001i'm getting messages okay call this meaning to order please rise and join us in the pledge of allegiance pledge congratulations to the flag of the united states of america and into the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all all right good evening everybody all right next on our agenda can i get an approval of the minutes of meeting held on august 8th please second can any discussion all those in favor signify by saying i i oppose same sign that motion passes and we now move on to persons wishing to address the school board on non-agenda items we have two two speakers tonight i'm going to read a brief statement here public participation at school board meetings this portion of the agenda is available for individuals wishing
002to address the board about a district related subject an individual wishing to address the board on a district related issue must sign up prior to the start of the meeting with the business manager or designee and give his name her name address and topic about which the person wishes to speak the speaker is limited to five minutes regardless of the number of subjects the person wishes to cover if multiple individuals sign up to speak on the same topic total testimony on the topic shall be limited to 15 minutes per side her side of the issue is determined by the president general decorum anyone anyone addressing the board must give his or her name and address the speaker may not give oral complaints regarding district personnel or personnel actions complaints regarding district personnel are to be
003addressed to the superintendent in private or in writing to the superintendent and board members in accordance with policy keb and its accompanying regulation the speaker may not offer personal attacks against any individual the speaker may not give oral complaints identifying individual students complaints regarding individual students are to be addressed to the superintendent in private or in writing to the superintendent and board members in accordance with policy ke the board president at her discretion may request the administration or another board member to respond to a person addressing the board immediately following input or may direct the administration to respond in writing if an individual does not follow the appropriate guidelines for speakers he or she may be denied the privilege of speaking before the board upon the first violation of the guidelines by an individual such
004person's privilege of speaking may be suspended for the remainder of the board meeting at which the violation occurs if an individual violates the guidelines a second time the person's privilege of speaking before the board may be suspended for the remainder of that meeting and for the next board meeting if an individual violates the guidelines a third time the length of the suspension may be at the discretion of the president that may not exceed one year all right with that we will start with rick alt with sorry scratched out there um if you could give us your name again and your address please 2600 east 33rd so i'm good resident of sioux falls and i'm here because two-thirds of our tax real estate tax goes to the school board system and i'm a father of 10
005living children and have had significant impact on educational experiences and i find it very interesting as well to the board at this point that we give the pledge of allegiance here because i understand that's not acceptable in the school environment in the classes and so on anyway i may be right maybe wrong okay i may be wrong every day yep but at the same time do they pledge the lead to the flag at the beginning of the school day yes in each class thank you for clarifying it there's a tremendous amount of value to be had from the standpoint of understanding what this educational mission is all about and my questions largely come from the standpoint of this what is the policy and what is happening with these overall arrangements in different school districts that
006have temporary files over here that are not parent accessible but what is parent accessible is only what the indus the district requires this is not good because we live in a community in a society that has to have be have a trusting relationship and it's absolutely essential the mission of education being that it is focused in on educating our children our grandchildren and all involved to the highest level possible to embrace them to enhance them to grow them and this chaos that's happening in this culture which partly is here as well is very disturbing and it's unhealthy and i find it to be very strongly that we've got to have a mission that's focused and that the community is behind it to be able to enhance and strengthen those basic educational missions now i've got
007a science background and i certainly know the difference between a woman and a male and i don't understand i don't know what where we're at with the lbg arrangements and so on i certainly have been brought up in my lifetime hate the sinner hate the sin but love the sinner we have to have total respect for everybody but to manure to something that's unnatural and unhealthy in many instances is not in the best interest of our community i'm sorry did somebody say something all right so that's what i am here to do to stand strong be bold be courageous in a way to enhance that and bring these dollars together in such a a very beneficial way to enhance it it's not all about facilities it's really about the spirit of raising these children educating
008them with the basics of life and science and education to the to the basic issues of reading writing and aristotech and i strongly encourage you to consider that and bring that into policies but i do appreciate recognizing what is happening in the administrative side of things you the school board the administrative side of things take a different route many times this has been my experience over the many years that i have been a parent of bringing all in the very significant way to the value that we hope for that every citizen who is providing these two-thirds of the taxes that go to the school district we expect the best from you and we hope for the best for you and it's absolutely essential that we move forward in that direction with a common understanding that
009is important you have any questions of myself thank you for your time thank you i appreciate that your understanding as well next up we have chad bishop again state your name and your address please good evening my name is chad bishop i live at 7405 south valencia drive here in sioux falls first let me begin by saying that my assumption is that all parents teachers administrators and staff share my goodwill and best intentions for our children and our community i invite you again to create a forum for discussion of sensitive topics like critical race theory social emotional learning diversity inclusion and equity help the community understand what the sioux falls school district means when it uses these terms help diffuse the artificial tension that arises from your constituents assuming the worst when they see the
010results of policies incorporating these terms in other communities last october 25th i addressed this body on the topic of diversity and hiring practices at this time quoting from a cheat sheet i cited one one understanding of the word diversity and it might be understood to mean an identity based approach to society which includes only those who agree with social justice which is a violation of individual identity enforced intellectual conformity puts in place political quotas and is an attack on merit in the form of soft bigotry so this isn't a this is a definition that many people you serve are starting to assume is meant when they hear this word used in the context of education or even employer hiring practices so please explain to the families you serve what you mean when you say we
011continue to value diversity does this mean that you will discriminate against better qualified candidates to hire purely based upon the color of someone's skin another reason the rhetoric from political activists gives us pause in my statement on 9 13 of 2021 i shared how dr abram kennedy's book was read to my elementary school-aged daughter in the district i didn't complain i just wanted you to elaborate and also explain was propaganda in an excerpt from this book or from his other book how to be an anti-racist dr kennedy says the only remedy to racist discrimination is anti-racist discrimination the only remedy to discrimination to pass discrimination is present discrimination the only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination it won't be constructive to dismiss our concerns as extreme or rational last summer we noticed when the
012nea adopted as modified new business item 39 codifying their support and defense of teachers who utilize to practice a critical race theory in the classroom they don't teach it they practice it in my statement from october i specifically asked what diversity means with respect to your hiring practices i'm sure it seemed odd at the time however we now see overt examples of this right next door minneapolis abc news reports when minneapolis teachers settled a 14-day strike in march they celebrated a groundbreaking provision in their new contract that was meant to shield teachers of color from seniority-based layoffs and help ensure that students from racial minorities have teachers who look like them that language sounds familiar from the contract starting with the spring of 2023 budget tiled cycle with accessing a teacher who is a member
013of a population underrepresented among licensed teachers in the site the district shall access nice way of saying fire the next least senior teacher who is not a member of the underrepresented population is this overt racism is it overt racial discrimination candy probably would actually admit that it is also from the abc story callahan called it just one teensy tiny step towards equity there's one of those words help us understand what you mean don't follow their lead don't be racist don't discriminate based on race i'd ask for more discussion more debate not less set up a forum invite the public thank you for your time all right thank you and i think you're also up for another okay so we're on to persons wishing to address the school board on agenda items and chad we've got
014you coming up again my evening good evening my name is chad i live at 7405 south valencia drive here in sioux falls with respect to the continue to learn plan update i've noticed that the updated cdc guideline per the updated cdc guidelines that you removed the policies that treated unvaccinated children differently than vaccinated children thank you for that i'd like to think that it was my persuasive arguments over the months that led to this change in policy or perhaps it was the doubly vaccinated and doubly boosted dr fauci or president biden both getting covered twice that had you questioned the wisdom of this policy but i do realize in the end you had to listen to the experts to manage your risk with that said please remember the value of sincere well-reasoned skepticism thank you
015for not following the outright adsc of larger cities like new york imagine continuing to deny over 375 000 kids access to sports or other quote high-risk activities unquote because they're unvaccinated imagine knowing what we know now and still coercing your teachers and staff into continued boosters they know the vaccines being offered don't prevent infection they know the vaccines being offered don't prevent transmission they know that the immunity conferred by infection is equal if not superior to that conferred by the vaccines which were developed against long extinct variants and they know that almost all kids have been infected and yet they persist not in pursuing a science-backed policy but in pursuing compliance compliance which in the light of the evidence that has been available to us for months and you've heard here for months almost a
016year will likely be considered medically unethical in the end if i were to ask for improvements to the plan as provided in this report it would be to the vaccine resources section and it would be to inform all who might read it that prior infection is more durable and more efficacious than any of the vaccine schedules that have been recommended should also be made clear given this that to vaccinate a covet 19 recovered person is to ignore the resulting risk analysis and is likely medically unethical especially when one considers the risk stratification by age and chronic disease lastly i would like to again say thank you to the board the administration teachers and staff despite our policy differences our children our families are the beneficiaries of your reasoned leadership on this front and i say
017that with sincerity and that snark again when the rest of the country lost their heads thank you for keeping yours sincerely thank you thank you all right moving on to agenda item six approval of the agenda can i get a motion in a second please so move second all those in favor signify by saying aye aye aye aye aye opposed some same sign all right that motion passes and on to the good news report dan and it's going to be me tonight yes we have a guest with us tonight we have steve hildebrand steve represents the promising futures fund and steve if you have guests with you i'll let you introduce them i didn't know if you brought anybody with you or not um we want to start this good news report by saying thank
018you steve has done so much for the children in our community and and their families because where all of this started as i recall is you saw a need and when you saw a need you went about finding some solutions that have resulted in some really nice program enhancements for students and focusing on literacy and getting books into the hands of kids which we love that so i would invite you to give us an update and let us celebrate the good work of promising futures thanks dr steven and thank you all thank you for your service to our community you have a tough job and you do it well you uh protect the taxpayer dollars uh very carefully and you protect our children and provide a great education and we love the partnership that we've
019created with the sioux falls school district my name is steve hildebrand i chair the promising futures fund it's a non-profit here in sioux falls which we started about three years ago and our primary mission is to provide equity for kids across the school district primarily focused on poverty trying to bring equity to kids who are growing up in poverty in the in the district our efforts are to go into the community to raise as much money as we possibly can and provide that money directly to the schools and to the district we started with a book a month club and it's a program that's really grown and i wanted to come tonight to provide the good news and to thank our community for supporting this program honestly it's been pretty amazing we started this program
020a little over a little less than three years ago at lowell elementary where there were 19 classrooms and diane kennedy the principal there was asking us to find people in the community who would sponsor each classroom providing a book a month for each child for the nine months during the school year and i told diane i wasn't sure if we could find 19 people and today we have found classroom sponsors we sponsor every single classroom every single child in 13 of the 23 elementary schools here in sioux falls these are the schools with the highest rates of poverty the kids with the highest level of need when it comes to reading what we have learned from the principals and the teachers is that oftentimes a kid growing up in poverty might not be read to
021as a child they might not have books in their home their parents may not speak english and so there's a lot of barriers and so a lot of these children are showing up at kindergarten behind and so this is an effort to allow each of these children to pick out their own book and to own the book so at the end of the school year each child has nine books to take home if they start the program in kindergarten and do it through fifth grade they're gonna have 56 books in their home that hopefully they're sharing with siblings hopefully they're trading with their friends but ideally they're learning to read at a higher level we're very proud of this and we're very thankful to the 240 sponsors across the sioux falls school district who have
022invested in this program it's a program where we ask them to give 350 to support a kindergarten first or second grade classroom or 650 for third fourth or fifth grade where the books are a little bit more expensive but each kid gets to pick out their book and they own the book this is their program and it's a wonderful program that the schools have implemented on behalf of those kids i'll say two other reading programs that we do superintendent you deemed the month of march as everybody reads month we stepped up to the plate provided a hardcover book for about 3 400 kids across our 13 elementaries that we support and that was a wonderful opportunity to give them a little bit of a special book that they also own and then the principals have
023asked us to create a summer reading program that provides books to send home with kids with encouragement to read over the summer and this year we provided a wonderful packet of six books for 3 400 kids as well and that was five books for reading and one math workbook with encouragement to read and we suggested to teachers do a little contest to encourage kids to do those math problems over the summer because most kids aren't going to do these math problems on their own i sure wouldn't so it's a it's a wonderful opportunity for these kids to have books in their home that they can read over the summer and hopefully address some of the reading loss that kids especially kids in poverty often time have so we're very proud of this in total this
024last school year and this upcoming school year we'll put 70 000 books in the hands of these kids and that's a big number and something we're really proud of so a lot of these kids are gonna go home with about 15 books um over the course of the school year so it's a great program that we're incredibly proud of we love doing this and what i want to say is the community has been so responsive they've understood the need they have stepped up and written the checks to support this program are these three programs i should say and uh when we did the re-solicitation for the book of month club to seek those 240 classroom sponsors we did this in 28 days and that just kind of blew me away that so very quickly we're
025able to find so many people to contribute um and to support our kids so very proud of what we're doing i left you a little piece of literature so you can see all that we're doing with field trips and experiences and supporting teachers and everything else so we love working with you and and we're just very proud of what we're doing thank you thank you [Applause] thank you steve and and for everyone that is involved it is just another wonderful example of our community stepping up and providing resources and support for our most at risk and at need kids so just thank you very much from the bottom of my heart for seeing that need and fulfilling it and you know ten times over um so just appreciate that and thank you for being here
026tonight i just want to add i know you talked a lot about um your reading initiatives which are amazing and i think that closely linked to that is your experiences and your field trips and i don't know if you said it if you copied somebody i don't know but i read it on one of your posts that you said you cannot be what you cannot see and that has something that has been resonating with me ever since i read that and so i think about tying together the experiences part of a book and so many times we don't understand that kids can read a book but if they can't relate to that experience it's hard for them to have comprehension it's hard for them to have the vocabulary so if a kid has never been
027to a canaries game and they read a book about baseball they may not connect some of those things or if they've never think about all the things and the amazing the college visits the um all the field trips that you guys have done is really yes it's fun for the kids and it's an experience but it's also impacting their reading and their ability to relate to characters and books and vocabulary and things like that so it's such an amazing program and just a package deal that maybe people don't put together but they really are closely aligned and so as somebody who has kids in the district and whose classmates benefit from your generosity and the generosity of your foundation thank you very much for the books and for the experiences that our kids are being
028able to have i think it's amazing our community gets involved this project i can't i don't know but i can't think of another community that the citizens of this city get behind kids when you ask for help with kids they respond i just i'm overwhelmed thank you and i just he's very humble but this wouldn't have happened without steve he started this out with an idea and has created this board and done the work to get the fundraising and made it successful and you know it started with asking the principals what they really need he didn't come in there saying this is what i want to do he asked those questions and it's really filling that need so thank you very much and i would be remiss and not acknowledging board member mickelson and her
029involvement on that board as well and thank you for your support and doing that and and helping build this group up as well so all right i think that's thanks steve thank you very much all i don't want to belabor it thank you and happy birthday coming up all right we will move on to um agenda items eight conflicts of interest we didn't have any new conflicts of interest this month so we'll move on to the approval of the consent agenda can i get a motion to approve items nine a through g please second all right any discussion all those in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed same sign that motion passes we move on to item 10 supplemental consent agenda um items a through c approval of claims to stanford health can i
030get a motion in a second please second all those in favor signify by saying aye aye that motion passes with one abstention from board member writer and now on to items d approval of claims to avera so moved second all right all those in favor signify by saying aye aye that passes with one abstention from myself all right on to reports of the superintendent yes our first report tonight is brought to you by dr nold and he's going to talk about some of the elements of our safety and security protocols here in the school district following that we have a busing update we have a couple of special guests with us who missy brack will introduce and then we have a public hearing and finally a report on some of the changes to the return
031to learn update so with that i will turn it over to dr knold we're close good evening board members and tonight i bring to you the sioux falls school district safety and security report the purpose of this report is to really update the board on the ongoing safety and security programming of the sioux falls school district and this hits primarily in the area of well-being explanation of this report and the safety and security of our students our staff and our community members really continues to be a focal point and this is truly addressed in the area of well-being which is part of our district priorities you will see safety throughout that entire district priority area we do also have the district has developed seven pillars of success for our safe and secure environment and i
032truly bring that to you as a product of the work of our risk manager that we've employed through the sioux falls school district which is retired major general bob bray and his work in making sure that we have this in place so that we do address each one of the areas of our safety for the district you can kind of see in this diagram the the seven areas i will break those down as we go throughout this report um to highlight some of the things that we're doing in each one of those seven areas the explanation of this just being continued we're really going to look at some of the overview the general overviews of some of the safety protocols and procedures some of our building changes that we've looked at and the technology that
033we utilize within the sioux falls school district to keep our students staff and communities safe so we'll start out in this first area this first area has to do with the policies practices and procedures it's probably one of the least flashy areas but one of the most important areas as you go through and it's really putting those things in place so that we have the plans in place the procedures in place so that every school is prepared to address any type of a situation that comes their way especially when we're speaking about the safety of our students and our staff the first area that i'll highlight in there is the annual required trainings that we have so each year as many of you know and it probably been part of in previous years but our
034fire drills our tornado drills we also utilize our lockdown drills and table top safety exercises that each school will complete the table top safety exercises really practices that they will go through discuss specific situations and then work out what those scenarios would be according to the plans that we have in place we have to also take the staff safety and security training so we work through each year at the beginning of the year with safety and security training that each one of our staff members will go through at the start of the year as part of that back to school training some of the additional drills that we will look at and the training is reunification drills if you remember a couple years ago three years ago i believe it was we went through the
035whole reunification process where we utilized one of the schools eugene field and took those individual students out and practiced that reunification process at the arena that's one of the drills we'll also do that again this year but it will not be with the students we'll take the adults and work them through that same process again our alternative site location drills where we have for each and every school an alternative site that they will have to go to in case we need to evacuate their building and so that is set up and we go through and talk about that and we make sure the staff know where those locations are at we put agreements in place with each one of those or mou's with each one of those sites that we make sure that we have
036that agreement in place in advance of any school needing to use that we also have our school safety professional development and part of that is done within the building and part of that is done through some of the training that we have utilized through the work of bob ray in making the videos available that we go through in each staff member depending on what their position is with the sioux falls school district they would need to go through and make sure they complete that training and then sign off we also have our incident management team table top exercises so here at the central ipc we go through some of these tabletop exercises as well we try to talk through and work with some of the entities in town fire rescue or our police department many
037other areas in town just to be able to make sure that we know and have those practices and protocols in place as we work through some of those table top exercises a few other areas that we can look at here as i stated that develop videos with specific staff training we have each of the staff members go through depending on what their position is and complete those trainings the monthly radio tests we do that throughout the entire district and our risk manager bob bray leads each one of the schools through that test to make sure that each one of our radios is working that's our primary means of communication when we do have a safety or security issue in the district we also work through the maintenance of the district emergency operation plans and the
038emergency hazard response plan and he continues to update that with each one of the schools to make sure that plan goes through and addresses almost every different scenario they could have or they could relate to that would come in contact with a school setting and the final part of that is each our school safety plans all are schools in the district required to have a safety plan in place a security plan each plan should be designed locally with help from law enforcement emergency personnel and public health affairs officials to make sure that it it is specific to that school and they can utilize that and implement that at the school some of our technology that we have um we'll talk through here but we have been working on this multiple years it is not something
039just lately here but we continue to adapt it as new things come out and are available to us some of those things as i stated with the radio system we have the ability with that to go both analog and digital channels we have the ability to communicate directly with that with our police our fire and emergency personnel within our community or we can close that down to just talk personally within the building or within the district on private channels we also have a system that's set up at each one of our schools called the easy lobby visitor management system and really it's where you come in and produce that id that government issued id and we checked that just to make sure a log of access who has come into our buildings when did they
040come into our buildings and then we evaluate that against the visitor credentials against the database just to make sure there's no concerns with an individual entering our buildings we have closed doors notifications this just notifies it's a computer program that notifies that there's an open door at any location within the building those are utilized by our building principals so they can see if there's a door that is a jar at some location within the building those are all for the primary outside doors not the interior doors some things continued on here camera equipment has been something that we've invested in significantly the emphasis on the camera equipment is truly on those exterior doors those entrances or exits at each one of our buildings they're covered on each one we have the ability to record and
041export if we need to depending on what the situation is and we have both remote and on-site access so we're not at the physical school building at that time we can remotely access those video cameras there's an average of over 70 cameras in our high school over 50 in our middle schools and over 10 per elementary and 41 different sites with surveillance intercoms and notification systems uh warning systems we have that within our schools now especially if you start to see our newer ones uh there's there's even additional light systems we have in those depending on what the situation is and it notifies our staff and students what the situation and what they need to be prepared for we're trying to look at other updates with our other schools as well but each one has
042an intercom light notification and a warning system our communication systems for specific functions for example reunification or emergency spot response those could be different within the schools and then a v alert system we have itinerant staff that go out to homes and they have a system that they utilize as well to be able to notify in any case of an emergency the next part on there is our physical security if you notice each one of the schools has an entrance that is utilized that's a safe and secure entrance now that was something that the board approved several years ago the last change on that happened just out here within the last year here at ipc so we're the last one to be able to make that change but each one of those buildings has a
043secure front door access and that is where we have that easy lobby set up as well some of our facility designs i apologize i was a little bit late there but with our facility designs we do have those secure entrances that we talked about this is one of our pillars as well the emergency warning lights we also have certain doors on the interior of the building that will lock depending on what the situation is so they can automatically lock those doors to make sure they keep things at a secure area towards the front of the building and then we do have the window coverings that we've installed in all of our our buildings now to make sure that if they need to at any point in time they can close those to minimize that view
044within the classrooms or within the school building our school resource officers this is another point of pride that we have is our ability we heard earlier here with with different resources with our community to help our students especially our most at risk students another great resource that we have with the sioux falls community is our school resource officers and they're a great asset we work jointly with our soups police department there are 16 sros our school resource officers that work within our school buildings on a daily basis there's three two sergeants and one lieutenant and then we also encourage our police department to utilize our buildings as often as they can for their training so they become very familiar with our buildings and the layout of our buildings and so they do that often within
045the summer days or some of the school days where we do not have school in session one of the other things that we significantly highlight is our see something say something so if you've had a notification that comes home where we update you on something that maybe happened in the community where we needed to do a shelter in place or a lockdown drill we try to always close that out with an encouragement that if you see something to say something majority of the information that we do receive that we look into or investigate or work with the police department on is because somebody in our community whether that be a student a parent a community member has notified us of a concern so we make sure we look into those concerns most of which are
046very harmless situations but you just never know so we greatly appreciate our community helping us with that information so we can look into those things to make sure our students are safe at school the vigilance and and commitment is something that we have to continually keep to the forefront of the conversation we want to make sure any and all of our staff members know and any of our students know that it's something that's going to be an ongoing commitment from the sioux falls school district to keep our students and staff safe culture and climate it's one that may not come to the top of people's minds right away when they think about school safety but it is an integral part of keeping our students and staff safe some of the things that we talk about
047there are truly the climate and how we keep our kids involved and how we keep them in a relationship with our staff and other students at a building so we make sure that they feel a significant part of the building and so as we go through and talk about some of those the implementation of the mtss model that's happening throughout the entire district to make sure we have ways to be able to intervene and help students at an earlier basis our safety and security coordinator that's one of the new things we have many of the things that we have here have been ongoing for multiple years but our new addition of our hired dave osterquist with that safety and security coordinator he'll go out and work with a lot of the buildings to make sure
048their plans are in place and the things that we need to make sure we know from our staff or our students he can hear that to make sure we incorporate that into our future plans implementation of a student threat and risk assessment program we're working through that now as we go through some of the training but how do we help to intervene at an earlier stage with a lot of our students so they can be successful in school our k-12 career counselor to make sure that they have an area that they see purpose in their schooling increased counseling services and increased social emotional supports will also aid in that to make sure that we address their needs at a younger age in earlier intervention our career pathways that we've added some of the things that
049we've added as well with our school psychologists for additional student support we have the enhanced counseling program in the elementary or they're going through more classroom sessions they'll go into the classes and help and teach in those classes and are additional athletic options for our middle school students and our high school students to help them to be involved that's something that the board approved through this last budget cycle and we know that if those students are involved at a younger age they're going to stay more involved and students that are involved have a much higher rate of attendance and far fewer office referrals additional schools to increase the crowding was something that our community approved over the last couple years that helps more of our students be involved in activities at the school our community
050engagement center to make sure our families have the resources they need so they can come to school prepared to learn our after school programming our additional social workers and student support for family needs and then also the new office of indian education department chair that's another area that working to reach out to some of our native american families to make sure that they have what they need to be able to be successful in school our pbis implementation our jag program at each high school and all the additional supports we're providing at the acts of park programming one of the key ones that anytime i can have a chance to highlight mentoring we need more mentors the more mentors we can have to be able to match up with our students that will benefit us our
051students and our community greatly so those are some of the things that we highlight and hit on that we've been doing some of the highlights here for the 22-23 school year are our priorities obviously with that continued safety training we did meet with a group of teachers clerical support staff and we talked through what are some of those checklists because some of the teachers had brought forward concerns about i'm not sure what all i do need in my classroom what all i should know so we created a safety classroom checklist that they should be able to go through this checklist and say yes i know where each one of these things are at and located within my room or i have access to it close by my room staff expectations checklist as well just some
052of the things that we require expect of our staff to make sure that we keep a safe and secure school we have a completion of the comprehensive school threat assessment guidelines or the c-stag training so we're going through level one and level two of that training and then we will meet as a school to decide what portions of that or what parts of that do we incorporate into our sioux falls school district program our district safety and security coordinator position i talked about that that's a new position this year our district tabletop exercise this year we will focus on that reunification process so we'll have our social workers our counselors and any of those staff that are involved in the reunification process we'll have them all together and we'll go through a practice exercise with
053them on that we will evaluate each of the school safety protocols and then again just a proactive approach to the safety and security of our schools in summary we believe all students staff must feel a sense of belonging and have the supports needed to be successful both academically and socially it is our responsibility to create a safe inclusive and nurturing learning community in each and every school administrative recommendation would be to acknowledge the report on the sioux falls school district safety and security update and i would stand by for any questions any questions i'd just like to acknowledge uh major retired major uh general bray for all of his work that he's done with the school district and um now with this new position with working with them and um helping to uh continue this
054process of keeping our students and staff safe in our buildings it's a very top priority of our district and always has been and continue and um we want our parents and families to know that we we do keep that on top of mine quick question with regard to the safety training do we do an orientation for our substitute teachers yes we do we have a program for each of the substitutes and they do a training each year that they'll go through and there's a video that they watch and they have some of that training on the safety and security yes and that was the part that came up several years ago but rhonda innings takes them through that safety process and and bob ray will speak to some of those as well especially the new
055uh substitute teachers and i agree with you bob has been an incredible asset for our safety programs over the last several years he deals with a lot of those nitty-gritty details uh that many others would not have the time to be able to do that and he has done that to an exceptional level i would just add that kind of the conclusion i get from all the things that you talked about is really that the safety of our schools is not one person's responsibility but everybody's and so whether it's the students or the parents or the community members who see something and say something or whether it's the teachers who make sure that their doors are you know closed that are near them they're outside doors or um just listening whether it's social media or
056whether it's you know at a basketball game or just paying attention i think that that's the biggest thing is for um we can do all these things together but if we don't work together and have everybody all hands on deck um then then there's a hole and so it really is everybody's responsibility um to do so and we've got many great programs and technology and facilities and things like that but it really comes down to all of us as individuals investing in that and making sure that we all take care of each other and report things when we see them or support people when we see that they need support to ultimately keep all of us safe i think it's sad we even have to discuss it but it's an important part and we have
057to do our due diligence and i appreciate what the administration's done and we hope for the best pray for the best i i think we're doing what we can do thank you any other questions or comments all right see none can i get an approval to um for the update safety and security report so moved second all those in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed same sign right that motion passes on to the next report yep we're going to invite missy brack to come up for our busing report and missy i'm going to ask you to introduce and recognize our special guests from school bus inc who are fresh off the airplane to be here tonight so we really appreciate you being here and we will talk about the work that's happened thus far
058and things how they look as we open a new school year good afternoon jacob iverson and josh canard literally just got here off of the plane they're from school bus inc and they have been working with our district over the past year trying to maintain services for all of our students we were currently serving so we're going to look at three areas uh to discuss the transportation for this year and that that includes recruitment and retention of bus personnel route adjustments implementation of several pieces of new busing software so we'll start with the first one the bus personnel sbi is targeting a need of at least 71 routes at any given time usually routes are double runs meaning that most of the 71 buses run an 8 a.m or an elementary and a 9 a.m
059middle school route and then in the afternoon a 3 p.m and a 4 p.m some of those 71 buses due to long routes can only do single runs and some due to shorter routes and adjustments and bell schedules can run triple runs in the morning and afternoon and we'll get to that here in a little bit sbi has significantly updated its personnel recruitment and staffing training staff with a full-time recruiter and a full-time professional trainer and a team of drivers to train and onboard cdl professional school bus drivers sbi has also significantly increased their starting wages from last year to 22 this coming year currently there are 66 am and p.m routes covered and a pipeline of 14 potential future drivers seven of which are behind the wheel training right now at sbi and seven
060are completing paperwork and permits sbi also has five office shop employees with cdls that are not in this count the second thing that we're going to talk about is route adjustments last year at the end of the first semester and in the early second semester route adjustments were made to reduce by seven the number of required buses and bus drivers on the road at any given time in may and june sbi routers principals representing all levels and central office staff then work together to further reduce by five the number of buses that were required at any given time this of course requires a reduction of five early routes and five late routes the committee looked at several options including eliminating early childhood busing except for special ed students increasing the maximum distance specifically looking at
061two miles for the walk areas and removing students from bus routes if they don't ride within a specific time period the committee decided to continue to bus all current areas including early childhood students while adjusting elementary school bell times and and double running 10 of the shorter middle school routes and then what we are doing with those when we're talking about the the adjustments in time so laura b anderson we didn't do a change in the bell times but what we're doing is we are picking up students early and dropping them off early at the school and then going back into their neighborhoods and picking up another group of students and bringing them uh to school at their normal 7 45 time and then at the end of the day the first group will leave
062at the normal time and the second group will be picked up by 315. these two adjustments maintain a one bus reduction which we made that last year and then hawthorne we adjusted their belt times they're now an early site they will double with lowell so we had to adjust lowell's bell time they are now going to be a late site so they can double with hawthorne rosa parks became an early site and will double with john harris and cleveland so we adjusted john harris and cleveland to late sites in order to accomplish that jfk's bell time was adjusted to 740 and 225. there'll be an early site that will double with pettigrew oscar hall is another one that we adjusted to an early site so they could also double with pedigree we have been rifle
063that will have two doubles in the am so what what that's going to look like is they will run an elementary site route get those kids dropped off and then they will go do the first run for ben rifle those kids will get there about 8 15 and then they'll go back out into the neighborhoods and get those another group of kids that will get there about 8 45 so then the reverse happens in the afternoon so there will be some kids that will stay at ben rifle in the afternoon and will leave there about 4 40. same thing will happen with memorial memorial we'll have three buses that will be like that additionally to make up bus route to make bus routes more efficient sbi recommended to the committee that bus stop distances be
064adjusted so buses don't spend as much time going through the neighborhoods we're doing more corner stops the general stop distance standards were enacted we have kindergarten of first grade is .2 miles from their house or 3.2 blocks second through fifth grade is .35 miles from their house or 5.6 blocks sixth through eighth eighth grade is half a mile from their house or eight blocks and then our special education students will be door-to-door we also worked with sbi this year to do a new busing software to increase student safety and allow for better communication with parents through a parent guardian app called stop finder which allows parents and guardians to accurately track their students school bus in real time the app is easy to use and is secure so only authorized users have access to school
065bus information stop finder which is tied to the district's bus routing software is free to parents and guardians and also users to customize when they receive alerts about their children's bus location the app is also a communication tool providing parents a convenient way to receive notifications instantly because stop finder works seamlessly with the district's routing software the transportation leaders can target communications to specific regions that may only be relevant for that area for example if a road is closed bus will be late only the parents of that area will be notified in addition to real-time geo alert notifications showing the location of the bus and the ability to receive other communications stat finder also provides school bus stop and schedule information to maximize the effect of the stop finder students will be issued id badges
066to scan on and off the bus the badges will ensure that students board the correct bus at the end of the school day and get off the bus at the correct stop students will scan their badges on the wayfinder tablet which also includes a turn-by-turn instruction for the drivers finally there's another piece of software called viewfinder which is a dashboard that allows school building personnel to track the whereabouts of buses that serve their schools central office and sbi staff can use viewfinder to track the progress of all buses currently running the cost for this is approximately 325 000 for new equipment supplies computers software and employee stipends for fy22 we had two high school middle school and elementary principals involved in the comm in the committee along with the transportation supervisor a trans our transportation
067specialist and our school busing group in summary the the district and school bus inc staff worked together for the past several months to maintain busing service to all neighborhoods that were served last year three main areas were reviewed and revisions were made to maintain busing to all neighborhoods that were served with bus service last year these include recruitment and retention of bus personnel route adjustments and implementation of several pieces of new bus software sbi is on track to be to have required enough recruited enough drivers to fully staff all routes planned for the beginning of the school year several routes and some elementary bell times were adjusted to reduce the number of buses and bus drivers required to run all the daily routes the software enhancements include a parent app to track the progress of
068their students buses and when and where the student gets on and off the bus they also have the ability of individual building student have the ability of individual buildings to track the progress of buses that serve their school the administrative recommendation to the school board is to acknowledge the fall 2022 busing update any questions i just i think the app is going to be so helpful for families for the student because i know you know especially if there's a new driver if it's running late due to no fault of their own but something happened in traffic or whatever it will be very helpful for parents and families the feeling that i've gotten so far from parents have been that it's easy to access and see the schedules it's been i think it's been good so
069far i would just like to applaud your efforts i know it's a tough job we all know what the job market's like today things going on with but uh i hope it works and i'm excited about it i think it'll be good i think especially in our winters um and weather in general it would be a big satisfier for families to know um i know i had kids that rode the bus and again like you said by no fault of their own there's an accident that they have to wait for or there's they're waiting for a snow plow or they're waiting for whatever you know and parents can then at least have an idea of maybe how long it's going to be until they get home instead of relying on their student who maybe is
070on their phone trying to give them a location of where they're at or who knows what so i think that's awesome um you didn't mention anything about tripper buses for high school so i'm assuming that that's not part of this rollout is that an accurate statement the the trip or buses will not the stop finder app will not work with that because there are no students that are assigned to those buses so no it will not work thank you quick question and supervision the middle school kids that are on the second wave for the busing where are they outside kind of waiting for the bus or in the fall of weather do they wait in the gym we've worked with both ben rifle and memorial middle school they will have staff on hand so there
071will be supervision there i believe that the plan is to keep them indoors you know beyond that i don't know they're going to have extra educational time i i can't tell you that question or answer that question but they are aware and they have plans in place it's not a whole lot of time so it's not yeah it's just 15 minutes or so some slow kids like mine might appreciate taking the late boss i would like to commend missy she's been answering a lot of questions that have come in as we get ready to use the app i'd also like to commend the school bus inc staff and gentlemen i would invite either of you to come to the podium if you want to make a few comments since you came all the way here
072which i think also shows their commitment you know this was a transition for the ownership of sbi last year coming into a market that's unknown they have recruited and recruited and recruited and i've seen them in multiple locations throughout the summer and it requires all of us to readjust our thinking around student transportation we know this is a nationwide area of shortage and so there are adjustments that the school district has made those are difficult decisions to make when you're adjusting times and places and when we're talking about children early in the morning later in the afternoon getting to and fro those are difficult decisions but we also know we can't keep doing things in exactly the same way as we all try to meet up together and make adjustments that we think are going
073to allow us to simply continue transporting our students and so i don't think any of us know what the future of this looks like we need to do our very best to continue cultivating people in our community who may be willing to drive for us and we have seen you all step up and make improvements we know that there were foundational pieces that needed to be upgraded with just management software and we really appreciate all of your efforts that you have done to continue to serve our students in our community so with that said there there's a lot that's happened feel free to come up one thank you thank you for the board for allowing me to come up here and speak and thank you dr steven and thank the board uh for what we've
074been able to accomplish this last year but i'd really like to thank missy um she has really helped spearhead this project over the course of this last year if it wasn't for her we probably wouldn't have gotten this close to this finish line the dedication the school district has been immense so thank you all for allowing us that opportunity thank you for being here yeah i know it's been a challenging um we've had our challenges but um sounds like we've got some really good enhancements and software that will help um take care of those challenges in the coming years so missy thank you for all your hard work and we've got one more one more speaker jacob i'd like to echo what josh said is thank you for that opportunity but the collaborative partnership is
075really important uh from how we finish off the year strong in those ways through the summer and putting things in place to make sure we live out the spirit of continuous improvement to build the world we were the support that we went through training this summer there's been a lot of training going on infusing technology it affects all the stakeholders and so i appreciate that the enhancements are really forward-leaning with sioux falls school district what you've done i might absolutely applaud you on that you'll be the first in the state doing what you're doing fully and we do operate in the state we're wonderful to be partners with you we're here to make sure everything goes as smooth as possible and put the resources forward so thank you again that's a good note our bus
076drivers have been learning about their new technology this is a quantum leap for them as well i saw some out driving today and i thought they're probably trying out their new equipment and seeing how it feels to be monitored as you're driving which i don't know about you but i don't know that i always want somebody watching me where i'm driving or how late or early i am but that's a big commitment on their part and i also want to mention our parents we've had a lot of parents step up and help us with problem solving and giving us ideas for thinking about that have been really really helpful thank you for mentioning it's about 15 hours of training each driver is going through hands-on physically getting out there doing stuff and i think that's
077a great way to set us up for success and the plug we're always looking for recruiting good quality professional school bus drivers so thank you thank you for being here any other comments or questions all right see none can i get a motion to acknowledge the fall 2022 bussing update so moved second all those in favor signify by saying aye aye post same sign that motion passes on to item c public hearing yes and we'll ask becky dorman to come forward to walk us through another hearing for waivers or teachers thank you dr stephen good evening everyone i'm here once again to talk about or to ask for your approval to apply for a waiver of administrative rule the south dakota administrative rule allows us to employ teachers pursuing their special education alternative certification while
078teaching the field of education under this administrative rule teachers need to have a teaching certificate just not necessarily with a special ed endorsement and three years of teaching experience within the past five years south dakota administrative rule also allows us to apply for a waiver so that's what we're doing we have three individuals as part of this public hearing where we need to waive a couple of those general requirements within the special education alternative certification those specific teachers are travis kaiser special education at washington high school lori vinti special education at horace mann bridges and nancy mikulski special education at susan b anthony elementary one special emphasis i would like to put on stating those three individuals names that they are all promoted from positions that they held within the district travis was an iep
079facilitator lori was an education assistant at bridges and nancy has been a long time substitute teacher and education assistant for us so i ask you to acknowledge the public hearing and authorize administration to proceed with applications for waivers from administrative rules all right this is my first hearing like to open it up for a public hearing anyone wishing to speak on this topic can come up all right we will now close the public hearing and ask for an acknowledgement we acknowledge the public hearing and authorize get a motion to authorize the administration to proceed with applications for waivers for from administering rules all those in favor signify by saying i i post same sign right that passes and i believe the final report for the night the sioux falls school district uh continue to learn
080plan for the 22-23 school year we'll i will go through and just provide you the updates on that these updates are provided to you because of the changes or the guidance that just came out this past week by the cdc and so the changes were prompted because of those changes first of all just a brief explanation the supah school district obviously had our continue to learn plan in place the board approved that august 9th of 2021 prior to that we had the return to learn plan which carried us through the 2021 school year which is about 165 pages long we still keep that there so people can go out and read that if they would like to but we replace that sense with our continue to learn plan we review that plan every six months
081roughly in december and may of each year or anytime that there are significant changes that come about and obviously the significant changes were the cdc changes that came out this past week i'll just give you the general highlights of the changes that occurred you have the redline document attached that would go into effect later this evening the general changes we remove the quarantine language for close contacts as part of the cdc recommendation remove the spacing expectations between students remove the statements that children under five are not eligible for vaccinations because they're obviously eligible at a much younger age now remove the positive case building notification requirement the face coverings the language on there now will read face coverings will be available for all students staff and visitors and the wearing of face coverings will be
082a personal family or personal or family decision some other added changes the ppe guidance was updated throughout the document that's the personal protective equipment that our staff will wear times they interact or work with students infographics were changed especially removed from pages 12 32 and 33 because we now have a new updated daily screening checklist that will be utilized based on the cdc guidance and then changes were made that correspond with the guidance on positive cases and their isolation of ill students the process of working with students that need medical assessments in any of those areas that were impacted by the health services so as we sent or went through and made these changes predominance of the changes all came in the area of health services and the final change it was made the table
083of contents was updated document the date changes were made on this date on the 22nd the committee participation in this there's 18 members of the committee and they include administrators of each of the areas of the continue to learn planning area and the sioux falls education association president the members of this committee participated electronically this time because of the predominance of the changes came within the health services area in closing the sioux falls school district is committed to a safe learning environment for our students and staff and community the continue to learn plan was created to articulate our plans of safety we will continue to update the plan and are to reflect the latest guidance provided us by recognized local state and national entities our administrative recommendation acknowledged that 2223 continue to learn plan updates
084as presented and i'll stand by for any questions any questions or comments production okay all right seeing then can i get a motion and a second to approve the update so moved second all those in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed same sign that motion passes thank you and i had a motion to move into executive session for sdcl 1-25-2 so moved thank you second okay all right all those in favor signify by saying aye aye and i would request um we'll be doing the exact sessions in here so we would just request that other participants would vacate our room as soon as possible so we can continue with our next part of our meeting thank you you