001Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to this June 9th, 2025 Great Falls Public Schools Board of Trustees meeting. And we'll call this meeting to order. And Mr. Patrick, would you please administer the roll call? Uh, yes, Mr. Chair. Gordon Johnson, here. Kim Scornagosski, here. Bill Brunson, here. Craig Duff, excused. Marley Sunchild here. Amy Thompson here. Paige Terroski here. You have a quorum present, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Mr. Patrick. Trustee Thompson, would you please administer the pledge? Thank you. And ladies and gentlemen, I will uh remind you by state law, we are required to record these meetings and they are recorded and then posted on our website at some time in the future. And um I'm going to invite um Mr. Williams to explain uh a glitch that happened at last board at the last
002board meeting whereas part of it was not recorded. 22 and one. That's a good record. You should be proud of that. Better than baseball right now. You should be happy. Yeah. Thank you, Mr. Williams. Mr. Chair Trusty Skagosski. I move we adopt the agenda as presented. Been moved and seconded to adopt the agenda as presented. Any questions or commentary from our trustees at the table this evening? Any questions or commentary from our gallery hearing? And seeing none, I'll call for the question. All those in favor of adopting the agenda, please signify by saying I. I. Same sign. uh who are opposed to adopting. Motion carries. We have adopted our agenda. Mr. Chair, trust Kodagski. I move we approve the consent agenda as presented. Second. Then moved and seconded to approve the consent agenda as presented.
003Any questions or commentary of the content of this consent agenda from our board of trustees? Any from our gallery? All those in favor of approving the consent agenda, please signify by saying I. I oppose. Same sign. We have approved the consent agenda. Moving on to Roman six, superintendent's report. Mrs. Hoyer. Well, thank you, Chairman Johnson, members of the board, members of our community. Um before we start tonight, just a couple of things. First of all, happy birthday. Um Marley's was on June 1st. Kim is on June 14th. So, ladies, we hope you have a fantastic birthday or had a fantastic birthday. Um, and thank you for all you do. Before I start scrolling through, I wanted to let you know I will update you every month as to our openings over the summer. So, as
004of today, um, and to the best of what I can reconcile, we have 29 openings. There may be a couple that we are looking, you know, doing background checks and different things like that, but 29 looks like where we're at, and I can give you a breakdown of them. So we currently have uh five resource one that's both elementary and secondary and 10 resource 2 three that's elementary and secondary. Then we have five general classroom teachers that includes one family consumer science teacher from North Middle School because I didn't have another column to put them in. So we have uh two kinders, two sixth grades, and one FCS. We do have one counseling opening. We have no library openings. That's awesome. um two HPE teachers, one at each of the two high schools, one business
005teacher, that's a halftime at both high schools. We have two English secondary English position, one at Great Falls High and one at East Middle School, and one world language position at Great Falls High. We do have a math intervention position that's at East Middle School and one music position that's a one-year only at CMR. Um and one elementary art. So, those are our openings that we have as of today. So, I'll start my presentation giving you guys updates. It's always a moving target because we have interviews and background checks happening all the time, but we're hoping that that number of 29 inches down as we move throughout the summer. So, with that, we have end of year celebrations. We had so many celebrations, but this was one that popped up on my email that kind
006of flew under the radar a little bit. This was our uh Great Falls Schools Air Force JOTC unit. They received the distinguished unit award with merit for growth and accomplishments of their cadetses and mentorship contributions from their instructors. They also received the silver star which is given to the top 5% of units nationwide for their community service and giving back to their community. So, this was a wonderful letter of commendation and congratulations to our Jay Rossi students um who continue to do so much for our community as they learn about leadership in that class. So, I snuck this in because congratulations to Trusty Bronson. He is. So, um, Bill, you can tell me if I get this wrong because I had to creep on your wife's Facebook page because you didn't talk about it. So,
007um, he's the 2025 Sherman Fellow Award winner for the Portage chapter of the Louiswis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation. And I was when I was reading about that, this quote really stuck out to me is you get things done even if you don't care who gets credit. So the reason I think this is important is because this deals about or this is about the education of our larger community of our state and our nation. Um Bill is the president of the national Lewis and Clark alliance whose chapters coordinate Louiswis and Clark education programs and trail stewardship along the entire Louiswis and Clark trail including here in Great Falls. And so he is he has served it says for decades with his gorgeout chapter with the Louiswis and Clark Interpretive Center Association, the Louiswis and Clark
008Festival and the Louiswis and Clark Foundation. So thank you Trusty Bronson for continuing your education of Louiswis and Clark in our schools and in our communities. So if you have time on your hands and I had to have a little picture of I think the the its name's Nugget. I can't remember. It's It's um Cassie Ross's little um I don't know what kind of reptile it is up there in the top corner. I can She's always posing it. Um and it has its summer um umbrella on and it lounge chair on. But if you have time on your hands, there are so many things happening and this is just a snippet of things that students can do um of all ages in our community through the public schools. So, we have swimming lessons, of course,
009happening at Great Falls High. Um, those have been happening for years. If you ever had a child that attended swimming lessons of your own, you'll know how high quality those swimming lessons are there. I would encourage everybody to check those out. We do have Safety Town coming up. Those are for littles who are heading into kinder. They have to be five years old and heading into kinder next year. And they learn all sorts of amazing things like how to be a back good backseat driver. Um, they learn about yield signs and stop signs and and roundabouts and railroad crossings, but they also learn about electrical safety and fire safety and stranger danger and all of the different things that deal with safety in the life of one of our youngest learners. Safety Town covers it.
010And then we have the soccer camps and we have volleyball camps, we have football camps, we have basketball camps, you name it. Wrestling camp, we have them. I just grabbed one from each side of the river. But then we also have our free summer meals happening as well. So just because we don't have students in our classrooms, we still have lots and lots going on with Great Falls Public Schools and helping our our students and our community. You may have seen this, but another congratulations um to Jordan. Jordan uh Forester was Langford Forester was named as a national low bilen center fellow. This is a U fellowship that is merit-based for educators of all disciplines who value the importance of teaching respect and understanding through project-based learning. She is the first fellow from Montana. She
011is also the first fellow who is an indigenous person. And so a huge congratulations to Jordan. She'll be doing that work this summer as she looks to discover a lot of unsung heroes ac across our nation who are doing amazing work in their communities. So, best of luck to her and we're sure proud to have her in our district. The annual book giveaway is coming up. Um, this hit or the information for this hit our email several weeks ago. So, Sherry and I wanted to be sure that we um gave this a shout out again. So, these are books that are out of date, obsolete, or no longer needed for reference materials. And this is free for people who want to come in and find a book to their liking or books plural or boxes
012of books. Um, Wednesday, June 18th from 11 to 6. Thursday the 19th from 10 to 4. It's at Paris Gibson Education Center Park by the football field. Go in the back gym doors. Um, and that's where that book giveaway is. And it's free to go in and to take books that you want and we're encouraging our community to go check those out. A huge huge thank you to Dennis Martin. He's the administrative assistant in the curriculum office and he organizes this and it's a large undertaking to get everything cataloged because he has to keep track of it and give all that information to Mr. Patrick. You may have seen this, but if you haven't, I wanted to be sure that we recognized the CMR boys and girls tennis teams. Um, they were recognized for their
013commitment, sportsmanship, and success throughout the season. So MHSA wanted to be sure that they um were recognized in our community for that by naming them the team of the month for May. So congratulations to the players and the coaches of the CMR tennis team. If you don't have anything that's burning that you want to do on Friday the 4th of July, please join us as we hand out pencils, which usually disappoints many young children. Um but hand out pencils. Um as we march in the band, we usually or march not in the band, we follow the band um and hand out the pencils. We usually also display the truck which the foundation raffles. That's the first time we have that out in the community. Um and it's usually a large competition between the Boyd family
014and the Hoyer family to see how many pencils they can hand out. And so um it's a lot of fun. It was the first community event that Mr. Williams did with us last year as a member of our cabinet. Um, and it's just a really cool way to get out and see a lot of faces, give a lot of hugs along the way. Um, it's an awesome time. So, join us if you're free. We line up at 10:45 at Whittier Park. We wear red, white, and blue. Um, we have a great time. So, Corey Reeves shared some restart data with us and I wanted to be sure that I shared it with you because I think it's important to really champion some of the amazing things that are happening there. And so for the 202425
015school year, he served or he and his program served 20 atrisisk youth ages 12 to 17 that came from Great Falls Public Schools who needed a different place and a different model to go to school. 14 of those students, so 70%, that's a a large success rate, successfully completed the program and transitioned either back into their school setting or enrolled in the CCRC to pursue their high set. One student, you see him pictured up there, actually graduated with his high school diploma following the completion of restart. And another student received their high sets during the CCRC's um graduation ceremonies. Their average attendance rate was 87.56. That's huge. And so, a big shout out to Corey and to the students and the families who bought into this program and are making a positive change in their
016life. We look forward to continued success. Speaking of success, these numbers were amazing. And so we had a total of what we what I consider graduates, 794. That does include the CCRC um even though they're high set and they're not traditional diplomas. So you all parttook in a lot of these um present or a lot of these celebrations but Great Falls High had 273 CMR had 280. Restart had one. He was not included in this the Great Falls High School uh program. So I wanted to include him. The CCRC had 117. She is my favorite graduate. She's 84 years old, Mrs. Bomb um Bombgardner. And um that was on her bucket list to get her high set diploma. And so she checked that box of her bucket list. It was pretty cool. Um Paris Gibson
017had 120 and I was texting Yenta over the weekend. I said, "Do you have any pictures?" Because I didn't I was cheering too hard for your kids and I didn't grab any pictures of when they threw their hats and she was doing the same thing. So we had this picture of this young lady. Um and then down in the bottom are secondary life skills kids. They traded in their certificates of completion for their high school diploma at the end of their programming. So there were those three there. So, we're very very proud of the who walked their own stage no matter what it was. Um, they completed their journey of high school and we're proud of them and the teachers and the staff that supported them along the way. So, that got me thinking for
018my data of the day really what is our investment in education? And so I need to give shoutouts to Chris me and to Shannon um to Brian Patrick and to Luke Deons who helped pull all of this together. So when you take a look at the data table in front of you, it shows you if you really tracked one graduate from the time they were in kindergarten, if they spent their 13 years with us and walked the stage, what would be their total collective investment when we're just considering teachers pay per graduate? So in elementary school, we knew we had 390 teachers. You see their average daily rate up there and the number of students that they have. So it's a 13.32 to1 student teacher ratio. We calculated then the daily rate per students and
019we counted 187 days because even though they're only with us for 180 those seven days of uh professional development time that the teachers have are really important to the quality of education that happens in classrooms. And so we counted those 187 days times the number of years at their level and that gives you the total. So you can see for elementary we invest about $31,970 over the course of that child's time in elementary. In middle school it's $11,34 and in high school it's $20,795. So for a 13-year investment it's about $63,800. Which means if we have 794 graduates and completers it's about a 50 mil 50.6 million investment per graduating class. It's a large investment in our students as they cross that stage. The reason this is important is because of the difference it makes
020in the life. So if we invest $63,800 into the students, they can over the course of their life, if they only have their high school diploma, turn around and invest over a quarter of a million dollars back into our community. So, in Montana, and this comes from work and money, um it was a big research study that happened um that broke down every state with the median salary for a high school graduate compared to the median salary for a non for a dropout. Um and the difference in just how much they make a year. It's a little over 5 or not a lot over 5,000, a little under $6,000. But what we know about graduates is in Montana, students without a high school diploma have a significantly lower median annual salary compared to those who
021graduate from high school. Their poverty rate is twice that of students who graduate. Um unemployment in 2023, the unemployment rate for high school dropouts across the nation was 23.5% where it was 15.8% for high school graduates. So that's huge. um their lifetime earning is just significantly higher. And if their lifetime earning is higher, their economic impact is higher in our communities, which turns around and actually makes that $63,000 investment per student a really really good deal. So with that, that is my data of the day and that is my report for the first meeting in June. Thank you. Thank you. very illuminating communication B audience communication. I haven't received any requests to speak before this board of trustees this evening. That brings us to action items a authority for the director of business operations to
022make endofear budget transfers. Mr. Patrick. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Members of the board, this is a standard meeting agenda item that happens in June of each year. And with the close out of the year, what I'm busy doing right now is getting all the funds and and balancing and and making sure funds are spent out the way they should be. But in order to have the information to the board, it have to be done by June 19th. So this action on your part allows me to make any transfers and in making this motion know that any transfers that I make are approved by the board at a later date. So um it's just a good financial fiscal move for the district to balance those funds unless you're um dead set on coming back to a
023meeting on like June 30th at at 5:00. So that's the end of the fiscal year. So um my recommendation uh Mr. chair and members of the board is to grant me the authority to make end of the year budget transfers. Thanks for the warning, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I Mr. move that we extend authority to the director of business operations making budget transfers as recently explained by Mr. It's been moved and seconded to approve the director of business operations the authority to make end ofear budget transfers. All those in Oh, any conversation or questions for Mr. Patrick before we take the vote from our board of trustees? Anyone in our gallery? Hearing and seeing none. All those in favor of the motion please signify by saying I. I oppose. Same sign. Motion passes. Thank you,
024Mr. Patrick. Action item B, second reading of the annual review of board policies 3,300, suspension and expulsion and 3311, firearms and weapons. Mr. Patrick. Thank you, Mr. Chair. U these are annual policies that have to be reviewed as part of our safety plan. They were as a report at our last meeting and the recommendation for a change was had to do with archery as one of our clubs and then is again recommended tonight. So recommendation is to approve these two policies as presented with a minor revision with archery. Mr. Chairman, trusty Terraski. I move that we approve the recommended minor language changes to board policies 3300 suspension and expulsion and 3311 firearms and weapons as presented. Second. Been moved and seconded to approve the changes in policies 3300 and 3311. Any questions or commentary from
025our board of trustees? Any commentary from our gallery here with us this evening? 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. Action item C, districtwide safety plan. Again, Mr. Patrick. Thank you, Mr. Chair, members of the board. Um this is again an annual review of our safety program and plan. Um policies 3300 and 3311 tie into our safety plan. Um there's also a lot of protocols and practices which are exercises and drills that we do annually whether it's the emergency fire alarm drills that would that happen and we make sure those happen. Uh the backbone of our safety policy is really a app on our phone for district staff called in case of crisis. It provides
026all the details for staff members on what to do if if something happened in any scenario, whether it's a natural disaster or a shooting, those types of things. Um um there's two members that are on the annual are on the safety committee. We have two meetings annually and review and and really those meetings are intended to get information from our employees on their eyes and ears of what's going on in the schools and how we can make them safer. Um, part of this report is also just a recap of the year on on safety items. And I'm not going to read it all to you, but I do want to highlight a couple of things. And one is fire alarm systems. We continue to upgrade the fire alarm systems. Last year, we did Chief Joe
027this summer. It's Lincoln Elementary School. And Mr. Williams is submitting a cops grant as you learned at the last meeting to exacerbate that process and move it forward and hopefully do a few more schools if that grant is successful. One of the highlights for me this year was the armed intruder training and for years before COVID hit, we would get small groups of staff and do one school and and have a few work comp claims and and um go through that that process. And um the SRO's and Lance Boyd put together a great program this year where we trained every school in the district and that that's phenomenal. Um it really is it it really opened the door to a lot of staff thinking on um what would they do in an armed intruder situation
028and um just a highlight of the year to get it's pretty phenomenal to have all that training take place because in years before we had a number of trainings and had maybe 10% of the staff trained. um our safe just know as a board member that part of our safety plan is we have an annual walkthrough at each building and part of that walkth through is safety it's what are the things that need to be fixed in the building we have all the people at the table whether it's the food service the principal the engineers uh Brent and Jack are there and we Julie Chnikov also attends and reviews the safety protocols she's been out before that they've reviewed it they bring that information at the meeting. So, it's a it's a priority for our
029district. Um, and then annual inspections, we have a million of them. Whether it's a Department of Labor, our insurance company, they do a great job of coming in reviewing our playgrounds, saying, "Here's some stuff you need to address." And that's appreciated because it makes our school a safer place. Uh number 10 on the list on page 50 that it's one that's a little concerning that I think raises a little bit of a red flag is workers compensation claims. Uh struck or struck or injured by increased to 67% this year and that's too high and it has a lot to do with a a lot of our situations with students but again it's a high one that we'll work hard to address in future years. And then um this district is also lucky and blessed to
030have Erica Harp lead our nursing program. They hit it out of the park along with Jesse Younger's um when we had a cell Manila incident in the state and in our district and uh the amount of time and effort and their proactiveness at getting information to people that needed it was phenomenal. Absolutely phenomenal. They were a great team. They worked with our city county health department and really hit it out of the park. So, and then I know at the end of the year there was some concern about measles and and Hav had some cases and we were ready and part of a lot of due diligence work by a lot of our employees. Uh Erica and Heather especially getting the information ready, get our district ready if that happened to hit us. So, um
031those are just a couple highlights and and appreciate you um see the recommendation. Yeah. And and the only other thing I want to um recap on this is there's the option in the board prep sheet. It talks about a transfer um to to if we wanted to transfer money to let's say do six fire alarms in a in a summer. The only problem with transfers when it comes to safety is if you borrow it from a fund like adult ed, you can do that. But before you can levy any mills in adult ed, you have to pay that money back. So to me it doesn't make a lot of sense to be borrowing money and then paying it back before you can increase it on a permissive levy. So not a high recommendation on that.
032So um at this point I guess my recommendation is to approve the districtwide safety plan for this last year. Thank you Mr. Patrick. Mr. Chairman Trusty Terranski. I move that we approve the Great Falls Public Schools Districtwide Safety Plan as presented. Second. Been moved and seconded to approve the Great Falls Public Schools Districtwide Safety Plan. Any questions or comments from our board of trustees. I'll just say I'm very grateful for the work that's been done on this project. It's quite comprehensive, understandable, and thorough. So, thank you for that. Any questions or commentary from our audience here this evening? Hearing and seeing none, I'll call for the question. All those in favor of the motion, please sign up by saying I. I oppose sign. Motion carries again. Thank you, Mr. Patrick. That brings us to action
033item D. Second reading of deleted new and revised word policy 1,00 legal status and operations 11,000 organization 10,000 which is new legal status operations and organization 1130 committees and 1531 trustee expenses Mrs. Hoyer. Thank you chairman Johnson members of the board. So in front of you, you have the second reading of those mentioned policies. Um when we take a look, it was policy 1000 and then um 11 or 1100 that is in front of you. Those two were combined into the new policy 1000. Then language changes for 11:30 and 1531 is recommended by the committee and MTSBA. There were a couple of editorials. Sorry guys, smoke is getting to me. Holy cow, it's a little early in the season. Um, uh, if you look on page 56, that is policy 1000, the new policy, you'll
034notice that we had the the editorial of changing the word of to with that was recommended by trustee Bronson. And also on page 58, policy 1531, um, that was making meetings plural. That's found on line 14. So those were the two editorial changes. Besides that, I've had no additional input from our community or our staff and I would recommend that you adopt those policies as changed. Thank you. Thank you, Mrs. Hoyer. Mr. Chairman Trusty Bronson. I move that we adopt the recommendation of the policy committee to delete policy numbers 100 to adopt new policy 1000 in place of the previous policy 1000 approve the amendments policy 305 just outlined second been moved and seconded to approve the policies that were listed by trustee Bronson any questions or commentary from our Board of Trustees regarding these
035policies. Any questions for our gallery here? And again, thanks to the policy committee for their good work on making sure that these policies are working in our favor as a district. Appreciate it deeply. All those in favor of the motion, please signify by saying I. I. Same sign. Motion carries. Thank you very much. Action other nothing was pulled from the consent agenda. It enables us to go to Roman nine reports discussion and policies. A board subcommittee assignments and I hope that each of my fellow trustees received a list of committee assignments. Uh thank you so much for submitting to me in a timely manner your requests. I'm happy to say that most requests were honored and uh we I chose to keep some of the key people in the same place in the same committees
036because of their efficiency and their effectiveness in those roles. two um notable things that I want to actually three. One of which is this is a non-legislator later and we're going to take a look at how we can best as a district perhaps coordinate with other community entities to be more effective in our uh voice down in Helena and we'll work on that. Uh two, um changing up the superintendent evaluation. And I've entrusted trustee Thompson with that so they can better serve not only uh effective and efficient evaluation but produce something meaningful that we can uh work uh to the credit towards credit of our organization. And then three and lastly I chose to augment the policy committee by one and put Mr. uh Duff on that because I think that's a good way to
037learn quickly. That's an understatement as to how the district functions. So again, I thank you very much each and every one of you for your service not only on this board but on the committees that you serve. Very much appreciated. That brings us to B discussion committee reports and comments. Trusty Trasi, would you please kick us off? Sure. Um just want to give a shout out to um the restart program. I think that's that's really great and I love hearing about it and um I think it's a great option to our students when traditional school isn't working for them. Gives them still something to to work towards. Um and just happy summer to everybody. Happy start of summer. All right. Very good sunshine. Happy summer to everyone. as a summer a summer vacation. It was
038great seeing all the fun teacher things reminded me I don't think I do that anymore. Just I mean they were fantastic and just want to say that um superintendent Hoyer's data for the day proves that education is the core of everything in this community. We want to invest in the community to start making better education. You're here trusty Thompson. Well, you you uh stole what I was going to say, but that's I you know how much I love you know how much I love the data of the day, but that that that's a that's a really great one because um if that investment wasn't there, then um what more are we paying for in the end? So, I I appreciate you putting that together and yeah, re reiterate what um Paige said about the restart
039program. It's awesome. I'm happy to hear the numbers. 20 and 14 graduating. That's awesome. Um and the graduations were wonderful. Um always very meaningful and I managed to not cry in the last two so that was good. And then I went to the um Spark the Arts on Saturday and that was a wonderful event. Um and many of um our students played and entertained the crowd and it was it was just really well put together and um great stage for our kids a lot some of them for the last time since they graduated from high school at least as high school kids. Thank you Trusty Bratson. Thank you Mr. Chairman. Just a couple of things. Uh first uh since I'm now taking Mr. Fin's place as the national municipal director. I attended my first meeting
040last week. He was also held in conjunction with the education finance workshop and superintendent also attended. I've left for each of you and the superintendent of the memorandum boxes just with some handouts from that session that I thought you might find informational. Uh probably the important takeaway from that event is that it was held co-extensive with the first meeting of the committee that will be studying for school funding for the next year and a half preparation for 2027 legislative session. So it was very interesting to hear a number of different viewpoints and look at some of the data that in any event there's a memorandum box there you have questionually and then secondly just a further update on insurance we are continuing to move forward our own health insurance program I really appreciate the services
041that audit staff provide to the district. But that doesn't mean we're not still looking potentially road at participation in this new health insurance trust. Uh they are getting closer to the point where they will probably be coming to all of the districts in future and asking whether or not they choose to participate. Again, that's a decision that we will have to look at very carefully because there's mentioned before, it's no secret. Our health insurance program is probably best run all districts. Given all of the advantages that we have in our particular plan right now, they will have to make a pretty strong case to us that need to move away from. That being said, they have been responsive in addressing a lot of particular needs of self districts like ours. And so again, proof will
042be in the data that they offer to us once they present a proposal. More to come. Thank you. Thank you for your service on those committees. Trust Kodski. Um just uh thank you to all of the staff members. Uh I know the end of the year is incredibly hectic um and a lot of additional work um so that so that you can take a break. Um and also just a thank you to Superintendent Hoyer um feel like you're you read our minds. I always want to know how many openings there are and um and you know what types of positions those are and um you know really to to emphasize the importance of of graduation um not just for those students but for our community as a whole. So thank you for that. Yeah and
043I concur the graduations you know I know how these things work to an extent. There's a thousand in 10 moving parts. But for the community to come and see their student graduate, it seems seamless. It seems just so natural. But to have that happen with all the pieces that need to be put together, all the people who extend love and dedication and hard work to make it look that seamless. More power to them. I'm very proud of what we do here in Great Falls in processing these graduations from these buildings. So, thank you very much to all concerned. Now, if there's no additional business to come before this board of trustees this evening, I will call for an adjournment. An adjournment that might be a district record 40 minutes. We probably did. That was for
044you, Jen. That was for you.