001please rise and join us the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all I get a motion second all those in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed same sign that motion passes and we have one person wishing to address the board on a non-agenda item um Chad I'm gonna read my statement get yourself ready um the board sets aside a portion of each meeting agenda to hear from community members on items of general interest or concern as well as regular agenda items comments are limited to five minutes unless more than three people signed up then the group is limited to 15 minutes total and we'll let you know when you have one minute remaining so you can wrap up
002your comments and 30 seconds we've got a new handy dandy sign um if multiple people are attending to speak on one topic we encourage you to coordinate your comments when you're called to the podium please identify yourself your address and the organization you represent for the record of the meeting if you have any visual aids or handouts please see a member of our Communications team prior to the meeting they will help you distribute information and approve any item to be shown for public viewing the board does not take any type does not take comments during this time on any Personnel matters and all meeting attendees are expected to treat others with respect and civility the board will not respond to individual comments and staff may be requested to follow up as needed following the meeting
003thank you for coming and tonight we will welcome Chad it's our first guest thank you my name is Chad Bishop I love it 7405 South Valencia Drive here in Sioux Falls so I'm going to break my rule and not have something pre-written but um what prompted um this is I saw a representative Linda Duba make a comment on the turnover in hiring with teachers and how discouraged teachers are with respect to the publicization of the classroom and difficulty that they're having and doing what they feel is necessary and then also keeping parents happy and so that's been the gist of a lot of the discussion in my request to have you Levy your relationship with the associated School Board to South Dakota and congratulations on your directorship there Mr Moran and um would like to
004see and the gist of it is you know there obviously is this political tension there's this this miscommunication or this failure and to communicate between parents and board members and teachers and administrative staff and so um I saw that you did hire 200 teachers for the coming year so that's a big task I understand how tough that could be and so as these teachers come in and you know they're newly out of school I can I sympathize I've spent several hundred hours in the classroom in this District at all City Elementary as a parent there and so I love the teachers I have some idea what they go through day to day and don't want to make their lives harder and um I can I can see how the political tension Across the Nation and
005the things that were happening specifically in Virginia last year that led to the letter from the nspa um how that could happen right we don't necessarily have that problem here but you do have that conflict and so there's parents like me who I came and I spoke to this body to address the reading of anti-racist baby in the classroom without parents present without contacts being presented and the idea that you have some teachers that might take it upon themselves to pursue anti-racism in the classroom I see it as not holding upholding ideas with which that I grew up that I grew up with I see it as the opposite of Martin Luther's dream Martin Luther King's dream excuse me Martin Luther King Jr stream and so um what I would encourage you to do is
006I'll repeat something that I've said before I I don't know how we do it I don't know what it looks like but at some point in the administration the school board parents have to come together and talk about what these terms mean that everybody's throwing around right I think we covered critical race Theory and I've been told it's not taught in the district but I also understand there's a college level course what we see is we think we see it being practiced in the district the Praxis is occurring we still use some of these other words like social emotional learning and what's more um gives us a little more concerned as transformative social motion learning that transformative word being a key watchword for those of us that have followed What Marxist would like to do
007in the country and have done worldwide and so you know not going off the rails here and thinking these things are crazy but you have CRT you have SEL you have Dei you have these words that people are concerned about and there may be nothing to be concerned about here everything may be above board everybody has the best of intentions we give each other the benefit of the doubt and um we proceed but we have seen other things in other parts of the country where these things have been done where these policies have been pursued and it looks very different and two years ago in the summer we saw rage violence we did see the hammer and sickle flying in the street at Banner some of these the violence occurred underneath and it does concern
008us you know so when I say us concerns me so you have parents who are concerned I'm one of those you have teachers who are experiencing difficulty and don't necessarily want that but how do you resolve it so I'm asking again I don't have a solution that I'm proposing I'm asking that you figure out some way have a meaningful discussion you know I know there's um concerned about the way that the governor has gone about in the social studies curriculum right removing teachers and putting people she thinks to come up with something that they can mandate that you're going to teach and maybe that's one route but there's other things that are a little more amorphous and hard for the average person to follow you have to spend a little time digging into but we
009come to some understanding between all of us who care about our kids future and the future of our community and how we go about resolving what these words mean in our community what we're going to do what we're not going to do and we have that debate because right now it's just kind of a black box to all of us those of us that have concern that are outside of the administration and outside of the school board we see these things they concern it concern us we see it being done elsewhere it concerns us um but I would encourage that dialogue thank you all right we don't have any persons wishing to dress the school board on agenda items so we'll move on to approval of agenda can I get a motion in a second
010please some of like all those in favor signify by saying aye aye aye opposed same sign that motion passes and on to the good news report Dan or me just save up yes well tonight we have a distinguished guest with us we have Wade pogony who is the executive director of the associated school boards of South Dakota and Wade is joining us because one of our very own school board members past president Cynthia Mickelson has received a very distinguished honor and Wade is here to present that to her in person so Wade I'll ask you to come to the podium thank you Dr stabham and members of the board it's great to be here it's an honor to be here and uh last week at our convention we have a school board and ministers convention
011we announced that Cynthia Mickelson was going to receive and was honored as the 2002 outstanding School Board member of the year and so of all the 850 school board members that we have in our state Cynthia was was selected as the top person and Cynthia this this award is you when I think about the criteria for this award about board members who are dedicated and hard-working and tenacious cares about kids leads their school board leads their District that describes you it really does someone like you who has been in a leadership position to undergo a superintendent search to implement a 190 million dollar bond to schools that have been been built the entire boundary every change issue that folks have been through it takes a tenacious leader it takes someone who's really dedicated to do
012that and and this is what this award is about it's about every person and so it's great because I I I I know you and uh we've known each other for many years and it's it's good to see that you get uh honored for something like this and I know what Cynthia will say though she'll say well this is a team effort this is about all of us working together and it is this award is also an example of the Sioux Falls School Board of all the things that you folks have been through all the Great accomplishments you've had but it also takes a leader to get you through that it takes someone who will take us through all the steps that it takes to accomplish those tasks so Cynthia Mickelson it is my honor
013to present to you the 2002 outstanding School Board member of the Year congratulations foreign thank you Wade yes please I just want to thank I think I was nominated by Dr Steven and Kate maybe you have heard a few people so thank you very much for the nomination but as Wade said all we have accomplished is the board has truly been all of our work so I appreciate you recognizing me and nominating me but thank you for being such great teammates and getting you accomplishing we have a lot more to do so thank you for your leadership thank you well thank you I'm just going to say thank you again to Wade for making the trip and being with us tonight and we have a second part to our good news report this evening many
014people think of Washington High School as the flagship of the Sioux Falls School District it being one of the most iconic buildings downtown is the original building and now doing very well on the Eastern side of Sioux Falls and so in our school Spotlight tonight Carrie papke is the principal there and she is joining Jorgensen they're going to share a little bit about the students and the happenings and the staff at Washington that make it such a great place so we'll invite them to do so well thank you and good evening we are excited to share some great things happening at Washington as Deanne alluded to Washington High School the original Washington High School was established in 1908 and was located downtown and is now the Washington Pavilion current Washington High School is located in
015the northeastern portion of Sioux Falls and serves most of Eastern Sioux Falls if you know anything about Washington you know that it is founded in a rich history of tradition and excellence and speaking of tradition one thing that we are very excited for this year it is our 100 year anniversary of orange letter days which is Washington High School's homecoming we have a fun-filled week of activities for our students as well as our alumni and we hope to welcome them home on Thursday evening with our variety show and coordination we hope they come out to the football game on Friday night maybe do a little tailgating and cheer on our Warriors as we take on the Watertown arrows and then we are excited to be partnering with the Pavilion on Saturday morning where we are
016going to offer an opportunity for alumni to gather maybe have a little breakfast and do a tour of alumni hall we're also going to offer that same opportunity at the current Washington High School as we have a lot of fun exciting new additions going on to our building this year at Washington Warrior Nation will consist of approximately 1900 students and that number is growing we have 124 amazing teachers and 68 fantastic support staff at Washington we are Guided by the four core values in circling our Circle of Courage Mastery belonging Independence and generosity and as such we have two main goals for our students we want them to get involved and we want them to graduate in four years with a rigorous course of studies well all of our four core values are of equal
017importance we recognize and believe that it all starts with that sense of belonging getting involved Fosters and accelerates the cultural belonging that we strive for at Washington we know that when kids get involved they get connected to each other and they get connected to our building and ultimately then our community we know that students through those relationships tend to step outside their comfort zones and meet new people and acquire those skills that we know that they are going to need for adult life at Washington High School we do have a diverse student body that is filled with a multitude of talents and activities and so we are proud of the fact that we offer over 80 different clubs and activities for our students and we challenge them that they still come to us saying that
018they don't have an activity of interest that they can always start a new one and they rise to the occasion because on average we add about four to five new clubs each year we're also as you guys I'm sure know excited to be adding girls softball this spring so go Warriors the other goal that we have at Washington is we want our students to challenge themselves with a rigorous course of studies when they leave us in those four short years we want them to leave us not only with those positive memories and friendships but also a quality education we know that when students have the courage to take risks and challenge themselves that they are capable of great things and in the last few years we've had some students achieving some incredible things on the
019national level for the past two years we have graduated U.S presidential Scholars a national poetry out loud Champion as well as two recipients of the quest Bridge scholarship our wall that is on uh yeah you want to go back Eddie our wall which I'm not sure if you've seen if you've come into Washington is a wall full of banners of different colleges and youth universities which we agree or would say that is a testament to the quality of Education that our students not only receive at Washington but in the Sioux Falls School District and we are proud of that fact this last year as alluded to earlier our kids have gone through a lot of trials and tribulations in the last couple years and so one thing that we have implemented at Washington that we
020did last year as a pilot is what we call Warrior halftime so Warrior halftime is housed in the middle of our day where there's traditionally the lunch and study time it is a time where our students have access to all of their teachers and all of their teachers have access to them and in doing so we're able to provide that academic support as well as at times that necessary enrichment opportunities for our kids to succeed it's also a great time for our kids to decompress and further that socialization and connecting with each other our kids have access to the library where we've seen that they have formed study groups sometimes they're just looking for a quiet place to study and and most often they just want a place outside of maybe the lunchroom to connect
021and socialize with their peers in addition taken after our good old elementary schools we have also opened up our gym and it's a great time for our kids to be able to work off some of that energy move their bodies and maybe participate in a Wicked Game of lightning we've seen a lot of great success with it and we were able to decrease our failures from the previous year by over 43 percent so we are looking forward to that programming that we're doing and building upon it and with that being said we're looking forward to another great year at Washington High School we'll be kicking it off this Thursday with Warrior day questions I don't necessarily have any questions but just a reflection you used to have so many great things going on and foundationally
022what stands out is the culture you've built there and that starts with your Circle of Courage and it just your coaches your teachers your Administration all seem to have kind of that foundational piece to the culture of the values of Washington High School so when you spoke today it just really resonated and I just want to draw out that Jamie Noel helped with getting those values out there I think in his PhD work and it just is um impressive how that has been carried down through the years and I hear that from so many parents as well that their coaches like I said your coaches read that the teacher's doing it really has an impact on your students thank you yeah the warrior halftime because I think it's so true it's not just about academics
023sometimes it is just needing to sit in a quiet place or it's needing to move and if you don't have opportunity to access those um things outside of the school day it's a great opportunity to be able to you know get yourself energized for the rest of your day or make a plan or whatever it might be so I think that's an awesome new thing to implement and the success obviously has has shown up for you too as well um and so I look forward to hearing more about the success of it this year and how it grows with more students or with more activities or things that students maybe recommend that would really be helpful to them in their learning absolutely I'm just glad to see Washington was able to succeed without the loss
024of my experience I'd say this you know down at the Old Washington that was there three years and we started this whole Community thing when they open the doors everybody gets to come everybody's welcome and everybody's somebody and that's that's been kind of I think the in my opinion the most important thing in my years at Washington High School and I know that these two will keep it going and I'm excited for them and as I am for every School Sioux Falls I got to be careful it's in good hands I mentored both [Laughter] story I think once a warrior always a warrior right Mark well I'm trying to lose a little back in Oregon all right we didn't have any new conflicts of interest this month or this um for this meeting so we'll
025move on to the approval of the consent agenda can I get a motion on the second please second all those in favor signify by saying aye aye aye post same sign that motion passes and we have supplemental consent agenda item 10A approval of claims to Stanford health I get a motion and a second please so moved second all those in favor signify by saying aye aye aye opposed same sign that passes with one abstention from board member writer all right on to the reports of the superintendent tonight we have two reports the first one is on professional development with an update from Sarah Claussen on the many many things that have been happening over the last few months and then we will follow that with a staffing update from Becky Dorman great good to see
026you all again has it been so long since I was here last time um as Dr seba mentioned we are in the throes of it in August in staff development here are just a few of the groups that we provide development for so everybody feels like they have the tools they need to do their job the very best um summer my kids as coaches always tell me that off season is when they develop and get to be better athletes and I really feel like summer is when our staff has a chance to be able to take advantage of different opportunities to hone their craft and just be really better rest also and just be better at what they what they do so well already and here are just a few of the things that we've
027offered throughout the summer for our staff to take advantage of all of which filter right into our district priorities this week next week this week we started with administrators back to school focus training um these trainings look similar year to year we adjust them as they go but it's to make sure that all of our new leaders in the district have the same Focus as what we've had before so everybody feels ready to start the year um and knows what what they need to be doing this year I know Becky's coming to tell us a little more we've had 220 new teachers as of when we pulled this data 94 of them were new to teaching however I do know that that number changes every day as we fill positions so her number probably is
028going to be a little different than this one as I stated earlier every department needs different tools to be able to do their job well so here are just some of the items that we focused on in different groups clear goal need a plethora of different tools to be able to do their job in different areas EAS coming in tomorrow and they get some choices of what they'll be able to attend in order to fill what they need to be able to do their jobs as well they work with many different students and need many different trainings same with Early Childhood trying to keep that continuity between early childhood and then what happens in elementary moving up they have some specific and PBIS and how that looks different in early childhood compared to Elementary and
029then up middle school high school um Elementary had the opportunity to attend some engagement training that a secondary uh already had attended so now that continuity is there as well and then keeping with mtss and PBIS for the entire District as well you'll see some of the same themes only things that are a little different maybe in middle school and high school as they go through curriculum adaptions they might need some specific training as well in whatever curriculum they are choosing to adopt in those areas and then like I said before we have so many different groups and each of these groups has a wonderful person in charge of helping coordinate their department so they are well ready for the beginning of school and then when I just had to throw in here because this
030one just happened last week we hosted the Inspire education conference formerly known as the summer symposium uh it was a really wonderful two days if I say so myself but I got some really good feedback as well uh we hadn't had it for two years because of covid and all the things we were able to bring in 10 National Speakers and authors to pour into our staff on all of these different topics um a few more photos and then I pulled some quotes from the feedback that I wanted to share with you I only pulled aside there were like 50. just so you know I did pare it down I hope to be back next year this was affirming to what district expectations are or should be for us teachers and helping us hone our
031skills to be the best that we can be this was the first Inspire conference I've attended and it was fabulous this rejuvenated my passion has given me new tools and has made me reflect as an educator on my practices wow the quality of speakers was National Conference level the topics were pertinent to our current reality thanks for providing this opportunity I thought this conference was great the inspiration gave me a jump start to the year and really got me thinking deeper into what I do in the classroom and then the final one the Inspire conference reaffirmed my decision to move from rural Minnesota back to the Sioux Falls Area this kind of opportunity wasn't easily available for me in my previous employment and opportunities to attend professional development events like this is one of the
032reasons why I switched to the Sioux Falls School Districts any any questions I just would like to uh recognize how much more specific type of trainings there are now that seem like when I first joined the board and it really listening to our staff and making those adjustments and making sure that each area has that training that they need or at lithium so thank you for doing that and making these options within the district I think it will help by those comments alone it just sounds like people are feeling really engaged and listened to and ready to start I agree that there's um like you mentioned every role kind of has a certain skill set or a certain knowledge base that's needed and so by being able to differentiate and really Target those groups it
033makes them feel like it's meaningful for them to be there and that the information is needed versus kind of a one-size-fits all I know it's a lot more work it's a lot more people to get involved in rooms to reserve and dates to you know all that stuff but I think the bang for your buck is definitely worth it especially based on your feedback but I think even just making sure that we all those people who are the who are serving our students and who are serving our parents when they come into the office or whatever it might be we want them to be confident we want them to be knowledgeable and so these are the ways that we're going to get them to that skill level so I'm exciting to see the the changes
034and the opportunities that they've had okay thank you thank you very much all right can I get a motion to approve the professional development update I moved second any further discussion all those in favor signify by saying aye aye post same sign okay motion passes and on to the Staffing update Becky it truly feels like I was just up here so fast all right well I am here to present the fall 2022 staff update um we're welcoming several hundred new staff to our district they're all bringing their best to our classrooms this fall and it's exciting for us we're wrapping up our teacher hiring and we're going strong on our support staff coaching and substitute teacher hiring so this report is going to touch on a little bit of everything that has to do with
035hiring teachers and classified staff as of when I pulled the data last week the end of the week we've hired 220 teachers a little exciting tidbit is that 19 of those teachers were former teachers they worked for us left for a bit and now they're back so this is the first year that we've tracked that little piece of data so we're going to continue to do that because that's kind of a fun thing to keep track of the ironic thing is that we are one teacher ahead of last year and I know that we are still hiring um and I have a feeling by the end of the the day tomorrow we'll see this number just a little bit higher looking back over the previous six years we've hired an average of 154 teachers so
036last year at 219 and this year at 2 20 we are going to see that average increase just over 40 percent of the district's 220 new hires are new to the teaching profession approximately 68 percent of The Hires have less than five years of teaching experience the average years of service of teachers new to the district is just over five years additionally 38 percent of the teachers coming to us this year have master's degrees or greater so we like to see the years of experience staying up there and in addition the Master's level educators I think this is my favorite slide of all um and that's promoting from within um 27 so between last year and this year almost 30 percent of the people we hired had worked in our district in some capacity so
037you can see um on the chart where they came from and then now they're in our classrooms as our leaders this year we experience just a slightly smaller um or slightly small decrease in the number of out-of-state Educators that we employed um this year it was 28 versus 32 percent and then the chart just shows where are these teachers coming from if they're not coming from South Dakota some new locations made the list including um the Philippines Mozambique Oman and Sweden new places for us it's always interesting to see if we can spot some Trends in our teacher hires that come to us with experience from the state of South Dakota so I just did a quick rundown of where they came from and this is the second year that we've closely tracked this data
038so it's going to be interesting to see if we can see any Trends we did have a slight increase in hiring teachers from districts that are very close to us so that'll be interesting to see if that increases or stays the same the district prioritizes a work environment in organizational culture that Fosters employee motivation engagement and belonging with a focus on hiring staff that reflects the diversity of the students in our classrooms fall 2022 welcomed 7.27 ethically diverse teachers from our group of 220 new teachers district-wide our teaching staff just over five percent diverse so you can see we're we're making gains on that number Mark I believe this was the information you were looking for um as of today we have one Elementary open opening no Middle School openings two High School openings and
039five special education I'm particularly happy about the gains that we've made in the special education area if you remember um I believe it was the end of May when we implemented some incentives we were sitting at 25 openings within that time as we were working to fill and get down to five openings we did have three more come about so we've really made some nice gains in our special education Staffing with the incentives that were put in place let's turn and talk just a little bit about teacher resignations I have two years of data the 2021 one and then the 2022 um resignations and the red arrow will point out the 2022 resignations the first thing that I noticed when I looked at this data was um or most interesting to me was those that
040left the profession we hear a lot about the Exodus of teachers from the classroom so that's one thing I keyed in on um when I'm looking at this data and we can see that 19 teachers or 13.67 percent of our total resignations indicated that they were leaving the classroom um another number that sticks out is 55 teachers said they were moving or roughly 40 percent of our resignations were moving I do have a feeling that within that moving um category you'll also find some that yes they moved out of state they do plan to teach maybe they didn't have a teaching job yet when they left us but they I'm sure that they could probably get one um and then we also saw an increase of people that decided to stay home with children or
041family matters I put them in one category and anecdotally I did talk to a couple teachers who stayed home to work in family businesses because they were short on staff so I thought that was an interesting piece you'll notice overall we did have an uptick in resignations this year so something again of course that we're going to continue to track for trending and um when we work on retention pieces we need to see how that bottom line reacts with what we put in place turning to support staff so far we have hired 80 educational assistants specialists in clerical and we still need about 35 more education assistance and specialists in clerical we need 20 custodians 38 coaches or other activity leaders and then one loan food service worker right okay yeah foreign and then of
042course 250 Subs we'll keep working on the subs we like to have that number met by mid to end of October before the cold and flu season hits okay recruitment this is this is the work behind all those numbers um having the run down there I put the Recruitment and Retention specialist at the top um we gained that position at the end of last summer and that position has been a game changer for us the way they are able to farm or cultivate applications just because we have someone that's dedicated and able to do that they've become the face the name and the friendly voice to the Sioux Falls School District when someone's looking for a job so um our recruitment retention specialist is Kate de Pascal and she is outstanding we've also implemented new
043teacher surveys to help us once we do an orientation once they go through an application process figure out what we need to change up or what are we doing that's good um we also Dr Boyson and I met with new teachers at the end of the year also to see what type of experience that they had and it was overwhelmingly positive so that was that was a great meeting um this year we started student teacher events we did bagels with the boss um I believe we did four meetings of bagels with the boss they got to come in and of course meet the superintendent um they got to meet some curriculum directors and then also talked to instructional coaches about what it's like to be a new teacher in the Sioux Falls school district and
044the supports that you're going to receive when you start your career here in Sioux Falls so that was a lot of fun we also know that with student teachers we have some potential for some real recruitment growth and that's a goal that Dr Boyson and I are going to work on this fall for student teachers we did hiring bonuses for shortage areas and hiring bonuses I can say have made a difference for us in those areas excuse me we also did special education stipends special education was a definitely a shortage area our teachers in special education all received a two thousand dollar stipend and then we also did hiring bonuses toward the end or toward the end of May that hiring bonus was five thousand dollars we also paid that to existing teachers who transferred
045into a special education position for us and we had a number of folks that did that so we were grateful um we're also um fostering our grow your own through our tuition assistance so we are also gaining special education teachers by funding their tuition and then we do the standard things that everybody has to do we do the job fairs in the interview nights um and then when we know we've got some great student teachers we offer those early contracts to make sure that they stick around with us we have the adult paid internship process that Dr nold created and we typically do hire a teacher or two a year from that program so that's been great for us and then of course our teacher pathway program you learned earlier this summer about our first
046teacher pathway graduate she was an early graduate so next year the First full cohort will be coming through the colleges and so I'm excited to see how many of them come back to Sioux Falls everybody always wants to know how many teacher applications you had um this year we had 848 we know that 66 percent of those people live in South Dakota and the average years of experience of our pool is six years and here's a look at applications over time I left for Joy when I saw that we've rebounded um since last year because last year's downward Trend was really concerning so I'm glad it wasn't a trend and it was a one-off we hope and so we're back to status quo you know this helps you notice that our resignations were higher helped
047having some more applications so that helped neutralize that we also noticed in our pool that we have a number of people that want to get into the field of teaching and there is an Avenue for that the South Dakota Department of Education has an alternative certification program and you will see that we have hired this year 23 teachers under alternative certification these individuals come to us with a bachelor's degree in an area other than education they teach for us while they complete 15 credits and take the Press practice Praxis exams they have three years to complete the requirements and then they are issued a professional license we have begun um over the last several years tracking who the number of acceptance and declines it is a a principle has a lot invested by the time
048they recommend somebody for hire so when you get the no it can be pretty crushing so we're very happy to see that our acceptance rate this year has increased um to 85 percent acceptance rate of the jobs that we offer and now it's time to take a look at what we know to be the work ahead as I had mentioned before a teacher turnover is certainly something that we are going to continue to monitor we know that um across all Industries turnover is a concern but of course it's here in education this year we were fortunate that our applicant numbers came in enough to to support the um oh don't start over there we go to support our slight uptick in teacher turnover are growing our own and are promoting that's very exciting for us
049with those special educators are coming on and then also promoting our education assistance to teachers promoting our substitute teachers to teachers it's great I think the district has really done a lot of great things as far as teacher compensation so it's exciting I think that's evidenced by us being able to track attract teachers from our borders all of our work of course is outlined in our district priorities and we're going to continue to do that that work that we need to do in Innovative recruitment I don't know if anybody received the postcard at home today or this weekend but I tell you I was when I came in first thing I did when I got back from our administrators meeting this morning I said did you get any calls today about postcards and they all
050looked at me like yes so I'm like that was a success so yes we did get calls it was immediate feedback so that's great so um and then also in all of this process we just continue to seek the feedback of others to how we can be more Innovative how we can be more accommodating and how we can attract more applicants and retain them so with that that is the end of the Staffing update I ask that you acknowledge my Staffing update and do you have any questions you feel see a difference in that this is a tough question but inequality quality of our applicants I mean are we well that's a that's a a great question um because the quality sometimes it's a little it's difficult because you have to consider that there's a
051whole group of teachers out there that did their student teaching online and we still have you know because we of covet so we have to factor that in um so and then we also have to look at at the end of the year at the end of the next three years with with teacher non-renewals have I noticed anything no I have not um but I'm not in the classrooms day in and day out um I'm grateful for our instructional coaches I think you know they they probably have their their work cut out for them when we do bring in 40 um of the people who have never taught before yeah it's it's tough to jelly be in the classroom for a while and I feel sorry for the ones that haven't had because of covet
052the classroom contact and I'm sure they can get some assistance from the district and it'll be great quick question Becky I know we went over the average years of experience across the district for new hires what is that for purchase our existing teachers and Empires what is that yeah I ran that number last year's I don't have like today's data but last year was like 14 and a half years after two crosses so the nice thing about that is that even if we have teachers who are coming in with maybe a either less experience or a different experience the bonus is is that the rest of our team s around 14 years of experience and nobody wants to see their peer not be successful you know and so we have great um you know whether
053it's the professional learning communities or other professional development or instructional coaches people like that who are ready and available to make sure that the people that we hire are going to be great in our classrooms and well some needs more help than others yes but you could get that from a veteran teacher too you know it's no different than um than that so I think um you know I work in the medical field and we've seen the same thing where you have residents who didn't get the same experience as they would have because of kovid because they were like hey you're a doctor almost here you go you're gonna do this now you know what I mean it's it's the same concept and so as we are hiring people and bringing new people on they
054too have had a different experience in their training and so different isn't always bad um and so you just make you make adaptations and you you make it work and they may have some skills that other people didn't have with technology because that was what they had to use in order to be successful and um and so I think it's it's looking at it kind of at a positive view to say how can we utilize the skills that they have and how can we support them and we're glad that they're here and that they applied and are in the classrooms with our students so exciting stuff lots of new people oh my God you know just take a moment um Becky makes this look incredibly easy and with her presentation the tenacity of our human
055resources department is just absolutely outstanding and I would dare say that districts are size Across the Nation would give anything to have the remaining number of openings that we do right now and quite honestly I would say it's a far better picture than I expected that we may have I also think we all have to be mindful that this is a challenge that's going to be around for a while and as I said earlier today every interaction is an opportunity to talk about what happens in this school district and the way that education is valued in this community is what still is bringing great people to higher to to work in Sioux Falls School District the number one most important thing for a great education for a student is a quality teacher in the front
056of the classroom every single day and so we appreciate the work that you've done and as effortless as she makes this look this is an intense summer of working the onboarding that they're doing the recruitment strategies the cultivating of those student teachers I can't say enough when we saw rooms full of our student teachers coming in to be together and they have that cohort with each other as well as hearing from all the people that make our schools look attractive that pays off when we're here in August now with this few number of openings so thank you Becky and it will be interesting to see the trend everywhere when there are hundreds of openings in many districts right now but we are very very fortunate thank you thank you Becky all right so you know
057the comments can I get a motion a second to approve the Staffing update please second all those in favor signify by saying aye aye aye oppose same sign that motion passes and on to the review revision of a Sioux Falls School District policies regulations correct thanks uh this evening we have three policies and there are regulations up for review revised these policies were previously reviewed by the policy Review Committee and are now up for their approval policy efd this is for the pricing and payment of food service the changes here are to the regulation only and this is to make clear how parents are notified and when they're notified of low account balances uh to clarify when alternative meals will be provided to students and the process Child Nutrition services will use to address negative
058account balances the second policy is jlcb and the changes here are to allow for the storage and use of opioid antagonists by School nurses and in accordance with the program for schools by the State Department of Health and then the final policy is kcv there's a minor addition to the policy to clarify the scope and then to the regulation increasing the value of gifts requiring board approval from 15 000 to 25 000. um and with that I'd ask for you to approve the review revision of the three policies and their regulations any questions or comments for Brett all right see none can I get a motion and a second please second all those in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed same sign those policies pass um we're going to move into executive session for
059sdcl 1-25-2 parenthesis 2. of course they get a motion to move into executive sessions second all those in favor signify by Saint I I seems fine right move into executive session