001I'll call to order tonight's regular board of education meeting for Monday, August 11th, 2025. Emily, could you mark Brian >> here. >> Tracy here. Eric and Aaron >> here. I'll verify that we have forum presence for all. Would you please read the school board? >> Working together to ensure high level of learning for all. Did you public notice? >> Public notice was given to the requesting news media. The agenda was posted in the district buildings and on the district website. >> Any revisions to agenda? Mr. President, I recommend that we move item 12 before 9. If that is possible, >> I would move that um we amend the agenda to move agenda item 12 to before agenda item 9 and otherwise approve as >> second motion by seconded by Brian to approve tonight's agenda with
002the following moving item 12. There any questions? All those in favor? >> I We have no request for public input on tonight's published agenda. And we'll move now into action item number 12, which allows us to hear about action research project from our staff members who are pursuing master street. And we'll uh we'll start with Miranda. Hello, my name is Miranda Flock and I work at Bridge Elementary. I'm a fourth grade teacher there and I've served the school district of Alaska for 14 years. This is my 14th year. Um this fall I will be in my final semester at W Lacrosse um seeking my masters in reading and um as you all know the elementary schools are going toward implementing CKLA in the classroom. Um and so that has led me to my research question
003which is how will implementing CKLA in my fourth grade classroom affect students reading comprehension and vocabulary acquisition. And so my following hypothes are that students that are immersed in a knowledge curriculum like CKLA will demonstrate improved reading comprehension and vocabulary acquisition um as measured by a reading pre and post survey student work sample um unit assessments from CLA the star screen and anecdotal notes um research from my literature review um has made a compelling case for rethinking and ing literacy instruction in the elementary grade, particularly through vocabulary development and integrated content rich approaches. Altogether, the literature supports a shift toward integrated literacy instruction that simultaneously builds vocabulary, comprehension skills, and background knowledge. Um, families in my classroom will just be asked to sign a consent form for their child's data to be represented in my
004research. All students will receive the same instruction whether I was conducting the action research or not. Uh the only addition is implementation of a pre-ervey and a post survey um as well as a vocabulary screener which is just added. The other assessment tools are part of our assessment matrix and um the assessment provided by the CKLA curriculum. Thank you for considering my request. >> Are there any questions for Have you um did you participate in the private? >> I did not. No, I didn't. So, I'm looking forward to um going full throttle this semester or this school year. Um I teach with Emily Mall. We're on the same team and so she piloted. So, um >> yeah, that's awesome. You'll get good out of that. So, that's exciting. question. >> Thank you. >> Next, we'd
005like to welcome Emily present her research project. >> Hi, my name is Emily Mall. I'm also a fourth grade teacher at Irving First. Um, and I am also going through the program as Miranda and Rachel. Um, I am getting I will complete my MERS this December and then I'll go to an additional semester to get my reading teacher license and my reading specialist license in the spring. Um, and the question um that I am hoping to research this semester um also has to do with the implementation of CLA. Um, and my question is how Will the implementation of the new PLA resource PLA affect students self-perceptions as readers and their reading comprehension? And within my hypothesis, I believe that implementing this um knowledge based curriculum will improve students self-perception and also will um improve their
006reading comprehension. Um I did a lot of we all do a lot of um literature review over the summer and I found in my review that there is a strong correlation between students self-perception that includes their motivation to read and their the value that they see in reading um and um their engagement there strong correlation between their their perception and their reading comprehension. So I'm looking forward to seeing how those go together in my own classroom. Similar to Miranda, there's not um much that my students will be asked to do that's not what we would already do in our classroom. So um I'll when I receive consent from parents, um I would implement our fastbridge assessment which we already give part of our assessment matrix. Um I would give the CLA unit assessment. Um And
007I think my my additional assessments would be to give a survey at the beginning and end of their self-perception of reading which I submitted a copy to you of that. Um it uses a lyer scale from four to one just quick um survey to see how they perceive themselves as readers. So, um, we're planning we have to submit this approval to the board at W Lacrosse and then we would once we get their approval as well, we would give um the consent forms to parents and um begin the process. >> So, as mentioned, you've already piloted and had the opportunity to teach part of this. Yes, I was the fourth grade representative for the CLA pilot at PERS and I will be like the fourth grade ELA lead um at PE this upcoming school year.
008So, kind of doing all all things at once. >> That's that's pretty fantastic. I've heard very good things about the program. So, it's good to see that you want to continue and kind of improve the reading comprehension and So, um, appreciate both of you taking the time to do that extra work to see the impact. >> Rachel Lopez from Middle School. >> Hi, I'm Rachel Lopez. I teach ETH grade at the middle school. Um I am in the same program at WL as the two speakers previous. This is my last semester in the program and my action research is focused on not my classroom students but my power time students. So this is like our middle school study hall intervention time. I will be working with a seventh grade intervention class and an eighth grade
009intervention group during our study hall time. So, I'm going to be doing my research with both of those groups. Um, both groups will receive the same instruction as they would normally. This is just giving permission for me to collect the data and report on it. Um, my hypothesis is that dual modality reading, so audio assisted reading, listening to a book while also reading at the same time, will improve comprehension, vocabulary acquisition, and self perception as readers. Um I'm going to use a lot of the same data collection tools as were discussed earlier such as fast bridge um star data in class regular just like I don't know like checkins um as we go through our program I have some teacher created um assessments that I'll be using for vocabulary and comprehension as well throughout the
010process um because I teach eth grade The atl requires student asent and parent consent. So my students will need to be informed before any of the instruction begins that I'll be collecting data from them. But like I said, the instruction won't change whether or not they they provide a program. I just have a general question. Yeah. Um so with all three groups, it's the students are going to learn the same curriculum regardless. Are there are you basing any of the feedback that you're getting on any like previous data like that you're aware of elsewhere like the so some national average or something like what are you comparing this to? So the students that will be assigned to my topper time um are students that are in the lower cile of the like overall star assessment
011data. So if they're below the 25th percentile, that's how they would be assigned to my tower. >> You'll do some preassessment and assessment, right? >> Yeah. On on your on my vocabulary, comprehension, and um self-perception. So there's like a self-perception survey that they'll do at the beginning and then I have just like a standard passage that students will read and it will um analyze their comprehension abilities at the beginning and then that'll be readministered at the end. >> So when all three of you are done would you come back and present what you found? >> That would be in December. I think that's been a great practice. You know, graduate studies happening, right? It's always interesting to understand what you learned and hopefully that that information will be transferred to other other teachers around the
012district and so forth as well. And I was going to just kudos to the three of you. I know what it's like and I think many in this room know what it's like to go to graduate school working full-time maybe with families at home. It's a lot of work, a lot of effort. Should feel good about that and be commended for the extra effort that it takes to do that. >> Action research projects outlined by Miranda, Emily, and Rachel Lopez. discussed and closure. >> Second motion from Tracy by Brian to approve the action research project and Rachel as described by the researchers outlined in any further questions. All those in favor >> team we'll hold back to ourformational and discussion items. We'll start with building project update and we'll start with the high school. >>
013Um there's no enclosure tonight. Uh but the update the question I frequently have been getting is Jared will everything be ready for the first day of school and and the answer is well no but not everything has to be ready for the first day of school. Some of the pieces of course will continue into November um quite a bit before all of it's done. Um the key things to think about those outside if you've come past on Wilson Street, um they're hoping to pour the last section of of sidewalk very soon, which allows it to then be paved, which will totally change the probably the perception and the look of of being ready on that side. Um there's still work to be done on the east side of school. They're starting on the Wilson Street
014side and working their way south along the stadium to prepare that for the bus pickup in the afternoons. And then uh starting tomorrow, they're going to be reworking the entrance to the parking lot on the uh the main parking lot to make it wider for easier flow in, easier flow out. Um particularly during high traffic times uh in the building, um we expect to hopefully get the main portion of the gym turned back over to us on Saturday this week, just in time for uh volleyball practice at 9:00 on Monday morning. um the lower level where there's seven classrooms being worked on. Um we expect to be getting those at different points next week. Um when I say getting them where teachers can get into those rooms, it's very similar to what happened in our
015science area last year where they got those at the end of the inservice week. And then there's lots of of little pieces that'll be finishing also um before they move on to the last phase which is the vocal music area um the special education room and then finishing the instrumental music area. So there's a lot happening, but there's still a lot to to finish. >> Over in the middle school, uh similar situation in that not everything will be completely finished before the first day of school, but that's okay. We have a plan in place. In fact, we we had anticipated we would need a couple of weeks. And so um all of our staff have a place to work. Um and it's pretty much um art and tech that we're still waiting on. And so
016our our music spaces are going to be done in a couple of days here. And so our our music teachers can get in there. Band has already been in their new space, but choir, orchestra, and general music will get in next week and get set up, start the year. Um, and then we're really just waiting on art and teched and then a few other little odds and ends. And so it'll be a couple of weeks into the school year before our tech is ready. But it's the space is looking awesome. Um, the tech has a wood built in with windows you can see into it and it's got the other said they got lockers in there and all all the cool equipment that they didn't have access to last year and so they're going to
017be able to do just so many more cool projects in the past and art my favorite thing about the art room is the display case out front in the hallway to put student work out there and rotate through and so just really again just like with every step of the project very intentional design um both functionally and aesthetically. So, if you've driven by lately, you've noticed our landscaping is going in. And so, we don't have to pretend that the weeds are our flowers anymore. So, beautiful landscaping. That's great. And then just finishing up the site work. Um, the updates to the bus lane and the parking lot, the main parking lot are pretty much good to go. And so, we're we'll be we'll be fully operational. It's just won't be in their new spaces. They'll
018be where they ended the year last year for a couple weeks. So thanks are coming along. >> Next up is gonna start we have our strategic plan updates on pillars three and four. >> So I will start out with pillar three and as you know this is focused around recruitment development and retention of our staff. And to measure success in this pillar, we look at our staff satisfaction through retention rate on the employee engagement survey and staying competitive with uh total compensation of salary and benefits. And last fall, we already shared the staff survey which was very positive. And so this board report is more focused on the two other areas of the scorecard related to retention and compensation and benefit. because this is really the time of year that we can report this out.
019So, I'm not going to go through all the slides in detail. Um, I'm just going to highlight a few. Um, so this first slide here that's up there, so you'll want to follow along on the screen. The first slide is I want to note the the bolded portions on the bottom is this is a change to our scorecard. Our scorecard previously reported just the lowest salary and the highest teacher salary for compensation ranking. And after brainstorming with our admin team, we found a way uh to share more of a compared with our norm groups for our certified staff as well as local district comparisons in a more comprehensive way. So if you want to go to the next slide, um just a reminder that these are the 18 comparative districts that we call our normed
020group. This group is made up of the districts that are either similar size or close proximity to our district and have either a similar revenue limit to enrollment or similar percentages of students with disabilities, economically disadvantaged or multilingual learners. It's comparative to us. The that are listed in purple are our local comparisons as we compete with local districts really for staffing. Um so next slide then these are really the updates to our scorecards as I mentioned we've pulled a few just to show that um first we are now highlighting the local comparison group not only for teachers but also for support staff for their wages and staff benefits and when we combine those three areas benefits will support staff as well as teacher and we compare those to the local districts we are looking to
021reach the top two um the teacher comparison ranking to that norm group those 18 that we referenced we're looking at more areas than just the lowest and highest and we are comparing it back to our minimum teacher salary benchmark so we have kind of comparison um we look at each district's reported salaries from DPI for somebody that has the same degree and same experience. Um it is kind of hard to compare because each district's compensation salary structure is a little bit different. For example, we pay every six credits where another district might be just a base bachelors or just a base masters. So with that, it's not always apples to apples. So keep that in mind as we compare these. Um we've had movements in all of our areas, especially with the establishment of the
022minimum benchmarks. Um there is some volatility in some comparison markers. Specifically, if you look at the bachelor's degree and the high at the high end, um it's a lower pool of people that we're comparing against. And then the other one that we uh looked at in changing on our scorecard is our retention rate. We've had a lot of conversations over the time with this. Our goal is 92% um but we realize there are many things that are outside of our control. So we um added an adjusted amount. Um so we still have the overall goal of a 92% but you'll see in the details that are reported on uh slides is that we added an adjusted rate rate which is still the percentage of employees retained but we exclude those that are leaving for reasons
023outside of our control. So relocation, moving to an administrative role with another district or going back to school for education, you're still within the education realm. So we have a lot of areas to celebrate that you guys can look into all the details on the um slides in the enclosures at any point, but I did want to highlight a few. Um first off, the adjustments to the minimum benchmarks um allowed us to move in rankings in specific especially to the local district. We moved from top three on teachers to top one overall. The addition of longevity pay for our support staff allowed us to increase our average compensation. Um just to note, we also monitor some unique positions such as communications, accounting, but since they're small employee groups, we don't necessarily put them in the
024details, but they are monitored as well to stay in that the areas um we ranked maybe third are only 12 12 cents and 11 cents off. So we're right there. And then our retention is at an all-time high. Specifically, our teacher retention does not follow state and national narratives. DPI shared a report last um spring for 23 24 retention rate where similar districts had a retention rate of 86% and you can see ours is at 93 and then if you take the adjusted amount it's at 98%. So I can't stress how much positive this is but the results are only successful through the support of the board and all of our employees. Um I continue to my counterparts and what are we doing in Alaska? They they understand and people know and people talk but
025it really is the overall leadership of the district and the staff who here make our school a great >> Yeah. So DPI sent out a um a report and it's bas it's always lagging. So it's 2324 and what I reported here for us is 2425. And they break it down by different schools um in comparison size. So when I look at um a city school district of ours, they were saying that about 86% of uh districts were retaining their staff. Um and they look at it based on when people leave. And we in Wisconsin have a resource called Wean. application system, but you can get a lot of data in there when people are hired and moved from there. So that's where they get most of their reporting from. >> Well, nationally is more of
026the narrative you hear, you know, from media and that, you know, teaching is not a great place to be, but obviously at our district, we've talked about this a lot. committee level amount of work that I know you put into this but as an overall team right attention comes from culture retention comes from certain concept as well as I think everybody owns a piece of this, right? finance, facilities, and operations. And as I've told you before, in this area, if we're doing our work well, it's kind of in business. The surface and the role is to support all of the other work that's occurring throughout the organization. This information was presented to you before in early spring, but so I'm going to fly through it quickly because it's just recapping it now that the year
027is done, but there's no new information here because our sur results and our data came in earlier. So, it may look like this is off where we've got a number in 2425 for the operations experience survey results and not um in the the information regarding comparing our district to the top five and that's because that data lays a year behind. So, we will be showing that for the next year. But, as you can see over the years, we're we're improving in each of these areas. So one of the things that looking at that return on investment. So making sure that every dollar that we invest we invest the smallest amount of dollar to get the greatest amount of return. And again with these districts that Sonia outlined earlier looking at this data on a yeartoyear
028basis and you can see we've got two years worth of data and you'll see that in the 23 2022 23 column we've got some areas where there's a green shading but not green shading elsewhere. That's the districts that were ahead of us last year and this year we moved our position. So we improved from the top six to the top four. Our goal was to be in the top five. So one year before the end we've we've met that goal. So now obviously for the next year our work will be improving that. And it's really going to be fun to see with the work that is being done on the instructional side with our new resources and our different things along that we're going to be investing a considerable amount of money and we may
029dip a little bit because you just have that implementation but in the long term we expect to see some really good investment time. So this one is looking at the operational investment and again operational that's funds 10 through 27 which we'll be reporting on in the finances in just a little bit. Um so basically 10 and 27 and then um just all of the operational expenses that go into that. Then taking that same data and narrowing the focus just a little bit more on the actual instructional investment. So this is classroom investment into our teachers and and all of the things that are directly involved with the students. We improved our from the top six to the top five. So once again, we met our overall goal for this strategic plan period. And you can
030see um the district that we falls where they got one green, we were behind them last year. This year we moved ahead of them. But that's looking at scorecard data that I did that analysis on. And what I thought would be good for you to also see is taking that scorecard data and two ways, both in growth and in achievement. And you're not going to be able to see all of the names on here. That's not the intent. The intent is for you to see how that purple line is moving up. That's exactly what we want to see. And again, this just goes to highlight the great work that the team is doing to to move the needle on both results um from an achievement perspective and a growth perspective. So with that, that's kind
031of recapping pillar four. There are any questions for Sonia or myself? >> I'm just curious. So like this information that you have here, you know, we're comparing ourselves to I mean, that's awesome that we're like going up. Um, my question is, do we know specifics about some of these other districts that are in the 90s? Like I was curious like when you get this information, do they give you any details or is all >> No. Well, you I think you would see look at the districts, Whitefish, Bay, um, Spederberg. What's different about them than us? No, it doesn't. It's It's poverty. It's you know where their poverty. So when our comparables were drawn up, we looked at two out of five um two out of five benchmarks. So maybe two out of the five benchmarks
032they were enrollment and when we established these this was at the start of the strategic plan. So a lot of things can change but it was enrollment in 2122 um revenue limit to enrollment um percentage of students with disabilities percentage of students who are economically disadvantaged and percentage of multilingual learners. So you could they had to hit at least two out of the five. It is these comparative groups are if you look at our website and click on the um scorecard and you click on the normed districts it actually pulls up the spreadsheet and tells you which biioarkers I guess in essence are we comparing against what um shared with me is when these were established we wondered like well does it make sense to compare ourselves to a white fish we're alike them but
033yet very different and we said yes because stretch for us. It's something that we should be striving towards and evidential on. >> Congratulations to all the work that's been put in for that. >> Thank you. One one thing that strikes out to me is, you know, as we continue to improve, right? The passion for continuous improvement has to grow, right? And continue to grow. I think it's really important to look at diverse question. >> So the um the quarterly report gone through these on a on a regular basis and at this point in the year we're looking at a preliminary peak on how did we close out the year. So we are in audit right now. So these are unuded figures that you will be provided but it it gives the it'll be pretty close
034the the changes that we'll have moving forward um are relatively small. So thinking about this again when we say the operating in 10 and 27. So those are the funds that every district has regardless of the different programs. So that it really is trying to do the best that we can do to compare ourselves to others. So one of the things that's interesting to look at is we look at these um reports through the year. I'm reporting this data on a cash flow basis. And this is the time of the year when you really can see that difference between What we do as we get ready for audit is change this to an approval basis. So basically everything that we're required to pay out everything that we're yet to receive. But we finished the year
035in June and we've got a long ways to go yet. So as an example, we have $7.8 million worth of taxes that are applied to this year that we haven't yet received. We have um another $700,000 in grants because with grants with federal funds in the state you have to spend the money then you request reimbursement for it. So we have to have fun in advance through basically fund balance and cash flow to make the expenditures and then we get reimbured on the on the back side. But in addition to that, we are we do weigh in some payments as well because our teachers have been given the opportunity to receive their checks over the summer even though they earned all of that money by the time the school lets out. We give the each
036teacher the option to you want to get your paychecks paid all through the year or do you prefer to also have your checks in the summertime? So those that prefer to have their checks in the in the summertime, we have July and August checks that haven't been paid out yet. So we have about $3.1 million as of June 30th that hasn't gone out the door yet. So you can kind of see how that shakes. And then the lighter colors on this graph are last year's numbers. The expenses are on the top and the darker colors are this year's. And so what you should expect to be seeing and looking for is our school tools are very cyclical. And when they're off on a monthby month basis, why is that? And often times what it is,
037it's a free payroll. One month their free payrolls might have been in March and the next time it's in April. And we had that this year that um we had payroll last year in September. This year it was in August. And then this year we had three payrolls in January. Last year it was in March. So you can see those are off there, but then they kind of start to um to crew up again after that. Then always starting out like with our budget, where are we at? Where does our money come from? As you can see, 86% of our budget comes from both state revenue and local. Most of that state revenue is equalization. That'll be a challenge this next year when there was no money put into the equalization. You remember the revenue
038limit formula. Revenue limit minus state local taxes. So that that no increase in that will be problematic for us for this next year. But you can see, you know, just a better idea of what is. Then when we're looking at our revenues, what we're hoping to see is that our revenues came in a little ahead of budget. And you can see when you look at the bottom line, we're at 100.1% of our revenues. When you look at the percent columns, so the percent of budget is comparing budget to actual for each of those line items. And then the yearly activity variance is comparing activities to this year's activities. So you can see um in that uh federal revenue seeing that going way down that's remember that and then in other financing scenarios that's an e-
039rate that we had last year that um just reimbursement from from you can see that our local revenue is up significantly because we're relying more on local taxes but um interest income is also part of that. So then looking at our expenses by object, you can see by far the largest section of this is salaries and wages and employee benefits makes up 74%. And then the other really big chunk is purchase services and educational payments. So what in there are our um we have offsite 4K partners. So they're not our employees. pay for them, but it is construction. We have um all of our voucher payments are in that category. And then transportation, um contracted education for our students who are served elsewhere. So with our pals program, we're hoping to bring some of that
040back in in house. Those are the major ones that are in that line item. Then looking at how weend our budget by object, what we're hoping to that we've undersent this year at 97.7%. Um, and you can see the year yearly activities. So, while we went up close to $2 million in actual expenditures made, we were able to stay under budget by about 98%. Um, you can see here that the bigger the bigger area, one of the bigger areas that kind of to draw your attention. If you look in that capital project line, you look at the budget last year compared to the budget this year. Remember, we had that three year bluff boiler budget. We won't be talking about that anymore after this year. That'll be off the books. That's been a comparison year
041over year and it's been skewing our financials for quite some time. But you can see that we did spend more in capital objects than what we had budgeted. And some one of the things was um just some things that needed to be fixed. But then remember we approved that pool that was um kind of a I won't say last minute but it was an expenditure that we approved that we hadn't budgeted before. Then looking at our expenses by function. Remember we always wanted to look at our functions two ways kind of the what and the what for. And then you'll see here that instruction you um instruction, co-curricular activities, and student services. They're all things that are directly working with our students at 67% of our budget and business administration. The largest section in there
042is transportation and utilities. So, those are the biggest places there. Then looking at again, you're going to see the same percentages at the bottom line, that 97.7% um as well. The activity variance is the same but just looking at the data a little bit differently. The thing to point out here is in budget the co-curricular budget went down. The reason for that is last year we had that boys and girls club grant and we were required to hold that in the 23 24 year in the co-curricular area and this and now this year it's in fund 80. So budget wise that's why that budget went down considerably. We did um have higher than expected expenditures. We had some pretty big football uh uniforms that and just some bigger things in our curricular budget that we
043hit. So looking at our kind of a bottom line, what does it look like we're going to be at for the year? Um, our revenues, as I said, came in a little bit more than what we expected. Our expenses were a little bit less. So, conserved funds of about a million dollars. That's 1.9 91% of the budget. And all of the staff are to be thanked for that. That is not the accounting team's work. It is everybody pulling hard to try to make sure that they do the best to conserve the funds. We we need to spend and we don't spend more. And so all of our staff need to be thanked for that because it's their work. It truly is their work and it's exactly where we want to be moving into the next
044year because it gives us a little bit of capacity as you know we've had our project come in over budget. I'm not as worried about that now because we've got have a funding force to basically cover that overage and then we'll have obviously inflationary increases too. So um it's just exactly where we want to end up. Then our next steps for closing out the year conduct and finish the the audit and that audit gets submitted to the department of public instruction and then our auditors will be here planning to be here on December 8th to go over the financial statements with you. Um, I can report that there there were no audit findings of a major consequence that were discovered up to this point. And again, that's thanks to all of our staff for the
045work that they do to make sure that we are following policy procedures and requirements by other organizations that we can have a clean. Is there anything that I can answer now? Now action items and item 13 which is the 2025 26. Mr. President and board as you can recall at our last meeting each principal went through their proposed changes for the handbook. Uh I have received no questions from board members uh or clarification that they wanted. Uh therefore I'm asking the board to approve all of the handbooks as previously presented. We can take these one motion without objection. So without objection I would move to approve all the handbooks that are detailed in the elementary prek middle school activities student activities. >> I'll make a motion to approve the >> Okay, the motion's on the
046table. Motion by approved questions. All those in favor >> with that we have our consent agenda. Are there request for any items to be removed from the consent agenda for separate consideration? >> Seeing none, I move that we approve the techn agenda as presented. >> Second by Mark to approve the consent agenda as presented. Are there any questions? All those in favor >> Mr. President, I think it would be for us to acknowledge the fact that we have a new principal in the room that was the board just approved. Um, Kelly, welcome to the team and uh it's going to be an honor working with you. >> I'm very very excited. >> My unintentional oversight [Applause] necessary. No, I'm I'm just very grateful for everyone here who just has helped me grow as a leader
047and um very grateful to be a part of the Northern Hill family moving forward. >> Motion to >> second motion by Brian, second by Tracy to all those in favor. Hi.