would be something to increase our attendance, improve our behavior um and uh make it so that every person does have a connection in the school, a support. So any questions for me on the quick rundown of our data? Uh Mr. Oh, yeah. Uh Mr. Mr. Horsesley will do some attendance and also make a couple notes on AP. Uh, one more. That's the one. Um, so this is our AP data from um scores are from last year. The scores won't be available until uh I believe July 7 they come out. So

127I will work to get those in report so you can see them. Um, and our testing numbers, um, that's how many students we had testing this year versus last year and the total test, which is pretty close. Um, and working with Mr. Johnson, um, we did put a fee in for students this year where the the fees were taken care of by a grant previously. Um and that that did substantial um benefit for us in that the last two years were all test fees were free. Uh there were a lot of students that just did not show up for a test but we're still charged for the test because the order date is in November and the tests are in May. Um so this year we had uh I think singledigit unused exams. Um, and

128some appeared as unused, but we when I have to reorder it's for students that make divisionals or there's they, you know, culinary made nationals, things like that. So, it was a a substantial difference there. So, that was a great benefit having students have a little um skin in the game. So, that that was good. Um, and as you I won't state too much on this, but as you can see, we're we're exceptional in some areas compared to Montana and globally. We have some some room to gain in some areas as well. Um, and we're on par in some areas. Um, but constantly we're it's a fluctuating thing where we're we're trying to put uh prerequisites, uh, application process, teach teacher recommendations, making sure the students have an equitable opportunity to take the classes, but making

129sure they're in the right classes. So, um, that that's just a brief AP thing and we'll have scores here shortly in a month, but any questions on that right now. Okay. And the next, just because, uh, at the high school level, graduation rates are a component of our SIP. Um, uh, I utilized information from GEMS um, for us and for double A schools. We're slightly above the graduation rates at DA schools. uh a little more slightly behind the United States. Obviously, we're working to improve that. We want to find at risk students, put them in touch with the right resources, support them however we can to get those rates up. But that's just kind of where we're at right now and what we're working to do to continue to improve that. And this is our

130attendance from the last three years. Uh our goal was 88% for this year. We fell slightly short of that as of two weeks a week and a half ago or so when we ran the reports for that. Um but that's that's where we are and where we've been. Uh the attendance policy went in place last year and there's there was a massive jump, you know, 4% jump there. So I I think more than anything that has helped us to establish communication and relationships with families and understanding what's going on. Um, so as as we move forward, that's our big goal is to continue to grow that communication, those relationships with families and and support where needed. Um, and and to try and pinpoint why attendance is an issue and to improve it. Can I say

131one? Yes, absolutely. Attendance to um the opportunities that we're providing our students across across the board in our curriculum and that whether it be our strong trades program or other offerings for that. We've really again honed in on that to help our attendance. I mean, get people involved, get our students involved so that they want to if you if give them a reason, they're there. And we have we have several uh unique opportunities for our students. So, we're really trying to focus on promoting that more and helping individual students there as well. Is is this attendance based on like not kids going to sports and or it's just purely didn't come to school whe they're sick or whatever. Sorry, you're good. Does that include all the excused absence issues? It it includes the excused. It

132does not include the exempt ones. It does not include medically exempt and the the school related. Those those are exempted. So, um, honestly, I it's it's a bit skewed. It's it's difficult to run the right reports and to to put it together. Yeah. Policies changed year-over-year here. So, those numbers would look different anyway, right? On what we call what that's that's correct. Yes. And to touch on what Shannon was saying, we've far from perfected it, but working like with the programs we're offering, you know, if a student's interested, they're going to be there and the behavior is going to be lower. So, we're we're working to to support students with what they they want and what they need to go beyond 12th grade. Um, so again, far from perfected, but that's what we're working on.

133Um, and then the next one is the attendance rate. uh just us versus uh double A and the national and we've got a ways to go and you know we're continuing to again the the critical thing is building relationships with families and emphasizing the importance of attendance you know being present and being active at school. Um so again we're substantially behind at 2% or so of uh the rest of the AA schools and nationally 2.3% behind. Um, but that's that's what we're working on and enforcing our attendance policy and still trying to be sympathetic to situations that are out of students control. Um, and the reality is if we get a phone call and a student's sick, they may not be sick and we get burned sometimes. But we want to support, you know, we

134ask families to give us their children for 40 hours a week and they trust us with that. So, we work to trust them and work with them in those situations. So still a ways to go but getting there. Are you guys similar to the middle school? You get after 5 days you're given a call to the parents and then after 10 a letter. We we we utilize a call for both. We've just found that more effective than written communication just to make sure. And and I I don't know the exact number, Mr. Miller, but unfortunately of of the calls we've made, the vast majority is no voicemail available. no um no voice mailbox set up and we're left unavailable to contact the parents you know via email. So we we do run into those obstacles

135and about the third quarter we started working with April uland our registar on doing a better job of all of us logging our contacts to the families you know if a student does need to be withdrawn but finding out what the situation is so we're getting there we're not there yet. Yeah. also um uh created a stronger process for when when we start the the work on absences and that and it will start the first day of school. It won't we won't we won't wait until um 10 days into school or 20 days into school. We'll start right away. I mean, we can catch kids that haven't been there for the even the first two days. Um, and so we really have a process um that we're going to put in place early and I

136think that that will um will significantly help us. And and what we what we did find at our first time, we we did wait a little bit into the school year. We did find there there was a a big portion of those students were out of state or transferring. So they were, you know, in good standing somewhere else or working to get there. Um so that that did happen at the beginning of the year in our communication. So that the critical thing is the communication piece and finding out what's going on and working to address it or support the students or families. Is I I was going to say um is there I know I'm using my son in Belgrade High School when he was there. He graduated last year as an example. Um, but

137when Brendan was there, I remember he had a study hall class and because of that, we would receive the phone call every day when we didn't when he didn't show up. And it got to the point where I couldn't tell, we ignored the call because is there a way to clean that up so that we're not getting information overload so that when the kids actually not in the school, we get the information, but you know, when he's not when he's skipping a study hall, our phones aren't burning up. So, you know, because like I said, we got to the point from a from this is coming from a parent perspective where oh, Brendan Brennan missed study hall again and and it was almost a joke in our house cuz my wife and I both got

138the phone calls about the same time every night and it's like it like I said, you you put so much information out there that it that it becomes a non-event and then when um you know, if he didn't make a class or something, he didn't go to school, it never flattened. It didn't register to us till, you know, way later when we're going, "Wait, wait, wait a minute. Why is it why weren't you there then?" You, you know, and and so I think by getting the over getting inundated with the phone calls, it uh you know, it the the important ones didn't rise to the top. Does that make sense? It makes absolutely sense. Yes. And that's the infinite campus side of it. Um, maybe it's something we can talk with Rick about, but I

139that's a very valid point and that's partially why Mr. Miller and I kind of shifted to us making a lot of calls because you don't want to hear if you've if you know your students home, you don't want every teacher that day calling you to tell you they've missed 5 days where you already know it is you already know that's happened. So th those are things we're trying kinks we're trying to work. It's on paper it looks pretty straightforward in terms of policy but putting hands and feet on it and working out I understand that. I'm just trying to I'm just trying to give you clarification from like I said, this isn't coming from a schoolboard standpoint. This is coming from a parent standpoint where I was sitting at home and like I said, it's

140oh, there's the school calling again and ignore. Yeah. No, I understand. And then if there was a legitimate problem because we Yeah, you ignored it because it was sir routine thing. So, so well thank you for that input and again I think that it is something campus side of it and that's a kink we can work to work out. Okay. Can you um I guess clarify for me. I had an interesting conversation over the weekend with a parent who admitted that their child in high school has been missing a lot of school recently. and they said that their child signed up for some AP courses and is overwhelmed like she probably should not have at this point, right? Um, what is our process for intervention on those things? And can a student midway through a

141semester of like, uh, this is too much? Because what it sounded like from this parent was this child is now overwhelmed and in the weeds and is instead of feeling like they are confident to just finish out the school year, they've just completely reverted into a shell and are skipping class because they don't want that responsibility, right? So, what is our process of identifying those kids that are maybe in classes that they shouldn't be in? Is there a way for kids to drop a class mid- semester and move to a different situation? What does that look like? Absolutely. And I would say maybe four years ago, it was much more stringent. And I think partly because AP teachers were very protective. If they had class numbers, they wanted to show they had class numbers so

142that their class would continue. Absolutely. Um, but I I think we've started um looking more at scores and working to get the student in the right spot. I would say this year might be the best year we we've done that. There were a lot of schedule changes. Um, for mostly for students, I would say in that junior level, you know, we have sophomores in bio and and statistics and sometimes in computer science, but for the most part, it's those juniors. and and we we were also I I don't have the answer for this, but I think a lot of students were taking AP classes to get the advanced studies diploma and maybe that was not the right fit. So, we're working to be flexible with them. So, yes, we we do work to especially at

143semester and even earlier just if we can change one from an AP to a just a a regular bio. Absolutely. Or whatever the class may be. So, in the future, if a parent comes up to me and talks to me about that at any point in the school year, um who should I direct? My phone number. Yeah, we we'll we'll work with them and figure something out. Okay. Also, um increase the um uh the application to get into an AP class. Now, teachers are having individual conversations with students just so that, you know, because you can't take an AP class doesn't say anything about you negatively. It just means it's not a good fit. and the kids are a lot better sometimes. I mean, that's a conversation with one of us and the teacher, not

144just a a no on a piece of paper. We can really filter them um much better for their own benefit. Okay. Any more AP attendance? The only thing I'd say is probably good better for someone to get out of AP earlier. Absolutely. Placed in another class. Mhm. So, I don't know if you have a timing uh requirement on uh dropping a class, but it would seem to me most of the time that I've been involved with that kind of thing, there's a window. You if you could drop a class within that window, then there's kind of a no foul, no alarm type of deal. And we do have a window. And the other thing with um like core subjects like English lit English language they could go into the normal English English three or four

145as opposed to having to find a whole new class. So that's with that bio um you know a lot of the subjects there are but then some subjects there aren't but we do we do have a window and um so that yes there is a window and um I know you mentioned something earlier Mr. Smith and I would say this as well when you mentioned co I think we did ourselves a disservice doing what we had to do during that time by making the school work so accessible via Google Classroom and things like that. And I I think that's kind of biting us right now attendance-wise. And that's also something we're trying to combat, which I'm open to any suggestions on that, but I I do believe that's that is a a component of things.

146You know, students have access to the vast majority of work. um and as I mentioned before a parent excuses an absence so they can just turn in the work it's excused come in for an assessment and so that's something we're battling as well and trying to to figure out thanks thank you Tyler um so I'll just talk about some of the behavior um data that we um put in there and um kind of condense I think the biggest thing that we've done the last going on three plus years just really like streamlining and making things very consistent uh is a little bit all over the over the place when I started and so getting it to a point where we're documenting but making it so we have apples to apples comparisons year after year and

147so going into this this is you know our you know are truly our second year where we can have an apples to apples comparisons about some of the behaviors in that are happening in the building uh similar to what the other schools have already said a lot of those tier one those classroom behaviors that doesn't show up in in this data right here. Uh we have teachers document those as uh what was minor behaviors now are labeled as staff managed behaviors and the similar process uh you know especially when when you get to the high school uh you know giving teachers that the latitude to create the classroom environment that they um works to their personality um works to their strengths and works to what's needed in the classroom. uh you know a a welding

148class is going to have much more stringent rules than a general art class and and that's just some of the safety components involved in that. So um kind of pulling that or you know getting those types of behaviors out of the data and keeping that in kind of individual conversations and um support for you know admins supporting teachers when those problems aren't fixed after the first time or after the initial consequence that was given. And that and that's where we step in. And so with some of these these are um you know tier one behaviors that uh were not corrected after being addressed by the classroom teacher and then were brought to myself or Bert to kind of handle and address moving forward. Um so you can see uh our overall behavioral referrals went from

14980 to 86 this year. Um, again, I think this is a more of a testament to anything of just better tracking and and actually getting a consistent tracking piece going here. So, um, you know, a lot of the, um, and of those 61 students, so there's a sizable amount or not a sizable, but a a percentage of of multiple referrals of one student getting multiple uh, referrals. I I think some of the biggest the the biggest takeaway that I would offer that is kind of you know I don't know if set in stone is the right way to describe it but you know where do you see behavior issues it's 9th and tth graders it's predominantly male students and so what was spoken before is what resources can we put in place to help with

150that transition what resources can we put in place to continue to support interactions of those younger grade level kids the nth and tth graders um you know you see in the last slide with the grade level there that it consistently drops year after year that the number of referrals that a student gets goes down and primarily the kids that we're seeing most frequently are are freshman and shortly after that sophomores. Um, you know, so some of the things that are in place, you know, the the ruler program, uh, some of that social emotional learning pieces, um, how to navigate conflict, how to navigate, um, you know, just responding to other people's and being more kind of socially aware of what's going on and reading other people's social cues. And, you know, a lot of the

151stuff that we get is teasing or joking that goes too far where, you know, we talk to him, it's like, well, I thought we were friends. It's like, well, you know, you're not or or you were friends up till here and when you went there, you're not friends. So, you know, but that's, you know, that that's part of those components is is learning to read read those situations and and helping those kids to learn that um and and better respond to that. Um, you know, pro promoting that connectedness to teachers and students. that's been brought up multiple times and you know that's kind of the goal of IG is you know making sure that there's someone in the building that uh a student feels comfortable going to whether that is a a teacher a staff

152member um you know whatever but if there's an adult in the building that I can go to to talk to because I think that's one of the other problems that we fight um you know is we we can only respond to what we know and when kids feel more comfortable knowing where to go to and who to talk to or they know a person that can get them to the right direction we're going to get more information to respond more effectively. Um I I think one of the big glaring things from this too that I I just wanted to point out um our looking at our out out of school suspension data compared to our inschool suspension data from last year to this year uh the out of school suspension um was much much higher.

153Uh this was a result of losing our past coordinator. um you know with that a lot of uh in school or probably uh you know a more appropriate consequence would have been in school suspension but just not having the staff to uh support that uh we had to use an out of school suspension instead. So um any questions on that? Got one. Walt, are you good? Ah, well, I'm looking here. ELLL, did we not have any incidents in the 20 year 425 year or did Nope, not this year. Okay. I was just wondering if it didn't get left out there. Why is the spike in the male student demographic this year so drastic from last year, whereas the females trended down? My joke answer is I blame Dave and Jessica. But um you know I

154I think that I think that just uh I think that it's it's just a reflection of what we see year in and year out and what you know is just the the students that we uh that have behavior issue or the most common behavior issues that come from freshman boys. Um I understand that reason. Yeah. And would would you expect it to trend down next year and just kind of be an average bouncing around or is that a trend that's going up that's going to continue? Are we looking at a pattern or are we looking at I I don't think it's a trend that's going up. I think it is I think it just more speaks you know certain classes are going to have their components. I think uh you know I think the other

155thing that I wanted to point out too is you know um 61 students were involved in this. So we only had 19 students that had multiple referrals. So you know a lot of these times uh they're kids. They're they're they do they do dumb things. And you know when we can address that with a consequence, you know, the the data plays out that for the majority of the time when the a consequence like that, especially a consequence like this, because anytime uh you know, any of these behaviors, parents have been called and and we've talked to parents about it. And so the majority of the time a kid isn't going to do that again. And so I guess yeah, now now to think about it, when it's 61 students, you know, statistically you can go

156all over the map. When I look at it here, it's alarming because all a sudden Yeah. Through the roof. It's like, wait a minute, what's going on? And and you can kind of, you know, and again, I guess I just point to the next one where, you know, if you look and, you know, if you follow the the um the red line to the or excuse me, the blue line to the red line each year. Um you can see how they kind of consistently drop each year a little bit. So, my assumption would be that, you know, it'll that'll come down and, you know, maybe the ninth grade boys next year will look more similar to this. you know, last year we had uh um more there was a lot more females that uh freshman

157females than normal this year. So, it just it's okay. I'm just trying to understand these numbers reading the chart. I think we're in a lucky position where there I I don't think uh you know it's it's hard to find any trends and that's that's the one trend that I can say was certain. I think other than that it it just depends on the the situation and and some of the the things that come up you you see once in 5 years and you you know I saw that once and you never see it again and you know it just it it's weird. So chalk it up as an anomaly. Correct. Yeah. I think the biggest thing that that we've tried to do with this is really just educate people on our processes and so t

158uh teachers, staff, students, parents, they understand where they're at in the process and um I think that's you know I'd say our biggest win and and I think that's the best one of the best things we can do with behavior type stuff is does everyone know the process? Are are we able to follow the process? Um because like I said, they're going to make dumb decisions. There's going to be dumb decisions made next year and we're never going to be able to stop that. They're cute. They are cute. Okay. Any questions for Tyler? Anybody else? Thanks, guys. Thank you. You and one more thank you to Tyler for all his work here. We've been going pretty hard for about two and a half hours. Does anyone need to take a break or should we continue?

159Jo. Joann's. Let's take five. That's the benefit of being here. I don't I don't have to ask. just spent two hours talking about education. I don't think we need to. Oh, yeah. Maybe. All right. Guess you got to wait for facilities, man. Thank you. All right, baby. This is just going to be one of those days. Leroy, are you ready? Well, you have to go in and get it done. Well, Jo, are you ready? Here we go. Facilities with reunite. All right. Um, I only got about 46 slides to show you guys tonight. I'm kidding. Um, for my update, I just I got a whole list of stuff there. Um, I'm not going to read all the stuff off. Do you you guys have any questions about any of it? Um, the parent teacher council

160shed. Um, is that being moved from from Peak? Yeah. No, right here. It's one of these ones being moved over there. Yeah, the green one. the previous parent teacher out about the one that's going to be at Sat that's at Saddle Peak that Ash is well Ashley's gone now but the one that because that's no longer a thing that group is no longer a thing. Okay. Yeah, the shed's still the shed's still there which I assume if we get another one that'll be their shed. Two questions. So where are the security gates going? Um that one that project has not been fully dived into yet. Um but uh definitely over at the middle school, that's one of our biggest ones where we just have these open hallways. If you go rent the gym, you can

161you can get to any part of the school. Um the high school as well in certain some certain key areas. Um Bridge View we don't have to worry about. They designed that one perfectly. you're if you're in that gym, you can lock and not be able to get through the rest of it. Um, and Saddle Peak has one as well. Story Creek is still up in the air. We got to have some conversations with Lori to find out. Um, and radon mitigation, where are we doing that? So, at the high school, we we've already completed at the middle school. Um, the numbers at the high school showed that during occupied hours were under the EPA recommended action level. It's only when the HVAC systems get turned off that you see start to see the numbers

162rise. So, um and and I met with uh the folks who install the radar mitigation and it was a pretty cut and simple when it came to the middle school. High school's a lot harder um based on the way that it was built and the key areas. much um maybe around 10 grand. Okay. Or less open and depends on how many number of systems. I mean the high school's basement is considerably larger than the middle school. The two of those the number of zeros is fine. Okay. Any questions for Leroy? Any further ones? Thanks for the update, Leroy. student achievement. Matt Johnson, it's your big moment. My big moment. Uh so I just wanted to touch base. Shannon made a comment uh for the high school that they're trying to give unique experiences to students

163that will help them beyond their high school career. This is one of them. Uh it's very unique because we are the only high school in Montana that has this opportunity going into next year. the uh uh Accelerate Montana and locally the Montana Photonix and Quantum Alliance had approached Belgrade to offer a pilot program that is typically a six-week program for adults that would be looking to switch careers um to become a licensed electrooptic technician or a certified uh technician. They want to try and see if they can can condense it and offer it to juniors and seniors in high school. So we are looking at a two to three-week program. It's backed up by like I said, Accelerate Montana, the quant photonics and quantum alliance, the university system, Gallatin College. It's all grant funded. It's

164not going to cost us a dime. Um we looked at uh Gallatin College recommended Mr. Kinnaman's class welding three class because it's already a dual enrollment class and it fits right in with an advanced manufacturing piece. He's got about 18 students in that class, which they were looking for about 20. And there'll be some field trips uh to various businesses in Bosezeman. And they're tasked with building a rover. And they'll do all of the work to do that through lab materials and quality control and lasers. And it's a pretty extensive program that they're going to try and shrink down into two to three weeks. His welding three class meets daily for 90 minutes. So it it should fit in really nicely. Uh Mr. Kinnaman is pretty excited about the opportunity that it could present his

165students in that class. Um so we're going to give it a shot. It's just a pilot. Um Mr. Kinnman would be co-eing it with uh Phil, I believe you say his last name is Diesel. He would be the one coming and kind of facilitating the class with Mr. Kinnman co-eing it. And then at the end of it, Mr. Kinnaman would be certified to do it as well. So if we continued this year after year, we wouldn't have to partner with him necessarily. We could bring him in as a guest speaker and and co-f facilitate it, but we would have the credentials to be able to do it ourselves. Um just going to see how it goes and see if it's something that works for us. Um but the idea is the students at the end

166of the two to three weeks would be uh have an industry recognized certification in electrophotonics optic technician or however you say that. So we're kind of excited to see how that works. Um Amy Guver, our STEM coordinator, through her connections with the quant photonics and quantum alliance and all the things that she does, uh she's amazing. uh she's got more connections in the valley than I could even imagine. Um they came and approached her with it and and specifically targeted Belgrade because of our location. So I think it's a great opportunity for us to give it a try and see what what happens. Any questions or comments for Matt? It's a one-year pilot program, right? It's two to three weeks in the late fall and that's it. Okay. And we'll see how it goes. Is

167it possible for the future then? No. I'm sorry. Is it possible to do again then in the future or we're going to see how this pilot goes and see if it's viable. Um mainly in the time frame like I said most more often than not for adults it's a six-w weekek program and the organization is trying to see if they can compact it into two to three weeks and make it still robust enough to qualify for the certification. So we're going to see how it works. Thank you. What specifically is this class? Is this like the getting the kids to be able to uh be certified to weld fiber optic cable? Is that what they're going to do? Fiber splicing or I I guess I'm just trying to I'm I'm all in on it on

168on it, but I'm just wondering what the actual specifics are with. So, there's various units. So, there's lab and material safety. They'll talk about electrical safety with high voltage materials, lasers, and all the regulatory requirements to that. Uh they'll work on solder soldering and connectors and and the various tools when it comes to manufacturing skills. Um digital and analog systems, sensors. Um and then there's the quality control with making sure all their documents are in line with what they're supposed to be doing. And um I don't understand all of it. It's a lot of technical jargon that goes with photonics and quantum quantum electronics and all of that. Um, so I'm I'm really excited to learn more about it as they're going through it as well. But there's it's pretty robust. I really cool. I

169think I was reading this. It's really cool what they're going to be doing. So, thank you, Matt. I think it'd be a cool opportunity for us. This good stuff. Yeah. Like I have guy I have crews working at night, change out traffic signals in in Tampa that are using four of these And they're highly paid, highly skilled guys. So, it's a good intro. Yeah. I'm waiting for Jesse to say what I'm gonna say. No, you say it. Seems like something that we should get a lot of news exposure for. Yep. But would only happen if we Oh, yeah. We're going to promote the promote the hell out of it. Good. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, Matt. All right. Next up, the consent agenda. Do we have a motion to continue? I move to approve minutes

170from May 19th, 2025 regular board meeting. What? Oh, I move to adopt the consent agenda items one through five. I forgot we were doing this. I love it. I move to adopt the consent agenda items one through five as listed on the agenda and board packet. Authorize necessary action for these items and include the same in the minutes. Second. We have a motion and a second. Do we have any public conduit comment on the consent agenda items? Hearing none. Any board comment or questions? Um, a question. Summer school staff, remind me where the funding comes from that. Okay. And it goes right in the general fund. Okay. We considered this when we were looking at budgeting. Okay. I don't remember it. That's why I asked exactly how many kids you need a summer school for

171to pay for it. So, okay, perfect. And the other I have is a comment. Matt be able to be able may be able to clarify your question. I just have a different point on the summer school staff. Bailey Blake has accepted a position out of district, so she won't be on that summer school staff. Okay. Sorry interrupted that Friday. No, you're fine. I wasn't looking up. I was looking down. Speaking note. Um, next question. The other comment. Um, I know this is uh that we have a sbatical on here that is fine. It was applied for under last year's rules. Those all changed this year in negotiations. Um, those shouldn't be on the consent agenda in the future. If we're going to do a sbatical, it's supposed to be for some specific reasons and and

172student advancement will benefit from it as well. So please, if we do that again next year, bring it forward. Thank you, Frank. Yep. Any other comments before we bring it to a vote? All in favor of approving the consent agenda as stated, say I. I. I. All oppose, same sign. Motion carries. Seven to nothing. Is Joanne still on? Yep. Did you approve, Joanne? Yep. Seven to nothing. Thank you. No prior business. That brings us to new business. Dee, would you like to update us on the orchestra? I would like to update you on the orchestra. Um, the school district provides orchestra programming at the middle school and high school levels. Students are registered for those classes for the fall. The teaching position has been posted in the state and with the National Music Organization. And

173we actually have had interest in the position and are moving through our vetting interview and hiring process as we speak. So, um, once we have somebody hired, we'll, um, get that information out to our families. And just thanks to our principles for finding Phil and teachers to support our students musically, uh, through the end of the school year and to our teachers and community members who stepped up to make sure that our kids had a great end to their year. Thanks, De. This will move us on to the petition to transfer the lands within a minor subdivision. Um, we do need a motion to continue this discussion, even though it is for deny, I believe. Um, I'll move to deny the petition submitted by Sean McFarland requesting transfer of property from I close my comment

174there from the Bgrade School District to the Boseman School District for property within minor subdivision number 473. I'll second. We have a motion in a second. Uh, I do believe we have public comment. Sean, would you like to step up and speak for a couple minutes? And I'm sorry this you picked the uh longest night of the year. Sorry for the wait. As you know, Juliana McFarland, my oldest daughter, just graduated. I can't hear. Can you make sure the mic's on pretty please? There we go. There we go. Okay. Sorry. Uh just a a first thank you to the people here at Belgrade. Um my daughter played at Belgrade um volleyball in 23 24 season. She's moving on to play volleyball in college. She'll be representing Petra at the Midland Round Table All-Star game this

175coming Friday. So we've gotten good support from people here. Um Coach Britt Murphy and also Matt Hoskins came to a graduation party and um so just good support from people here. um that what we found in those two years with Juliana coming here is she had to leave school half hour early from Petra to get to get to practices. Um she often missed like team study time together. There was like study hall time together, stuff like that. She wasn't able to make it for that in time. In addition to that, we we found out recently that she could have been involved in other extracurricular activities including choir, orchestra, speech and debate, so on so forth. Much broader than athletics is included in that extracurricular activity option for homeschool or private schoolers. Uh we live our

176our address is technically Bosezeman. We're right like a stones throw from the district line. Uh our lives are in Bosezeman. It's just the nature it's been. My wife works as a legal law firm downtown in Bosezeman. I work I'm a part owner in a business in Bosezeman. We've been there for a long time. We have three more kids in school. One is going to be a junior. One is going to be um an eighth grader. One is going to be a sixth grader. So, as we move forward, we have interest in extracurricular activities, whether it's athletics or things like choir, things like orchestra. Um and looking forward I so we found out about this MCA this law and MCA about petitioning for school district transfer in uh this December and I reached out to the

177Gall County superintendent. He instructed me to talk to Mike Waterman of Boseman schools first. So I lengthly lengthy discussions with him about what about open enrollment? What about this? What about that? And what we found is is that this would not cover we couldn't cover everything. If our kids wanted to take part in an extracurricular as choir sports or take a class like an an elective class at a local school, what it would do is it would split it up. If we through the open enrollment, we could petition into like a class or something in Gallatin or Bolsman near Petra, but we would still have to come out here for extracurriculars, the way the law is written. And so this is a this this MCA to petition from one school district to another is a

178very narrowly used one. Historically, even prior to open enrollment, this I worked with Mike Waterfman. He can only find two examples of this being used. They were approved. One was between um elementary districts in the Bosezeman district. One was from the Bosezeman district out of the district, I believe, into Manhattan district. Um it only refers to people along the boundary line. It only refers to people that are over three miles from any schools within their districts. So our request is that our kids have been in Petra for 13 years. We have no no plan to to move there. We drive I drive by Gallatin High every single day. Um my kids can walk from from Petra to Gallatin. Uh for us to have kids in ninth and 10th grade uh without driver's licenses and to

179get them to appropriate extracurricular activities, we would have to pick them up at Petra, drive them out to Belgrade, drive back to work. That's 45 minutes to an hour depending on traffic and trains. Uh whereas if it's Gallatin, they can without me leaving work, they can walk across the street to Gallatin and go to extracurricular activities. Even if it's Bosezeman, I can pick them up, drop them off at Bosezeman, and be back at work in 20 minutes. And we've we've told Bosezeman that, too, that in if they were to accept us into their district, they can make the choice whether it's Boseman or Gallatin High, where we participate in extracurricular activities for the purpose of what's best for their district. because either way, a drive to Boseman High is still less than half the time

180as coming out here. And so, as we have our our oldest daughter's going to be a junior, she she dances six days a week from Montana Ballet Company. That's my my biggest concern is the kids coming up prior to driver's licenses. Even with driver's licenses, driving across town in the middle of winter, just an extra hour every single day. So, that that's kind of the background of this concern. Um just kind of a few notes. Um I noticed there was a lot of concerns that um the district brought up and and understood. Um again extracurriculars are broader than athletics. That was one of the major concerns was athletics is not constitutionally um I don't know what the word used uh backed but this is broader than athletics. This includes educational aspects as well in extracurriculars.

181Um and the the way this law is written is all aspects are pointing to where do you live and access the the main aspects of this law this ability to petition are based on do you are do you live right on the line? If you don't live right on the line you cannot petition for this. Secondly do you you you have to meet are you three miles from any schools within the district. Most of the schools within the districts are close to double that amount. They're like five and a half to six plus. Um and so and then the other aspect of it is excuse me sorry is is burden on schools and I think kind of that aspect comes in the tax aspect which you guys noted in yours this would be a permanent

182change. Um big picture, uh it's a I think it's around 8,000 a year, 10,000 a year from our subdivision. Uh four residences, one church in our subdivision. Um there's four school children there now. I have five in my report, my daughter just graduated, so it's not four. Um the other uh young lady who is in our subdivision, she goes to Manhattan Christian and will finish up there next year. So, um, as far as the tax implication, we're pretty small compared to the whole district. Um, the other thing is to mitigate that if you would like, um, I would be open to any, uh, discussion on a reversionary clause in 2033, um, to mitigate that. So, it's not a permanent effect long term to you guys. And I would be willing to work that out with

183the Gallup County Superintendent. If you'd like to work on that, we could do that. And, and we can leave that open. That's that's like even out of my discussion. It's 2033. You guys can talk with Boseman and figure it out. Whatever you think is best, do it. Um, another aspect of this is is there's a concern with erosion of school boundaries. I I could see how he'd be like, "Oh my goodness, this guy is going to is going to head out of the district. There's going to be a train of people behind him." Um, as I've noted first, I think if you went this through the statistics of who's on the boundary line, who's a home school or private school, it's going to be very small. The other aspect of it is boundaries change. You

184can you can you may this may increase properties in your district. For example, if I live in Bosezeman and my kid went to the private St. John's private school, Catholic school here, I would it would be so easy for them to walk from the Catholic school in town right across to do sports in Belgrade. So you could gain someone wanting to petition in from Boseman from Manhattan. So this is not this is not an aspect you were simply lose someone. This could be a lose or gain aspect. Um so that's the other aspect of this is I I'm a land surveyor by trade and so I work bound with boundaries all the time. I see boundaries shift and move. That's my daily thing. And to be quite honest boundaries moving one of the most practical

185aspects for boundary boundaries moving is access. I'm about a couple days away from submitting a boundary realignment for access to the gout county clerk and recorder. That's common. And so access issues with boundaries are that's just common in Montana. I see it every day of my life. And so when I saw this in MCA, it made practical sense for access and and and I look at it from a standpoint of is I have an hour each time a kid needs to come to extracurriculars in Belgrade versus they can just walk across the street in Bosezeman or drive 10 or 20 minutes. So again, that's kind of wraps everything up. Again, I just want to follow up with again, thank you. Um really um my daughter enjoyed her time playing with Belgrade and and that's thanks

186to the people in your programs here. So I just it was really like it really touched my heart having Matt Hoskins and Brett Murphy show up for a graduation party that was like out of the way. So that's all I have to say on the matter and um any questions I guess. Well, we can ask you questions, but thanks for sending us an email and uh clarifying all the things that were listed on here for sure and for showing up and sticking with it during the great long program before this. So, thanks and I guess do we have any other public comments on this where it comes back to the board? I think we've seen both Boseman and Belgrade's response to this as well as Sean's response to the points brought up by Dee. Do

187we have any questions to ask of Dee regarding this proposal? Okay. So, not seeing any, it comes back to a vote, and I will clearly read this. The motion is to deny the petition submitted by Sean McFarland requesting the transfer of property. All in favor of denying the petition say I. I. I. I. All same sign. I motion passes 6 to one. I'm sorry, Sean, but the next uh place you want to follow up is with the county superintendent. Now, he may be able to give you an exception. I appreciate it. Thank you. Uh consider meal pricing increases for 2025 2026. Do we have a recommended or a motion to continue? I'll move to increase lunch prices by 75 cents and breakfast prices by 50 cents. I'll second. We have a motion and a second.

188Um, I don't think we need to explain this, do we? Inflation. Any public comment? Any board questions or comment? Is this going to be enough to get us through so we don't have to raise rates for a little while or is this just a stop gap for a year or two? We got a we got a gap for a year or two. We just don't want to jump up too much. We're still way too low. We're still going to lose our ass, but we'll lose less of it. And hopefully our keep meal quality keeps going up and you keep doing a great job. Yeah. And we'll get there. I don't think school lunches is ever something that really breaks even or makes a profit here if I'm correct. Trying. Try. Okay. We're not even close.

189Trying to break even. Even. All right. Any other questions? All in favor of approving the increase in lunch prices by 75 cents and breakfast prices by 50 cents, say I. I I I I All oppose. Same sign. Motion C passes seven to nothing. Item number four, food service wages for 2026 20, excuse me, 2025 26. Do we have a motion to continue? I move to approve the food service wage revisions for uh FY26 as presented. Second. We have a motion and a second. Um, I don't know. Do we want to have Rebecca comment on this or are we good to go? Dia, um, you can be good to go or Trey is prepared to a little bit of an over. Do you want to give us a quick Sure. summary, Trey? I know we're running

190long, but I don't want to overlook anything either. You're good. Much of what this uh proposal has is a restructuring or organizational restructuring of our school nutrition program. And so I wanted to start on the first page there where it says what were our goals this year. As you know our goal was to increase participation. We did that probably not as much as we like but it we did increase it and that's that was good. Our our other goal was to improve our meal quality and we did that by adding more fresh fruits and vegetables and reducing processed foods. That's that's continues to be a goal for next year as well. We also wanted to improve the breakfast experience. We did that. Uh the middle school had uh additional breakfast second chance at the high

191school. Uh and we implemented some uh grab and go at the elementary school to speed up the process to uh help increase um meal uh participation at the elementary school. We also uh were trying to build our staff. We were able to fill um we had nine vacant positions and I think we had we had five vacant positions. So we didn't feel fill all of them but we we did make a a debt a dent in that. We also our goal was to reduce debt. uh and we've worked on that. We've eliminated last year's or all previous year's debts. So now we're just where we are currently is our current year debt. And so we've also developed a debt collection process that involves uh principles as well as our school nutrition program. So what are

192our goals for next year? Well, we obviously want to still increase participation. We want to provide a high quality meal program uh that will increase participation. And so some ways we want to do that next year are increase efficiency. There's a lot of redundancy in tasks. So we want to minimize that. We want to consolidate our purchasing. We want to consolidate our meal planning. Right now all the schools uh kind of have their own little meal plans. We'd like to consolidate the meal planning so that we can uh reduce our redundant tasks. Um and part of that process would be uh purchasing entree items from the Bosezeman kitchen uh central kitchen. Uh we'd also like to increase our meal options and by doing that we could provide at least three meal uh three entre options

193and then increase fresh fruits. Uh, one of our goals is to improve our quality of our food and that's going to be done through scratch cooking which means you know less processed foods and so part of that is we're going to implement our u healthy pro menu planning software which will help provide uh parents and staff with the nutrition of of the meals that are in there. Um, we also want to continue to do those other things we talked about earlier. And then, uh, part of this plan will create advancement opportunities for staff, uh, give them a career pathway and also provide, uh, enhanced training opportunities for them along the way. And obviously, we still want to reduce debt. So, on the back side, what is the proposed plan? Well, you have Rebecca as the

194school nutrition director, and with some of the vacancies that we have uh in our in our pro in our high school and elementary schools, we would like to convert at least shift some of the manager responsibilities there and create someone who's more in charge of operations, which would mean the ordering of the food, the meal planning, uh making that a district-wide decision versus individual schools. And then you would have the managers at each uh at each facility. So that's kind of the big big 40,000 foot plan. And then what's the cost? Uh you can see this year the 2425 FTE we had 20.30. And that's total salaries. You could see there next year we anticipate a little bit less um staffing. not much, but an increase due to the increase in wages as well as,

195you know, um that's really the primary cost is just the wages. So, it's really a 20 a little over $21,000 increase. Um and so that's kind of the big the big picture of this. Uh obviously part of it is an increase on the wages is just a dollar per cell. But then the other other is to increase the pay matrix and allow people to move uh not only vertically but also horizontally by increasing their training and skill set and what they bring to the kitchen. Okay. Thank you for that explanation. Any board comments or questions? Yes. Uh, I'm trying to How many people are we going to be out? How many different How many folks lose? How many folks do we lose this year? Next year versus this year. Well, uh, we did we did

196have some transition. Uh, saying what's your headcount for next year versus what it was? Well, our our goal is to have 19.81, which is a little less than the 20.3 we had this year. Um, do we have a pretty good idea what the cost is going to be from from Boseman? Well, part of that is going to be contingent upon what kind of like if we provide our uh commodities, if we provide them the beef, then that's going to reduce our cost there. Um, obviously Rebecca, I don't know if you can help me address some of the the expenditures related to the kitchen at Bosezeman and what that cost would be. Um, but are I so I'll just let you try to address some of that. Would you step up here, Rebecca? We need to

197get you in the microphone. So, we've gotten a price from Boseman based for um it it's all hamburger based product. So, it's the things that we put into entre that are hamburger based. And we right now prepare these products about five times a month. So, it's spaghetti sauce, taco meat, chili, oh, I'm going to lose it. Sloppy Joe's. Sloppy Joe's. Right now, we we produce those about five times a month. The really the only price comparison I can do right now is what it would cost us to buy the same product from US Foods. And the Boseman price delivered to Belgrade um every two weeks is about 3% higher than what US Foods is. So you say, well, why would you do a product that's priced higher? Well, the reason is the product coming from

198US foods is chalk full of all kinds of additives. The product coming from Bosezeman is meat, tomato sauce, spices, beans, lentils. Um, we get a lot more control. Boseman is willing to look at our recipes and use our recipes or we can use Boseman's recipes. We did a taste test um just this last week. So, that's still to be determined. One of the big savings would be, as Trey mentioned, is if we used we sent our beef and our canned tomatoes, our product to Boseman to be processed, and that would be a significant savings. So, and we can do both in this month. They're going to transport this to us. Yes. Um, are we freezing this stuff and then transporting it? Are we We hope not. We hope not to freeze it. So it would

199be transported between 34 and 38 degrees. Um that's that's the quick chill what they chill it at and it would come to us in that degree. So how often does that happen? Just whenever you're going to have that specific item, you're going to transport it from Boseman to all the different all the different schools. There's still a lot to be worked out on how often it would come. Um the shelf life these are are five gallon bladder bags and the shelf life at 38 degrees of these bladder bags is about 3 weeks. How do we So we store Yeah. So we have the cap we have the storage capacity. We certainly do. Yeah, we do. I don't know if anybody else anybody else has a question. Keep going. Keep going. Keep going. Keep going. I'm

200doing great. Next question is related to I mean you know I I uh I know this is probably going to be a little bit uh negative seen in a negative way but um when you look at food services I guess I have a little bit of a wonder why we have decided to make a matrix here where we've increased the number of positions by uh the steps by three over what we had before. I didn't I guess I'm just trying to figure out what the advantages are of this versus uh doing it the way we were before. And you know, I'm I understand people want to have a a uh you know, some sort of advancement, but I'm not sure this is the the discipline that needs multiple state stages. I guess that's why it

201it that may not be positive for some people. Uh I understand that. I'm not always a positive person. try to be but it doesn't always work out for me. Uh but you know I'm trying to understand the value of produce increasing the number of of uh steps that you've got in here uh and at an at an fairly significant increase in cost uh per step. And so I I I guess I'm struggling with that and and maybe nobody else is struggling with it. I don't know. Uh it would seem to me that we made an example the other day that the high school cafeteria was producing exceptional food to the extent that people from the uh office were finding their way over to the lunchroomy to have lunch. So they what they were doing what

202you've been doing has been wonderful. And I get that there's a bit of a shift in the headcount there, but I get I guess I'm this this is still for me it's it's a lot of change. It is a lot of change and there's not a lot of details with all the changes and for me that gives me some significant concern. So I don't know if anybody else has concerns about these kinds of things or not but so so that makes sense to me. the the the counter I come to with that in my mind is this whatever she's doing and she actually comes to finance me and explains a lot of what you're doing so maybe there's some of the detail there to the last yeah that's right you were there so it seems

203to be working with people coming out of the office to eat you didn't have that in the last several people um but that's really related to the people that are there doing their thing I think it's related to the attitude of the people losing their thing which is kind of reflected from the leadership though. I I mean it I think it flows down. I think you walk into I don't know pick a fast food joint in town. I mean they're all bad but walk into Burger King and you wonder what they're really doing for a business in there and the food's cold and it sucks. They're walking to, you know, McDonald's and it's hot fresh and there's a line out the back and that's not no appreciably difference in quality is the staff at each

204of those. That's that's why I'd say it's worth a shot. Staff that we have is leaving us at after tomorrow. You want to retain them? You want to retain them or you want to lose them when they've been there two or three years and don't have anywhere to go? That's that's my my thought on it. I I hear you. If it doesn't work, then Well, the other thing is I get the that we're looking at the change of menu here for the kids. We we we don't know for sure how well that's going to pass with the with the kids. And that's really going to end up being a big part of whether we're successful or not. My concern here is really related to trying to do too many too many things all at the

205same time and not making the grade with kids who are ultimately the the judge the judges of whether we're successful. Yeah, fair enough. Are you good? Are you good? I'm done. All right. I'm going to say I'm thinking that we're talking multiple different issues here. Some I like. Some I'm not in favor of. I'm going to be honest with you. I had we used to call it quick kill over at the prison when I worked there. They switched they they that they went from cooking fresh to a quick uh cook chill facility and the quality food took a noticeable nose dive and of course we were promised the same thing that it was supposed to be the same quality of food and promised and delivered were not the same. I really struggle with dealing with

206the Boseman thing. Um, and I don't I can't picture that, you know, them uh in Bosezeman are going to be able to produce food and have a lower labor cost than us in Belgrade. Maybe I'm wrong, but uh I thought it was more expensive over there than here to live. Um other um that being you know that being said like I guess this is multiple issues because the pay matrix you know and maybe a reorganization might be two or three different concepts to look at and so I'm kind of struggling with this just being an omnibus situation here when there's a bunch of different issues that should be there are a lot of different issues. Um, so what we know is we can't staff at the level that we currently have and that's been an

207issue for several years. Trey mentioned that we had nine openings last year. Um, those nine were filled. They've been filled since February of this year. Now we have five new openings. And so it's not like we're carrying the same five. That's always going to be an issue. Even if we had a pay that people were amanable to here, there's nobody applying. We don't have anybody applying. Um I don't know what kind of salary it would take to get people to apply. I know the last two people that I interviewed said they could not take a job that was not 12 months a year. No, they just couldn't. And so you're asking people to apply for jobs that are full-time, but they're not. Let me ask this. Go ahead. Is Boseman going to be able to

208staff their kitchen to be able to produce on top of their needs, our needs? Boseman has a a central kitchen that supplies food to all of their schools, but are they going to have the labor to operate as they also sell their products to restaurants throughout the valley. And so the pricing that they gave us um it took them two weeks to come up with the pricing that they gave us based upon the volume that we would be asking for and how they would staff for their volume. So they didn't go into this lightly either. Um I will say that the time savings for having five kitchens prepare spaghetti sauce on the same day as opposed to five kitchens heating spaghetti sauce on one day. um is significant. When we looked at the time savings,

209we were talking about 10 and a half hours in one day for five schools to do the same job versus 10 and a half man hours. Yes. Correct. Correct. Versus two two and a half to cut the bag open, dump it in, and turn it on, turn the crockpot on. Correct. Um part of this model comes from Montfortton School. So, Monfort for school had trouble with staffing and so they took a step back several years ago and started buying their entree products more than we are even suggesting. They were buying pasta. They were buying mac and cheese. They were buying all of their entree products from Bosezeman. It gave them time to step back, do the things they needed to do to train their people and to build their program. We are having we struggle

210right now to build a program to do any kind of parent or community outreach because we're making spaghetti sauce. Um so if we could take those things moves take that step back use that same kind of model that man for did um we think we could build our program. I'm not saying that so is this a short-term solution to this is a short-term solution. Okay. Okay. I guess I And the key factors are what do we do about staffing? What do we do about a kitchen that's lost essentially all of its employees and we've got to fill that gap in two and a half months. What do we do about that? The second one is what do we do about building our program where we're already up against working so hard, you know, that we

211just don't have time to do building that program. And then the third step is this five five tier pay matrix. Right now we don't have any room to reward an increase in skills, any room to motivate an employee to work harder, train harder, you know, do better. And I guess where I'm going with that is that's, you know, a separate issue on the fixing the pay matrix. the pay raise is a separate issue. The subcontracting our uh our food to you know Boseman food service is a different issue and I'm just look you know so if we solve the problem of losing people by doing this pay matrix increase then that gives us several months to work on what this looks like. I I'm gonna be honest. My head cooks are not 100% sold on

212the idea of having somebody else make their food. So, they're now negotiating and talking amongst themselves. And what if we could do that in-house? Well, the problem with doing it in-house immediately is we don't have the equipment to do it in-house. We could make So, 30 gallons of spaghetti sauce times five and a half. You know, we could make that spaghetti sauce now inhouse. We don't have the equipment to cool it in a safe manner. What if, and this is just spitballing here, so these guys are going to throw something at me. What if we were to, and this might be a way to to to to give a 12 year or 12 month continuity to the program to eliminate that three-month sit scenario, the summer where we lose people. Could we, you know, prepare

213foods and refrigerate them, freeze them, whatever, um, and then pull them out through the school year so that we could, that's something we could look at a hybrid central kitchen and it's something we could look at next year. You could, you have to be careful too, Walt, just because you don't want to try and solve the problem all in the meeting, too. Yeah. So, you throw out some ideas, but at some point, we kind of have to move on and get a vote. And then what you would do in this case is this is their proposal. You'd vote against it. And if the me if the measure failed, then we could go back and break it down into chunks like you want. So I mean you have valid questions. Just don't try and solve the

214problem right here is my point. So I if the proposal passes um I have a crew that's ready to spend the next two months. Normally, they would have the summers off and they're prepared to take a deep dive into what these menus would look like in the fall, what this staffing would look like in the fall. Um, what it would look like if we started moving some people from this school to that school. Um, I have six people who have said they would like to increase their hours. So, go from a three and a half to a six and a half hour position. Go from a four-h hour position to a sevenh hour position. and that's where some of the gains are made. Um, you know, it's it's Jenga and um what we don't know

215exactly what it would look like. I think I could exactly what it's going to look like if we don't do it. So, in summary, I mean, you have labor costs going up and you have less people applying for the job. And if you can consolidate some of those things like cooking this food and actually have a better quality product, that's the key. That's exactly right. It's worth it. So, we trust you for you to to monitor that, you know, and if it's not good to let us know. Exactly right. That's just kind of the gist of it right now of this of this motion. So, um I don't want to beat a dead horse to death, but I don't want to squaltch anybody's questions either. you know, at some point we kind of have to

216move on too. So, does anybody else have any specific questions on this motion besides enhancements? To your point, if we do it and it doesn't work, we're going to have a hard time putting the genie back in the bottle. Okay. Meaning you you'd have problems reverting. You make a big matrix change with your with your cooking staff. Oh. And then you say, "This isn't working." you you're not gonna you're not going to get a lot of volunteer. Well, I don't think the matrix was ever intended to revert. I think the intent to revert was just for the pre-prepared food at the central kitchen. Is that correct? Well, that's a big sticking point, right? The matrix itself is is a solid business plan. It's how we promote people from within. It's how we build a succession

217plan. Um I'm the fourth food service director in eight years. That's not sustainable. We can't do that again. We we need a succession plan where we can grow our own people to love this department, be in charge of this department, take the reigns when I'm ready to go. Um that's a big part of this succession plan. I will say that um this is five tiers. Um Boseman has eight, Billings has eight. Um so we're skipping some steps in there. So let me ask you this. Let's just say this fails. What would be the next steps? Yeah, let's say this fails, like how would we go about finding something that meets the board's approval a little bit better? Um, well, if if this fails, then I go back to my people tomorrow and let them know

218what passed and what did not pass. Um, and kind of where we go from there. And then we take a hard look at what vacancies we currently have, the five that we have. And um we have quite a bit of enthusiasm right now from the current staff about moving around and shifting and changing jobs. Um we actually out of the four empty positions at the high school, we have five empty positions at the high school, we have four people wanting to move to the high school um in new roles in new capacities. So if this does not pass, we go back to them. and we explain to them what they are going to get and we start talking again about what's it going to look like in arts. Okay. You have anything to follow up

219with that Trey? Well, I I I do believe that part of the part of the plan is to uh attract and retain those employees within the department. And obviously that's been a a challenge over the last several years. So I think that's one of the the primary emphasis of this plan is to do that. Obviously um the the meals outsourced to Bosezeman can be done. Well, we just talked about a few five different kinds of of entre or so. Uh so I think there's room to dial that in and out as we progress. If it's not working, we can dial it back. Um, but I but I do think it it gives us somewhere to go as opposed to um kind of being where we currently are with not a lot of options. Okay. Any

220other points of clarification? Just to point out like if it fails that's fine. Um we'll gather and work to get it to meet our needs as quickly as possible. Does that sound fair? Okay. The motion was recommend recommendation to approve food service wage revisions for 20 FY2026 as presented. All in favor say I. I. I. I. All oppose. Same sign. Nay. Motion passes 5 to2. Thanks everybody. Motion to offer contracts to the excuse me consider classified hourly contract renewals for 202526. Do we have a motion to continue? I move to offer contracts to the hourly classified employees as presented. I'll second. Okay, we have a motion and a second. Um D, do you have anything you want to explain here? So, our classified employees uh for a long time were not put on contracts. Um

221that changed um under the previous superintendent and they started as people came on board, they started being issued a contract. We can't retroact retroactively put somebody on a contract who was not on a contract. So, as people come into the district, they're placed on a contract. This is just the renewal of those one-year contracts for our classified people who are on contracts. Okay. Um, do we have any board questions for DD on this hourly contractor notice? I motioned and Joanne second for Laya second before Joanne. They tied. Yeah, it doesn't matter. Okay. Did we have any board uh questions for Dei? Why do we not do uh why do we do contracts instead of just employees? um because it gives us a um a framework for their employment with us. Um if we have a

222problem employee, you don't have to terminate for cause and go through a lawsuit. It's pretty common practice within the state. We just we had a couple that a couple of bad non-contracts for a long time and we couldn't do anything about it. So, it's protect ourselves. I think I had when I worked at MSU if it was a one-year deal every year and it corrected a lot of problems when John Blackman came in and did that. Good use of an HR director. Good use of an HR director. It's a It's a pretty standard thing for school districts. Any other questions for Duty? I don't believe I asked for public comment as well. Any public comment? Okay, that said, it looks like we're done discussing. All in favor of the motion to offer contracts to the

223hourly classified employees as presented, say I. I. I. Same size. Sign. Sign. Motion carries. Seven to nothing. Approval of the parent student handbook. Do we have a motion to continue? I move to approve the 202526 school year student parent handbook. I will second. We have a motion and a second. Um I think this is pretty self-explanatory. Did the board have any questions or comments on the handbook for DD? I do. It's my idea. Sure. First of all, I don't think we really edited this document very well. I could say that for sure because Dei's name's misspelled on the very first page. Well, it's the wrong name. That's your old name. My old name. Yeah. about stuttering in the the the issue that I have really is related to um making sure that what we say

224in this handbook is what we plan to do because I don't think we're as consistent in that regard as the handbook would indicate. The handbook would indicate that we're quite good with our attire, our our our dress dress attire, which is not not right. Might be right in elementary, might even be right in middle school, but it's not definitely not right in high school. Um, I think also I think attendance is an issue that needs to be worked over. making sure that we uh incorporate the things that are in the current deal into where we're going. We we talked a bit about uh whether we're going to how many how many absences we're going to have versus a call and when we're going to get uh SRO involved and things like that. I just want

225to make sure that we go through this with a little more detail before we agree to it. Last year we just agreed to it. I didn't think too much about it, but uh I think this year there's some things. One of the things that we want to talk about, we're going to talk about in a couple of weeks is cell phones. It's in it's in here. Uh we shouldn't do this until we have an agreed procedure for the particularly for the high school. Um, another thing that's uh in here is student IDs non-existent. Might start for a week or two, but you can't find them unless maybe the bus driver would ask you to show a an ID, but for the most part, we don't have student ID. So, it's in our handbook. We're not

226doing it. Now, if we want to do it, then we have to change our whole nature of how we do business. Um, we did talk about Narcan And I do think we ought to put something in there for what we're going to do for next year. Yeah, I found the MCA today actually that says all of the things that we have to do. Um, one of them is notifying families. Um, we have to decide if the handbook is the correct place to do that. But the other is we have to have a training protocol. We have to decide who's going to be trained. There's a bunch of things steps that we have to do for that. But we just need to Yeah. So, the handbook may not be the place for that procedure, but yeah,

227maybe. Are you thinking you just want to take a step back and you have all those questions written down? Yeah. Yeah. Just kind of review them as a group maybe or something. Yeah, I think it would be good if we pulled this off and went back and talked about these items and made them clarified them a little bit and got some um agreement on what we're going to do, if we're going to do certain things or if we're not going to do certain things. Write them out of the handbook. I'm I'm I mean I don't have to look from a dress code perspective. I don't have to look at these kids coming in and out. It's not a problem for me. I'm thinking some of these guys that uh uh teach here might might have

228a different perspective on that. Um also um some of the phone numbers were incorrect on the attendance line. So there's some things there that we need to address. All in all in all, he's the new Marielle. Marielle and laugh. We found Mariel and laugh. Somebody else had to come back. The torch. I was I was counting on you to do this, but I'll do it until you get up to speed. How's that? When do you guys need this approved? You know, that's a really complicated question and I think um there is no good answer. We want to have it up as people as parents are registering so they can read it and approve of it. However, we also know that by August, we're going to receive information from the attorneys, both MTSBA and BIA's office

229for legislative changes and updates that need to go in the when we don't do it till the end of August. That's a challenge. And yet, we're probably going to have to be making changes up to that point anyway. So I think you know you can approve and then make a change and put it out there and then make you know it's what however we want to organize it about cell phones and to well it seems like there's more might be a good time to do you're not the only one who has questions is my point like if there's other people like just get a show of hands would somebody be interested in just sitting down and talking through this with dudy it's not a committee but it's a committee we've got four right here so

230we can't have four you don't want to beat this horse's head either my only thing is accountab ability. It doesn't need to be on this. It goes back to Rocky's point. If we're going to put this in there, we just want to make sure what what we're doing. Yeah, that's fine. I think like I mean you guys could do it in the next couple weeks probably, right? If we have four, it'll be a board meeting. No, I'll stay off of it. That's what I'm saying is like my only thing on it is if we're if you guys make sure that it's realistic accountability actions. We have Walt, Laya, and Rocky. Does that sound good? Sure. you're gonna notice it anyway. It doesn't matter if it's three or four. Well, anybody can come. You just can't

231participate as board member. Yeah. One thing I would ask is as we it's, you know, coming up here real soon, we were talking about uh work sessions. This is kind of exactly what they are for. So, is there something is this something we could, you know, lay on the table right now until uh we schedule it for a mid July work session? It' probably be about right. and then adopted in August when we got the information. Yeah, we have we're doing cell phones this month and then next month we really have to do the fourth elementary school because you're going to vote two weeks later whether or not we're moving forward with it. So we we can't move that one. Okay. Committee and then could we meet or could we, you know, I I think

232the time to approve it would be at the August meeting be able to get it get it printed and out in time for the school because then we would have the attorney's information with the changes and stuff, right? Hopefully by the second week of August. When when do we expect that? You ne you never know. Yeah. I guess I'm I'm just thinking that, you know, it's probably a little premature. Yeah, but you guys will get a good start on asking these questions as newer board members. You know, you'll shoot some holes in it and hopefully make it a more robust document and then it it'll change based off what Dee says. She'll say like, "We got this information. We're going to add it in here." It'll be more simple going forward once you guys do

233this. Okay. I appreciate you doing sound good. So, we'll I don't think we're gonna we just don't vote, right? Or do we pull the motion? We just table the motion. So, do I ask for a vote to table? I cannot recall. move to lay a motion on the table. If you withdraw your motions, the first and the second, and we can just say that the never happened. Okay. I withdraw my motion to approve the 202526 school year student parent handbook years ago. I believe that was a second. So, I withdraw that. Okay. Okay. Good discussion. Thanks, everybody. Item number seven, out of state trip for eighth graders to Washington DC. Do we have a motion to continue? I'll move to approve the eighth grade out of straight trip request to Washington DC in New York

234City May 5th through 9th. No, I'll second. Oh, Laya second. Rank was first. Laya second. Do we have any questions for No, I was always asking for board comment first. Seems like it answers public comment. It's the same one as yes as last year. Yeah, this So, this is the same trip we do every year. We shot a lot of holes in this. Is there any public comment? Any board comment? What an awesome awesome trip. It's a great trip. My my granddaughter went on it this year. Learned a lot. I think it's posit very positive. Perfect. Well said, Rocky. All in favor of the motion to approve the eighth grade out of state field trip request to Washington DC and New York City, say I. I. I. I. Motion passes seven to nothing. Approval for

235track resurfacing. Could we have a motion to continue? Move to approve the target sports to resurface the high school track for 447,42 and 87 pennies with an additional 231737.70 to mill and overlay the underlying asphalt if necessary. God, we have a motion in a second. Um, what? Somebody somebody needs to talk about it. I thought DeeI said what? Dee, do you want to talk about this or Leroy? Give us the quick. Leroy can give us the quick real quick. And then Rocky also took a look at the track too. So me he may have some to add. Yeah, the real experts sitting over there. Yeah, right. Watching us all. Thank you, Scott, for still being here. Um, if anything comes up that I don't know, I'm gonna throw it to you. Um uh track is

236uh has a lifespan and the surface of a track made of rubber also has a lifespan. Um and we have hit the end of uh lifespan and track surface typically 7 to 12 years. It has been 13 since we've resurfaced the track. Um underneath the rubber is a layer of asphalt. Um, and just like a parking lot, when that starts to wear, um, it's it's gonna continue to wear exponentially. Um, you start getting cracks in there and then and then you get moisture in there in a freeze thaw cycle. Um, from what I've seen and what I've been told by the professionals, we are right on the cusp of uh there's there are some minor cracks that are happening under the in the asphalt itself and not left treated. this cost could grow exponentially. So,

237that's why we put um you know, we don't know if we're going to need a mill and overlay. Um you really don't know that how bad it is until you actually get that rubber up. Uh there's there's going to have to be some cracks that have to be sealed, which would get us through this through the cycle. Um cost is well, that's a lot of money. Um, and for a track that gets used quite often, I mean, that's that's pretty standard. Uh, went this route because of, uh, being in a purchasing co-op, as I've, you know, you guys have learned before, things are nationally sourced. We're getting the best value that we can and don't have to go out to bid. Um, this particular company, I spoke with the facilities director of Bosezeman. They resurfaced

238their track out there last year and they were very satisfied with the results. Um, of course, as cracks grow, the the potential for tripping happens. Um, what questions do you guys have? Did you want to comment? You Sounds like you did a field trip, Rocky. Yeah, I did. I walked out went out there today and walked around and looked at the track. Scott uh was out there and and Toby were kind enough to kind of give me a history lesson on kind of when it when it was put in the issues that we have. Showed me some points where you could see the asphalt through the through the rubber. So, it's definitely it's not it's not like everything's that way, but it but we are seeing it. There are cracks. They're not huge, but I'm

239sure that uh as you say through the winter they'll get worse. That's the way the asphalt works when it's got a crack in it. Um I think this was actually installed sometime earlier, quite a bit earlier than what we said. It's like 2004 or something like that and then resurfaced in uh 2014. is actually they came in and actually put a coating on it. U so it wasn't a full resurface they did. They came over and put a top coat on it. Um there was areas that had some damage done by a semi-truck. Um and so they wanted to repair that and they just went and put a top coat over the top. Are you talking about the asphalt itself? No, the rubber seal. The rubber itself. Okay. Um so the truck wasn't stripped down

240and then restarted. do is they drop some glue, put some more pebbles on it, then reglue those. So, will this process be they strip off the rubber, make sure the asphalt is sealed, then put a new rubber layer on. Is that correct? Correct. And repaint it. It's a different product. Today's products much different than the product that we have. Not the old tires. It's not the tires. Yeah. So, it's u you know, and it's for me it's a bit of an issue just because the and I said this to Scott. I said, you know, we're looking at uh our maintenance deferred maintenance numbers and we're trying to figure out how we're going to get to some of this stuff. But the problem you have here is that you don't do it, then the number gets

241bigger. So you have it's sort of like you're you're kind of like between a rock and a hard place and in this case the well there's not so much hard place on this track so we have to we need to do something with it. Um I you know one I don't know this is a topic completely different but somehow or another we have to come up with I mean our legislature was gracious enough to give us a bill so that we could go to our taxpayers for maintenance costs and you know that's worth about this much. So, uh, we somehow we're going to have to come up with a way to approach some of these things because we really can't afford to keep pushing off maintenance. We're going to have a we're going to have

242the kind of catastrophic problem that's going to cost us a lot of money. So, it's a big number. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, you know, somewhere between 9 and 12 million bucks to to lawsuits and also a big number. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, it's it's an issue. I mean, we pushed it off because we didn't have the money. We did we did what we needed to do to make it happen. Make, you know, I don't know if anybody here had any uh part of that, but it's one of those things that you just have to do. Yeah. So, my perspective on that is maybe we have to get some grant writers and get somebody to come in and help us with bringing in some cash that we can actually use for some of this maintenance

243cost because the legislature doesn't seem to be able to get their act together to make that happen. Okay. Any other comments before we come to a vote? I'd point out that it's not just used by the school. I I live hop skip and a jump and people are on that track 247. Sorry. I walk it. Yeah, I walk it. Okay. I guess I didn't ask for public comment. Was there any public comment? Homer, anything else you want to say? Our facility, I mean, tracked one of the biggest programs we have in the school. Uh, so it utilizes kids I was watching from um track's the biggest program we have in this in the high school. So we have roughly 100 to 130 kids coming out each year. Um we have community members that utilize the

244track. We have PE classes that go out there and utilize it. Um field day for the middle school goes out there. So it's not just a one aspect that this gets used. Uh we have many different people who do come out and utilize this thing. And the more use that this continues to get, um, like Rocky pointed out, it's going to get a lot worse. And the longer we wait, the more we keep pushing it off, you know, how much more damage we're going to see. And what's that bill going to look like? And that's kind of what we are trying to get ahead of is try to keep our maintenance costs to where they're more manageable. I know that the number that's currently in front of you guys is not a it's not a

245small number, but two questions. Go ahead. Um me or just in general, you probably all can answer. Um what is the time window where this work has to be done in our environment? Summer, can't be done in the I assume we start to get fall, we lose whatever weather window we have to do this. Um it have to be above 90 degrees for a week or something. You know, I'm not sure of the specifics. when I asked if this makes it to the board meeting for Monday and they approve it, what's your time frame? And he said 90% chance or maybe even higher. He said we could be done before your first um football game. So that's a long It takes them a while. I guess they have to order product and transport it here

246and get people here because they're national. How far out they're booked currently? Yeah. And also, um, that's under the the guise of if we just peel it back and got to do a couple of minor repairs. If there's a mill and overlay, then that has to cure for a while. It could be going into the fall. Um, and he did say, you know, if we had to go uh October or November, they could even build a bridge to get people across so that way nobody's walking on it as it's curing and whatnot. But this year, for sure. Okay. And then I know it's this the national procurement thing makes it kind of an easy button and is nice, but when we hit 600 700,000, did we consider just tossing it out to bid just to

247see or is it just beyond our scope to be able to manage that kind of procurement and think about doing it right? Um I know it's definitely beyond my scope to be able to write an RFP with the specifics that a track would take. Not only that, but then you also have to think about all the the time and the manpower and everything. You have to evaluate it and pick the right one. Oh yeah. Yeah. There's a lot to it. Um there's limited companies that do it. Um there's one called Bannon out of Washington. Um and then we have one that's local to Montana. And those are about the only two that I am aware of. Um that would be available to us. And the one that's from Montana's they're at least more familiar with

248our weather patterns and what it could look like when you start going to, you know, another state. Yes, they probably installed them. But is there any number in the state or anybody's done this recently where it'd be relevant? Boseman. Those Yeah, but it was Target that did theirs last year. Uh Missoula did theirs and I think it was a little bit more. Did we call them? Okay. No, I did. Okay, so we're in the we're in the ballpark. Okay, thank you. We're not going to not have a track. Okay, any other questions for these guys? I know I've gone off the cuff since it's getting long, but I apologize if I've missed anybody. Good. Okay. All in favor of approving the target sports bid to resurface the high school track say I. I. I. All

249post same size. Sign. Motion carries. Seven to nothing. That's you. Is that you this week? Yeah. Item number nine. We had to put as much effort into spend an eser money on curriculum. I'd have a lot of problem between this and the bleachers in this. But thanks Scott. Yeah. Thanks. Thanks, Bob. You guys appreciate it. You want to do a triple jump on the way out? What's that? Do the triple jump on the way out. That runway's not It's supposed to be 93 feet. Item number nine, consider contract amendment renewal for superintendent. Do we have a motion to continue? I move to approve and renew an amendment of DD Summerland's superintendent contract effective July 1st, 2025 through June 30th, 2028 to incur a salary increase, an increase to the 403b deferred compensation contribution, and a

250one-year extension of the contract term. I'll second. We have a motion and a second. Um, any public comment, any board questions or comment? I'm going to comment that I would have recommended a higher increase to keep in line with the state and we're going to you you propose this as an argued us down that's fine. Um when eventually you retire if we keep doing this it'll bite us in the ass because we'll be like where we were with Godfrey like we're 40,000 below every other double in the state. So we just got to be careful. I appreciate the gesture, but food for thought future. I agree. Thanks, Frank. We're going to get out of line quickly if we do that, but that's fine. Any other comments? I was going to say I wouldn't have approved

251the uh one-year extension if it hadn't been for the all the data that you had on the uh test scores. There you go. Thank you for doing that. Any other comments before we bring this to a vote? All in favor of approving the contract amendment and renewal for Superintendent DD Simrod say I. I. I. All oppose. Same sign. Motion carries. Seven to nothing. Strategic two-hour conversation about educational data. And up next, we have the contract renewal for Mr. Olsen. Do we have a motion to continue? I move to approve the renewal of the assistant superintendent contract to include a salary increase effective July 1st, 2025 to June 30th, 2026. A second. We have a motion and a second. Any public comment, board comment? This mirrors the 4.75 that we gave everybody else, right? I've appreciated

252all the Yeah, I know. rounded it say this is in regards to salary, but I appreciate all the work that Trey's put in, especially going to the schools and just handling just the loose ends that run around the district. Um, it's been well noticed and appreciated. You know, I think uh I didn't say anything with Dee, but I think it's because these two are team. Um, you know, our goal here is to get better every year. Um, you know, Belgrades doesn't always hasn't always had the best uh results or or uh whatever you want to say, reputation. But I believe that we're focusing on the right kinds of things to make improvements um that we need to do. I mean, there's standards that need to be made better and um you know, our goal here

253is not only just make sure we're giving you the right pay, but to also say to you, you know, we need change and uh I know you applied pressure, but you know, change is still a big part of where we need to be going. And I think you got that you got a consensus of that from the last board before these folks came on. But I'm sure you'll get the same with all of us again going forward is that we need to focus on how we do our job better in you know getting kids to the finish line and uh how we raise the uh placement of Belgrade with respect to other schools in the state and particularly the ones in Galin Valley. we need to do as good as we can because then I

254think we'll have less kids leaving us and more kids coming to us. You know, we have some great programs you guys are working on. Many of the people in the wheel are working on. I think it's really important that we keep focusing on that, but uh please please focus on how do we make get to the next step. Any other comments? Just to echo what Rocky said, I read something last week about consistent standard becoming your culture. I know you've ch wanted to change the culture. Hope you keep the standards high, make the kids work. Anything else before it comes back to a vote? All in favor of approving the assistant superintendent contract say I. Burnley. I. Harold Vincent Olsen say I. I. I. All oppose. Same sign. Motion carries. Seven to nothing. Consider audit

255contract with Nexus CPA Group. Do we have a motion to continue? Make a motion to approve the audit contract with Nexus CPA Group for the B fiscal year ending June 30th, 2025, 2026, and 2027. I'll second. We have a motion in a second. Carrie, did you want to speak about this briefly? I guess you already did. Yeah. question. All right. I don't Does anyone else not cheap? I don't think we have much of a choice. All in favor of approving the audit contract with Nexus CPA Group, say I. I. All oppose, same sign. Motion carries. Seven to nothing. Our next item is the board members to committees. I think what we'll do is just go down the list. Um, let's see. Let me give right in Joann's here real quick. And she just said she'd

256be happy to be on your status. We'll take a look at these committees while I'm writing here and see what she would like to assist on. I'll take Rafy's here while I'm doing that. I don't see fourth at elementary. Is it? It's just It wasn't Joe. Are you still on? Yep. Um, I see I'm writing your name down on finance. Are you sure? I thought we talked about that one. No, I remember I couldn't because I was teaching at 8 a.m., but I'm not teaching at 8 a.m. anymore. Oh, congrats. Yes. Shall we begin with the agenda setting committee? I think I have to be on that. That's you two have to be. I think it's YouTube. Yeah, that's that's your easiest one. That was the easiest one of the night. Okay. Do we have

257a list of when these committees meet or do we just try to schedule them around? They make it as obnoxious as they can. And there's a lot of them. The only set on one's finance, isn't it? Finance 7 am Friday before board. Yep. Make it work. Okay. Facilities advisor. We have Rocky pencled in there. Does anyone else want to Why where did that go? The sticky note right here. Didn't you send me that? Walt just raised his hand for that. He didn't put facilities, he put finance. House is on there. I would be interested in it if somebody else doesn't want it. I I wrote on the long wrong line, Rocky. I was multitasking and not doing a good job on the facilities. Not Rocky. Not Rocky. Yeah, I'll go for a little while, but

258I'm not. Well, you don't have to. That was my mistake. Um, facilities advisory of Walt. God, I hate that one. We can just go with one. Just one. Okay. Okay. Professional development, I thought. What about finance? Finance. Oh, I'm sorry. Finance, we have Joanne and Rocky. I'll stay on finance. And Frank. Okay, that makes three. Uh, professional development calendar committee. We just need one. I would be good at that. They really meet every month. Technology committee. Are you staying on that one? I probably should. Okay. If somebody else wants it, that's no big deal. No, I think it'd be good for you. Mary Ellen was on Mary Ellen and I were both on that one, but we just scored it down. Technology. Oh, you want to do the technology one? Technology level. You do more

259than one, right? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Like I have a list of all of them that I would just be there. I'll just shut my There's technology on there. Keep talking. Yeah, she Yes, it is. It's on there. Need to be If somebody's wants it, please don't. Well, I I usually go on it because I'm in tech. Yeah, you you should be on it. Yeah, there's two people. Good effort. So, Lyla, you can be number two. Well, I was right. Everybody gets a year of it. So, you keep So, can I committee? I talked I asked Holly about it. I'm like, what do you do? And she said she was never invited to a meeting because they told her she couldn't sit on on the meetings because it dealt with negotiations, insurance, and negotiations. So, I

260was going to bring it up and just say I don't we're ch we're we're changing that. We're we're required by law to have a wellness committee that has a different focus than that. Yeah, that's what I think. We're working on getting that set up correctly for next year. So, we do need somebody to be Yeah, it'll be different next year. All right. Who was who wanted to do wellness? Laya, I'm not going to have a life. It'll be great. Retirement's not going to work out too well for you, is it? You did not sign up for a life when you chose this job. Unfortunately, this board, we keep it busy. Long range planning committee. I'll stay there, Frank. We have room for two more, going once, going twice. What's You can throw me on long

261range planning as well. I think Walt's wondering what that is. Is that right? Is that just the one that lays out this that long range facilities planning really as we were kind of thinking about the 60 acres and the you know so so so but we took off the facilities part to just say lawn range planning. So it could have a number of purposes. It may meet for a while and then not meet for a while. So essentially be the growth committee then. Yeah. Basically on that manually or as needed. I suppose I could show up for one meeting a year. Yeah, that'd be good. Walt, I've already thrown you in for a transportation committee. I don't know why that would be seems to fit. Negotiations committee. Frank should do it. Since this is your

262last time, I'll probably do it. If anybody else wants to, somebody else needs to jump on this. Unless you're I'm seriously not gonna run again and you might not. And why this is how many more times will we do this? I guess so. Next year we're going to negotiate just for money. Oh, yeah. I was thinking that this is a two-year sentence to do it for the contract. And then the following year it'll be full board. So we have Frank and Steve on the negotiations so far. Yeah. For one year. Next year that's fine. Just have two of us. And we really need somebody else to somebody who's going to be on for a while that's interested in this because Frank and I have been and Marielle drove this. How much time of the day

263do you normally? Oh, dear God. This is a time a big one. And you have to take a week off of work and for negotiations. Oh, it is a week every other year. Think about it and we'll come back. Why not? Sure. Walt. It is. I'm going to regret that. But anybody else would like to do it too? We need to. It's good to be there. This is the first year to do this. Next year. Well, that's that's three right there. Frank, Steve, and me. You'll see. You'll see what happens in your time. Well, my point is like, yeah, other people need to learn how to do this besides me. Okay. Yeah. So, anybody's welcome. Literally a process. Um, see, transportation, we got Walt, curriculum selection committee, Joanne, Rocky, anyone else? Oh, that's two. Behavior

264committee on that. Okay. Oh, you only need one. No, you need two. You want to do that one, Laya? Does somebody else want it? Go for it. It's you. Oh, dear God. Could be a bad room. Yeah, I feel like I should join in on that, too, because I kind of started that whole thing. Okay. So, who's on curriculum? Joan and curriculum is Joan and Rocky. So, what was the one you were suggesting when I was asking the questions about the Was that the behavior committee? Yeah. Okay. So, you can go to the meetings. You don't have to be on the committee. You can go to participate as a parent, a community member. Yeah. Yeah, I think what I was talking about, Rocky will probably bring this up. It's be it's kind of evolving from

265a behavior committee about how we track behaviors in the district to how we handle them. Okay. So, that's probably where that'll go. Could it be almost like a I guess almost with a handbook then, wouldn't it? It's a little more about the details behind that. Kind of how they set their you heard how they set some of their programs up in the elementary. So, it's sort of like how do we go from here to here to here? And I mean, well, I'll attend as a parent. Why don't we Why don't we slap you on there just in case it splits into two, then we'll have two for each. How about that? Good place. Career pathways. We had Joanne. There's only one, but if anyone else is interested in that, I'd like that. Okay. Then we

266had you for the evaluation committee, too, Rocky. We'll do that because I was trained on it this year. the stem the superintendent evaluation committee and we'll uh you don't need to write them down. We'll send out a list after this for everybody. I'm staying on CTE. Clear about that. Okay, Jesse's on CTE. That's a good one. Frank, you staying on with that? So, what I'd say with CTE is somebody else should do it. Twice a year. You go listen to what they're doing in the high school. The first the fall meeting you go to the high school. It's like a Wednesday evening. You get cookies and stuff that ProStart made and you listen to what we're doing in all our programs and then the fall tour you tour all of it with and it's people

267in the community that are coming in. It's just good way to see what we do. It's a week night twice a year for a couple hours. I would also say it'd be awesome to see all the board members come to that. I've done it for seven years in a row. Somebody else should do it just because it's cool. I I'll throw my name on that one. I mean, everybody should do that tour just because of me. I actually want to go see it at CT. It's not It's not a time suck either. Yeah, Rocky's crashed it before, too. Anybody can come. Yeah. Did you want to be on the committee, though, or No. No. You want to be the uninvited. Go to Africa. Okay. So, we have two on CT advisory council, Jesse and Walt.

268And then, um, anybody can come to that, too. And then the last one is the BEA scholarship fund. I think I have to be off that because my kid will apply. Oh, I could be on that. Not that it'll get I can't be on it. You get you get a stack of scholarships like five or six last year, I think, and read them and grade them. Okay, I can do that. It's not a time sec. It's interesting to see what our kids are doing. Cool. Yeah, I can do that. Probably use one more just in case. Laya, I think you'd be good at that. Would be perfect at it. I've done lots of stuff. It is. See, you're experienced. Five criteria. My granddaughter applies for one. Do I just throw her? Is your granddaughter going

269to be in the running for it? I don't know. She probably apply for everything she can. Well, I think you just remove yourself in that instance. Say I just not I think you'd be good at that. Oh, if anybody decides that thinks about this and they want to add themselves or remove themselves, it's a evolving list. So, just let us know. Okay. I won't review these, but I think DD will probably send out the completed list tomorrow. And then our last item on the agenda is the uh board meeting dates. You have to say every single one of those carry. No, just the recommended action at the top. Make a motion to hold regular work session board meetings on following date 26 unless otherwise posted. Insert dates here. Does that look was that your motion?

270Yes, that was a motion. Okay. Oh, I have I'll second. We have a motion and a second. Any comments? Talking, but I made a video. That's I have a question. Does the state law apply to these where if you miss two and a couple of them in a row, you're up for getting off the board? No, I'm not trying. But it's a it's a it is a deviation. And I make it a point to schedule out with my work that I am not going to travel the second Monday of every month. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah, I I do believe it's a lot of excuse who excusees me. Me or you communicate your excuse? But if you just don't show up for a bunch of months, ghost us, then if you ghost us, we can

271do what Joanne did tonight. So when we're getting close to negotiations like work sessions, I may not accept. Better have a good excuse, Frank. Well, I think that's what we're talking about workshops. Yeah, work sessions. I just was trying to differentiate because so this is just a you miss out on being a part. So what it is is your uh taking up time at the board meeting. Your board meetings are on there and then the work sessions and everything else. That doesn't necessarily mean all these work sessions will happen place. The workshops we can sit and talk about stuff right when we can interact with people in the audience versus the board meeting we're supposed to follow rigid rules that we usually do. Typically, there won't be anything you would vote on at a work

272session, right? Um, you know, if we have some emergency thing that you have to vote on, it's probably a good time to do that. We just start with that and then we just move into the discussion. Just have to post it. Yeah, we we post it anyway. So, we would just Not done yet, guys. All in favor of approving the meeting schedule say I. I. Oppose. Same sign. Motion carries. Seven to nothing. Now we're finished. Thank you. This hearkened back to cocky. Becky, serious. Rebecca, is it happy birthday? Wow. Do you know how to party without gun like I don't