001Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to this June 8th, 2020 26 meeting of the board of trustees of the Great Falls Public Schools. Happy to have you here this evening. And um I want to remind us all that these meetings are being recorded for future upload on the Great Falls Public Schools website. And with that, Mr. Deakons, would you please administer the roll call? Thank you, Chairman Johnson. Gordon Johnson >> here. >> Kim Scornagowski >> here. >> Bill Bronson >> here. >> Craig Dove, >> excused. >> Paige Henning >> here. >> Marley Sunchild >> here. >> Amy Thompson >> here. >> You have a quum for which to work this evening. >> Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, would you please rise and join me in the pledge of allegiance? >> I aliance of
002the God, for all. >> Thank you, >> Mr. Chairman. Trusty Bronson. >> I move that we adopt the agenda as presented. >> Second. >> Been moved and seconded to adopt the agenda as presented. Any questions or commentary from our board of trustees? Any questions or comments from our gallery here with us this evening? Hearing seeing none, I'll call for the question. All those in favor of the motion, please signify by saying I. I >> opposed. Same sign. Motion carries. >> Mr. Chair, >> Trusty Scorioski, >> I move we approve the consent agenda as presented. >> Second. >> It's been moved and seconded to approve the consent agenda as presented. Any questions or commentary from our board of trustees? Any questions or commentary from our gallery? Hearing seeing none, I'll call for the question. All those
003in favor of the motion, please signify by saying I. I. Opposed. Same sign. Motion carries. Thank you very much. We'll move on to communication and uh Superintendent Hoyer is on the road today. So, our report will be given by Mr. Boyd. >> Thank you, Chairman Johnson. Uh, welcome to our first board meeting in June and school's out for the summer. We made it to last week, so we're very, very, very excited. Uh, tonight we have a bunch of reports as a part of Heather's report to go through and I'd like to start it off with a little celebration. So, if I could have Kathy Warner, uh, the head coach of the Great Falls Lions Special Olympics team, uh, come up and debrief the board about state spring and summer games. Welcome. >> Thank you for
004having us. >> So I am Kathy Warner, co-LPC for the Great Falls Lions. So that's the local program coordinator for the Great Falls Lions school age team. And the athletes that I have here with me tonight are part of those that got gold medals while we were at um Special Olympic State Games in Billings. And so I will just let I will call their name and let you know what they got their gold medals for and they will come around and see. We're going to start with >> Ella. >> You okay? >> Uh she was she got a gold in botchi doubles with her partner and she got gold in a 15 meter unassisted swim and the 25 meter freestyle. >> Yeah. Okay. Over there. >> Shake those hands. Next we have Rachel Dhoni. And
005Rachel Dhoni got a gold medal for the 25 meter freestyle in swimming. Rachel, there's a whole lot of blinging going on here. Clang, clang, clang, clang, clang. That's how we don't lose them when we're await games. Just kidding. Just kidding. Next, we have Alexis Fields. Alexis Field. She got gold medal in the 15 meter aquatic walk and the 15 meter unassisted swim. Next we have Gunnar Lamir. He was part of a 4x um 4x 100 uh traditional relay and so he got gold with his team. Go ahead. Next we have Sophia Larson. She also was part of a 4x100 traditional meter relay. Um it was the lionesses and in fact we have a couple other the people that were here too. But Sophia got a gold for the 100 meter relay and for softball throw.
006So go ahead Sophia. Next we have Carmen Lawson and she got a gold for the 100 meter um traditional relay with Sophia and um she also got it for botchi doubles with her partner um Sophie Warner. So Carmen awesome I should have started at the back because I know that it's what it's like to be the last. I should have started with Sophie. We have Sophie Wner. She got a gold medal with her partner um Carmen for botchi doubles and she got a gold medal in swimming 50 meter freestyle. and we will get all the clanking out of here for you guys so you can focus. Uh, but thank you for having us here and recognizing our accomplishments. A huge thank you goes to Kathy Wner, Mary Beth Tolen, and then her team of athletes
007that work so hard uh from early in the fall through the winter and into the spring uh to be able to make sure that uh our students that are a part of the Lions have some great opportunities to excel. So, thanks Kathy. >> Good work, Kathy. the whole audience. Yes. >> All right. So, we go to the next slide. Uh we'll talk about graduation. Uh so, a week ago, Monday or Sunday, uh we were going through graduations, a large set of graduations over at the Four Seasons Arena. It started on that Friday and worked its way through the weekend. Uh and when Heather and I talked about this slide, really it's about the 976 student opportunities uh that the class of 2026 uh had to be able to complete their journey through Great Falls Public
008Schools. So whether that was the two students that finished uh at secondary life skills and graduated at the age of 22 or our 113 Eagle Feathers awardees or 114 students that graduated from the CCRC our 109 traditional graduates from Paris, 264 from CMR and 253 from Great Falls High. Uh it just shows that the district goes above and beyond to be able to provide opportunities for our kids to meet their pathways uh for the future. So it's something we're very proud of. Next, I'd like to invite Miss Brittany Erdman uh up to the podium. Britney was selected about a month ago uh to be the next principal uh at Longfellow Elementary. She'll be replacing Shannon Gilfoil uh as Shannon moves into the role of director of special education. So, Britney, welcome to the team. Thanks
009for being here. Anything you'd like to say? Um, there we go. There you go. >> Um, chairman and members of the board, I am Britney Erdman, new principal at Longfellow Elementary. Um, I couldn't be more honored to have been selected for this position. Uh, in my 11 years with Great Falls Public Schools, I feel like they've given me multiple opportunities to learn and grow as a leader, and I could not feel more prepared to lead Longfellow Elementary. Um, at the end of the school year, I did get a few days to go and hang out with the staff and the students, and it just was great. I was able to establish some relationships and get to know the teachers and I just couldn't be more excited for the next school year. So, >> congratulations and
010thank you So Longfellow is very lucky to be getting Britney as their next leader. She's had a great set of experiences both in the classroom and out of the classroom is going to lead that building really, really well. The next slide we jump to is AP testing. So if you had the opportunity to be up at the district office building at any point in time during the last week of April through the last week of May, there were signs everywhere that said sh AP testing in motion. So, a hu a super huge thank you goes to Becky Frisbee uh and her 24 proctors uh that spent 16 days giving out 356 exams in 14 content areas uh to all of our students in Great Falls Public Schools uh that so wish to go the AP
011route uh for their college board testings. Now, all of those students are anxiously waiting for the middle of June to the end of June to be able to get their results. But again, uh just another highlight as to great programs that we offer year in and year out and great opportunities for our kids as they move into college. Uh the last week of school, uh Jackie and I had the opportunity to go out to five of our elementary buildings uh to be able to work with the Great Falls Association of Realators uh and award the Flag Day essay winners. We were super fortunate this year. We had six buildings uh that participated in the essay contest and four buildings of those six had participants. We swept Great Falls Public Schools swept the categories. Uh so
012up on up on the screen are the award winners. Coral Oonnell from Valley View, Lonnie Leman from Riverview, Norah Dhan from West, and then our honorable mentions, Emma Allen, and Rise Herenstein. Uh they were also pretty lucky when we went over to Riverview. We had the opportunity that the third graders after we did our fourth grade uh awards in third grade. They were celebrating America's 250th because it's a part of their social studies curriculum. So, the Great Falls Association of Realators got to spend another little bit of time in the third grade classroom watching them make log cabins out of pretzels, marshmallow cream, and green coconut. So, yes, very, very exciting. So, now I'd like to bring up Miss Carol Paul to the lectern. Carol's going to give us our data for the day. Uh,
013and it's about Dibbles and where we're at sitting with our Dibble data as it relates to our literacy grant. >> Okay. Your slides. Well, thank you for having me here. I'm excited to share some information with you. This is our official first year with our Montana Reads Grant. Um, it's actually, according to the state of Montana, our second year, so we're cramming in a whole bunch of things. If you go to the next slide, you'll it'll show you the schools that are involved. start pre kindergarten all the way through Great Falls High School. Um the schools have to be title eligible which means they have a certain percentage of students who are on free and reduced lunch. And um these are the these are the people who get the money that we have from the
014Montana Reeds grant but we are spreading the efforts to train up teachers and give good strong skills to kids throughout our school district. So we are making that work. On the next slide, it talks about the three goals that the schools have from preschool to high school. The first one is to increase family engagement in literacy activities. One of the speakers we had um through our training with OPI said 95% of parents think their children are on grade level. And our board of trustees knows that's not true. Um, but we need to talk to parents about why and help them help include families in sharing and understanding of how we get them to be on grade level. And this year, the whole idea was just to talk with your children. have lots of back and
015forth conversation. Not just how was your day, good, okay, we're done, but really um encouraging families to engage their kids in longer conversations because when they can listen longer and they can have a conversation that takes longer, then when we give them a passage that's long, they'll understand that there could be good stuff in there, too. And work hard to access that. We are working to increase our st staff professional development as I said with all of our teachers. Um we had hundreds and hundreds of people today at CMR for it's always amazing to me that people come back after last Friday and are sitting in seats all day long and some of them are getting nine hours of PD today and tomorrow in CMR. So they'll have all of their PI hours done. But
016they were cheerful and bright and we had um food trucks in the parking lot to get them some lunch and I don't want to steal Becky and Rachel's thunder, but it was a it was a fun day and I was in a room for six hours. Um and people were working hard and attending and pretty excited to be getting the information but also not thinking about it for a while till school starts again. So that was a gift for folks. Um we want to increase our proficiency in reading. Um, and our ultimate goal is 85% of students successful at grade level, but we're not there yet. I'll show you some ways we're moving closer. So, we use Dibbles in our elementary schools. It's the gold standard for checking literacy skills because it has a bunch
017of subtests. We do it three times a year. Three times a year. We are going to be training some more teachers because more teachers are asking us if they can do it too because we only go K12. So the intermediate teachers want to know where their kids are and what they need help with. Um there are subtests that we do in our intervention and special ed rooms to check in throughout the year, but otherwise it's three big tests. And we have a team of amazing teachers who give up time in their classrooms for 10 days and their schools give them up for 10 days and they go visit all of our grant schools. So we have the proper data for our reporting in our grant. Um if you look at this one, this is the
018dibbles data. It measures um in different grade levels, different subtests. And if you look at the green and the blue, they're getting bigger. We're moving over. This includes in our grant schools, all K12 kids in our other schools. It includes children through sixth grade who are in special education. So, this is our total picture of kids who had Dibbles assessment this year. So, we went from 28% um at proficient and and above proficiency, so green and blue, to 42% this year, which is pretty darn good. We'll see how it holds over the summer if they get some good summer reading. The next slide is about kindergarten. Um we started out with 21% kids either on grade level or advanced and by the end of the year, according to Dibbles, we had about 56% kids um
019on grade level or advanced. So that's pretty darn exciting. Part of this is the good good work that our curriculum team has put together, our coaches have put together, helping people understand the curriculum that we purchased several years ago. Um it's super dense and complex and um I think we're getting on a roll is in terms of using that, but it's also the interventions and extra supports that we've added in because of the grant for grade one. It looks similar. It's good news. 38% were at or above grade level at the beginning of the year and dibbles 55% are at or above now according to those two um highest ones. Second grade 46% the better you get the harder it is to get a lot better but we still got up to 55% as far
020as on grade level or advanced in our dibbles tested schools. So I wanted to share if we don't if we could back up and not go to grrey high yet. Um, last week Heather asked me to do this and we got a whole bunch of data, but I just got some from Rihanna Madano today. We caught her in the hall at CMR and I shared with the board members something that I'll just have to say out loud for the rest of you and I will share it with you also in paper if you want. But, um, Re said she was really excited about her powerup data. What we know in our past 10 years is we have we have pretty good intervention supports for little kids, but as kids get older and from working at
021Longfellow, I know as kids get like even sometimes done with second grade, if they still can't read, they think they just aren't going to read >> or they think there's something really wrong with them that we can't address. But especially in secondary schools, we've had trouble finding tools that address foundational skills that they typically would have learned in kindergarten and have them presented in a way that's not belittling to kids because we still want them to turn in tune in to those things that we're teaching. So, we use a tool called Power Up. It's super pricey, which is why we're encouraging people to make the most of it now because who knows how long they can afford it. And we want to have a smaller number of kids who need this program. But it measures
022the these are the the data that I gave you on your table is in three categories. One is word study, one's in grammar, and one's in comprehension. If you're good at those things, you can read well. The light blue, which there's a lot of light blue on this page, is for kids who are at foundational levels. Now, this is only with about 144 kids at East Middle School who are either in special education or they're in special intervention classes for reading. So, the light blue is kindergarten to second grade skills. So, if you look at the top bar, it's a lot of light blue. Um the medium blue is grades three to five. So, if you're in middle school and you're in in medium blue, you're not that far behind. If you're multiple years behind,
023you need to make multiple years growth every year to catch up before you get to high school. So, you can do this. This program is also available in high school. We purchased it and we have more high school um interventions that teachers looking for it next year. But, as you can see, we did make big growth as we went along. We went from um where are my totals here? 79 and 20. So 99% at below fifth grade to 57% plus 18% above fifth grade. So we're moving along. These kids are still significantly below. And some of them who are still in the light blue, could be multiple years below. They could also have multiple disabilities, which means they'll never be dark blue or bright blue. They won't. But we still can teach them more with
024this tool than we've had with previous tools. So, this is pretty exciting and I'm glad Rick suggested it because I don't I had not looked at the middle school stuff yet. Um, the next one is about Great Falls High and Tammy Faulner at Great Falls High suggested I talk about the Achieve 3000, which Great Falls High uses with ninth graders as a way to help teach social studies. You have to understand how words are put together in social studies. you have to understand grammar and um have the comprehension piece. So, at the beginning of the year, they were 33% of their kids, 33 and a half, were on track to meet college and career readiness goals, which sounds like a really good high school way to talk about what we're doing. And at the end
025of the year, 41.5 students were on track. A lot of the students who aren't on track will still be getting extra supports in other classes all through their high school years and some of them will use power which is what feast was using. So I think this is impressive. Tammy thinks it's impressive. We just have some growth that seems to be sticking and we'll check with Dibbles again in the fall and Charl Charl Charlene will come and talk to you about that next fall. We have three more years with this grant. um we have invested in some pretty strong tools to use. We are investing in teacher support and training in these tools. So we purchased as much PD in the inlexia programs to have so for those sort of one or two teachers in
026a building who just say I'm finally ready to look at it. We can have someone get online and talk them through it and they can be professional um proficient in in the tools too. So we have these goals. aim high, train well, and celebrate growth with families. Because if we tell them, "No, your child's not at grade level," we better tell them tell them, "Yes, your child moved up this much, and we're going to celebrate that because it was hard work, and they'll have more hard work ahead of them." And our teachers are working really hard, so we're celebrating that, too. So, thank you. This is a great opportunity. I'm sorry I'm not going to be around to watch everything, but I'll be checking in with certain. >> I'm sure you will. Thank you for
027being here. Are there any questions for Mrs. Paul before she leaves? Astrom. >> Yes, we have a comment from Trusty Scornski. >> I just want to take this I bump my button. Um, Carol, because you're retiring, um, just to take an opportunity to thank you for decades of just truly passion for our students and passion for them to find their own love of reading. I've had the opportunity to work with you on so many different things and it just your your love for students and you know your your hopes and your dreams and your plans and your ideas and all of those things come come to fruition in your work um to get every child to love reading. And we've just seen seen the fruits of your efforts in our district in so many ways
028um all the way down to even students who aren't even in our district yet. and I just truly appreciate everything that you've done and that you and I know you'll continue to to stay in the mix um even after retirement. So, we appreciate you. >> Thank you. >> Absolutely. >> Thank you very much. >> So, chairman, that ends the superintendent's report for tonight. Thank you. We've received no um requests to address this board of trustees this evening. So, we're going to move on to action items. Action item A, 2627, secondary student class fees. Mr. boy. Chairman Johnson, member of the board. Uh tonight I bring you uh the student class fees uh for the 2026 2027 school year. This is an annual action item uh that we work through uh is a board and a
029district to be able to identify student fees and required lab fees uh for required courses uh that the district offers at the high school level. One important thing to note is you look at all of those fees that are on pages 31 or yeah page 31 and 32 of your packet is many of those fees have an asterric next to them. Those fees that have an asterric means that they are eligible to have those fees covered at 100% of the cost uh because they qualify under the Montana Advanced Opportunities Act uh fee side. And so what we do every year starting in February is we canvas with all of our classroom teachers uh that would have a lab fee and then we have conversations as a department to determine the projects and things that they're
030producing in that class. Do they justify a fee increase? Uh are we going to stay the same for those fees or are we going to add a fee uh based on new courses that are being added over the course of time on that side. As you look at your packet, a new course that Becky came to us earlier this year uh to add to the docket for next year is cosmetology. Cosmetology will be a new class housed at Paris Gibson Education Center and you can see that it has a pretty large lab fee uh that will be eligible uh for MAO and we'll get coded aggregate aster after this meeting on that side. But when you look at all of the hair product items and required supplies that a student needs to become a cosmetologist,
031uh the list is large and expensive at the same time. But when we looked at our fees and where we settled at at the end of the year, uh with needs and wants of certain classrooms where they're at, we will still have more than enough money in the pot to be able to cover those fees for students entering cosmetology on that side. So with that, my request is that you approve uh the 2026 2027 class fees as presented. >> Mr. Chair, >> Trusty Henning, >> I move that we approve the 2026 2027 secondary student class fees as presented in the attached document. >> Second. >> Been moved and seconded to approve the 2627 secondary student class fees as presented. Any questions or commentary from our board of trustees? from our remaining gallery hearing. And seeing
032none, I'll call for the question. All those in favor of the motion, please signify by saying I. I >> oppose. Same sign. Motion carries. >> Thank you. Action item B 2627 facilities usage fees. Mr. Boyd. Thank you, Chairman Johnson. So, tonight I bring to you uh the 2026 2027 facility usage fees uh update uh for next school year. Over the course of the last two years, uh the administrative team up here working with building administrators, uh coaches, uh and other people, engineers, custodial staff have really began to see a rise, uh and the usage of our buildings, everything from classrooms uh to cafeteria spaces to hubs to ox gyms to libraries and everything there in between. And when we really started to look at the 480 events uh that are held during the course of
033this last school that we're exiting out of those events are able to generate uh a little bit of money in rental fees about 57,500. But when you look at the offset in costs for overtime uh for things that we have in regards to sewer, electricity, natural gas increased costs across the board uh that we have there. That money is not making ends meet. At the end of the day, the district is still very much in favor of the community using our facilities and wants them to use our facilities. But at the same time, we have to be good stewards of the money that we bring in and good stewards of those facilities to be able to come up with a fee structure that allows us to offset costs when an accident happens, a backboard gets
034broke, something goes wrong uh in in the pool or something like that that we have a pot of money that we can have a conversation about to be able to fix the damaged equipment on that side. So, as you go to page 35 in your packet, uh we were able to put together from our committee's work over the last two years the fees as they sit right now and then the proposed fees that we would go to. And we broke things apart. So, like when you look at our gyms, uh we'll look now at a fieldhouse. So, the CMR and Great Falls High Fieldhouse, the Ox Gym or the old gym at Great Falls High, the Paris gym, a middle school facility, uh our elementary facilities. I was shocked at the number of facilities that
035are being used for practices outside of Heisy and things that I had when I was a principal uh in the building on that side down to everything from our hub centers and our STEM conference centers to our libraries and classrooms. Uh we really had large conversations about where do fees need to increase a little bit? where do we keep fees the same so that we can attract and allow students to have those extracurricular opportunities that our district doesn't offer at a variety of age levels but again still be able to pay for the overtime of our employees that are covering these events especially our custodians and engineers uh when you have an event here at Great Falls High in January for a little kid basketball tournament and it snows 8 inches and you have to
036have the playground plowed and you have to bring in extra staff to make it safe there's a cost that comes with that but if you don't figure that up front uh is a district we're losing out at the end of the day. So, my recommendation uh is to approve the fees uh for the 2026 2027 uh year as presented for facility usage knowing that we'll bring these back to the board every year uh for the foreseeable future. This is the first time in 10 or 12 years from our research that we've had these fees come back to our >> Thank you, Mr. Boyd. Trusty Bronson. >> I move that we approve the 2026 2027 facilities usage fees as presented. >> Second. >> Been moved and seconded to approve the 2627 facilities usage fees as presented.
037Any commentary from our board of trustees. Trustee >> Thompson. >> Thank you. >> Hello. I was just curious, does Heisy have a a different fee or is it for each gym exactly the same? >> So, we have several different groups that are unique to our community. Um, for example, when um MFP comes to Great Falls, those are pieces that we work closely with them on the contract. the coaches association. We've got the little wrestlers wrestlers who um put together the old gym and the wrestling facility over there that we work with. So, there are some unique circumstances. Um but we try to keep it as across the board as possible because that's a hard thing once you start moving it for one particular group outside interest group. It's difficult to match that um across the
038board. So, we're just very careful about it. >> Yeah. Oh, no. I get that. I I just appreciate Heisy is a great way to have kids get introduced to different kinds of sports. So like to be able to keep the keep it down a little bit the price down for parents. >> Thank you. Any other trustee comments? You know, I I agree. I think our community expects that um these facilities should be made available for uh activities outside of u school and education and these fees are incredibly incredibly reasonable and I think we need to be as a school district quite proud of ourselves being able to make uh these facilities available and it's such a a reasonable fee at that. Any questions or commentary from our uh gallery hearing? Seeing none, none I'll call
039for the question. All those in favor of the motion, please signify by saying I. >> Oppose. Same sign. Motion carries. Thank you very much. We are on to C. Action item C, second reading of board policies 2120, 2120F, 7625, 8301. Mrs. man wearing is at the rostroom ready to roll. >> Ready to go. Good evening, Chairman Johnson, members of the board. I am here with a second reading of the policies he just outlined. These uh were first read the last board meeting went through the first reading. Uh we have had no input from the public, no further changes. So with that, I would ask that you approve board policy 5120 revised, 5120F to delete that one. Uh 50 26 oh 7625 revised and 8301 revised. Uh district safety and that is as presented. Right. >>
040Mr. Chair, >> Trusty Henning, >> I move that we approve uh revised and deleted board policies 5120, 5120F, 7625, and 8301 as presented. Second moved and seconded to adopt these policies as enumerated by Trustee Henning. Any questions or commentary from our board of trustees? None. Any from our gallery? All those in favor of the motion, please signify for by saying I oppose sign. Motion carries. Thank you very much. Action item D, second reading of the annual review of board policies 3300 and 3311. Mr. Deakons. Thank you, Chairman Johnson, members of the board, members of our community. um since the last board meeting with uh the review of policies 3,300 suspension and expulsion and 3311 firearms and weapons which both go with healthy, safe, secure schools. Um we have had no comment or any changes suggested.
041Therefore, I am going to ask you to approve the recommended um minor changes from the last time to the board policies 3300 suspension and expulsion at 3311 firearms and weapons as presented. >> Thank you. Mr. Chair, >> Trusty Thompson, >> you got >> I got it. >> I I move that that um that we approve the recommended minor language changes to board policies 33 and 3311 as presented. >> Been moved and seconded to approve policies 3300 and 3311. Any questions or commentary from our board of trustees? Any questions or commentary from our gallery? Hearing and seeing none, I'll call for the question. All those in favor of the motion, please signify by saying I. I. >> Oppose. Same sign. Motion carries. Thank you very much. Action item E, districtwide safety plan. Mr. Deakons. >> Thank
042you, Chairman Johns and members of the board and community. Um, tonight we do get to go through our district districtwide safety plans and those pieces that have been updated and give you a brief overview of what's happened so far this year. Obviously, this will all be taken into account when we do our action plan here this summer and making sure that it's represented in the healthy, secure, safe schools as well. Um, as of May 6th and May 14th, we presented the policies that needed to be with the safety committee um to the board. started on May 26. We've just finished up the prior couple. Um since 2014 when we instituted the safety plan, all these practices and procedures have been evolving since that time and we try to keep you updated as we go through.
043This always has some costs associated with it because when we're talking about safety um and secure schools, we're talking about everything from workers compensation, the safety of students in the buildings to transportation across the board. We try to do that and a way that we are very good stewards of the funds as well. So, if you look at page 56, I'm going to brief you on just a couple of these items that we're working on throughout this year. Most of them are self-explanatory and many of them we've already talked to you about as a board and you've either approved them for projects that go on during the summer or during the school year. The first thing I want to do is just say thank you to uh Julie Shanikoff and Justin over in the transportation.
044Justin moved on to the um custodial staff, but we have Trisha coming in there and they really are the ones that keep track of the safety pieces. Everything from the number of drills to the radios to the buses. Um they're on all aspects of it. Um and then also just with cabinet, um they all have their part to make these pieces run very smoothly for our district. We have two safety meetings a year. Um, one in the fall, one in the spring. We not only look at the safety issues, but you do the workers compensation pieces that come along with it. Any major instances that maybe have arised as well. We continue to use the in case of crisis safety application. Um, and then the piece that we're working on, and I believe there's six
045left, think six or seven, five left. Um, fire alarm systems, Valley View. We just had the opening meeting today. They'll be upgrading the Valley View alarm system which you approved several months ago um for summer work. Um trying to get those pieces integrated into the system. And with those systems, not only is it the emergency side of it, they can also call throughout the the building when there's a major situation that does arise as well. We constantly are updating our uh evacuation sites. Armed intruder a little bit different this next year. Um, we won't have nearly the amount of training that goes on, but we are going to continue to revisit this in years to come because as we hire on new staff, they have to have the training that goes along with an armed
046intruder type site. Um, crime prevention or SEPTA. We're looking at five different buildings this next summer. CMR High School, Whittier Elementary, the district office building, Mountain View Elementary, and West Elementary School. Interesting enough, as we are going through, the district office building has been something that's been kind of pushed to the side for quite some time. And with a unique campus up here with several buildings, several cubbies, um, trees, parks, 10th Avenue South, we thought it'd be a good time to take a look up here because we believe that although we don't have students here, it's just as important to make sure that we're safe here as well. So, we'll be going through those particular schools this summer. Uh we have facility safety meetings that is handled mostly by the transportation and the safety department.
047They go out and they meet with the individual building safety teams and then they bring the information back to us before we do our building walkthroughs. So when we sit down as the executive directors, business director, buildings grounds, we can really walk through and see what they need to make the updates. Um, if you were on my email this week, you would have noticed we had 22 different um, inspections for our playgrounds and buildings that just came through from our insurance. That's constantly going on. It happens at least one time a year. Sometimes it's several times a year depending on the projects that are going on and whether or not the state comes in and does an inspection as well. Keeping those updated. Workers compensation, top three instance this year, nothing's really changed. struck by
048and injured is at 49%. Slip falls and trips at 25 and injuries or by strain are 8%. Those numbers they move a little bit but they generally are the top three injuries with workers compensation. And if you look at the state and compensation as a whole in schools, those are the three top injuries that are reported. Erica Hart, thanks to her, she has given us the information on the CPR and training um going through. She's offered the CPR classes with her nurses. She's also worked closely to make sure that we are taking advantage of the grants for the AES that are out in the buildings. We're limited in Great Falls because we have several buildings that we have to go to, but we can only do one per year. So, we work closely with her
049to make sure that we're upgrading the batteries and the pads that are in those so that we can effectively use in a time of need. Um, immunization she tracks, you can see the data there, as well as student vaccine clinics and flu shots. Obviously, these are pieces that we've worked very closely with our community on to make sure that we do have the parent consent that goes along with it. Um, that's something we hear about quite often. They feel we're just giving these. We're not. They have to opt in for these now. It's not an opt out. As well, we work with our active emergency responses. um fire rescue. Um they were called 23 times. Medical codes for the most part. Um 13 activations at the building level, medical emergency teams. Some of those probably
050were things like allergies, beastings, major injuries, somebody falls off of monkey bars or breaks an arm, things like that. They're things that happen at school. Um although we call them major um a lot of the times I want to say they're routine but they're never routine in the moment for sure. Um nice thing to see we're not using the naron in our buildings but we do have it. Um and then daily management. This is the piece that just um you can't overstate how important it is to have these qualified nurses in our buildings. If you look at the number of office visits in the schools and the medications administered alone, that's enough. feels like for me to have three nurses in there sometimes to try and keep up because they're trying to go from one
051end of the building to the other for four different medications within five minutes because they know that's the only time they're going to see them get them into that routine. Human resources on that side, Heather Spursm has given the update there. You'll see um we're still doing many of the same things that we're we're we've been doing in the past. However, we can say, and it'll be exciting to hear as we get further into the summer, um, they've had a little bit her luck filling some of those positions. Um, as I was meeting with another group today, I was saying if you ever see Dusty Molino, you should rub his shoulder right now because that guy's got a little luck with him. Um, with all the positions that he has, everybody that comes through the
052door, they're good candidates, and he's been able to pick up some great hires there. Uh, Jeff over in technology, he has some projects going on this summer across the way. the Great Falls High, Mountain View, Valley View, Chart with our CRM Russell, Chief Joe and West. Um, working on those camera installations, making sure with that that all the cameras are working. It isn't like they stay working all the time. I'm sure with the three inches of rain, there were probably some issues out there at times that they had to take care of over this last week and coming up. And then we'll be working at doing some cabinets and MDF upgrades um across the district. Um, with that, that is your update there. And know it's there somewhere. We would ask you to approve the
053Great Falls Public Schools Districtwide Safety Plan as updated here. It will be continuously updated as we go. >> Thank you, >> Mr. Chair. >> Trusty Henny, >> I move that we approve the Great Falls Public Schools Districtwide Safety Plan as presented. Second. It's been moved and seconded to approve the Great Falls Public Schools safety plan as presented. Any questions or commentary from our board of trustees? Trust Konagowski. >> Um there was a few mentions of um kind of progress being made at a certain pace because of limited revenue. And I guess you we know what our our budget looks like. And I guess I'm just wondering safety's obviously number one. If there's any concerns about the speed at which we're updating, you know, fire alarm systems, if this is something that when we're looking at
054future budgets we need to consider. >> I think that's a great question. As we look at what we're updating, um, we try to do one fire alarm system throughout the year. as you know, they're very expensive to get the upgrade completed. Um, but that being said, one of the pieces I look at as I'm starting to wrap up this school year is if we have the availability to do more doors and door locks and things like that that we found are needed to be done. We're trying to use some of those funds if we have a little bit left over um in in those particular areas. And then if there's something that comes out that's an emergent type aspect. Remember we can use a flexibility fund, we can use building reserve to try and get
055on top of those. We're trying to balance that at the same time. So as I can say, I appreciate what you're asking. We got to be pretty diligent in what we're doing because we could easily overspend like you kind of mentioned there um and be in a tough spot because we do have other pieces that come up that need to be upgraded as well. I think also, Kim, we're pretty blessed to have Jack and Brent on the team when we do our facility walkthroughs uh with those guys. Obviously, you get a lot of asks and many of those asks revolve around safety, but both of those gentlemen do a great job of identifying asks over the course of time and then determining what are financial capabilities that the conversation goes on in the business office
056is and what are projects that can get done in a reasonable timeline and for a reasonable amount of money. An example of that is replacing door locks this spring at Sunnyside Valley View Sack in Metal Arc. So those were ancient door locks where you had to go outside, twist the dead bolt, do that. Now you're to a push button style, much more modern. It can stay in the lock position. The door can be open all the time and in case of an emergency, you can close it. If it wasn't for those guys being able to procure those things at a price time that was affordable, we wouldn't have been able to accomplish those little projects, which are big projects, uh, in the spring of the year. And those were really pushed up. Some of those
057were looking at being done this next year or two years down the road. However, we had an update in pricing where the lock sets were going to increase anywhere from $40 for the simple ones up to about $80 per lock. When you look at one particular building, um especially if you're talking about a large elementary or moving into a middle school, large elementary, you're looking at approximately $70 doors. You don't realize it, but they add up very quickly and at the cost of about $220 versus 280 or 320. Um there's some savings there that sometimes we have to balance out and make sure we have it because it's just as important for not just our our students, but our staff and the community that's in those buildings as well. Thank you. Is this uh safety
058plan posted on our website? >> So part of healthy secure schools is on there, but one thing I look forward to working with Heather on is noting some of these other pieces within it because I think that's an important part that the community needs to see. >> It'd be nice for parent reference. Yeah, exactly. Thank you. Any other questions from our trustees? Any from our gallery? If not, I'll call for the question. And all those in favor of approving the Great Falls Public Schools districtwide safety plan, please signify by saying I. >> I oppose. Same sign. Thank you so much for your work on this. It's really quite comprehensive. Action item F, authority for the business director to make a year of end budget transfers. Mr. Deacons. >> Thank you, Chairman Johnson. Um, authority is
059a big word right there because I'm in my first year of this position, so I'm learning a lot about it. And no matter what position I've been in with the school district, authority has a different meeting until you're at this level. Um, so yes, I am going to ask you to approve the year end budget transfers as I'm working through in June. We're working through all of the different funds. Some of them have to be zeroed out. Some of them have to be rolled. Part of them on some of the funds have to be zeroed out while other pieces can roll. So those are the pieces I'm working closely with my mentor out of Boseman. uh Mike um to work through and then working with Jessica down in finance office as well to make sure
060that we get that taken care of. However, as always, it's the end of June when it has to happen and it'll be after that next board meeting. So, I would ask that you do trust me to make those transfers where we can. Hopefully, there is something left. We know there will be a transfer to the interlocal from curriculum for sure. Hopefully there's something a little bit more that can go with that this year because we do know what next year is going to look like and any anything we can put aside will be a savings for that next year and reserves to be able to be used appropriately. So with that I am going to ask you to approve myself to have the authority to make year end budget transfers. >> Thank you Mr. Deacons.
061>> Mr. Chairman >> trustee we authorize Mr. to make the year end of year budget transfers as >> second >> and moved and seconded to approve the director of business operations the authority to make year of event budget transfers any questions or commentary from our trustees any questions or commentary from our gallery hearing seeing none I'll call for the question all those in favor of the motion please signify by saying I >> oppose the same sign motion carries chairman Council may add one thing there. I will bring these back to you in July once the transfers have taken place so you are aware of where they were for approval. >> Thank you. Action other nothing was taken off the consent agenda. So we're going to move on to reports discussion and policies. A first reading
062of the 2627 revised and reformatted student handbook. Mr. Boyd. >> Thank you chairman Johnson. All right board members. So sit back, relax. We've got 60 pages of student handbook to review. >> No, we are not going to do that tonight. We'll save you that. Jackie I and a huge thank you goes to Jerry Rollins uh our administrative assistant in our office. So the handbook process begins July 1 uh of every year. So, we will get this approved at the next meeting and we will start formatting and revising the handbook for the 2728 uh school year as soon as July gets here as we change and adjust policies. But ultimately, after spending a lot of time with the current handbook that we've had over time, uh we needed to modernize the handbook that we have. Our
063previous handbook was over 140 pages. Uh it was single space type that was impossible to get through. I could remember as a principal asking parents if they would rather have it in hard copy or look at electronically and still 10 years ago I was getting a lot of can I have in hard copy and then you'd hand them the packet and they'd go what and so what we have done is we worked with Beia Cavala and her office out of Missoula Beia spent a whole year going through and modernizing the handbook to be able to match so that we could match our policies in a way that was modern and allow families when a question comes up or when things need to be found that they can go to the handbook, they can find a
064link to a policy, they can click on it, but more importantly, they can go A to Z in our district and how we do business in a fashion that flows alphabetically, A to Z. So, if you're looking for food, school food prices, you're able to go to school foods, you're able to find it, and you're able to look at it. If you're looking for the discipline policy 3311, you're able to look at it and then you can have a conversation with your building's principal uh to discuss those. It's been an arduous process to say the least, but if you could all spend time looking through it, even as Jackie and I have spent hours together looking at it with Jerry and then giving it out, uh we still had to make major changes. Sherry did
065a bunch of formatting a week ago for us uh to be able to make things look a little bit cleaner so that when it's printed, it looks really good uh on that side of it. But at next the next board meeting, we'll be bringing the 26 27 student handbook to you rar and ready to go because as soon as you give us the okay, it goes to print uh for the few that are going to be printed and we'll be able to get it posted on the website uh and ready to go for the first day of school. >> Thank you very much. Good work. My goodness. Reports, discussion, and policy. So I should say, are there any questions for Mr. Boyd on this handbook? trust. >> Uh I guess just for the the version
066that's going to be printed online and you talked about it being alphabetized, which is obviously a huge benefit. Is there going to be any search function capability? So if I want to type in a search word, >> yes, we just have to we explain we explained to everybody just they have to go control F uh and then you can type it and search it the same way Jackie and I have to. It's just we don't have inside of our websit's capability the ability to have a separate search bar function just for the handbook. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Any other questions? None. Thank you very much. Reports, discussion, and policies. B. First reading of board policy 2410R. Mrs. Maywary. >> Good evening, Chairman Johnson, members of the board. I'm back with the first reading of
067board policy 2410R, the publication of graduation requirements. This begins on page 130 of your packet. Uh there are very minimal changes. It's the one change to the actual language of the policy comes on page 130 uh line 22 and it is just that uh name change from algebra 1 to integrated math one. The graduation requirements have not changed in any of the rest of the the policy here. The other changes that the committee is recommending has to do with updating policies in the cross reference, adding some and then updating some of the MCA, the codes, uh taking out some of the um legislative language and referring it back to the the codified language there. With that, any questions? >> Thank you. Any questions for Mrs. Manwearing regarding this policy? If not, we'll see it again
068in two weeks for potential ratification. >> You got Thank you. >> Thank you. Thank you very much. Reports, discussion, and policies. Um, Chairman Johnson, if I may, really fast before you get started on this part. You do. >> So, I was remiss in my duties. I apologize, Sherry. So, we had a couple of birthdays that we need to recognize before we get to the end of the meeting. >> Happy birthday. >> So, Mrs. Sunchild had a birthday on June 1st. She turned 29. Uh, and Mrs. Scoragoski has a birthday on June >> 14th and she's going to turn 28. So, happy birthday to the both of you. >> Almost. I was close, but I had to get it in. A report in background music. Happy birthday, trustees. Fantastic. Now, with that, Trusty Thompson. Uh well,
069I just wanted to thank everyone for all the hard work of the whole year. Uh it's exciting to be here and I mean after this we're going to start thinking about next year. Um the graduations were amazing and thank you all for your hard work on making it all happen. >> Thank you, Trusty Bronson. I'll ditto uh Trusty Thompson's comments and then just add a couple of things. Uh, Chairman, I will be uh Helena this week for the MTSBA meetings. Just for the record, this is the 100th anniversary of Montana School Boards Association. So, they're going to have a little celebration event tomorrow night. One of our former school board trustees, Don Hamilton, was also the chair of the state organization back in the 1980s, and Don will be traveling down from that. quite an
070accomplishment for him. And uh we'll be having a board meeting for MTV SBA as well. We'll be taking a look at our proposal for the legislature next year for changing funding formula. So I'll have a report on that at some point after the meeting. And other than that, Mr. Chairman, uh there's a likelihood I will not be available for the 22nd board meeting, but I'll confirm that with several days before. Thank you, Trusty Senchild. >> Ditto on the graduations. And if you want to see my absolute favorite video on anything to do with graduation, it is the Louiswis and Clark PTA parachute. The graduates when they did their walk, they did the parachute that it's just a whole thing. It's a whole thing. It's my favorite one. And it's on Lucen Clark PTA and go
071to it's awesome. >> Sounds like fun. We'll do that. Trusty Henny. >> Uh, once again, ditto on the the graduations. Congratulations to all the teachers and the school staff for making it to the end of the year. It was tough there at the end, but made it through. Um, I wanted to comment on Lexia because working in one of the elementary schools, I get to see the kids doing it up close. Um, my kids love it. A lot of the kids love it. It's very engaging for the students. It's a great way to get them learning word sounds, learning grammar, learning that comprehension, >> which is really key. And I think this data, you know, speaks volumes about it, but seeing the kids and they're so proud of their achievements through it and then getting
072called out for, oh, you reached level nine, level 16, whatever the levels are, >> they they get a lot of pride in that, which is awesome. Um, and then one of our Special Olympic gold medalists, uh, is a Valley View kiddo, and he when he competed at the fans in the stands, he did the 50 meter dash, and there were five or six Valley View classes there, all cheering him on. It was the coolest thing. They were all cheering for him. He just had so much pride in himself. It was it was great to see. And then speaking of Dusty Molino, he's got a lot of work this week and next week doing the instrumental summer camp which my son went to this morning and he loved. He switched instruments on me at the last
073minute. Um decided not to go with the trombone, to go with the clarinet so he could switch to the saxophone. And so I was scrambling to find him a sax to get him a clarinet. But he loved it. Even though it was 45 minutes, he came home playing the clarinet, making sounds and I did it pretty much all day. just sat and played the clarinet all day. So, it was fun, but it's it's a really great opportunity and I I love how invested our district is in music, musical learning for our students. That's awesome. Thank you. >> Thank you, Trusty Skagoski. Um, I mean, again, obviously, thank you not only to the district administrators for all of the work that goes into preparing for for graduations and eagle ceremony, eagle feather ceremonies, etc., but obviously
074the staff in each of those buildings that requires a lot of setup and cleanup. Um, so I think just a thank you across the board. Uh I also wanted to just mention briefly that um uh Superintendent Hoyer being in um is it Washington? >> Washington um to visit um with the Janick Key staff. I think um we you know I imagine a few of us have heard some comments from our community both excited and nervous um about um this um ch you know this business coming into our community. Um but I think it's just important to make sure that the community knows um just how involved our school district staff is in the decisions as they move forward. um and making sure that um both that we can be a good partner in providing potential
075employees um to this uh you know of the 500 to a thousand um new employees that's that some of those can come right out of our schools. Um but also just making sure that our schools are prepared um to take on a potential influx of of new students if if folks um do move to town um to meet those employment needs. So, you know, we we are very involved in in this relationship in this um you know, new change and because of that um you know, we have the opportunity to to meet the need and you know, also make sure that our community is ready ready for for any potential circumstances. So, I just think it's really um wonderful that that Heather is, you know, so integrated into into this process. And I think um
076you know, we have we have the opportunity to potentially have a lot of new students and a lot of new families in our community, which coming from the school funding perspective, we know that the number one driver of our funding is the number of students in the seats. Um, so there's a lot of of potential and it's just wonderful to know that we are at the table um in all of the decisions that come forward. >> Thank you. And I just want to again acknowledge the work. I mean, tonight we've had reports about student handbook and and safety and and reading etc. and our administrative team makes it seem so seamless and the untold hours of dedication to the questions that all of these docs uh address is is very impressive and is uh I
077I think that uh we have a very grateful community for the the work that's well done and seems to go by so quickly uh with so little acknowledgement but everything you do is so important and it's so weighty that uh I just want to make I'm sure I'm speaking on behalf of our trustees here that we're very appreciative of all the work that goes into that, all the thought that goes into that and as we as emissaries in this community, we're going to share that word too that we're in good hands. So, thank you for for all you do. And I'm looking at this uh upcoming events. Oh my god, it's shrunk from May to June. I'm I'm in with that. Two June dates and two August. June, July and two August dates. So get
078those in your calendar. And with that, if there is no further business to come before this board of trustees, I would entertain a motion to adjurnn. >> So moved. >> We are adjourned.