001like to call this Tuesday, October 14th board of education meeting to order. Please rise and reciting the pledge of allegiance with me. >> I pledge 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. First order of business is to approve the agenda. If I can get a motion. >> Motion to approve it. >> Second. >> All those in favor? >> I. >> All those opposed, same sign, scheduled unscheduled audience have any. Uh moving on to school reports and fanfare threat assessment proce um process and procedures special service report. Uh Shelby and Ashley. >> Hello. >> Is this standing ovation time or not? >> So Shelby and Ashley would ask you to turn that mic on
002and use that so the people at home can hear. >> Well, now >> so just push hold the button down >> till it turns green. ing. >> Okay. So, it is my first time presenting to the school board, so I'm a little nervous, but this is Ashley and I's favorite topic. Um, is threat assessment and self harm guidelines. So, we'll try and keep it to the five minutes. There's a lot of text on our slide. We will not read word for word. But before we get started, I just kind of want to introduce myself and Ashley. I'm Shelby Hartsy. I'm the district school psychologist. Um, I've been in this role going on my second year now and being a school psychologist going on five or six years. Um, I'm Ashley Castus. A lot of you
003know me already. I am a school psychology intern student this year. Um, but have been with the district for 13 or 14 years now as a special education teacher previously. So, yeah. So, before we jump into it, we're going to kind of talk about two topics today. Um, and they are kind of interchangeable. um threat assessment and self harm guidelines. Um some outside entities use threat assessment interchangeably. Um threat assessment for us in the schools means a threat to harm others and self harm means a threat to oneself. And when we go through these guidelines, it's really important to remember that the whole point of these is to make sure that our staff, students, and community as a whole are safe. um and that we work with students to keep them in school and also
004provide interventions when we go through these processes. So, we're basically just going to give you the bare bones of what each of these are. Um and if you want us back, I guess we'll come back and explain more in depth because it's our favorite thing. So, um guidelines on student threat to harm self. This is you, isn't it? Oh, >> it's not >> okay. Yeah, we'll just reverse here because for some reason we're going backwards and that's okay. So, we'll start with the guidelines for um student threat to harm self. Um it's like Shelby just said, we acknowledge that there's a connection between physical and mental health and student success. Um and so with suicide being one of those leading causes of death among youth, we are committed to that proactive approach in our district
005just to ensure the safety of our students. Um we have guidelines in place. Um our school counselors have a role in the guidelines. Um we have a protocol um called the Colombia suicide screener. So if our teachers, staff, other students identify a student that has maybe made a harm to threaten themselves, they will immediately go to the school counselor who will then um do that screener and then we kind of go from there and we always keep really good documents. Um not going to read these word for word, but um we also have and ensure that staff professional development occurs. And so, um, yearly, um, we're trying to make it so that staff members have access to training. And then the, um, Department of Ed is mandated by South Dakota state law says that we
006have to complete that approved youth suicide, um, awareness and prevention training at least once every five years. Um, and I know that we have processes in place to ensure that our staff are doing that as well. um curriculum. As far as that goes, we make sure that we've got the social skills curriculum, that we're constantly using those positive behavioral supports and uplifting our students, and then just also um ensuring that our students are making safe and healthy choices. Um really empowering that awareness piece. Um it comes into effect a lot more in middle school and high school, but we have seen it unfortunately in younger ages as well. So, we're um hitting it in a different way, kind of using those social skills curriculums and um just being aware of those kiddos when that happens.
007Um and then that immediate um you know, that intervention and assessment process. And so, if a student um does have a referral or is brought to the counselor, like I said, they do that screener. However, it comes up, there's different levels in the screener where we can be super worried about it or like, okay, we need to watch this kid. Let's put some interventions in place. There are times when the counselor might say, "Hey, we're going to refer out to other services and then some different processes happen. But what the important part is is if these kids are identified, we create safety plans for these kids and we put interventions in place so that these kids can um be safe at school, be protected, and then gain some coping skills and um kind of grow
008in their self-confidence. And um we work really closely with families and then if there's outside providers, we work really closely with them as well. So the other thing that um we really want to make sure of is that our educators that work with the students every single day um not only have knowledge on that that suicide you know that annual or every five years that we have to do um but also that we're reassuring them of you know what are our warning signs what do we watch for and how do we go about it because you know we might go through a training we might know what to look for but sometimes we don't know the process and so we've really worked on making sure that educators, teachers, other students know who they can go
009to when something that like that were to happen. So, >> thank you. And I think um with both of these um staff and families get a lot of comfort in knowing that we have processes for these. So for sea stag comprehensive threat assessment in um guidelines for the schools was created in 20 2001 by Dr. Dwey Cornell from the University of Virginia. The whole point was to make sure that schools are safe um and having a process to make sure that we don't underreact or overreact to verbal threats or physical threats of violence. Um so there's a whole continuum um from not a threat to transient to a very serious threat. And because of that um we have trainings and we have staff that are trained in level one and level two um to go
010through that process and make sure our student we don't underreact or overreact and we provide interventions to those students if they come back with a threat. So a lot of the times I think it was 73% out of um the state of Florida um students had a transient threat and what they were able to do is provide coping skills for those students and intervene and make sure that they stay in school and have a healthy environment there. So, unfortunately, we have an old slideshow here, but the main takeaway is that we have staff that are trained. Um, and it goes from school psychologist, our building admin, counselor, um, to our SRO's for a serious threat. Um, a big piece of that is something called a safety interview. So, we make sure we interview the students,
011we interview witnesses, um, we interview teachers, we interview parents, and we do a safety interview with students if it's a serious threat. And the whole point of that is to figure out how serious the threat is. Um what lagging skills the student is missing and just overall making sure that we make sure our schools are safe. Um kids these days are very much connected. So witnesses to threats and possible threats in our community can go as far as Rapid or Souf Falls. So if a student has a connection with a student in rapid and that's where the threat is taking place, we want to make sure that we are communicating ethically with our other districts and our other schools as well. Um so that is a quick nitty-gritty breakdown of threat assessment and our suicide
012process or assessments. I would ask if we have questions, but I think we went over on time. So >> I will I will just I guess add a little bit. I think our principles are ability administrators do a great job when something is brought to them of taking it serious. I mean regardless of what it is and then again to go through the sea stag the comprehensive threat assessment um to go through that and determine whether it's serious or just a transient. you know, somebody on the on the playground saying, "I'm going to, you know, playing football, I'm going to kill you next time you get the ball," is different than somebody making a very substantial threat um in the school. So, they do a great job waiting through that. And then, uh again, if
013it's something that we figure is fairly fairly serious, they go through the threat assessment and everybody's involved. It is it is really thorough. And what's really nice about it too, I think one of our SRO's at a safety meeting had just quoted that, you know, having like the chance of having something happen in your district is far less than 1% of it ever happening, but just having the knowledge and then also the proper guidelines and prevention materials in place is just super helpful in ensuring that that 1% hopefully never comes our way. So, >> Thank you. Good information. Thank you. Uh, next item, there are no conflict of interest waiverss, so we'll move over toformational items with the superintendent update. >> Yep. Just a few things here. Uh, first of all, you'll see back on
014the back table there, the plaque with the gavl on it. The board did receive another all award. Uh, they received the silver award. And for those of you out there uh it uh this program recognizes board members participation in outside activities, board development and training and demonstrated leadership at various areas and levels. So I think this is like the fifth or sixth straight year. So thank you board for your continuing efforts there. Uh, next thing is at our associated school board region meeting, there was a mention of having a joint possibly a joint board meeting with the Lee Deadwood uh board members uh with our legislators just because we share the same legislative district. Is there interest in doing that? And do you want it as a full board or do you want a committee
015of two? I talked to uh Dr. Pearson, superintendent and Lee Deadwood, and he was going to bring it to his board tonight as well uh just to get your input. I did offer that if uh we would travel up the hill. Uh we had the region meeting down here, but we'd travel up the hill there. Uh but we were both looking at early December. >> I think it would be a good idea. Would you guys feel about the whole board or >> I think there'd be value in everybody being there for that. Yeah. Okay. >> I would agree. >> All right. All right. We'll pursue uh probably just prior to our uh December board meeting. Maybe the Monday prior Monday or Tuesday, Wednesday, somewhere in there prior to our December board meeting. >> Okay. >>
016Thank you. >> Yep. Um just a little update on the progress of the middle school track design. Uh we've I think we've kind of narrowed down maybe somewhat of the scope. Uh and so and and you guys jump in here at some point if you if I'm saying the wrong information, but kind of narrowing down the scope or what the project may look like. Uh there's going to be a a list. They're going to get us pricing or estimates on a multitude of things. Whether it be just the track, just the field, just the bleachers, just the lights. So we can kind of pick and choose if we're going to move forward. We have kind of an allocart of items that we can choose from. I think they are looking for a decision to be
017made by the full board in November. Uh I that's not going to happen. Uh once we get all the estimates uh the track committee needs to sit down and go through those and make a recommendation to the board at the November board meeting at the earliest and just be a discussion item. I think the December meeting will be the earliest the board I would ask the board to make a decision. So again, I tried calling uh Derek Budig, who's kind of their uh representative uh on Friday, and he didn't answer. I'll try him again tomorrow, but uh just so he knows that not to expect a decision at the November board meeting. uh Mount View Alley project uh met uh here a few weeks ago with the city and the engineers on that and it
018was more about the uh how we're going to proceed with the project as far as advertisements and who's going to be in charge of the project. The city has volunteered to be in charge of the project. So they will um they will do all the advertising and they will be the the people in charge if you will. There'll be two different schedules in the bid document. So there'll be the schedule that people will put a place a bid on for the uh school side of things and then the city side of things. Again, our estimate is roughly 450,000 for our share of it. Um so I I told initially told Craig it was going to be 750,000. That's the total cost of the project. So ours is going to be in that 400 to 450,000
019for our park. uh when it's all said and done, it'll be a a great uh uh renovation to the alley. We're not only doing the pavement, but we'll put a sidewalk on the west side of the building there. So, when students come out to line up for buses, they have a sidewalk to to uh to line up on. We're going to catch some of the water, the drainage, uh the down spouts coming off the north side, and we're going to daylight that. We're going to take it underground and daylight it out into the alley as well. So, and then uh we'll put some artificial turf on the grass that's closest to that west fence and get rid of some of the landscape rock and put in a new fence there. So, it'll be a nice
020addition or renovation to that property. >> So, that be all this next summer. >> Yep. Summer of 26. Summer 26. Uh last thing is just to talk a little bit about enrollment numbers. Again, our uh uh date for that was the last Friday in September and we are down 93 students. We went from 2397 to 2304. So there'll be some conversations between myself with the admin team, the leadership team, and then certainly with the board on how we plan to address that uh here in the next couple of months. That's all I have. All right. Thank you. Uh moving on to the action items. Action item A, appoint a representative for the Associated School Board's delegate assembly. I move that we have Eric go as our assembly delegate. >> Second. Any discussion? >> I was
021pretty much volunt alternate later. No, I should be fine. >> It's pretty riveting information. All those in favor of Eric being our our delegate um our representative for the delegate assembly say I. >> I. >> All those opposed. Same sign. >> Motion carries. >> Mr. Representative I want want my in the minutes. >> Thank you Eric. We appreciate it. Uh next item is approve a special board meeting Monday, October 27th at 5:30. >> I make a motion to approve it. Second it. For those in the audience, this is going to be the board's opportunity to set my performance goals for the year. So, uh, will be discussion surrounding that. >> Look forward to it. >> As do I. >> All those in favor say I. >> I. >> All oppose, same sign. >> Motion carries.
022Uh, moving on to the con consent agenda. We can do all those at once or you can pull one off if you would prefer. Um I would take a motion to approve. >> I'll move to approve. >> Second. >> Any discussion? >> I have um is referee club exactly what it sounds like none of our high school reps are here because of volleyball as you >> it is trying to get those young people more involved. I think uh Mr. Harkless is the one that uh has is putting that together and We have second semester class. Oh, you're right there. You're so quiet. >> We have roughly uh I think right now we have 14 maybe 15 and we're kind of split between males and females that part of that class which is fantastic. So >>
023I just saw it on there and wanted to make sure I asked. >> You might have said it. What What do they Is it for all different types of referees or what's it specific? >> It's primarily for uh basketball. >> Okay. >> Also volleyball. >> Okay. And uh there is there are two young ladies who are wrestlers and we will incorporate the wrestling program. >> It's just to uh it's it's to encourage the younger development officials. It will also benefit us based off of the numbers or the officials that are needed for middle school. >> That's the primary objective moving forward. I know we're short referees, so >> awesome. >> What's the >> Mr. >> What's the cyber club, >> Mr. Sire? Since it says 9 to 12 >> cyber club. >> Yes, >> it's
024there's a there's a number of different nuances. So, uh DSU right now is putting forth a uh they have an objective to incorporate high school into their cyber security. And so I think that they're going to dabble in into some of that. It's also to incorporate a different level of experience with regards to computers. Right now computers is a it's a computer apps program that we run. It's it's basically Microsoft and uh and it will it will melt into robotics at some point. Cool. Okay. Thank you. Any other discussion? All those in favor say I. >> I. Oppose. Same sign. Motion carries. Uh, moving on to the minutes. If I can get a motion to approve. >> So moved. >> Seconded. >> Any discussion? >> None. All those in favor say I. >> I. >>
025Post. Same sign. On to financial reports and bills. If I can get a motion to approve. I so move. >> Second. >> Any discussion? Right. All those in favor say I. >> I. >> Oppos. Same sign. >> Motion carries. Uh motion to adjurnn. >> Make a motion. >> I'll second it. >> All those in favor? I >> I >> meeting is adjourned.