001and for the pledge of allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all good evening we'll move on to approval of the minutes of the meeting held may 23rd do i have a motion to approve so moved second i have a motion second all those in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed same side and for those of you who are not in attendance or watching our work session we have two board members absent this evening board member writer and board member baker um we'll move on to persons wishing to address the school board both of these items are on non-agenda items and you will each get five minutes we set aside a portion of
002each meeting from to hear from the public on items of general interest or concern uh board member parker will time you each and let you know when you have one minute left 30 seconds and then time's up after five minutes when you are called to the podium please identify yourself in your address in the organization if you represent if you are representing someone for the meeting if you have any visual aids or handouts please see a member of our communications team dan prior to the meeting she will help you distribute the information and prove any item to be shown for public viewing we do not take comments during this time on any personnel matters and all meeting attendees are expected to treat others with respect and civility we will not respond to individual comments and
003staff may be requested to follow up as needed following the meeting and thank you for coming tonight and first of all welcome uh mayor former mayor rick novi to the stand please thank you good evening madam chair i know a couple of you many of you i don't just for identification purposes yeah my name is rick noby i live in sioux falls i've been here since 1971. i was mayor of the city from 1974 to 1984 commonly called the golden years that got a bigger lap at the county and there were fewer people in the room what happened um i'm hearing a serious matter however um if you're like me you're probably sad frustrated and maybe angry you folks all of you in this room that work for the district are on the front line
004when the bullets stop start and stop flying you and your people will be the ones responding and then cleaning up the carnage an attack on a school the mall or superstore you visit your church an outdoor concert a senior center your business a hospital a courthouse even this meeting space is no longer unthinkable panic screaming tears deaths wounded blood everywhere total chaos a june 3rd article in usa today by ryan miller does a good job describing the crisis i hope you'll read it a book called the violence project goes into depth about the individual murderers it puts forth ideas on how to fix this crisis the authors were on face the nation sunday i suggest you access it in washington the house has passed a fairly decent bill sunday it was announced a bipartisan group
005of senators have agreed to a framework to deal with mass murders it is not much in my opinion it doesn't raise the age of purchase and by the way since i put this together this afternoon it was announced that two of the people who were arrested in idaho that were allegedly going to storm a pride parade white supremacist residents of sioux falls south dakota also an incident in alabama today no gunfire but somebody tried to break into a school had about 38 students in it fortunately the students were not at all harmed so it's real it's happening now going to age 21 to purchase in the house bill is progress however to me it's not good enough follow the science the human brain is not fully developed until age 25. impulse control is the part
006that is not fully developed think about that ask your friendly local psychologist or psychiatrist or google brain development as of this writing there is not a written senate bill based on past experience they will not be acting on saving lives soon i have little confidence the senate members most of whom are beholden to the nra will act favorably on anything comprehensive like you i've been spending time thinking about what i can do to make a difference and that's why i'm here today we are not helpless we do not have to accept the current situation we have the power to speak up and act responsibly to make change i realize the decisions on gun laws happen further up the political food chain from you folks but since all politics is local we should start here i'm
007not anti-gun i just want to save lives i put together a plan there are 12 parts to it plus some commentaries i'll leave it with bev chase at the end of this discussion i'm going to leave you a copy i'm not expecting you to do anything today except promise me you will read it and at a future public meeting soon i hope discuss the parts you support and obviously add your own ideas further i hope you will adopt a resolution outlining the specific points you support and then send them to the legislature the governor and yes even our congressional representatives asking them to act on your and therefore our behalf to protect our lives and increase gun safety speaking up and acting responsibly by the way may also have a positive impact on teen suicide
008gun violence has gone up here we are not immune we've been lucky so far it's not a matter of if a mass murder will be attempted here it's when if comprehensive action doesn't happen soon the phrase life liberty and pursuit of happiness enshrined in the declaration of independence will become a lie as local elected officials in the largest county city and school district in our state you are our leaders i'm hoping you will rise to that occasion and take action godspeed and thank you thank you thank you next uh chad the ship please hello my name is chad bishop i live at 7405 south valencia drive here in sioux falls i'm representing myself given the content of the previous speaker i'd like to bring up one topic in addition to what i published here um
009we served at for 11 years at all city elementary 17 commitment years for those of you who know what that means and i had approached the principal there at the time volunteered as a sentinel volunteered to go through since i was in the school district and in the building every week volunteered to go through the training and peer volunteered to do whatever was necessary to help address this issue and this district shut it down the principal there said chad i would absolutely trust you in my school i will support you in this from our written statement in multiple previous public input statements to this body requests have been made to have this board through its membership and the associated school boards of south dakota disassociate itself from the national school board association by exercising its
010vote and if necessary the withholding of its dues especially if they are paid with taxpayer funds these requests have been made specifically in response to the nsba's letter to the president of the united states on september 29th of last year where it was suggested that the parents be pursued by the federal executive in the same manner as domestic terrorists on may 23 of the same date as the same date as my last statement to this body on the subject the texas association of school boards announced its end of its membership in the nsba the press release said the following tasb has been actively monitored as nsba efforts to rebuild trust following the release of the september 29 letter to the biden administration on monday may 23 the tasb board of directors met to discuss the
011report which discloses new details about the development of the nsba september 29th letter and have decided to lead leave the national group there's a few more paragraphs there which might interest you it is my request that this body moved through its membership and the associated school boards of south dakota and withholding any related dues to disassociate from the nsba my second topic or third i guess as you know i expressed concern last september when ibram x kennedy's anti-racist baby was being read to elementary school-aged children in sioux falls public schools i was told that critical race theory is not taught in the nf the sfsd however i'm starting to wonder if is being taught to teachers and then put into practice last summer we took notice when the nea adopted as modified new business item
01239 last summer i'll just read items a and b here [Music] and publicize through existing channels information already available on critical race theory what it is what it is not have a team of staffers and members who want to learn more to fight back against anti-crt rhetoric and share information with other nea members as well as their community members b provide an already created in-depth study that critiques empire white supremacy anti-blackness anti-indigeneity racism patriarchy cis heteropatriarchy capitalism ableism anthropocentrism and other forms of power and oppression at the intersections of our society and if we and that we oppose attempts to ban critical race theory and or the 1619 project oh boy so i have questions about continuing education credits specifically are how they're approved for teachers in the sioux falls school district specifically we have
013taken notice of the credits being offered at the sdea summer academy and we are wondering if they will comply with the governor's executive order thank you for your time thank you chad moving on to approval of the agenda do i have a motion to approve so second a motion second all those in favor signify by saying i i oppose incent the agenda is approved on to the good news report good evening i am here to just give you a preview to the next two things that will be happening at tonight's meeting um we will have uh erica palladino hazlitt from whittier middle school sharing about the school spotlight coming up as our second part of the good news report but first we are excited to make an announcement here tonight and i will have dr
014staphum you want to come to the podium here or would you like there and we have some friends among us that we also would like to invite toward the front of the room so we have jared johnson ceo and president of pepper entertainment and annalisa mckelvey is in the marketing department at pepper entertainment as well as colin chose i get that right awesome colin chose is the solution sales leader at a and b business solutions and they have been great partners with us and we're excited to make an announcement here so i will turn it over to dr steven for that i would also add that allison strzok is here from our sioux falls education foundation and really why we want to announce this tonight is this is just a great example in our community
015of how so many people are willing to come together for the benefit of our students and to provide a new opportunity so and i suppose about a year ago i had talked with dr perkins who oversees our fine arts classes and said i'd love to see guitar started in our high schools i was at another meeting with colin and dennis anderson with a b business who knew someone from pepper entertainment so would you please stand so that we can recognize you and come on up why don't you both come on up as well and so um we started to talk about the possibilities and pepper entertainment was interested in supporting the students of sioux falls as a former lincoln graduate and we started to think about what's possible the same time dr perkins sent out
016a survey with our students they were interested in an opportunity there's band there's choir there's orchestra but some of our students would like a music opportunity that maybe aren't part of those things or interested in another instrument one that is a very useful instrument so then i was at a basketball game and heard the pep band next to me at lincoln high and there was this incredible guitar player named jack simpson who provided a little music coming in i think the jazz field was kind of a nice way to start a board meeting maybe we need to do that every board meeting um and about that same time we also had a lovely donation to our district that jack is holding which is a signed guitar from john bon jovi so all things came together
017with a bunch of people who want to support our students and i believe now we have how many students signed up 145 kids signed up for guitar for the first time ever next fall and so we thought tonight would be a great opportunity to celebrate this new partnership do you want to say just a few words about what you're planning to do from pepper of course um thank you it's great to be here and to get this kind of launch tonight and um you know as far as pepper goes we've been we've been looking for a charitable component that we would actually bring in-house and and we just hadn't quite found the right partnership and obviously with we got a little distracted with you know getting back to live music so uh when my business
018partner dennis anderson had brought this to me and said hey can you help you know what's your thoughts on this i immediately knew that this would probably be a great uh partnership to launch what we're now in the process of doing is launching a new national foundation um so our our pledge to the amped up guitar program in addition to just supporting it obviously pepper is going to donate a dollar for every ticket sold starting immediately for all sioux falls concerts through 2023 um we're gonna help hopefully support the sustainability of it get it launched um i my guess is that we'll probably have this go on for quite a while past 2023 but for the immediate launch of it that is what we have pledged to do additionally we're going to also try to
019get some of our national touring shows that are in the market coordinated to either do school visits or will create some cool you know on-site type things that they can come out and maybe be a promoter for a day or you know do all kinds of different stuff to try to encourage them to use music as a positive outlet um and chase their dreams of playing guitar so we're very humbled by the partnership and we're very excited to to help get this off the ground so many careers at launch and from being a superstar who is generous to a school district to video setting up a stage actually playing the instruments promoting graphics so many things that we hope to launch and just more opportunities for our students right here in sioux falls now there's
020been one little change in this partnership and jack was going to be tutoring kids in guitar next year but lo and behold help me get this right jack i believe he is one of 10 students in the world to be invited to attend interlaken next year if you know about that that is a big deal and so jack is going to spend his year at that school pursuing his dream but he is able to do that because jack has learned how to play the guitar along the way and so we thought it would be fun to feature him just for a few minutes tonight to give us a taste of what our students are capable of and what we may be able to launch for many many other students so with that jack take it
021away [Music] uh [Music] foreign [Music] do [Music] nicely done shortest concert maybe the best we've heard at a board meeting jack can also be uh listened to locally jack what group is it that you perform with um games probably once or twice a month um i headline my own gas quartets and then our wine gardens um everyone smiled with the vampire quartet with spears anywhere there's jazz happening jack may be there thank you for being with us thanks to all the partners for helping this come together and to our foundation who will help us with the funds so we appreciate everybody's partnership thanks for coming tonight i don't know how eric's feeling about following up after that it's a pretty pretty difficult uh follow-up to do but we invite erica palladino hazlitt from whittier middle
022school to the podium to share a little bit about her school and what makes it special at whittier middle school yeah that's kind of a hard act to follow jack that's super cool nice job well i'm erica palladino i'm the principal at whittier middle school and this is going to start my fourth year that i have been there i don't have a powerpoint for you today but i have a lot of fun facts and i think that's kind of important to know these things are important to know about whittier so whittier actually will have its 100th year anniversary this year for their building and i want you to know that over a hundred years ago students were bussed by covered wagon too whittier todd i thought you might like that like they're still busing today
023and a hundred years ago um other really important things to know about our building is it houses about 750 students that's new this year um in the past wheat years had about a thousand but with the opening of ben rifle we decreased you know in anywhere between 200 and 250 students with that being said we're about 72 percent diverse about 73 economically disadvantaged and about 30 percent of our students speak english as a second language i give you that information because some of the facts that i'll share with you are specific to some of the opportunities that we get to provide our students that are unique to whittier and whittier gets a lot of press lately good press um we do a lot of things at whittier that are really good for kids but the
024things i'm going to outline are things that maybe you wouldn't have heard about before that we do in our building so last year we started what we call camp wolverine and we took about 20 to 30 of our students who who weren't great attenders and we felt like maybe just didn't have connections into our building and we started a program that is run by our teachers and we take them all over the community we introduce them to community uh providers we take them to college campuses we take them and give them experiences they may not have had before because when you think about our economically disadvantaged percentage they might not go out to eat very often so we'll take them out to eat they learn how to order we take them to the sculpture walk
025we do all sorts of things with them to connect them to our community and to our teachers in that building and one of the important stats that we showed after last year was that in an exit survey from our students they all wanted to continue to meet with that same group of students throughout the year we started a soccer club last year this year it's not as big a deal because it's actually going to be a sport in middle school but at one point we had about 150 students involved in that soccer club and then we started last year athletic outreach and this is for our students not all of our students have the opportunity to play at the pentagon or to play for the cyclones but they do have the opportunity to be able
026to walk to a school that's near them and we started that program without reaching into the elementary schools and we thought that was a really good idea but it turned out to not be a great idea they all wanted to come to whittier and so this year we've averaged about 20 to 30 students in that program and what we do is we provide coaches for our students and then during the summer they come twice a week and they can participate in whatever sport they want but in a structured environment so they might do some drills they might do some controlled scrimmages last year we had two kits on the average and i said we just kind of have to hang in there until it starts to build itself and this year like i've said we've
027averaged about 20 to 30 students i think the other important thing to know about whittier is probably the wittier way and many of you have heard about this but this is the language that we use at whittier and if you talk to students after they've graduated from high school you talk to the principals at washington they will talk to you about the culture of the whittier way and i could go over all five of those aspects with you but i won't what i would do is i would invite you to come to whittier and hear that language in action because you will hear it from students in the hallway you'll hear students telling teachers to make sure that they represent the whittier way students telling students and teachers telling students whittier has been like i
028said around for a very long time but the culture that is there is still represented very well today do you guys have any questions for me no but thank you and yeah you did great i know you're already after jack but thank you to everybody at whittier for all you do and you know reaching out to those students especially who have different needs maybe than some of our other buildings and making sure that they have what they need to be successful students we greatly appreciate that eric and team thank you we'll move on now to our conflicts of interest no new conflicts were presented so we'll move on to the consent agenda items nine a through f it looks like um a i'm sorry that's a consent that's just a through e do i have
029a motion to approve so moved take it i have a motion second all those favors signify by saying aye aye close same sign onto item f uh which is the claim to stanford health care items one and two do i have a motion to approve so moved very good promotion second all those in favor signify by saying aye opposed name sign those are approved onto the reports of the superintendent excellent i also am glad that i did not have to follow back i guess she didn't have that same ability but i'm glad i did this evening we bring forward to you the report of the axle park middle school and high school placement programs and this is a board update and the purpose of this report is to go through and update the board on
030the work that has been completed to evaluate and then improve upon the services that we provide over at the axle park placement programs as we look at the district priorities this hits each one of the five areas or priorities that we have listed for our district priorities in the explanation of this uh we went through with this and and there's been multiple steps that have been taken to improve the services that we have for our students in our placement programs and a few years back if you recall we went through the same process with our joe foss programming and provided improved services there for those students who were earning an education at that location then we went through and revised many of the things that we had provided as far as the placement programming at
031our elementary program which is the horse mann center and now in spring of 2020 we started that same type of a process with the axda park programming and went through and established our committees to do that we broke it down into a few different phases so the first phase of this was really we started with two committees 17 high school individuals representing the high schools and then middle school committee as well of 17 individual members and the whole process of this was just to go through and identify those components that we would truly need to benefit our students and those students who would be attending those programs we did part of that in visiting similar programs we took a large group of individuals down to lincoln public schools and visited a program they had there
032and then there's some individuals that went to other additional programs but really did some review of some other programs and really when we were done with that whole process with the two committees we came up with five areas there were of significance that we had identified and wanted to go through and make changes to one of those was the mental health and counseling supports and that's something that we've obviously heard a lot about over the last several years and that's one of the key things that that rose to the top and absolutely to the very top of the programming needs at the axle park placement programs a structured day was another piece of that that we looked at additional elective options and i'll talk about each one of these a little bit more coming up
033and then supports for the classroom uh the classroom itself and the teachers and then a better defined referral and integra reintegration process for those students and so this information really allowed us to be able to set that up to how we were going going to go through to give our staff and our students those resources to be able to meet their needs the second phase of this we really then started to implement we identified the needs and we started to go through and look for those partnerships or how we're going to resolve those needs so the first part we reached out to average behavioral health and they've been outstanding partners with the sioux falls school district and once again they stepped up and provided services and they're providing interns and a supervisor that work over
034at the axle park program and provide some of those mental health two mental health therapists that are doing internships and then a supervisor and they're there three partial days a week and it provides student services our services to our students in mental health therapy we also added a school psychologist and we've seen a change in a lot of our school psychologists you saw through the budgetary process that we're trying to hire some of those to go through and work more directly with our students in helping them with mental health with some of those planning how do we gain resources we also added a school social worker be a little different social worker job description they're going to go in and actually work with the students on a daily basis with social skills and help in
035that avenue and then the school counselor many of the duties of the school council be slightly refined so they're working more directly with students in those classrooms and the counseling services so that was the area that we went forward to address that mental health component the second part of that was our the implementation this we'll see part of those changes predominance of them in the 22-23 school year as you realize with that proposed budget many of those items were included in that and be ratified later this summer some of those programming components started a little bit earlier this year especially the avera component they wanted to get into the school be able to start to see what was working and what may not work so they'd be better prepared for the fall the third part
036of that and we looked at some of those additional supports and processes and these changes were addressed through the committee work and the administration meetings and then teacher feedback as we went through that whole committee meetings the reintegration process we saw this be a significant factor with our horseman program how do we go through and help those students to improve in certain areas so they can reintegrate back into the traditional school and school setting and so we went through to address part of that the referral process to the school and that's still in process many of these will be looked at and reviewed throughout this next school year additional classes being offered because we want to make sure there's going to be some programming changes as you see the additional programming and class changes part
037of that goes with the electives that they may have and part of that will go with the programming so the students start to become familiar with goal setting and the process of how do they achieve some of those goals how do they meet together in group assemblies and just some of those general processes that they will utilize over at the axle park programming we combined several classes this really helped us in utilizing or better utilizing our teacher fte and especially some of the certifications of our teachers so that a math teacher wasn't just involved in one program we could utilize them across several programs and not have to hire as many in specialized areas that allowed us to also help with some of those additional programming classes offered it helped the teachers also to be
038able to specialize within this one subject area and not have to move so many different programs additional busing supports were also added in there we do provide busing for our middle school students and the majority of our high school students but not all of the high school students especially the regular education 9th and 10th graders another part of that was the professional development training for all staff and we truly tried with the all and we have the representation here of the administration uh that worked over at the axle park building or works over at the axle park building with rana copely and and tyler engelson and mitch shafer and so really they are going through this part of it right now with the training for all staff and we include in that with the eas
039and the support behavior support staff our clerical staff but all staff that are located over there at the axle park building with those programs to be involved in that training we increase the support staff with the behavior facilitators and ea time especially on that ea time to be able to ride the buses to make sure their safety and security on those buses at all times and then as i said earlier the mental health supports we increased the number of electives the area that we heard the most on and that was art and we added through that budgetary process and the proposed budget a 0.5 fte for art classes to be able to maintain that interest in the area of art and then increase safety measures we also included in we had moved a couple years
040ago the ged programming over to the akstel park site so we could utilize that ged program because that will meet the needs of some of the students that are involved there so life circumstances may be hindered them in some way they can go through and complete that ged or they can better utilize the the offerings of the joe boss program and then additional changes will be made as we go through and and look at these uh how these supports are being implemented and and what success they are having the fourth phase of that is truly that staff training and program alignment we did go through in december 16th and informed all staff we had several of the axle park staff on the committees with the middle school and high school but we went through with
041all staff and had all staff meeting to inform them of the changes and their participation that will start to become a reality as they go through the training this year and then through the summer and next year uh the the leadership team over there that i'd introduced really went through then and set up those committees and started to conduct some of that actual our training there at axa park in march of 2022 we contracted also with a group to come through and do a review of our program to give us some additional input they are also working through a virtual training that they completed in april 21st with our axle park staff to bring them up to date and then are going to be the phases that we have during the summer now so the
042administration will go through training in june 14th and 15th and then we'll have the entire staff with a two-day training august 9th and 10th for that professional development a big part of that is really to have all staff on the same page so we have that consistency throughout the entire program and then in august those individuals we had come back in to do the review they will send individuals through that first week of school just to make sure that it's appropriately implemented and they'll help if there's any staff questions and to be able to provide that extra support then they'll have two different coaching sessions where they'll come throughout the school year and just help our staff to make sure that we implement that with fidelity so the committee participation in that the axle park
043placement programs review committee was comprised of 17 high school and 17 middle school members and we represented administration central administration contract employees counselors teachers and success coordinators within those committees in the summary the committee's reviewed the programming at the current axle park placement programs and added additional supports in the areas of student mental health and well-being programming busing services safety protocols educational opportunities and structure the changes will be implemented during the 22-23 school year and will be reviewed during the year to assess the effectiveness of each of the changes and to determine additional changes are needed the changes are intended to meet the needs of our district priorities in closing our administrative recommendation is to acknowledge the report on the work completed by the committees that reviewed the axle park high school and middle school
044placement programs and resulting dramatic improvements i stand by for questions i just want to acknowledge i attended the leaders of tomorrow graduation uh dr steven dr hold officer as well and it i was reminded by you dr knoll that was it two years ago when we decided to change course and leave contract we had originally for the joe foss programs and go this route and i think we're seeing the fruits of that change and obviously we still need to improve in some areas but i like that we're being diligent and reworking and looking at things what are needed for success for our students at these schools and making sure that we give them the supports they need so they may be successful and so much of that is based on the needs of the students
045being able to help them to be connected and i think we saw that with that leadership training that those students went through i like the concept you're trying to feed them back to their home school that can be done that soon saw some great value in that with our elementary students and getting them back in otherwise they stay in some of those programs throughout their entire k-12 career and we want to make sure that they have that great opportunity of being in their home attendance centers so no other questions or comments do i have a motion to acknowledge the accidental park middle school and high school programs update don't move second a motion in a second all those in favor signify by saying i i of course same sign that is acknowledged anything else for
046the good of the board seeing none do i have a motion to a journey so moved second question in a second all those in favor of adjournment signify saying aye aye for the same sign we are adjourned thank you you