001Good evening. I'll call the order of the board of education for Monday. >> Bridget Tracy here tonight. Nation God indivisible. Working together high levels of learning for all. There are no changes to the agenda. >> I'll make a motion to approve the Hello, my name is John right now. I'm the head coach of the high school gymnastics team and I have Tom here with me. She is our individual state qualifier on bars. Um Ellie worked extremely hard this season along with amazing group of girls. She had a very very successful season. Um a large group of seniors leading and Ally is one of the few oldest on the team. Now that the seniors are leaving. So it was amazing that she um to go to state and represent an Alaska as an upcoming leader of
002the team. Um, it was really exciting opportunity for me and it was a lot of fun because I got to meet so many different people there from a bunch of other teams and I really liked the walk because I got to meet like a bunch of different girls that I didn't know and just the whole like the amount of people there and it was just like a really big I added in my double bag for the first time and I ended Next we'll talk about Maximus, our individual state qualifier for WIA division state wrestling at 190 pounds. Maximus shows what it really can happen if you really dedicate yourself to something. Most wrestlers start at kindergarten, first grade, stuff like that. Matt didn't start until his eighth grade year where he didn't win a single
003match. Um had a losing record as a freshman. Um he's grown so much throughout the time wrestling that you didn't need to start at a successful wrestler. you talk about your experience down there. >> Yeah, it was it was pretty awesome to go down there and represent my team because we we have a lot of young guys in there. I kind of wanted to be like a role model for them. My favorite family members had a lot of lot of friends. Like that's amazing. That took a lot of people know that we are all All right. We'd like to thank and share our gratitude with the following members of our community that provided donations for our school district. $1,271.33 from the Lacrosse area journey Lutheran Church for any district needs WL swag and two season
004passes from WL's lacrosse basketball program for the Northern Hills family reading night. $120 worth of gift cards for free sandwiches or nuggets from Chick-fil-A to use at district discretion. And lastly, $200 from Lisa Haj Richardson and Bryce Richardson for the district lunch fun. Thank you to all of them. Tomorrow's a day of celebration. It's a It's a day of celebrating at the high school with the ACT exam and in talking to some students today just them knowing a specific group individually tomorrow's a way for them to show what they know where maybe other metrics haven't done that as they think ahead to postsecary and and traditionally thinking postsecary four-year college it's more than that there there are so many of the skilled trades that want to see what that score is there's so many different
005opportunities that that can open doors for and so I really am really thankful and excited about the attitude going into tomorrow and hoping with everything working the way that it should. Um, another celebration, uh, one of our welding teachers started a welding certification to the state and a local business partner had graciously donated the the specific type of steel that's needed for it. Thickness, specific alloy, and one of our partners said, "Absolutely, that's something we want to support and they dropped them off last week." So, really great example of a business supporting a specific need that they're looking forward to future Yeah. So, this is Edhere, but it's a fun tradition that we have to celebrate all the joys and ups and downs of middle school. Staff trivia contest Thursday. Feel free to stop by
0063 to And then we end with an assembly Friday at student staff. always always a fun time, always a fun week. Um, which is good to get spirits up because next week we start testing season. And so I don't know if I mentioned this before, but the National Association of Education Progress Our eighth grade was chosen this year. So we have 50 graders who will test this Wednesday morning as part of that and then the former testing starts upon us. And then lastly we're we're busy planning for next year. One of the things that we're most excited about is we have a way that we can get seventh and eighth graders that they may focus in a little more heavily on music. So we're excited about being able to roll that out and it is
007staffing neutral. That was kind of a prerequisite that So you're not guaranteed to get all of your topics, but hopefully you'll get some interested in everything so they know kind of what they like and what they don't like to zero in a little bit more. So preparations for next year. season. And then we've been promoting our family surve. responses to get some high a little bit about our employee survey. We've done this every other year perception and this year we added an additional survey as well throughage that through the United States. I'll touch on both of them. The first one is on me. This is a survey that we did. It's about 40 questions that we give to all of our staff members with the goal of 75% of our staff completing that. This year
008we did reach that 75%. It was done in November. So we get the data shortly thereafter between end of December early January and then we analyze the results questions. that are specific to the district level and then some that are specific to the building level. Our principles dive into the building level questions with their guiding coalition members and then we here at the district look at uh we each building and I and our district leaders to kind of round out themes what are our opportunities for improvement as well as positives that we can celebrate. So, first off, we'll start with that positive that we can celebrate. These four questions that are listed here are the top four that are rated by our employees. by building and then fin 24. You can see that the numbers
009and then these four are bottom areas of opportunity. They set up as well, but you'll notice that the from note. The same top bottom four are there. The only one that did move in the top areas were um things that was not topificant. We also have that high leverage question from 23 24 inreased in all of the buildings as well as we are tied to our plan. There are three questions that are around professional development and eight questions that satisfaction. So after meeting with our staff and those focus groups and looking at the data, we ended up reported out two years ago. The first one is around student discipline. So emotional learning a lot of But as you know, what I presented was our numbers continue to go up. So we know that we're doing
010a lot of the right things. Um we added the early childhood intervention tools. We looked at implementing the curriculum over the last years. We added so a lot of great work that we're continuing to do. Um and so this building administrators are meeting with our guided building to kind of develop action steps around The other area that we saw heard about more is on professional development. You'll see some of the related questions and here and really is focusing how can we have that professional development focus on needs that are with our teachers professionals or administrative jobs. So there are little things that we have done already. Um creating a shadow day for example for our new professionals. We're working with our administrative assistants more support at the building level teachers so they don't have to
011deal with things that we can do immediately. a lot of things that we have in the works. You'll see all of those listed there and we're excited to roll those out this spring and we'll share that with all of our staff as well. It's always a good thing to remain competitive in our pay practices. So whether it's compensation or benefits, we have a number of things coming up in the works that we'll make recommendations through our Wheel time and time again. So I don't learn So then what we did is having pictures and all of that. Then we also sat down with all the model as well as the feedback. And we took that all of that information and we divided it up into five different areas and quality dining. So we've got all of
012our different ideas. But one of the challenges that we have is that success. So we're really looking at what are those things that we can aren't going to requ serving that thinking more hot and so excited. We're excited as a team and able to move the needle between last survey and this survey. Those are all the areas that we learned from our focus groups and perceptions and happy to share on their top workplace award that we did receive a top award in the education industry. Um that's a national award. They also found four areas that um we do very well. So purpose and values, professional development, employee wellbe announcement of this. So many of you are excited to share this out. people. >> Yeah. They didn't have to. They don't have to. They're very proud
013of what they do and they're very very very easy to work with. So humble act is another celebration our health very favorable. This is not a ministry in that we had a decrease in our high deduct on our plan as I kind of looked at other school districts that this is not the norm. So we can celebrate this as well. We do have one adjustment to the plan and that we do have to increase the deductible and the high deductible health plan just to the requirements and so that's listed on the attachment as well. Um the thing that we have worked though with our insurance task force is looking at a number of recommendations and how we incentivize really that high deductible health plan and also create parity between the traditional and the high deductible
014health plan. This will be our fourth year going to that and we haven't the HSA option that is there the provides to help cover that higher deductible. Um so our insurance task force is going to be brought this recommendation in that we are changing our percentage that we pay toward the health plan to a defined contribution a flat amount on the single plan and the family plan regardless of what plan you are at. So how we determine this is what we are currently paying for the HMO plan which amount and we figured out what that flat amount is and then with the high deductible health you'll still have the same amount but larger portion will go to the HSA then so it's in essence paying the employee instead of the insurance company you can see
015that list as well currently for the single going to 1700. The family is currently 2600 and then it'll be going 3600. We listed out all the premiums there and so you'll see that an impact for the district is only going to be about $4,000 where the impact for employees and that no deductible. In addition to the health insurance, we do have a slight increase on the dental insurance. So last meeting Janet brought forward our budget projection and within that we had a number of options to consider. And so as we continue that budget work and evaluation that we have 10 teacher retirements that gives us that opportunity to kind of review all the positions that we have and look at what are their current needs and and go forward. Um, one thing to note that
016everything we're presenting here to the board is going to be done through 100%. So, no teacher will use and really it's our time to write. So, the first section is really just that elementary adjustment. So looking at each building and the number of sections that are needed based on our classes reduction at northern but adding the number of pair professionals that we need at the time that we have At the high school level, uh we have a reduction in special education services. So this position will be discontinued. This last year we did not fill a science position. So that one will be discontinued as well. Um we also had a literacy that was district. We did not this year and teachers at the building levels that will be and then we have coach is retiring
017that as well. This is kind of our adjustment currently as I said, but high school will continue to review their course. We found that we do have quite a few needs at the building level as well as early interventions. So we are looking to add interventions at the middle school. This will have a specific math focus. Right now we have a partade that's however that person will go to one of the buildings. We have a number of interventions at those and then we are looking to add few years ago. We uh eliminated this position and put it on with our library. As we reviewed the needs of our students, we felt that this was not the best fit for that and we weren't giving what they needed. And so with our technology teacher position, we
018eliminated that um it to the elementary standards to the library media specialists and then take the enrichment and add it to a plan for the future. We know that there's a lot for our students to go into the workforce. And so we are looking for a coordinator position that's considered helping bridge that gap between the classroom and the work has shared a little bit more about this past meeting position as well as our director of IT position. We aren't there yet in terms of an online school option, but I do want to share that a lot of the staffing changes we brought here forward and shared with our staff are independent of this review and what we bring forward. So the attachment and then also listed here is really positioned that we consider as we
019balance of rightsizing our district, managing that staff stability and what our current needs are going forward. Yes. >> Mark. >> Yeah. So, uh we presented this to the board and at our last meeting and I had received zero questions regarding these policies other than what the definition of district plan very polic We added that in there because one of the policies language was different than what we had in our policy. Transparent Can you just please clarify? Mark, Brian, >> Tracy, Bridget, and Aaron. All right.