001good afternoon ladies and gentlemen and welcome to this February 24th 2025 meeting of the great falls's Public Schools Board of Trustees happy to have you here this uh meeting will be recorded as per state law and will be posted on our website at some point in the future Mr Patrick would you please administer the roll call thank you Mr chair Gordon Johnson here Kim sorosi here Bill Bronson here Mark finam here Marley sild Amy Thompson here Paige troski here you have a full board present Mr thank you Mr Patrick trusty finum would you please lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance United States na thank you trusty gagoski agenda as presented second been moved and seconded to adopt the agenda as presented are there any comments or questions from our Board of Trustees are there
002any question comments questions from our Gallery here with us this afternoon hearing and seeing none I'll call for the question all those in favor of adopting the agenda please signify by saying I I opposed same sign we have an agenda from which to work thank you Mr chair truste terasi I move that we approve the consent agenda as presented it's been moved and seconded to approve the consent agenda I've been alerted there been one Small Change in the consent agenda and I would invite Mr deacons to come and clarify that for us please thank you Mr Johnson uh chairman Johnson members of the board superintendent horer um we do have one small correction to make on here if you go down to the the line item position library teacher aids you are going to see
003your original said huitt Carissa it's actually huitt Rihanna pay and everything Remains the Same that was corrected just happened to be um an extra click in there that put this be page found on page 14 sorry page 14 yes thank you sir you're welcome it's been moved and seconded to approve the consent agenda with the one Amendment as stated by Mr deacons any questions or commentary from our Board of Trustees any questions or commentary from our Gallery if not 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 we are on to communication and character strong giant Springs Mrs mearing good evening chairman Johnson members of the board superintendent Hoyer members of our community it's my pleasure tonight
004to welcome principal Carla Miller and her group from giant Springs to present about character strong well welcome it's nice to have you here well thank you so much for having us I'm Carla Miller I am very honored to be the principal at Giant Springs Elementary I have returned to to Great Falls I started my career here 21 years ago and felt so supported as a teacher here and then really appreciated the education that my my own personal children got that I ended up returning um here as a principal so I'm very excited to be here this is my second year at Giant Springs we currently have 413 students we have 22 classrooms and we're doing some pretty amazing things and so I'm very excited to introduce you to some of our amazing things as well
005as some of our amazing students they're each going to go ahead and introduce themselves hi my name is DW Hall and I am a pilot in training hi my name is laramy Log and one fun fact about me is I am a baker hi my name is Chan Neer and one about me is I Do seasonal jobs perfect so we have some pretty amazing things and I do have to say she is a pretty good um Baker because she's made some pretty yummy things for the teachers and everything um we want to talk about character strong and so we definitely utilize character strong at Giant Springs and this month is focused on honesty and each one of our students wants to speak about how we use character strong in our building and also talk about
006honesty so we're going to start with Chandler explaining about honesty what honesty looks like to me is tell the truth to adults because you get in less trouble if you tell the truth you you don't have to tell and you don't have lies to hide at Giant Springs honesty looks like telling the truth all of the time taking responsibility for your actions even if you make a mistake I show honesty by telling the truth to my teacher and not lying to the principal all righty dtin I will be talking about how giant Springs does these whole school assemblies each assembly has to do with the monthly character trait every teacher chooses one student to get a certificate and a chance to be student of the month for their grade to get the reward you need
007to be honest for this month's character trait we tried to booster store students character traits with the student of the with the student of the month assemblies I will be talking about morning meeting morning meeting is a honesty building thing and how you do morning meeting is by making a circle and all the classes will make a circle in their classroom and you will um every student will talk about their character strong of the month and three classes of the sixth grade will meet in the library and some of the special teachers that can come and listen and this builds relationships and morning me meeting helps build relationships and building honesty with one another and so part of the reason we start with morning meeting is really to get students started we really can't control
008what goes on at home or like when my own children sometimes that argument in the car um so coming in making sure they get their breakfast and then morning meeting being able to regulate themselves and really build that sense of community and that sense of belonging and also focusing on character strong another important thing that we do here um at Giant Springs is our strong character tickets and it is based upon our three universals which are we are responsible we are respectful and we are safe each one of our students is going to explain what each one of those means so laremy responsib responsibility is one of our three rules of the school responsibility is not being laate to school and turning in on assignments on the time at time and bringing the right items
009to school such as instruments for fifth and sixth graders snow gear and gym shoes respect to me is caring for someone you dislike even letting students you don't normally sit with at lunch sit at your table or letting them join your game is being respectful we are safe and it means no climbing on chairs or picking them up you can be safe by not staying on your CH desk and another thing is walking in the hallways and not talking dealing drill or ways that I am safe by giant swings and so what we'd like to do is our students are going to pass out some of our strong character tickets so you can take a look at them and so students can earn these strong character tickets for demonstrating at least one of these universals
010on the back the teacher can write a personal note or the educator so any adult in the building can write a specific note because if we're spe specific in our feedback it definitely has more meaning so they can write that note to the student they end up bringing down the certificate to the office and there's a portion that we rip off and it we have hundreds chart up in our hallway and students get to select a number that's not been selected yet and they put that small portion of the slip in that number every Monday we do drawings so we always want to start off the week with something positive and so we have the computer randomly generate uh 10 numbers between one and 100 and we announce that on our announcements students come down
011get a prize and um the other portion of the strong character ticket students can either take home or they can keep it because that feedback is always very important when we do fill the hundreds chart we do something fun with those hundred students and so this past time we um did a secret Spirit day that only they knew about and the adults knew about so we came in pajamas with our stuffies uh some other things that we've done is they get a coupon and they can wear a hat or bring a stuffy to school so doing fun things like that we're definitely focused ing on the positive and so when we we see what we're looking for and so part of these strong character tickets are really to be looking for those students because they're
012doing amazing things looking for those students who are doing exactly what we need them to be and it's a great way to honor them and a great way to celebrate in closing I just want to say thank you so much for your hard work um our school board as well as our cabinet we appreciate all the hard work that you do and appreciate you having our students here to be able to present and they're pretty amazing um and so I would love to give them a round of [Applause] applause they worked very hard on exactly what they were going to say and I appreciate all their hard work and them being here and I really appreciate families bringing them here too thank you [Applause] what a great presentation thank you so much we're inspired I
013think your presentation is going to help each of us in this room be a little bit more honest each and every day so thank you for that Lisa sap is she with us she was unable to make it this evening chairman Johnson I see thank you so that brings us to communication item C superintendent's report Mrs Hoyer well good evening chairman Johnson members of the board and members of our community um nice warm evening this evening a little different than our last board meeting so um I'm so excited to be able to share some information with you about Great Falls Public Schools so our first slide is just a quick representing gfps um I have talked to um principal Jeff hobble they are going to be bringing these folks with them to the next board
014meeting so I don't want to steal their Thunder because there's a pretty cool story that goes with a girl s swim state champion ship but you probably saw on social media Great Falls High School's girls were repeat State Champs in swimming congratulations to coach mamy um their boys received a third place trophy at State congratulations to coach crza and there are our individual state champions from both CMR and Great Falls High Georgia hatson Beller 100 breast stroke she said a new state record it was a fantastic um Seth Rell Great Falls High boys 100 meter backstroke um Great Falls High girls their 200 medal relay team won their 400 freestyle relay team won and then in wrestling we had three um State Champs in Great Falls Maddie deer from CMR won the 125 weight class
015and girls wrestling kale fener for Great Falls High boys won the 126 and then kale Balman from uh Great Falls High 11 157 so we'll get to see those folks in their coaches at the next meeting and hear a little bit about their championships so um I was chuckling with Brian because at 6 o'clock in the morning last Friday we couldn't decide if it was Donuts at dawn or pastries at pre-dawn definitely pre-dawn um Mr Patrick picked up multiple dozens of donuts um for the 64 drivers for Big Sky Bus Lines who drive the 64 routes every day so a very special thank you to those bus drivers because they run 40 general education routes 24 idea routes and then they also Drive our Charters and we wanted to recognize them on national school bus
016drivers morning had great conversations heard some good stories laughed and thanked them a lot um in addition to this a a very special thank you to Cascade County Sheriff uh Scott bandin you probably saw on social media we had what happens sometimes with a bus that slid off the road on really icy roads and under Sheriff van dyin and um his uh officers who are with him actually witnessed it happened Big Sky Bus Lines quickly got a bus in route but it was a little cold they decided to load the kids up in the cars and the sheriff's department took them to school which the kids said were fabulous um and um just a very special thank you director Barbie Stucker up at Big Sky Bus Lines called all of the families we only had
01710 students who were on the bus so called all the families talked to all the parents and let them know that they were on their way to school and then we got the bus out of the ditch and off we went the next day so roads are much better now but this is just a really good example of the the wide range of Partnerships we have throughout gra house public schools and our County High Voltage weekend was a huge success and I know Becky Nelson does not like to be thanked but she is not here so I am going to thank her profusely um she worked her tail off to make this a very successful weekend it started with the Great Falls Public School's business after hours art show student art show in the Dark
018Horse which was very very well attended and then it flowed so that was Thursday night flowed into Friday night when we welcomed uh 27 aspiring teachers and over the course of two days 34 faculty members but a big thank you to those donors and the list of donors is listed for you to show you um the folks who came forward and provided $10,250 to support this last weekend TDS was our Premier sponsor opportunity Bank was our gold sponsor we will have a member of TDS at the next board meeting he was unable to make it this evening um had a different commitment but a huge thank you to everybody who was involved um I was not there when Mr Anders blitt um gave the keynote address on Saturday but I heard it was amazing and
019moved quite a few people um to understand what makes greatfalls so special in Great Falls Public Schools so thank you to Becky for organizing all of that dual enrollment information nights have been happening throughout the year but I wanted to share with you a little bit of data and thank you to Stacy wgam up at um Great Falls College MSU and the work that she does in helping Great Falls College MSU be our largest dual credit partner just for your information in 2023 2024 274 Great Falls Public School students took a total of 329 courses throughout the year 144 were students at CMR 113 were Great Falls High and 17 were Paris 80 of them were online or in person at gryf Falls College MSU and most of those students are Paris because principal Jake
020likes to have her students actually get their feet on the ground up on campus so many of her students are up there um 312 were concurrent courses meaning that they were taught by High School faculty on the high school campus through the partnership with the college and so we continue our work with Great Falls College MSU and are very very proud of them for providing opportunities for our kids and our students for taking advantage of those opportunities as they prepare for their future so some more representing Great Falls Public Schools um you'll notice through three pictures that Becky sent me so Lincoln Elementary there were three students um this last winter Who provided blankets and gift cards to slon Cancer Institute gra House High School was recognized by the Salvation Army for raising over $3,300
021during their red Kettle campaign and then wyar elementary students had a book author tea party in Mrs lali's class Miss Lali is here I believe in the back of the room if you want to raise your hand um and this evening we we have some very special treats before I move on or guess we can move on we have two authors with us who are going to come up and read their stories about their favorite animals so I'm going to back up a little bit so they can sit here and read and we can pay attention to the screen so we have Bailey and zoie ladies if you want to come on up we're going to read about the amazing cow so Bailey's up first and by the way she is holding the book that
022has been published and I will let you all know how to purchase one should you be interested in purchasing one so with that I'm going to turn it over to auor baby hi my name is Bailey and I wrote about the amazing cow come come explore animals with this to learn about the cow did you know that cows are the most common animal in the world they can smell up to five miles away cows are mammals and they breathe oxygen baby cows are called Cales cows run faster than a horse cows St mute to communicate I hope I could ride a cat one day [Applause] and next zoie is going to tell us about the cheetah hi my name is Olie and I wrote about the love of cheetus come explore animals with us and
023learn about cheetah cheetah moms have four to six CS mom has to teach her Cubs how to survive in the dry open grasslands of Africa and Asia cheetah are daylight hunters and their fur is a spotted padded this allows them to blend in easily among high dry glass grass lands after a chase a cheetah will need half an hour to catch its breath before it can eat cheetah don't Roar like lions and tires but they do Purge just like house cats however they do utter a wide variety of sounds no other animal can run faster than a cheetah I saw a cheetah on a live webcam they are truly [Applause] animals so I think we just heard from the first of many works from these amazing young authors who did their tea and book reading
024um with authors at woodier elementary principal Frank Gilbert is here with us and I'm sure that all of his authors sure sure do that school um proud so thank you very much ladies for teaching us about cows and cheetah I want to end a little bit with data for the day and you have in front of you the updated strategic plan that is highlighted to show our progress in meeting our action steps and our goals for all three of our goal areas um just a reminder if they're highlighted in green those action steps have been accomplished so we will be moving them um to Archive if they are yellow they're in progress if they are unhighlighted we haven't started them yet and I'm proud to say we have everything in progress or achieved at this
025point during the year but I wanted to focus in on healthy safe and secure schools in our goal for that for those of you who aren't aware is by June of 2027 um a reminder that we had to have a three-year strategic plan for accreditation so graall Public Schools will Implement evidence-based strategies and opportunities to increase appropriate behavior among students this will be measured by a 5% decrease to Major incidents by increasing students opportunities to demonstrate skills traits and characteristics identified by profile of a learner and reported by school-based and District level data what you heard tonight from both schools is an example of healthy safe and secure schools in action before I go though or on to the next slide I want to share Mrs Renee Mullins she is one of our fabulous lunch
026ladies at Riverview and when I was doing my school walk around for third quarter um it was cold really cold um and we were just starting to get to the point where we could have the kids go outside for recess we have a lot of flu and illness going through the schools and we were shorthanded and as this sixth graders I believe they were hit the cafeteria with a lot of energy um Mrs did what every educator and I think you heard Mrs Miller say every adult is a teacher this is an example of it she took the microphone and she was going through the expectations in the cafeteria she was reminding them of their character strong trait and she was doing some rcd and she was running it lock step it was so cool
027to watch um and we were able to to watch that in in action and I'm just very proud to say that Mrs Mullen is one of our staff members when we look at the data we can show some great growth um when you look at incident severity this is Major for the school year we are seeing a 27.4% decrease in major incidents alone with a reminder that our goal was 5% when we compare it to the same exact time or point in time last year and the years before we know that 2021 is an outlier because we didn't have all of our students physically with us during that time so just as a reminder why that number is so low we kind of set that data point aside um because many students were not face
028Toof face but were virtual so we're feeling really good about our progress and looking forward to the work we need to do this spring to be sure that we continue to maintain that progress some of the reasons for this is because uh we're calibrating our documentation when we look at Major incidents within our schools our principles are doing that work with the executive directors rcd has been a big factor in helping us work with students and helping them realize the impact of their behavior on others and and how they own their behavior and um redirect character strong um and then the thank you Brian and then the collective education that you saw with for example Mrs mullen's on that is a really an important part of what we do when you combine major with minor
029incidents were actually down 38% over the same exact time last year so that is not done with a lot of hard work on the teachers part on the administrators part but also on the students and the parents part and so I just want to give a huge shout out to the staff and the parents and the students who are embracing this and making this change happen in our schools when we dig into the details so my last slide is going to show you in in the um graph table or the data table is represented by the graph itself it's just hard to read um what you will see here is our aggravated assaults so this is where we have students that are um getting going after each other in a very aggressive manner within the
030school in many cases we can have them cited um if it is prudent we have 38 of those this year our attendance appears to be better with 359 major attendance violations disorderly conduct is 741 compared to 804 our fighting where it's definitely two sided um often times we can also Loop that under disorderly conduct but that is down a little bit as well and the one area that we're seeing an increase in is insubordination um with just a slight bump of three more incidents this year than over last year and then School threats are remaining consistent with Ada of a but we're starting to see more School threats happen at younger ages versus older ages so that's an interesting data point for us to dig into um I did highlight that Co year the alternative
031in attendance definitely impacted that but with that I will entertain any questions and um if not that is my report for this board meeting thank you well thank you are there any questions for superintendent Hoyer good work thank you very much going on to communication D audience communication I've had no requests to speak before this Board of Trustees this evening so we'll go on to action items and before we do that um our friends from giant Springs you're free to be excused should you choose to to go we have action items and [Laughter] but you're free to go all right thank you guys you did an amazing job nice job thanks so much for being here all right action item a Lewis and Clark Elementary School playground Improvement project Mr Patrick um what you have
032before you is the Lewis and Clark Elementary School playground Improvement project uh hats off to Ben Jakes and the PTA at Lewis and Clark they've done a lot of uh groundwork um to raise money to improve their their playground and uh just so you know as far as playground projects go we've got a process that's been established where uh we've worked with TDN to do a handicapped assessment make sure we meet all the guidelines that we do and then um the Lewis and Clark Foundation is working with the Great Public Schools Foundation as they raise money and thank donors and um what the final part of the process is the work will take place this summer and then they will bring that to the board for approval um and the reason they do that is
033for insurance purposes so at this point in time just would like you to approve the Lewis and Clark Elementary School PTA project uh moving forward on the playground thank you Mr Patrick Mr chair tressy taski I move that we approve the Lewis and Clark Elementary School PTA ability to move forward on upgrading the Lewis and Clark Elementary School playground as presented it's been moved and seconded to approve the Lu and Clark Elementary school project any questions or commentary from this Board of Trustees regarding this motion any from our audience 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 I oppose same sign great project passes unanimously thank you action item B Lincoln Elementary School fire alarm upgrade
034project award Mr Patrick thank you Mr chair members of the board uh in November you went you approved going out for bidding on the Lincoln fire alarm project and one of the things that we're in a process of trying to annually replace one or two fire alarms and the advantage of of when we replace it it's an internal and an external um warning system for people um coming in probably from the outside as well and we had two biders on this project which is good because then you know that um at least two people you know the number the number you have is the low bidder and they had to sharpen their pencils to do that uh we advertised on February 2nd and February 9th and um in my prep sheet there's it says 2024
035it's really 2025 we didn't do it last year so I'd like to make that correction and um the bid results came in and the recommendation is to award it to Liberty Electric in the amount of $149,600 u the estimated B bid amount from our TDN who did the the draw drew up all the designs and and hats off to Brad Kaufman and his work that he put into this uh whole project um they came up with 138,000 so that's pretty close and in this day and age I'm happy with that and my recommendation is to move forward with awarding the bid to Livery electric so they can get their stuff ordered and work on the project this summer thank you Mr Patrick Mr chair trusty taski I move that we award the bid to Li
036to Liberty electric to replace the fire alarm system at Lincoln Elementary School in the amount of $149,600 as second been moved and seconded to award award the bid to Liberty electric to replace the fight alarm system any questions or commentary from our Board of Trustees truste oh down here trust GNA come just a clarification Mr Patrick would you tell us how we're funding that um it's coming out of our building Reserve it's it's one of the levies that the state provides money it's the $110 per student uh plus 15,000 per District so that money generates uh money that we can do projects like this perfect thank you any other questions or commentary from our Board of Trustees for Mr Patrick any comments from our Gallery hearing and seeing none I'll call for the motion uh
037all those in favor of awarding the bid to Liberty electric to replace a fire listem fire alarm system at Lincoln please signify by saying I I I oppose same sign motion passes thank you very much action item C declare reduction and force process and criteria to be used in the event RF becomes necessary Mr deacons again chairman Johnson members of the board superintendent horer members of our community out there and before you today to talk about the Riff process of reduction and force um as part of our budget every year as you know we have our first budget meeting coming up next week I believe it is um so just to be in touch with that if it would become necessary that funding would start to look very different um and we had to run
038a reduction in force within our collective bargaining agreements and policy we do have ways to make that happen um in an order that we go to so in the pages following this in your board agenda you will see each of those laid out for you as well as the MCA codes and so forth um if you have further questions I'm happy to answer them for you but basically in the end it would be some sort of a financial reduction we'd have to be making and we'd have to run through these processes to make sure that we do it correctly so I do request that you declare the possibility for reduction in force as always um with these attached processes and criteria thank you Mr deak Mr chair trusty Kowski I move that we um declare
039the possibility of a reduction in force and adopt the attached process and criteria should that be needed second it's been moved and seconded to declare the possibility of a reduction in force are there any questions or commentaries 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 oppos same sign motion carries Mr deacons non-renewal temporary non-tenured teachers with positions expiring June 6 2025 thank you chairman Johnson again I was before you in December we went through our first group of onee only hires they were temporary employees they were either filling positions that um employees had taken leave or they were hired after the first of the year we do have a
040few more of these to account for that we've hired throughout the school year which is really pretty exciting news for us because as people move into our community when they are licensed and ready to go to work in our district we want to get them tied to Great Falls Public Schools as soon as possible the flip side of that is we can't keep them long term because we do have to do the one-ear only process and that allows them though once we go through the non-renewal for for them to apply in the IND District process we hopefully get to keep them for next year as well if everything works out we do have about eight or nine of them on this one as well that were hired after that December date um that we needed
041to make you informed with so we can inform them as well of the outcome um so we do request that you non-renew the teachers listed as they are temporary positions that expire on June 6th 2025 and with that I would say I'll probably be back in front of you at least one more time because we just hired somebody this week as well and it's hard to let somebody go before they've actually started working so we got to make sure we run it in the right order thank you Mr chair trusty trasi I move that we non-renew the teachers listed that expire June 6 20125 as presented second it's been moved and seconded to non-renew the teachers listed as they are in temporary positions any questions or commentary for Mr deacons from our Board of Trustees
042from 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 I oppos same sign motion carries thank you Mr deacons thank you we'll see you again [Laughter] nothing was pulled from the consent agenda so we can bypass item 8 action other and move right into reports discussion and policies man we're making up some real time here aren't we tonight trusty trasi you got plenty of time too all right I don't have Soo much I got to do my convocation half day last Friday um on the 14th that was a lot of fun it was H I filled in for Mr is it aen is that how you pronounce it at Great Falls High as a history teacher and he was greatly
043missed I guess they had a lot of teachers out that day um so there were a lot of kids asking if he was okay yeah he's not sick he's just he gets relaxed today um they were all really well behaved and I didn't have to you know send anyone to the principal's office fortunately and did get asked an interesting question uh by a student they were having a little bit of a debate and it was do you think cereal and milk is soup I I don't think so so I said no um and one of the kids was having a you know kids sign a petition to see whether or not other students agreed but that was a bit of humor in that day but it was it was fun it was very snowy day
044so I was glad to be inside but it was fun and uh all the kids at valy viiew are so happy to be back outside playing finally there audible cheers down the hall of excitement and they're running a muck outside and stepping in puddles and getting muddy and so it's it's fun to see they all come in red-faced and sweaty from running around but it's good to they're getting fresh air and energy out but that's about it thank you excellent thank you trusty Bronson thank you Mr chairman uh a couple of things uh number one uh we did have our third and final Community consensus session here about a week and a half ago with members of the community trustees corosi and I had another opportunity to interact with those folks and I you know
045I'll I'll defer to uh her perceptions on it but I do think the end product was a very good one very useful one to guide initially the budget committee but also this board should we have to make some difficult decisions down the road with respect to our budget and in that regard uh we've been getting off pretty light the last few weeks next month is where the rubber really hits the road in terms of what we will need to do going forward with our school system in the coming year and hopefully we will have enough guidance from the legislature by the time we make our ultimate decision that we can make ones that um really are in the best interest you know of our young people and our teachers and the other folks that we
046serve in our community another quick reminder too at the end of March I believe March 27th you will all have an opportunity to to hear a presentation by a representative of the newly formed health insurance trust uh let me just say this is still a work in progress so whatever you hear at that time there's still probably going to be a lot of work yet to do but this will be an opportunity for the rest of you to see and hear what I've been experiencing over the course of the last year uh in terms of whether or not that might present viable options for us going forward but U keep the 27th open on your calendar for that possibility very good thank you thank you very much trusty Thompson and then the only other thing
047I wanted to mention wrestl CMR and I awesome well thank you breaking past practice I'm just going to do mine now in the line of sequence yeah um I just want to amplify superintendent hoyer's comments about the high voltage weekend it was fantastic those people in the room were supercharged by High Vol voltage so many people too um coming home kids from Great Falls call them kids but uh young teachers from Great Falls waned to come home and I thought that spoke a lot about the uh the great things of our community and then I too was in the classroom this past week Friday afternoon at Riverview teaching I use the word Loosely second grade at Mrs Ross's class and she sort of threw me a curveball I wed walked in the room at 11:30
048in the morning and each of the little kids has a gram cracker about this side size slathered with blue frosting with an Oreo cookie at the end and they were enjoying these snacks and man were they buzzed there we had a great time but it I my respect for teachers has always been Paramount but now it's 10 times that so to be a second grade teacher you have to have a lot of energy and a lot of creative fluency but I had a blast thank you trusty Sadowski um yeah so I just to touch on um the consensus building I think um one thing at at the end they asked everyone in attendance to to share kind of the message um that they hope we will all um receive as trustees um and really there
049was a pretty common theme that they hope that will listen um that there was a large number of community members who gave three entire days of their time um to really digging in and considering um every option on the board there was you know everybody brought ideas they they also um represented a lot of ideas that we hear a lot in the community of things that need to be cut and everything was um very carefully considered and analyzed and discussed um and and we have some some ideas of you know what what that future budget could look like but I think it was very important to the folks um that were at those sessions that that we listen to them and consider consider their work and and the discussions that went into that um and
050you know really the other feedback that I um took away from that was also that um people really appreciated the process they appreciated having their opportunity to learn and they appreciated the opportunity to to talk about um kind of these decisions that are that are ahead for us um and of course you know there's still so many things up in the air um between the federal budget and the legislature um that I don't we don't have all the puzzle pieces quite yet for what the budget is going to look like um but we do know that that this the funding formula is not working for for districts like ours that have either slightly declining enrollment or steady enrollment so um you know this was really important conversation um and I really appreciated everybody that that
051came to the table to have that conversation so um something that we'll learn more about in in the weeks and months to come um the other uh meeting that I attended in the between our previous school board meeting was the Safety Committee um and we did hear you know some of that school um data that that Heather presented um looking at um you know really pretty dramatic improvements for um obviously attendance and um kind of uh behavior problems um so that was great to see there was also some great data about um attendance improving um and we'll hope that that is the start of a a trend in the right direction the committee also looks at everything from you know people fall slipping on ice to um you know the kind of follow-ups to the
052school um shooter drills so um it's really a a wide array of topics that are covered um in in a short amount of time so um if you if anybody has any interest they're really U very interesting meetings I would encourage anybody else to attend those if they want to want to know more about the safety of our schools thank you very much trusty finum thank you Gordon I appreciate it a couple thoughts from myself today I really get a kick out of character strong particularly honesty gosh shouldn't we all learn more from that I'd like that talking about high voltage weekend I'm going to see if l is going to smile but he was sure smiling Saturday morning because of the number he's smiling now still good and so after all of the interviews
053happened on Saturday I would be curious to hear what the numbers look like now or a month from now fantastic thank you we were able to interview 27 individuals a couple of them were interviewed for multiple type positions for example Elementary and they also had a foreign language which would allow them to teach K12 right now we do not have a lot of openings because we only had a few people resign and retire early before our first round of in districts but we were able to offer I believe it was eight um offers that we will let them know after next week because we have to let the process of in districts run before we can offer any of those positions um in addition to that there are another six to eight individuals that have
054k 12 however we didn't have anybody at all right now in those positions that have resigned or retired so it's a little bit of a waiting game but trust me when I say I pulled them off to the side and had a quick conversation with them that we believe in you we wouldn't bring you here if we didn't think you were good teachers but you need to give us a little time so our process of hiring can can work itself out and I think I'm pretty confident we they will give us a couple weeks to get pieces squared away so really was a very positive um experience for us again and I just want to reiterate you know Becky Nelson does a fabulous job and Mr BL was a excellent choice for the speaker his
055passion for not just Great Falls and Great Falls Public Schools but for what our teachers do for his own children and what they did for him so it was a great opportunity for everybody to come together thank thank you very much and I think we owe a thank you to Luke as well let's give him a round of applause and then later on Saturday morning I got to be a table host so I got to visit with all 27 of those son OFA guns and man I'll tell you what yes they look young but they are also ambitious and really excited about the rest of their lives speaking of the legisl legislation moving forward in Helena there's a lot of pro Public School bills working its way through and so optimistic Ally positive that those
056will come to fruition and we might get some um good news for our local voters speaking of the Montana Schoolboard Association board members we are looking for someone amongst us to raise your hand to Mr Gordon and say you know I would I think I would like to become that board member on that we're quit laughing but that is actually one of the fun ones and please call me ask me what it means to be on that board because it has been very very rewarding that's it thank you trusty sunchild to that's a that's that's a lot my friend thank you so much much yeah fantastic well thanks to everybody for what you do you're so dedicated this group of people and the others in the room thank you so much and uh with that
057being said I would entertain a motion to adjourn so moved we are adjourned thank you ladies and gentlemen