001St e okay the Norfork Public School District's Board of Education meeting is called to order roll call Terry Bower Cindy Booth present Brenda carart present Lindsay Dixon present Beth shashikant present Sandy wolf present all members are present we do have a quorum thank you Dr Thompson this is a legal meeting of the Board of Education as advertised by the means specified in board policy a complete copy of the open the open meetings Act is posted in the boardroom for your review a copy of the agenda is available at the desk of the recording secretary please stand and join us in reciting the Pledge of Allegiance and if any of our kiddos want to start us that'd be great thank you we are going to begin with the presentation of special recognition focus on the students
002focus on the students Angie Housman hello board members we're so excited to be here and administrators and families and friends of NPS we are excited to present to you tonight our just very new Lincoln leaders in response to our strategic action plan with Communications we decided to get a jump start on having our student leadership get formed and see what we needed to have in place kind of as a trial run this spring getting ready for next fall and what do you guys think of being a Lincoln leader so far pretty awesome so this is a pretty new thing for us but we have a few events that we've helped with that we want to share with you um the kids are excited and they've been working hard to prepare to present to you and
003so I'm Angie hman I am the principal at lincol monory we've got Mrs Johnson over here so she and I are co-sponsors of our Lincoln leaders now I told the kids I wanted them to think of a word that they think of when they hear the word leadership so I would like them to introduce themselves and share their word um hi my name is Eva and my one word is helper hi my name is Natalie and my one world word is respectful hi my name is aah and my one word is respectful hi my name is Dawson Mitchell and my one word is being a role model hi my hi I'm Hayden my one word is responsible hi my name is Bowen and my one word is 3bs be respectful be responsible and be safe
004hi my name is Tanner and my one word is being honest the purpose of Lincoln leaders is to help share students ideas interests and concerns with teachers and administration the leadership team gives students an opportunity to develop leadership by organizing and carrying out school activities and service projects in addition to planning events that contribute to school spirit and Community welfare the leadership team is the voice of the student body we help share student ideas interests and concerns with the schoolwide community the Lincoln leaders were chosen to experience the rewarding world of being part of Lincoln mono's student advisory team based on our teachers recommendation two members one boy and one girl were selected to represent each fourth grade classroom being a Lincoln leader comes with a lot of responsibility we strive for good sit citizenship
005we respect all individuals in the school and Community we involve all students in sharing ideas to make our school the best it can be we promote school spirit and we serve our school and community in order to be a Lincoln leader we are held to high expectations be a good citizen in the classroom on the playground in the lunchroom and when representing our school in the community be be a hard worker and diligent student Follow The Three Bs on a consistent daily basis be safe be respectful be responsible relate well to other students and adults complete work plan on a daily basis regular School attendance each member of the Lincoln leaders is responsible for performing the duties of of membership including attending leadership and committee meetings being an active voice for students in the school
006completing committee service responsibilities setting a good example for others and showing s Spirit next we want to show you a video that we made that we made that highlights some of the work we've done so far Big Red Keno day every year Lincoln monory hosts the Big Red Kino science and math program day northw public schools have been awarded Financial grants to advance the progress of stem education big red Kino Awards grants for projects that develop and demonstrate the Improvement of Science and Math resources that will impact our [Music] community Norfork Public Schools uses the materials that are purchased with the grant money to setup stations to teach all third graders in the district science technology engineering or math concepts students are busted to our school throughout the day to take part in these fun
007activities there are four different stations that third grade students [Music] experience students and teachers from the senior high Junior High middle school and monor demonstrate the activities for the third grade students around the district this was our first opportunity to show leadership in our role as Lincoln leaders we had so much fun teaching students from other schools about fossils Monastery showcase the second opportunity we had to serve in in a Lincoln leadership role was during our first ever monaster showcase day the purpose of the monastery showcase was to show our families what jobs we work on at school so they can see the monstory materials put into action all of the all of the students in our school had the opportunity to explain a job to our special guest children in the monory program learn
008by working with specially designed materials that support learning objectives working individually or in small groups children develop a sense of self self-esteem because they are given a balance of freedom and responsibility as a leadership team we are able to help Miss Housman set up for this special event we had very little time to turn our gym into a classroom after lunch on Wednesday we helped Miss Roxy clean the gym then we gathered the materials and set them out for the students it turned out to be a really great day and it seemed as if our special guests were very impressed with us woot woot cart just last Friday we were able to visit class rooms and spoil the adults in our building our school has a woot woot cart the cart is filled with snacks
009and water snacks are donated by our families and friends of monory it was cool to see their faces light up when we walked into the room with [Music] [Applause] treats [Applause] I have a question so how or what made you decide you wanted to be a leader we had a meeting during lunch that told us what meant to be a Lincoln leader and we had to sign a paper so did our parents during parent teacher conferences you probably already said it but remind me how did you guys were you voted on in each class or did that did the other students choose you it was based on the teachers recommendations so the teacher would choose one boy and one girl what's been the best part about being a Lincoln leader it's kind of cool how
010you can just like help like with different events around the school and like share school spirit and help other teachers and stuff like that so I have a question do you feel like other students uh are viewing you as Leaders now can you tell that or not um well usually like we will leave the classroom if Mrs Housman needs us to help her out with something so we will like go help her out then we'll go back to our classrooms for a couple ofs so as as leers we'll share this video ours you've come up at meeting a couple of times but it's very new I have had a few third graders say will you do this next what would you say to next year's fourth graders if they ask you whether they should be
011a Lincoln leader or not I would probably tell them that there are a lot of requirements and you might have to miss out on some fun things that only your class is doing like say like today we were making ooble and me and Dawson had to not make o because we had to go help Miss Housman and we can we have sometimes we Ock is a liquid and a solid um um we actually on Friday we read a book called Bartholomew and the O and sometimes like we'll miss recesses and we have to be able to do you have AO but we have to be willing to sacrifice fun things like that what else you have to be a good student and follow all the rules if you want to be in the leadership team
012mostly everything that we get to do I'm very impressed that you you've done so much in just a couple of weeks I'm thinking my goodness if they've did this much in just this little while what are you going to end up doing next year and the year after that very impressive thank you Lincoln [Applause] leaders thank you so much Mrs Housman that was awesome okay next we have the award for excellence Mrs Bowman thank you Madame President we um as a committee our award for excellence committee met a few weeks ago and went through our nominations that we had and the group selected Karen Rubio if Karen would come on up please Karen oh yeah you can clap you clap Karen is an elll paraprofessional at Grant Elementary School she has a lot of comments
013on her nominations that I will share a copy with her but a few of the highlights about Karen is that um one of the staff members said whether Karen is working in the regular classroom or in the elll room she is always looking for ways to help students she is positive and helps make grants environment safe fun and memorable for our students she is kind patient and intuitive when working with all of our students but this is especially true in regards to how she interacts with our English language Learners her quiet presence calms students and seems to unleash a confidence in them to use their newly acquired English skills and reach out and become more involved in their classroom Community the smiles on students faces when you say Miss Rubio are all the proof you
014need very nice so what Miss Rubio many of you have heard this but some of you haven't she is going to take a plaque with her that I have already told the students about so they're probably going to want her to bring that to school and share that with them um a copy of all of the comments you can take that also um hiy donated a $50 gift card to Karen so she can use that for whatever she would like I did ask the students for some ideas when they when I was there and made the announcement and they had some creative ideas for her and then in addition she will work with Mrs Brown who was unable to be here tonight but um to come up with a use for $500 for something to
015benefit students at Grant Elementary so they were especially excited for that would you like to say anything yes okay I just want to thank the wonderful Grant staff for nominating me for this award um this means a lot to me congratulations congratulations Karen we are going to next do our special presentation now you are more than welcome to stay but if you were thinking you might want to leave you might want to leave right now thank you all for coming thank you okay next is our informational session on artificial intelligence Mickey Mueller all maybe you're supposed to be presenting this information I'm sure not okay I'm sure not she is the expert okay um I'm Mickey Mueller I'm the educational technology facilitator for the district and I am here to T tonight to talk to
016you about artificial intelligence so um I'm probably going to move away from the podium um but before we get started I just want to get your gauge you and where you are at in your understanding of artificial intelligence so we're going to do a fist to five okay and you don't have to I'm not talking you right here is good okay so you don't have you you haven't heard anything about it right you're a zero you've heard about it but you're a little confused you've heard about it and maybe you've tried it but you're still confused or you've tried it and you're using it currently in your daily or work life so fist I don't know anything to five I'm using it anywhere in between okay okay thank you appreciate that you guys I I
017know about you guys all right so as we get started with our conversation tonight I want you to if you want to go ahead Eric think about the thing that you car around in your pocket or your purse with you all day every day right so AI isn't just a futuristic concept the term artificial intelligence was actually coined in the 1950s and scientists and technologists have been working on it since then okay you probably interact with AI on a daily basis and you may not even be aware of it so I want you to get out your phone and I want you to look through the apps on your phone or a feature on your phone and try and decide what do you think is using artificial intelligence and I want you to partner up
018so get a partner and have a discussion with your partner what on your phone app or feature is using artificial intelligence why do you think it's using artificial intelligence and why does it make it better well then you have a lot of choices Lindsay you do so interested about your okay let's come back together what did you decide what what apps or features on your phone make use of artificial intelligence give me your best guess if you don't know pretty much all of them pretty much all of them could we narrow it down just a little bit from that Tik Tok how is yeah how is Tik Tok or SnapChat how are those apps using artificial intelligence because it says AI on the top right is that on snap that Snapchat has a little AI
019friend right there have you ever talked to it no no I bet your kids are talking to it though okay so uh Snapchat does have an AI assistant built right into the tool but other ways that those tools are using artificial intelligence are through the filters and also the videos that they're you're being served up to watch based on your viewing habits based on other people's viewing habits all of that is generated by algorithms and artificial intelligence how about can we think of any anything else besides Tik Tok and Snapchat aren't the search engines AI search engines are incorporating some AI features but at for the most part right now they're separate so um there was there was an article a couple weeks ago about a primary an an election primary and people were going
020to a chatbot an AI which will Define this more in a minute but they were going to an AI chatbot to ask where their polling place was and the bot was giving them in correct information so if you have a question you need to go to a search engine if you want to generate new content then you're going to use one of these artificial intelligence tools is the way I like to differentiate that how did you get into your phone with your face with your fingerprint it's artificial intelligence okay do you talk to Google or Siri or Alexa artificial intelligence do you have a Roomba artificial intelligence okay Lindsay my sleep app is artificial intelligence yeah yeah reminds me what I listen to and what to listen to the next night yeah yeah GPS GPS
021right yeah Maps your Google Maps Apple Maps are using artificial intelligence to help navigate you places so you are interacting with artificial intelligence on a daily basis whether or not you realize it okay it is everywhere okay next slide Eric so we're going to ground our conversation tonight with some vocabulary terms okay and I've already gotten ahead of myself just a little bit so I want to back up all of those things on your phone do use some form of artificial intelligence there are different types of artificial intelligence the type of artificial intelligence we're going to talk about tonight is called generative AI this is a type of Art artificial intelligence that can create new content such as text images music videos and it does this by learning from a large amount of existing data
022for example a generative AI model that can generate text might be trained on a data set of books articles and other written material so anything that's on the Internet is up for grabs when it comes to training a gen gen AI uh tool once it has been trained then the model can generate new new text that is similar to the data it was trained on okay so that's generative artificial intelligence and that's where we're going with this conversation tonight another term that you may hear when we talk about gen AI are large language models or llms this is a type of artificial intelligence that has been trained on a vast amount of Text data and what they do is they learn patterns in the data and they use this knowledge to generate humanlike text they
023analyze excuse me the input they're given and predict what should come next based on what they've seen in their training data while they generate very humanlike text and you interact with them in a very human conversational way they don't understand things the way humans do they don't understand what you're saying to them they don't understand the output that they're generating all they're simply trying to predict what comes next based on the patterns they've seen in their training data for example if I were ask you if I were to ask you to complete this phrase peanut butter and jelly or the sky is blue or if I said now we're talking about Chicken Little and I said the sky is falling okay it's just patterns it's recognizing patterns the last term we're going to Define that
024I've already used is a chatbot okay this is a computer program that can talk to people through text or voice they can help you find information answer questions and do tasks without human help they can be used for different purposes such as customer service education entertainment some of them are simple and only follow a script and they can only respond to key certain words or phrases Alexa Siri Okay Google right those commands wake up those devices other chat Bots are more advanced and use artificial intelligence to understand Cal language and learn from conversations they can handle complex questions and give more personalized responses now all three of those definitions were generated by a chatbot okay all right so we're going to go ahead and talk about the three big players in this game okay chat
025GPT is probably the one you've heard about this was released in November of 2022 and it kind of set the world on fire for a few months um it's done by a company called open AI they've been in aot in the news a lot recently um for their board of directors and and who they're who they're hiring but chat GPT was the one that started it all there are two versions of chat GPT that are available right now 3.5 is the one that was released in November of 2022 it is free cost you nothing to sign up and use an account with at 3.5 they also released in February of 23 they released GPT 4.0 which will cost you $20 a month okay so and the advantage of paying the $20 a month chat GPT
0264.0 is more current is faster and is more accurate than 3.5 okay the next tool is Gemini this is Google's version of an AI this is the one that a lot of our teachers have tried because they have access to it with their uh work Google account and then finally we have Microsoft is always a player when it comes to technology of anything their chatbot is called co-pilot now it's interesting to note that open AI originally started as a nonprofit and since they've released their GPT um a lot of companies have come in to back open Ai and one of those companies is Microsoft so the engine underneath co-pilot is actually chat GPT so they're very intertwined so you can pay the $20 a month for chat GPT 4.0 or you can use co-pilot for
027free okay all right so I'm going to show you how one of these tools Works since it didn't look like a lot of you had actually had any experience using these tools I'm going to show you Gemini this is the tool that um we share with our teachers we've shared all of these tools with our teachers but Gemini is the one that they gravitate towards because they don't have to create an account they already have an account to use it so Eric all right so um I am a high school economics teacher and I am looking for some project ideas for my senior students on how to tie economics Concepts that we've been learning about to popular things in culture that they might be more interested in than economics so Gemini is available at gemini.com
028yeah close that there okay so here's the prompt that I'm going to use you're an expert teacher skilled at thinking of creative project ideas for your students generate 12 to 15 research project ideas for my 12th grade economics students learning about supply and demand they should be age appropriate and specific for example referencing a particular Market segment product service digital and so on that's my prompt that's the question that I'm asking this is livetime I haven't sped this up but look at these ideas that I'm getting sneakers teenagers love sneakers streaming yep the sharing economy Uber and Lyft um organic foods the app economy um cryptocurrency sustainable fashion the fair trade movement I've got some great starts here for my students now one thing I like about cop or Gemini is that it actually gives
029me two different versions to answer that one question now I may see some of the same topics on here it might be formatted a little bit differently but I've got a lot of different topic ideas now that my kids might be interested in once I've got this output created I have some different things that I can do with it I can modify this I can ask it to make it shorter or longer or simpler I can also do a Google search to check and verify the information but the thing that I love about Gemini is that I can export this directly to Google Docs it is now part of my Google Drive and I can come here and I can edit this and make it ready for my students so if there's ideas on here
030that I don't like that I don't think my kids will like I can take them off but you know what I have some big swifties in my class wonder if it could generate some ideas on how they could tie economics to Tailor Swift so let's ask a follow-up question could you suggest a project with Taylor Swift as a topic of course it can so here we have the ticket Fiasco merchandise her transition from country to pop a few more ideas swifties the case the fan Community copyright controversies so now I have several additional ideas for my students who are into Taylor Swift so I've really taken the time to personalize that project idea and now hopefully my students can pick from one of those 20 different ideas that I've just generated in a few minutes
031that video was two minutes long so we are really excited about this technology for teachers and here's why in 2022 Mary College and the edweek research center did a survey of 1300 teachers from across the country a variety of subject level subject areas and grade levels on average they estimated that they worked 54 hours per week what is the average work week for a an adult 40 hours okay so we're working 54 hours per week of those 54 hours 25 of them were spent teaching the other 29 were spent doing administrative and other tasks things like answering emails things like creating lesson plans creating projects for my students creating assessments qu qu quiz questions test questions all of those other things that a teacher has to do to get their job done so we really
032see that art gener generative Ara icial intelligence can help with this 29 extra hours which means that those teachers are going to have time to do what they do best and that is build relationships with students also in 2022 the Gallup uh Corporation did a panel Workforce study and interviewed um people across Industries 52% of teachers say they always or very often feel burnt out at work which outpaces all other IND Industries nationally this is a huge issue we need to help teachers restore their work life balance we need teachers not to feel burnt out I don't need to tell you about the teacher shortage that we currently have this is not an easy job it's a very rewarding job but it's not an easy one so again we really feel like generative artificial intelligence
033can help our teachers so what we ex what we uh Express to our teachers is we want them to use the 8020 approach so we want them to use or suggest that they can use AI for the initial work up get them 80% of the way then they're going to take that last 20% they're going to review the output for bias and accuracy which we'll talk more about in a minute and they'll personalize and contextualize appropriate for their students no bot is ever going to know students like the teacher knows their students we just need to give teachers a little bit of help to get there we want teachers to know that AI generated content is a starting point not the Final Destination so there are some things to keep in mind I know I've
034come at you fast and furious tonight um but there are some things that we need to keep in mind the terms of service for all of these tools I've chosen to highlight chat GPT here um indicate that users must be 13 years or older to create an account okay so that means we're primarily worried about our Junior High and Senior High students but we are also realistic and we know that a lot of students create accounts for a lot of services when they are not old enough okay so we have to be realistic that's what the terms of services but we're we're also keeping a realistic eye out on that the output that these Bots create is not always correct because remember it's trying to predict what comes next so it's important that the teacher
035critically evaluates any AI output for accuracy okay they just don't copy and paste they've got to go back through and check it they have to verify the the output the output that these tools generate can be biased and I will give you an example we've been talking about text based generators tonight but there are also image generators that we'll use you can put in a prompt words and it will throw back an image to you if for example you were to ask the bot to create a picture of a doctor nine times out of 10 it will give you a white maale in a lab coat and that has to do with the training data that these Bots were fed the training data was not diverse enough to show a range of genders to show
036a range of ethnicities to show people of color as a doctor so we also have to worry that the about the output and we have to verify that we've taken care of the biases that may be included in that output again that's where the teacher uses their professional expertise to go back and do that another term that you may hear when we're talking about generative artificial intelligence and it sounds a lot scarier than it is but it's hallucination and a Hallucination is when these Bots generate incorrect information but present it as fact and sometimes they're really demanding that this is the way it is again that's where you need to use your professional discretion and if it sounds too good to be true it might be so go outside the bot open up a new
037tab and do a Google search verify that information all of these um Bots are limited based on the training data that it was Fed so chat GPT 3.5 which is the free version was trained on Data before 2021 that's its limit 4 point o was trained on Data before April of 2023 that's its limit not current that's its limit so if I were to go to either one of those Bots and ask it who Travis Kelce is dating not going to say Taylor Swift because that happened this summer okay so you have to be aware when you're working with that if you want current information it's better to go to a search engine to do that because the search engines are going to be up to date and then lastly we always want to protect
038data privacy we want to protect personally identifiable information either for teachers or for students remember we I showed you an example about generating a resource for a student okay we never want to include student names numbers phone numbers Social Security numbers addresses nothing that can personally identify that child or yourself the information that you are feeding into these Bots becomes part of its training data and so we don't want to tie that kind of information into the training data so part of what we wanted to do tonight is kind of give you an overview of artificial intelligence this is a very condensed version of the training that I have given to teachers but we also wanted to let you know what we have been doing to prepare as a district so it started with teacher
039training um Mr Hughes was he's still here he's still here and he's awake um actually contacted me in August after he had been to a uh presentation over the summer uh and said hey you need to come and talk to my teachers about AI so I teamed up with Braxton Dreer who's the stem instructor at uh the middle school and we did a presentation for his staff on artificial intelligence and that's really what started the ball rolling I had all of the elementary teachers in at Johnny Carson and trained them and I finished up went to the junior high and in Jan anuary I finished up with the um Senior High and Little Panthers preschool back toback on the same day um and then Mrs lure asked me to do a presentation specifically for our
040district special education staff because there are a lot of uses of artificial intelligence for our that our sped staff can take advantage of so we've done teacher training we also have created guidelines for teachers in leading the usage of AI in the classroom there's a screenshot of it here you also that was also included in your board agenda um and this has been distributed to the teachers uh this is the recommendations that we are giving them if should they choose to use AI either as themsel to create resources or should they choose to talk about it with their students for our secondary level folks uh We've also included things like this sample student agreement for AI use and had teachers you know decide if I'm going to allow AI use to my class CL room
041this is an agreement that I can have students sign so that we're both on the same page when it comes to uh using artificial intelligence and the last resource that we've shared with them is this acceptable use scale when is it acceptable to use artificial intelligence on a particular activity in a classroom we realize that AI use may vary depending on the subject but it also might vary depending on the activity so if we're building Foundation knowledge for example we want students to write a science lab report and we need them to understand the process that goes into that we want students to do that we don't want the AI to help in that instance and so this is a simple scale that teachers can use to let students know when and if artificial the
042use of artificial intelligence is okay on a particular activity so um we feel at this point that we've set ourselves up pretty well when it comes to artificial intelligence um there are many schools in the country and lots of schools across the state of Nebraska that have not done this work because they simply don't know what to do but we firmly believe that if our goal is to prepare students for their future that future has to include AR artificial intelligence and we have to start having those conversations now I know that was a lot of information but I'd be happy to answer any questions that you might have I think it was a great presentation but I was just wondering more apparent as well as a board member but how do the teachers know if
043the students are using AI if it is not permitted in something that is a great question Terry and one that doesn't have an easy answer um we would hope that our teachers would be familiar enough with their students writing that they would be able to detect if something was off but as of right now there there is no tool that can 100% identify if something is AI written or not so we really want to start having conversations honest conversations with our kids um about acceptable use responsible youth ethical use um and again it's not something where we want to accuse but we want to seek to understand and so I would hope that teachers would come at it from that perspective um this is hard this is really hard um I just want to add
044to that um one of my kids had to submit an essay for something and the activity sponsor sent me a text afterwards saying they ran it through a filter of some sort and it generates like a percentage of you know whether it was new content created or you know like copied it searches for that somehow and spits out a percentage in anything above like a I don't know 93 or something like that is means it was you know pretty much written from scratch or whatever and I did not know something like that existed so that was a surprise to me so um some of our our senior high English classes use a tool called turn it in which is a plagiarism detector so it Compares writing in student work to writing that's out on the
045internet okay that is a pretty simple process to I used to I used to do that in my classroom when I didn't think a kid wrote it I just pop it into Google and yep oh sure enough there it is took it right off the site um but turn it in is more sophisticated than that but there are no tools out there currently that can 100% as I said to Terry detect if it's AI written so while we know teachers are trying to rely on that we also know that there's faults with those kinds of tools I know that's not a very reassuring answer but that is the information that we're giving teachers we would prefer that they not you try and use an AI detector simply because the false positives are too high um
046there was a Stanford study that was published this spring that this last spring that um indicates that AI detectors are more likely to flag non-native English speakers writing as AI written and so with the high population of ell students we have in the district we don't want to have to rely on those kinds of tools so do we foresee maybe a lot more use of like a disclosure form where the kids are signing or a pledge like this that would be my recommendation um you know I've heard uh statistics out there that within the next two years you can pretty much guarantee that every piece of writing you come into contact with has been touched by AI in some way so to have an AI disclosure statement to be upfront about how this is how
047I used AI um and and this is this is the output that I gave to me makes more sense especially if that's the way this is going um grammarly is not I don't know if any of you have used the grammarly extension that's also using artificial intelligence there was just a case um of a college student out east who turned in a paper and she used grammarly to check her grammar it was flagged as artificial intelligence so it's it's to me a disclosure statement to have an honest conversation with the kids about this is an appropriate use tell me how you used it is probably more the way to go that was an excellent presentation I learned so much but you know those kids know more than we do it would be great if you
048could do this presentation for parents at some point because I don't I mean I'm sure the kids are far ahead of the parents in this do do any of you that are parents do you want to admit if you know if your kids have you had this conversation with your kids I did four days ago I you know I think it's a mixed message to the students you know do it use it use it use it but don't use it you know I mean there's I I get there's the honor System in the world we're also very new in this journey and we don't have all the answers right now but like I said we've done a lot of thinking about this and we've put forth the best information that we have at this time
049this guidance may change as we go forward um but we really believe that this is the future and we've got to prepare the kids we really do want to make sure all of your questions are answered on this topic I know that there are probably people in the community that are concerned and have questions about AI um it's not something that we can stop it's coming can't say don't ever use it at home because we can't control that so we want to do the best we can to teach our teachers and our students to use it appropriately when to use it when not to use it and I mean there can be consequences if it is used inappropriately I mean that is cheating and plagiarism and there are consequences in the code of conduct for
050that so so how many of the students you know maybe at the high school and Junior High Level specifically do you think their teachers have talked about this and you know talked about like this chart when it's okay to use it when it's not okay to use it should that be part of you know curriculum so that chart is very new that's only gone out with this last bit of guidance so I can't speak to that chart in specific um but I do know our English language arts teachers at the junior high high and at the senior high have had conversations with their students that is not the only group that should be having conversations with their students because every industry can be using artificial intelligence you could ask artificial intelligence to generate a resume
051for you and it will so if your business teachers are doing resume writing it's important to have that conversation too so um I I can't I can't answer that 100% Beth I I guess I would just like to mention to like um if you leave here tonight and then you have more questions like let's open up the conversation again like this doesn't have to be the only time we talk about this um because like she said it is ever changing and it's a lot to take in at one time um and I did want to say when like I have read some writing of um artificial intelligence and you can um if you have a key teachers eye and you know your students like I've read some things like uh as a high school teacher
052I would have known this did not come from this student you know because of the language some of the words that were used or the way they were put together you just know your students and I'm not saying that's 100% foolproof but it's probably the best way to vet through your students information sure oh sure oh sure and and and two too right exactly and so too that's why our approach is okay we need to be proactive we need to understand this our teachers need to understand it so that way you know we know what we're dealing with you know 20 years ago oh my gosh kids started having phones in their hands and that was like a thing and now this is where we're at well I think Dr Thompson said it the best
053it's coming I mean it's there so you may as well try and get get ahead of it and I'm going to support Sandy on that as a parent using it and I think they need to be more knowledgeable like my daughters wanted me to help them with their geometry wasn't happening I didn't know how to even start it and I used an app just to get started and then I could go from there so I mean it can help parents with their students also so yep absolutely yeah thank you Mickey that was a and Mickey has I'll brag up on her just a little bit she has presented locally Statewide and nationally I believe on this topic yeah yeah she has she has so um yeah I just got to brag up on her just
054a little bit yes thank you okay we are to public comments and communication this is the time during the meeting when the public May request to address the board according to state law if you wish to comment you must identify yourself including your address the name of the organization you represent and the topic that you wish to address public comment cards are located at the media table in the back of the room please pick up a provide the required information if you plan to speak each individual's comments will be limited to five minutes please note that the board cannot discuss or act upon matters that are not listed on the agenda therefore board members will not respond to your comments or questions if you wish to request that an item be placed on a future
055board agenda you may contact the superintendent or her assistant during normal business hours also note that concerns related to school Personnel need to be addressed to the superintendent using the approved District protocol individuals who make false defamatory or slanderous statements during public comments may be held legally liable slanderous comments are not protected just because they are made at board meetings would somebody like to speak thank you uh my name is Abe Shaner I live at 2600 mimic Drive in Norfolk and I first of all just want to say thank you to all the board members who serve uh many times people are quick to criticize complain very rarely do hear a thank you you or congratulations um and I know how tough uh it can be doing what you do just as it is for
056many of our our school teachers so thank you to each of you that are willing to serve and do do a a job that many people aren't able to or unwilling to do so I just wanted to start off with that um my comments in regards to and I want to preface this with having spent 25 years in media I understand how important it is to be accurate and I'm glad we've we've added that portion to public comment because if you're going to say something you better know what you're talking about and it needs to be accurate and so with that background I'm bringing some of this information and I'm going to be very careful about the words that I use because I don't know that some of these things are accurate but I've heard
057enough seen enough read enough that it causes me to be concerned and I want to make certain that um this isn't going on at norfor Public Schools Friday the Nebraska State Board of Education rejected to Define and ban sexually explicit books and materials from school libraries School members who voted against the proposal said they agreed pornography should not be in school libraries but disagreed with what steps to take next I would say if it's pornography it probably shouldn't be in schools having said that there are allegations that I've been made aware of and this isn't just Norfolk Public Schools but public schools throughout the state of Nebraska and I'm going to read just some of the content of the books and materials that are allegedly in our schools this would be Elementary Middle School junior
058high and high schools I'm going to be careful about my words this book contains sexual activities including sexual assault sexual nudity profanity derogatory terms alcohol and drug use violence including domestic violence and child abuse this book contains explicit sexual activities including the rape of a minor prostitution explicit violence this book contains sexual activities including sexual assault battery and profanity if I stopped right there that would be enough and again these are books that are allegedly in our schools and throughout the state Elementary Middle School junior high and high school this book contains violence sexual assault and excessive derogatory terms this book contains sexual activity sexual nudity profanity derogatory terms violence controversial social and political commentary controversial religious commentary hate abortion and suicide commentary this book contains obscene excerpts involving sexual assault battery sexual activity sexual
059nudity profanity and drug use quite honestly I get tired of reading these so I'm going to stop there because it gets worse and I'm not going to read any portion of any of those books because after reading two of them I was angry to think that any of this material might even possibly be available to minors I hope this information is wrong in that it's in any of our schools not just noroot Public Schools but in the State anywhere the two portions of two different books that I read made me sick because I go as an adult I don't watch those kinds of movies with what's being portrayed in some of these books one book alone has 440 uses of profanity and apparently it's a book that we have I say we because my wife
060works for norfol public schools our two sons attended norfol Public Schools I have a lot of great things to say about norfol public schools but the thought that this kind of material is available to Children this one book contains eight references to it says six times once 776 times six times 10 times five times 121 times that's 440 profanities in one book and if a student can't say these in the classroom or at school why would anything like this be in our school libraries I pray that the information is wrong but I've had multiple sources that I've seen read emailed talked with and I hope I'm wrong you have a tough enough job as it is if any of this stuff is in our schools I pray that you are diligent and thank you for
061serving and doing what you do thank you Abe would it be okay with you if I addressed that comment please do thank you I just wanted to address this comment um I was made aware of this on Friday um that Mr Penner um made these comments at the state school board and that there was one book in particular where Norfork Public Schools was listed as having that book in our library um we did check into that and we have are in the process of pulling it it is checked out at the moment but we will be pulling that and review in it with the more robust selection criteria that we put in place in May of 2022 um that particular book was put on the Shelf in 2012 before I was superintendent so these criteria
062were not in place at that time um our media Specialists will be you know reviewing it and making a determination in the future um I did also email Mr Penner asking for a list of all of the books in question he has not responded to my email so hopefully he's just busy and hasn't gotten to that yet um but we did put very robust and comprehensive criteria in place in May of 2022 and those have been presented to the board previously in Open Session um Beth could probably speak to that even more but we do take it seriously we want um the materials in our classrooms and in our libraries to be appropriate age appropriate for our students I'm just hoping that even one or two of those words that he just quoted that this
063is a book that wouldn't have to go through an evaluation and it just leaves the school well if I make that determination myself it's called censorship if I let the media specialist as a committee make an educated decision then it's an educated decision but I have let Media Specialists know that I do not approve of any ual content in our books whatsoever so I feel confident they will make the right decision okay thank you and I would just Echo to um our online um repository of books started in 2012 so the ease by which we can search our books is easier however I I there are Decades of books that exist on our shelves that that we are working through our media Specialists have already known you know this is this is a deal you
064know and and some of them are new to their position it's not like they would know those thousands of books that are on that shelf so I mean it's not with an ignorant eye it's not something we're ignoring either so I but please right we established a a protocol you know a way that we can go about this in a diplomatic fashion instead of just one person censoring something would anybody else like to come speak okay thank you uh my name is Gary sheer I live here at 611 JQ Street in Norfork uh I want to thank Dr Thompson for sending me the letter that I requested on uh the criteria for hiring new teachers I just got that in the mail today um I had one other question for you tonight um just because
065I visited with parents grandparents actually children uh adults that have graduated already from nor forai and I get a different perspective from each and every one of them on the target based grading nobody really knows how it's really defined and with that I'd like to see a definition for it of what actually is in it what percentage of each one goes for a grading and is that set by the state is it set by the district or is it set by each uh teacher separately just more of a definition so we everybody knows because parents don't even really know for sure so if that could be brought up or given to all the parents so that it's always consistent between one teacher or another I think it would be better off for them everybody' have
066a better understanding if that's what you're actually going to go to otherwise I think it may needs to stay the way it always has been a through F that way kids at least know what it really means thank you thank you Gary thank you Gary um the information about Target based grading for our district district is on our web page um there's a tab over to the bottom right that says Target based grading and it will tell you exactly how that is used in nor for public schools well you and you probably might have gotten different answers based on their age level because it's been established in the younger grades and grown to Upper grades but it's not complete it's in progress also um any student K through 8 there are brochures that are established
067and updated every summer and parents are given those or have the opportunity to pick those up when they go to welcome nights and parent teacher conferences and um also on the web page yeah asked uh I've asked this uh from the last month I've asked some parents that have kids in school I've asked some students that I've seen out walking just visiting with them and some of them say well that doesn't matter you don't have that we don't have to do that because it doesn't count on the target based grading so I think it still needs to have a better definition for sure of what really is going on thank you all right good evening uh my name is Jen Carlile I'm the middle school art teacher and a mom of three Norfork public school
068students I am here tonight asking you to consider a ban on cell phone use for Norfork Public Schools the current cell phone policy does not allow for cell phones k6 and I love that however 712 cell phones are allowed I believe that you're looking at the policy for next year and I'm asking you to consider a K12 cell phone ban as a teacher I can walk into our gym in the morning where students are lined up waiting for their teachers they can use their phones at this time that gym space is full of kids and is eerily quiet most students are on their phone or looking at someone else's phone compare this to lunch when students are not allowed their phone and the room is a buzz with conversation the biggest difference is in the
069way that our students are interacting our kids are struggling technology and the constant noise it presents is overwhelming as I said I have three of my own children they're 18 15 and 12 and they like their devices as a parent it is my job and responsibility to help them learn healthy habits when it comes to using technology just like I taught them other healthy habits however I found the biggest challenge is the addictive nature of technology in the informative book irresistible the rise of addictive technology the author shares how phones and social media are designed to create a behavioral addiction they want us to use them a line from the book that's stuck with me was only two things have users technology and drugs I wouldn't give my kids drugs but I do give them
070technology it was also interesting to me in that book the number of tech creators who allow their own children only very very limited access to technology in fact Steve Jobs never gave his own kids iPads because he thought they would be bad for his kids anyone who works with our kids or around kids can see how they are changing as an art teacher it saddens me to see how much our children's find motor skills have decreased since the introduction of and mainstream use of Technology from being able to Simply cut out paper to even write legibly their skills are suffering I could go on but I have a time limit so I'm keeping with the policy the junior high handbook states that cell phones and electronic devices are permitted when designated for learning by the
071teacher I wonder what learning could happen on a cell phone that cannot happen on a Chromebook as provided by the school from listening to my own children it sounds more like they are used as a reward for early finishers in which case I wonder what might happen to our test scores if those early finishers read a book or worked on their ISL skills for 5 minutes or what might happen to society and the anxiety our students feel if they talked face tof face with a friend for five minutes our current generation reports that over 30% of them have anxiety when you study the effect of technology on our kids watching Instagram reals or Tik Tok videos requires them to use passive attention they're sitting and watching their bodies release dopamine when they see something something
072they like their bodies release adrenaline when they see something dangerous however cortisol the stress hormone isn't released as they're just passively taking in what they're seeing then when our students are asked to do something challenging like schoolwork or talking with a classmate they don't know cortisol levels rise and they don't know how to handle this new hormone causing anxiety according to Common Sense Media 42% of our kids have a phone by age 10 by 12 it's 71% and by 14 it's 91% cell phones are here here and as parents and as teachers we owe it to our CH our children to teach them healthy cell phone usage habits the senior high handbook states that cell with cell phones there is a possible interference of the educational process as a parent I can say that there
073is interference in the educational process when cell phones are allowed in the classroom when tracking my own children's phone usage and grades I can see where they have put forth their minimum effort in their schoolwork but yet found time for social media use during the school day in having conversations with my children it seems like they get more out of classes where their teachers have a strict no phone policy they would never admit it but knowing that their drug isn't allowed keeps them from using and without the pull of Tik Tock reals a quick check of their social media they're more likely to be engaged in what is happening in the classroom when we talk about the rise of student anxiety and suicide in teens so much of it can be traced back to The
074Chronic loneliness and overexposure to adult content our children deal with through the use and abuse of smartphones so many resources talk about setting limits for our kids and teaching them healthy boundaries I would say that being at school and doing the work of school without their cell phone is a very healthy boundary we have so many great expectations for our students at NPS making their phone usage via before school after school activity is easily one more way to ask them to just be outstanding thank you Jen would anybody else like to speak good evening my name is Jennifer iens and I live at 1302 Hillview Drive um I taught English and language arts in public schools in Nebraska for many years and I currently work as a librarian um I want to start by saying
075that um and we had another speaker this evening who read what he identified as profanity into the public record which leads me to believe that these words are perhaps not as offensive to him as he would like us to believe this meeting I would note is recorded and made available to people of all ages through the school website so that's something we should keep in mind school librarians and media Specialists are people who are specially trained to select age appropriate materials for students we need to keep that in mind um and that works of literature must be judged as a whole someone who has not read an entire book is not in a position to pass judgment on it I follow these stories in the news both locally and across the country most often it
076comes it comes to light that people who are complaining about an image or an excerpt have not become familiar with the entire work um materials that are accused of being an obscene are to be judged legally by the Miller test this is a three-prong test uh the three-part test asks whether the average person applying contemporary Community standards would find the work appeals on the whole to perant interest two uh describes sexual conduct in a patently offensive way and three it lacks any serious literary artistic political or scientific value the Miller TS you would have to be able to meet each of those three not just one of them in order to deem something obscene um in a in a book or other materials in the library as Dr Thompson said we do not want our
077school to engage in censorship our students have the right to access information so I would ask that our district not get sucked into the national talking points targeting School libraries and instead uphold the freedom to read and our students right to access access information it's our responsibility to teach young people how to select and evaluate the information they need and the reading material they're interested in these are skills that they will need for the rest of their lives and it's critical that we trust Librarians and media Specialists to select material for the district's collections as they've been trained to do it's already come up at least once this evening that it's very difficult for us to find and keep teachers um in the profession and and here locally and uh by targeting those people and
078by putting this in the news and acting like people are trying to do something that is harmful to children when in fact they're dedicating their lives to helping children learn and grow um does not benefit any of us so I would ask you to keep those things in mind thank you thank you Jennifer is there anyone else that would like to speak okay thank you all we are going to end the public comments and communication and go to information and discussion items we'll start with the finance and Facilities report Dr Thompson thank you Madame President the total amount of claims to be approved on the consent agenda for the month of March 2024 by specific fund are listed below general fund $621,500 $1,863 N3 subsidiary fund $447 36 special building fund $1 13,650 employee benefit
079fund $1,588 student fee fund $1,440 and 1 cent the total amount of claims for the month of February 2024 in the activities fund is $1,394 4 I'm sorry it's hard for me to concentrate when I can hear you talking in the audience if you could step out if you need to talk I would appreciate it all of these claims were reviewed earlier today by the finance and facility committee thank you Dr Thompson 6.2 teaching and learning report Mrs Nelson thank you Madame President um in the curriculum committee meeting on February 13th we reviewed curriculum purchases for the 2425 school year this will be reported by Beth shashikant and details will be in her report I participated in two crucial meetings last month related to curriculum and assessment as a member of the Nebraska assessment and
080accountability advisory committee we discuss po potential additions to the aest accountability system Our advice emphasized that they should avoid negative calculations for schools that are missing benchmarks focusing only on the positive marks for meeting goals we also recommended running practice numbers on proposed changes to ensure their effectiveness the second meeting was with the Nebraska Association of curriculum instruction and assessment Mike Delaney presented potential legislation that could impact curriculum and courses although nothing is confirmed legislative decisions affecting classrooms May pose challenges for our district Additionally the state's decision to cease funding for the map growth assessments for grades 3rd through 8th grade raises questions for all districts these include Financial consequences whether to continue with the same assessment and considerations for an alternative assessment to address this the director from Millard has arranged Zoom presentations from
081various vendors to provide information on assessment design different grade levels the cost technical functions charting of results disaggregation of data and more can I answer any questions how long has map been around oh my goodness that's been around for years has it it has it has and that's um where districts across the state we struggle to let that go because it's consistent long-term data and we have longevity in our information to pull from so you know um before before I was here so and and we used it in my prior District so you know prior to 2010 you know so it's it's been a long time is there a reason they pulled it um they didn't pull it they just yes the funding right um I don't know if I have an easy answer to
082that Dr Thompson could you respond to that I think that the state was using esser's funding to pay for that for districts and now that that's going away it's going back to the district to pay for it because we paid for it ourselves for years until the state took it over now it's no longer in our budget and if we want to continue continue with it we'll have to put that back in our budget for next year thank you approximately how much would that be to put it back in our budget any idea what we used to pay for it before us right right um it would be right around $36,000 a year but you it's charged per student and per subject matter that you assess them so I mean it's it's an important decision
083and that's why so many of us across the state we going to list listen to some other Alternatives and see what kind of information we come up with thank you Beth uh 6.3 student programs report uh Mary Laur usually speaks on this but Beth is going to cover since Mary is yes she's ill yes the English language proficiency assessment summi of window will conclude this month we will receive results in the first weeks of May the elementary special education teachers will complete their training in letters 2 on Friday March 15th this program focuses on vocabulary comprehension and writing we will use a supplemental program to our Marzano vocabulary instruction to increase overall reading comprehension members of the special education leadership team attended a professional development at esu8 on February 23rd where they will be or
084probably have been planning to apply that information to the targeted Improvement plan and I cannot answer any questions for you thank you Beth 6.4 student service report Mr Wilson thank you madam president just a reminder that kindergarten enrollment for the 23 24 school year is in full swing registration is being held at neighborhood schools parents must have birth certificate and a copy of immunizations to begin that enrollment process kind Garden Roundup will be held on Wednesday April 17th at your neighborhood elementary schools we are encouraging families to start the reg registration process early to avoid any complications and then parent teacher conferences were held last month our attendance at our elementary and middle schools uh is historically very high because of those are scheduled meetings unfortunately we did see a decrease in junior high and
085senior high levels information about those conferences is posted below answer any questions thank you Eric uh 6.5 human resources and accreditation Mrs Bowman thank you madam president letters of intent were sent out to all MPS certified staff on March 1st and our due back on March 15th which is Friday at that time we should know all the positions that need to be filled quite a few teachers have been hired for the 2024 2025 school year and we continue to advertise and search for the best teachers for Norfork public schools in addition I have started receiving student teacher placement requests for the fall and I'm starting to uh begin with placements at those appropriate grade levels we have more teacher placement requests than normal or about the same or is it too early to tell four
086student teachers only have requests from Wayne State College so far but it is fewer than we had in the fall um I I don't know if they have fewer students that are placing this semester or not I haven't reached out for that information thank you Angie uh 6.6 superintendence report Dr Thompson thank you um I would like to start by having an update on our enrollment Although our September 1 student enrollment count was slightly lower than last year's September 1st count our monthly enrollment data shows a positive trend throughout the the 2324 school year with recent months exceeding last year's enrollment and you can see the charts for yourself um then I would like to discuss closed and exemp session procedures um we received updated procedures from our school attorney um recently um that we
087need to follow in order to ensure our full compliance with the open meetings law and I have listed those for your review um we Doe good with this but we don't always remember every step so I have um made a little cheat sheet for you at your seat um that you can use when we go into closed or exec session later this evening um the nasb Finance Workshop that sounds better Beth shashikant Cindy Booth Eric Wilson and I attended the nasb Finance Workshop last week a lot of good information and ideas were shared with us including alternate formats for our monthly board Finance reports Mr Wilson and I have some ideas for making them easier to read and more informative in the future and we'll be working on that and share that with you in
088a future board retreat or workshop on the budget and then finally I have listed several special spring events that board members are encouraged to attend um that includes a K12 all School School's art show at the northark Art Center which started on Saturday but will be open until the 28th at the northark Art Center during normal business hours our life completion program which is May 8th at 3:00 the National Honor Society induction which is May 16th at 5:30 and the highlight of the Year graduation which is May 19th at 2 o'clock Dr Thompson do you have the date yet for when we honor our teachers yes I just want calendar it's May 1st May 1 uh 2 o' two o'clock okay thanks is that the Johnny Carson it is at the Johnny Carson and it's
089May 1st we're double-checking the time because we did change our early out that day I'm guessing it starts at 1:30 1 o' well yeah so probably 1:30 we'll get that information to you for sure okay thank you any other questions thank you Dr Thompson now we're to committee report 7.1 is facilities and finance Brenda carart facilities and finance committee met earlier today board members present were Sandy wolf Terry Bower and Brenda carart we reviewed claims for the month of March and activity claims for February other topics discussed included updates on the following facilities update rfps preliminary budget information negotiations property for sale our next finance and Facilities committee meeting is scheduled for April 8th 2024 thank you Brenda 7.2 government Relations Committee Terry Bower the government Relations Committee met twice since our February board meeting
090we met at 12:40 on Thursday February 22nd 2024 board committee members Sandy wolf Terry Bower and best shashikant were present along with Dr Jamie Joe Thompson and Tiffany settles the committee discussed all education bills with upcoming hearings and decided to take the following action Terry agreed to write a letter opposing lb 1150 which would change the tax equity and education opportunities Beth agreed to write the letter opposing to lb 1065 which would authorize the school district to hire a chaplain to perform the duties of a school counselor without certified insurance by the commission of Education we also met on March 1st and board committee members were Sandy wolf best shashikant Dr Jamie do Thompson and Tiffany settles the committee discussed the 2024 priority Bill list lb 1329 education bill that was released it includes lb
091339 which allows boards to develop policies allowing armed staff in schools lb 673 which provides grant funding for emergency response mapping lb 1012 which allows QC Puffs for safety infrastructure lb 962 which limits maps on Project Maps lb 855 which prohibits debt collection for outstanding lunch balances lb 1385 which streamlined the process for teaching certificates approval the committee agreed to email senators in support of lb 1012 in 1385 and in opposition to 1328 is it currently written the committee would like to see legislation include some best practices and mandatory training prior to authorizing armed staff another education package expected to come out of the board education committee would deal with funding the commit will watch for that future meetings will be scheduled as needed based upon daily legislation agenda is that enough thanks Terry 7.3
092Activities Committee Brenda carart Activities Committee met on Monday February 26th at noon board members Brenda carart Terry Bower Lindsay Dixon are present along with the following staff members Dr Jamie Joe Thompson Eric Wilson Jason subtles John Irwin Kurt Lamers Amber Lenton and Ken Collins John irn reviewed the progress and results of the winter activities at the senior high it was also discussed the addition of neural training which will be added to athletic training at the senior high it is designed for athletes to optimize Focus mental resilience and mental agility via virtual reality brain training cost will be covered via the booster club Amber Lenton reviewed the progress and results of the winter activities at the junior high the committee discussed our swimming co-ops it will be recommended that we renew our girls swimming co-op with
093norfor Catholic Lutheran High Northeast and wils Winer Pilger Public Schools it will also be recommended that we add Wayne public schools to our boy swimming Co-op and with norfor Catholic and Lutheran High Northeast our next meeting will be Monday April 29th at the central office thank you Brenda I have a question actually sorry um do we not have boys from Winer Pilger who want to swim and likewise is it girls from Wayne Public Schools is that why it's just one or the other correct we have had um girls from Wisner Pilger on our team for several years um the last one that we know of will be graduating in two years um and Wayne currently just has boys that wants to participate but in the future would like to add girls once we are able
094to add a fourth School we can only co-op with four schools total so we cannot have both Wayne and whisner in addition to Catholic Lutheran and ourselves interesting thank you uh 7.4 curriculum committee report best Shasha the curriculum committee in their meeting on February 13 2024 discussed potential program purchases for the upcoming 2024 25 school year they recommended the adoption of the preschool math program mcra Hill building blocks based on positive feedback from teachers and its potential to enhance math instruction Amplified geometry for the senior high previously piloted and approved was deferred for a year to ease the implementation burden on teachers the K through sixth grade math program I ready received strong support after a two-year pilot emphasizing problem solving and critical thinking for seventh grade health Essential Health skills for middle school was
095chosen as an updated book for its appropriateness lack of bias and alignment with District principles the senior high Spanish materials will be renewed for five years with no new materials considered the next committee meeting in early fall will include a Civics portion on the agenda thank you Beth 7.5 norford Public Schools Foundation committee report Brenda carart the foundation met the board of directors met on February 19th at The NPS administration building 15 board members are present board president Jason bu Bush called the meeting to order committees will meet prior to the March Foundation meeting to continue work on marketing fundraising and strategic planning goals executive director Austin TRX reported that the mpsf scholarships are nearly ready to start for application and hopefully we get those out soon additionally the foundation is planning to establish an
096ad hoc committee to engage with the MPS staff exploring how the foundation is perceived under understood and expected to work by the Educators we are dedicated to supporting basically we just want to get our word out and um get more involved with the school so that we can support each other it's the goal for that ad hoc committee any questions thank you Brenda that brings us to the consent agenda items 8.1 is the minutes of the meeting minutes from the meetings on February 12th and February 22nd and they are both attached for your review eight point two is personnel and we'll begin with our contract approval Dr Thompson thank you I have eight contracts for your consideration this evening Kylie Berman English teacher for Norfork Junior High School Amanda gazelle second grade teacher for Jefferson
097Elementary School Emily keer special education teacher for Norfork Senior High Michelle kman science teacher for Northfork Senior High Caitlyn sharp kindergarten teacher at Lincoln monu Brienne Swan third and fourth grade teacher for Lincoln monu Allison Melcher assistant principal for Nork middle school and Jordan Henrik dean of students activities director for Norfork junior high school thank you Dr Thompson great work Angie 8.2 is resignations Dr Thompson unfortunately I also have number of resignations for you uh Kelly Krueger business teacher at Norfork senior high is retiring after numerous years with us um Alice Alicia Dukes third grade teacher at Grant Elementary Ronda Gates Early Childhood special education teacher at Little Panthers preschool Sydney Schilling first grade teacher at Grant Elementary Lisa powitzky Title One interventionist at Washington Elementary and Benjamin Sullivan social studies teacher at Northfork Senior
098High are all resigning at the end of the school year thank you Dr Thompson and thank you to all these teachers especially Mr who was all and loved 8.3 claims Dr Thompson attached are the claims for the month of March 2024 these claims were reviewed earlier by our finance and facility committees there are also three conflict statements this month that will need to be read before voting out of an abundance of caution I hereby declare a potential conflict of interest and abstaining from voting on claim number 823 for the month of March in the consent agenda for this meeting I have signed and filed this written disclosure with the secretary of the board it is my intent to vote on all other remaining items listed on the consent agenda my vote on the remainder of
099the consent items should not be taken as a vote one way or the other on the items which I have ident identified or any of the matters set forth therein or related there to and that claim is related to travel to Lincoln for a gnsa meeting out of abundance of caution I hereby declare a potential conflict of interest and and am abstaining from voting on claim number 154 for the month of March in the consent agenda for this meeting I have signed and filed this written disclosure with the secretary of the board it is my intent to vote on all other remaining items listed on the consent agenda my vote on the remainder of the consent item should not be taken as a vote one way or the other on the item which I have
100identified or any of the matters set forth therein or related there to out of an abundance of caution I hereby declare a potential conflict of interest and abstaining from voting on claim 883 for the month of March in the consent agenda for this meeting I have signed and filed this written disclosure with the secretary of the board it is my intent to vote on all other remaining items listed on the consent agenda my vote on the remainder of the consent item should not be taken as a vote one way or the other on the items which I've identified or any of the matters set forth therein or related there to mine is also for travel expenses to Greater Nebraska schools activities and with that is there a motion I'll make a motion to approve the
101consent agenda I'll second have a motion by Beth and a second by Lindsay is there any discussion please vote motion carried 60 thank you Callen we are to action items 9.1 discuss consider and take action to approve the two-year renewal of our girls swimming co-op with norfor Catholic High School Lutheran High Northeast High School and whisner Pilger High School Dr Thompson thank you the Activities Committee has recommended that we continue our long-standing swimming co-op with norfor Catholic High School Lutheran High Northeast High School and Wisner Pilger high school once whisner Pilger no longer has a girl participating um we anticipate that Wayne Public Schools will ask to take their place and we will consider that at that time there a motion I'll make a motion to approve the two-year renewal of our girls swimming co-op
102with norport Catholic High School Lutheran High Northeast High School and whz whisner Pilger high school I'll second the motion I have a motion by Terry and a second by Beth is there any discussion please vote motion carried 60 thank you Ken 9.2 discuss consider and take action to approve the addition of Wayne High School to our 2-year boy swimming co-op with Nar Catholic High School and Lutheran High Northeast High School Dr Thompson thank you the Activities Committee also recommends that we add Wayne public schools to our long-standing swimming co-op with norfor Catholic High School and Lutheran Heine Northeast High School Winer Pilger does not have any boys interested in participating and we'll be dropping our girls Co-op once their current swimmer graduates Wayne we anticipate that Wayne will be added to the girls Co-op at
103that time thank you Dr Thompson is there a motion make a motion to approve the addition of Wayne High School to our two-year boys swimming co-op with nor Catholic High School and Lutheran High Northeast High School I'll second we have a motion by Brenda and a second by Lindsay is there any discussion please vote motion carried 60 thank you Callen 9.3 discuss consider and take action to approve the 2024 2025 compensation rate for classified hourly staff Dr Thompson the following changes are recommended to the classified hourly compensation package number one the classified hourly compensation rate should be increased by 4% for the 2024 2025 school year this amount was determined by increasing each employees pay rate by 4% which is the same percentage that was applied to nonsupervisory certificated staff otherwise known as teachers the
104estimated cost of this increase is $ 41,43 number two business office Personnel should be listed as a separate category as outlined in the attached document and number three speech language pathology assistant slpa and certified occupational therapist assistant Kota should be listed as specialist examples thank you Dr Thompson is there a motion I'll make a motion to approve 2024 2025 compensation rate for classified hourly staff I'll second that I have a motion by Terry in a second by Cindy is there any discussion please vote motion carried 60 thank you Ken 9.4 discuss consider and take action to approve the 2024 2025 compensation rate for classified salaried staff Dr Thompson the following change is recommended to the classified salaried compensation package the classified hourly compensation rate should be increased by 2.39% for the 2425 school year this
105amount was determined by increasing the base of the classified salary schedule by 4% which is the same percentage that was applied to non-supervisory certificated staff the estimated cost of this increase is $2,199 34 and I used to make fun of Bill when he puts cents on it and called it an estimate so it's funny how your brain changes when you're put in that role you Dr Thompson is there a motion I'll make a motion to approve the 2024 2025 compensation rate for classified salaried staff I'll second the motion we have a motion by Beth and a second by Terry is there any discussion please vote motion carried 6-0 thank you Callen and as if you're sitting here listening and watching we have discussed this at length in executive session so we do know what's going
106on we're making this look simpler than it was 9.5 discuss consider and take action to approve the 2024 2025 employment agreement for nurses Dr Thompson the following change is recommended to the employment agreement for nurses the nurses compensation rate should be increased by 3.44% for the 2425 school year this amount was determined by increasing the base of the nurse's salary structure by 4% which is the same percentage that was applied to non-supervisory certificated staff the total cost for this increase is estimated at1 13,000 $198 thank you Dr Thompson is there a motion make a motion to approve the 20242 employment agreement for nurses I'll second that motion we have a motion by Brenda and a second by Cindy is there any discussion please vote motion carried 60 thank you Callen 9 .6 discuss consider and
107take action to approve the 2024 2025 compensation rate for six pence facilitators Dr Thompson the following change is recommended to the compensation agreement for six pence facilitators the six pence facilitators compensation rate should be increased by 4% for the 2425 school year this amount was determined by increasing each employees pay rate by 4% which is the same percentage that was applied to supervisory certificated staff the estimated cost for this increase is $847 15 six pence is a Federal grant facilitator costs are reimbursed accordingly and they are on a separate salary schedule as listed below thank you Dr Thompson is there a motion I'll make a motion to approve the 2024 2025 compensation rate for six pence facilitators I'll second we have a motion by Cindy and a second by Lindsay is there any discussion please
108vote motion carried 60 thank you Callen 9.7 discuss consider and take action to approve the 2024 2025 compensation rate for administrators Dr Thompson the following change is recommended to the administrator's compensation package the administrator's compensation rate should be increased by 2.58% for the 2425 school year this amount was determined by increasing the base of the administrator's salary schedule by 4% which is the same percentage that was applied to non-supervisory certificated staff the estimated cost of this increase is $83,500 to approve the 2024 2025 compensation rate for administrators second the motion we have a motion by Beth and a second by Terry is there any discussion please vote motion carried 60 thank you Callen and last but not least 9.8 discuss consider and take action to approve the 2024 25 certificated substitute compensation rate Dr Thompson
109thank you our system for compensating our certified substitutes has been simplified each group will receive at least a 4% compensation rate um the details are attached for you to consider thank you Dr Thompson is there a motion I'll make a motion to approve the 2425 certificated substitute compensation rate I'll second the motion we have a motion by Lindsay and a second by Beth is there discussion please vote motion carried 60 thank you Callen I said last but not least but we have several more 9.9 discuss consider and take action to approve the amendment to the negotiate agree oh no no is that right yeah dang it with nonsupervisory certificated staff regarding the extra Duty schedule yes we are done with our compensation packages and moving on to other agenda items um this particular item is
110to approve an amendment to the negotiated agreement with our teachers um to add an assistant cheer coach an assistant Pink Panther coach and to add poetry to the extra Duty schedule you Dr Thompson is there a motion I'll make a motion to approve the amendment to the negotiated agreement with non-supervisory certificated staff regarding the extra Duty schedule I'll second the motion thank you Terry we have a motion by Beth a second by Terry discussion we actually discussed this at length at the last meeting and we had to wait till it got to negotiations so that's where we're at so what do they get paid then it's a level it's a step level on our on our um step on our can you pull it up it depends how many years they were there and I
111think the assistant coach is two steps below where the head coach of an activity is so when it came last time we didn't have this negotiated so they would be two coaches would be say paid the same and now we followed the same procedure and so they're two steps below the head coach answer her question how much they going we paid it's about 3,000 a person each add one in pink pain Panthers and one in chle one in dance yes and then our poetry is I'm not sure how much that one is that was much less that's extra Duty 10 so it is the lowest about 1500 we're approving an extra about 6,500 no 7500 7500 please vote motion carried 60 thank you Callen 9.10 discuss consider and take action to Grant permission to seek
112rfps for the chiller installation at the senior high school Mr Wilson thank you madam president this is for the bid to install the new chillers and redo the necessary pipe work at the senior high we anticipate bids to come back in April for board approval installation work will take place in the fall if approved I'll make a motion to Grant permission to seek rfps for the chiller installation at the senior high school I'll second we have a motion by Terry and a second by Lindsay is there any discussion just to um remind me we already ordered the parts for this right and have we received them or not or we anticipate receiving them by the time they want to do the installation in the fall correct we ordered those last fall they should be here
113hopefully by September so as the weather starts cooling down we can shut off the air conditioners and install the new ones thank you please vote motion carried 60 thank you Ken 9.11 discuss consider and take action to approve the purchase MRA Hill Building Blocks Preschool math program Mrs Nelson thank you um the preschool administrator and teachers have invested time into studying two math programs for implementation for the fall of 2024 building blocks was found to provide structure sequence and consistency for math instruction as mentioned in the curriculum report the program was reviewed and considered carefully although the program will likely be used more than 5 years the total cost for five years of use actually breaks down to $9 a student per year the funds for this program will come from the general curriculum budget
114the total cost of 9,994 37 thank you Beth do we have a motion I'll motion to approve the purchase of mcra Hill Building Blocks Preschool math program I'll second the motion we have a motion by Cindy and a second by bath is there any discussion I would just like to say for everybody out there who doesn't really know what goes into this um Mrs Nelson and her team and the teachers who look at this curriculum put a lot of work into vetting the curriculums looking at our standards and making sure they're going to work before they decide um to request to purchase a new curriculum so a lot of work and information goes into these decisions thank you Beth I would also add that our curriculum materials that are up for adoption tonight are available
115on the table on whatever wall that is underneath our logo um for board members or um community members who would like to take a look at those Dr Thompson please vote motion carried 60 thank you Callen 9.12 discuss consider and take action to approve the purchase of amplify math geometry for the senior high Mrs Nelson yes okay so the decision to purchase amplify math program in 7th through 11th grade was determined last year geometry was in intentionally delayed a year to allow overlapping teachers the opportunity to learn one program at a time um the average student cost on this is $29 a year the funds for this program will come from the general curriculum budget it includes classroom textbooks and online access for both teachers and students for seven years at a total cost of
11662,200 thank you Beth is there a motion I'll make a motion to approve the purchase of amplify math geometry for the senior high the motion we have a motion by Beth and a second by Brenda is there any discussion and it says online access to most curriculum still come with the ability to do this from home if students choose correct thank you please vote motion carried 60 thank you Callen here comes the big one 9.13 discuss consider and take action to approve the purchase of kindergarten through sixth grade IR ready math program Mrs Nelson the decision for the k6 math program has been under our study since 2020 there has been piloting of three different programs the last two years have included exclusive piloting of I ready math we have reviewed the progress in the
117last two curriculum commit committe meetings although the cost appears High the cost per student per year is $38 the program will be a six-year subscription with scaffolding training opportunities throughout the first year as I always mention with core programs for like English language arts and math they always come at a much higher cost than other content area counterparts the average cost per student in this program is $38 due to our forsite the funds for this program will come from a combination of general fund and depreciation fund it will include textbooks online access and man manipulative materials with a six-year subscription at a cost of 9,744 and um again there has been extensive study on this and I know that's a large number um that's what we expect and we see as we rotate through those
118large curricular um content areas Ela and math and um thank you Cindy for um spending some time studying that as well um we tried to bring our curriculum committee along the way and share the results that we saw and feedback from teachers so I'll just add for the public that um this was a concern because it is such a high amount of money and I wanted to make sure that I went in and actually physically observed this math class in action and talked to the Math teachers and the elementary teachers that were using it and um it I really had a positive reaction to it and felt really good with it and saw the kids in the different ways that they were learning it teaches them uh different methods so that there's different learning methods
119for different styles of learning and it was very impressive so I was very impressed with it thank you back 20 since 2020 that is a long time to study a program so thank you and your team for that hard work is is there a motion I'll make a motion to approve the purchase of kindergarten through sixth grade I ready math program I'll second that I have a motion by Beth and a second by Cindy is there any further discussion I would just remind board and community members that we maintain five to sevene budgets for technology and for curriculum because we know there are years like this where we have a big purchase so we save money in depreciation so that that we have it available when we need to purchase language arts or math materials
120or when we need to purchase um desktop units for our secretaries um because those are large purchase years you Dr Thompson please vote motion carried 60 thank you Callen 9.14 discuss consider and take action to approve the purchase of seventh grade Essential Health skills for Middle School by goodart Willcox publishing Mrs Nelson thank you currently the textbook for the course is outdated with a copyright of 2010 this course has a limited number of sessions only meeting 82 times per school year upon completion of the 7th grade textbook resource review the teachers determined that goodart Wilcox published of essential health skills for Middle School the fourth edition as the resource that best fits the needs of the course while still upholding the Integrity of the district's position toward health education the book contains more age and
121grade level appropriate language that is free of bias as a reminder NPS does not follow the state standards but rather its own the average cost per student per year is less than $2 if this textbook is used for only five years the funds for this program will come from the general budget at a total cost of $ 45899 thank you Beth is there a motion I'll make a motion to approve the purchase of seventh grade Essential Health skills for Middle School by goodart Willcox publishing I'll second the motion we have a motion by Beth and a second by Terry is there any discussion please vote motion carried 51 thank you Callen 9.15 discuss consider and take action to approve the purchase of the senior high Spanish Soros Vista learning program renewal Nelson yes the senior
122high Spanish program online access will expire at the end of the year this program will be renewed for an additional 5 years this program comes at a cost of $30 per student per year the funds for this purchase will come from the general curriculum fund budget the cost of it's a total cost of $ 9,671 125 and that does seem costly we have a lot and proudly say we have a lot of students that take Spanish courses and so um it also serves for Spanish one and Spanish 2 so those materials are just used throughout best way to explain that thank you Beth is there a motion your Spanish please you say the online access will expire so does that mean the program so so we'll still use our books that we have our textbooks
123but you know when we purchase textbooks and an online access the the online access is what you you know we said the seven-year subscription or the sixe subscription that was the end of that online subscription and because teachers and students use the online piece of that we need to resubscribe so not new materials but just um adding on to the subscription of the online access so we're using the same books next year just get absolutely we're getting the online back yes okay Y is there a motion I'll make a motion to approve the purchase of the senior high Spanish SOS Vista learning program renewal second that motion motion by Lindsay and a second by Brenda any further discussion please vote motion carried 60 thank you Callen 9.16 discuss consider and take action to approve the
124second and final reading of board policies 4028 through 4133 related to Personnel Dr Thompson thank you there have been no changes to board policies 4028 through 4133 related to Personnel since their first reading those policies include 4,028 appropriate address 4,29 fundraising 4030 wage information 4031 injury leave 4100 qualifications for appointment as a teacher 4101 qualification for appointment to administrative and supervisory positions 4110 contract 4111 certification 4120 probationary certified employees 4121 permanent certified employees 4130 assignment of Duties 4131 agents and tutors 4132 student teachers and pre- student teachers and 4133 substitute teachers thank you Dr Thompson is there a motion I'll make a motion to approve the second and final reading of board policies 4028 through 4133 related to Personnel second that motion we have a motion by Brenda and a second by Cindy is there
125any discussion please vote motion carried 60 thank you Callen guess what that brings us to the end for all of you the second monthly meeting of the board of education is scheduled for Monday March 25th this is a change in date from what you're used to it's on Monday rather than Thursday at noon the next regular meeting of the Board of Education will be held on Monday April 8th at 5:30 p.m. all components of these meetings will be held at the norrick public schools central administration offices and will be open to the public unless an executive session is needed in order to protect the interest of the district or the reputation of an individual with that we are going to go into executive session to discuss our superintendent contract negotiations as needed to protect the
126interest of the district and or to prevent needless injury to the reputation of an individual is there a motion I'll make a motion to go into executive session to discuss superintendent contract negotiations as needed to protect the interest of the district and or to prevent needless injury to the reputation of an individual a second we have a motion by Beth and a second by Lindsay we will vote with a roll call vote it can actually be done electronically that counts as roll call okay please vote motion carried 60 Callen we are going into exec at 7:34 p.m. no action will be taken at this meeting any changes to a superintendent's contract must be posted on the school website prior to the board meeting at which it is voted upon by the Board of Education thank
127you Dr Thompson thank you and thank you all of you that sat through this meeting need to restate the specific reason one more time yep okay I know it's listed it's after roll call blah blah blah blah BL we are going into the executive session for superintendent negotiations