001- [Lisa] Good afternoon, we will reconvene our meeting. - I move that the Board of Education approves the agenda as submitted. - [Katie] Second. - It has been moved and seconded that the Board of Education approve the agenda as submitted. - [Member 2] Any discussion? - [Carrie] Any discussion? - [Lisa] Any discussions? Okay, we are here to talk about the District Priority Initiative update. - [Carrie] So you have to vote then. So you... - [Nancy] Vote on the motion. - Vote the motion. - Yeah. - [Carrie] So you're gonna say "All those in favor." - [Lisa] All those in favor? - Aye. - [Lisa] All those against? It has- - It's been moved in- - moved in second that the Board of Education approved the agenda as submitted. Now we will start- - Yes. -
002our discussion on the District Priority and Initiative updates. (group chattering) - Yeah, good evening, everyone. That's okay, Liz. Our board President had another commitment tonight. So Lisa, thanks for stepping in. I appreciate it. Tonight we're here to talk about our strategic plan, and we're to give you an update on the priority initiatives that we've shared with you one time already this year. That was in October. Now, this is our second report out in February. And then our last report out will be in May with our final progress, and then what our priority initiatives are for the next school year. So if you look at this packet that was put together for each of you that's at the table, you can see that it's broken out by the priority that we have set this year for
003the district. And then underneath, it shows you what's pillar or action step that's coming from, and then it makes comments on the key actions and the next steps. We're, of course, gonna present this to you, but this is just a nice summary that you can have and look at, at your leisure, okay? So if you look up at the screen, the first thing is just as a reminder, these were the goals that we put together in our new strategic plan. There was four of those. And then these are the action steps that we talked about, again, with getting feedback from our community, our staff, our principals, our students, and our executive cabinet, and then of course the school board as well. So these are just reminders that those are all piece of our strategic plan.
004This last piece that we're gonna show you is, if you remember, these are the measures of our success. This is how we'll look at where we're at in five years. And these are the goals that we have. So it's around student attendance, academic growth, activity participation, high school graduation intentions, and graduation rate. And the top two we're gonna talk about throughout the evening tonight. But I really asked Joe Maloney to come and give a little update around activity participation, because we have had a very busy and successful winner. And so Joe, I'm gonna turn it over to you. Thanks for being here. - Yes. Thank you very much, Superintendent Hawk. And so, yeah, like Amy said, we just wanted to highlight a couple things, but before we got into that, obviously, as Amy indicated, one
005of our measures of success is increasing our participation in our middle and high school extracurricular activities over the next five years. Some ways that we can do that is by not only offering high quality programming, but also providing top-tier facilities. And for me personally and on behalf of all of our coaches, and directors, and students who participate in extracurricular activities, I just wanna give a shout out and a thank you to the board because it's your support in helping to build new facilities like the Aquatic Center, which seems like not too long ago, but it's been five years. So those types of facilities that we build new, and also your desire to help renovate some of our facilities like the Senior Auditorium and some of our other school spaces that gets used for students in
006these extracurricular opportunities. So I just wanna thank you all for your dedication to our students. Also, just to thank you for allowing us the opportunity to explore different partnerships, you know, over that period of time, obviously, with the Aquatic Center, we partnered with DASH, and they've allowed us to do some great things with that pool and have that shared partnership in the use of the pool. Recently, we partnered with DEL, Dubuque Esports League, which I'll touch on here in a second, to start an Esports program for our high school students this school year. So those partnerships with other community members greatly enhances the opportunities that our students have. So I just wanted to thank you for those as well. So, as Amy said, I just wanna highlight a couple of these, kind of over the
007last couple months and over the course of the last year. Recently, you know, with the Aquatic Center, as we indicated, our Hempstead High School boys swimming program, just in the first time in their school history and only the second time in our district, we had the senior boys back in 2009, I believe, won a state championship as well. But Hempstead won that here just a couple weeks ago down in Iowa City. So that highlights the use of that new facility and also the partnership that we have with DASH. Senior Speech continues to do great things in there. And just most recently, quite exceptionally, 26 out of 26 of their events, totaling an 87 students of those 26 teams, met a Division I excellent rating at the Large Group Speech contests. So of those 26, 20
008of those in 87 students, were designated All-State honors by the Iowa High School Speech Association. So great things happening there. If you remember, just a couple years ago, we implemented a new dance program at both of our high schools. And we're proud to say that, you know, combined, those two buildings have 54 students that are involved with the dance program. And they do most of their time in the fall and winter at football and basketball, and do some service work throughout the community as well. But that has continued to flourish in those two years. Recently, this past summer, we had a student from Hempstead, Brandon Zheng, who was only the second student in Hempstead history to qualify for the Congress at National Speech Debate Tournament, which is a pretty prestigious honor and recognition for Brandon
009and Hempstead in our district. So speaking of Esports, in that partnership with DEL, our Esports team just qualified for the state tournament. They're one of eight teams who will be competing on Wednesday, in Marshalltown, Iowa at the state tournament. So out of the 32 teams in Division II, is where we fall, they were one of eight to qualify through, similar to what we would do in basketball and volleyball, any of our sports have a postseason competition, so we wish them the best of luck. But that obviously is a great opportunity for those kids in this brand new program that we started. Our district music, we continue for eight years in a row now, will be the recipient of the Best Communities for Music Education award. And that's kind of a culmination of all the things
010that we're doing, elementary, K-12, within our district. So Shirley Davis-Orwell, who really kind of oversees a lot of that directly has a lot to be proud of, and all the directors that she works with in the Music Department. Our Senior Theater, we had nine groups, earned an overall superior rating and have qualified for the national event at the University of Indiana this summer. So continue to have great things coming out of our Speech and Theater Departments at both schools. High school robotics, if you remember, this is going back just a little bit, but I think this group tends to be kind of in this limelight quite a bit lately. So just this past summer or past spring, I guess, in 2024, they qualified and participated in the National Robotics competition down in Kansas City. As
011a result of that, one of our students that was on the team received a $10,000 scholarship for her work as part of that team, basically to attend any school of her choice when she graduates. And this just highlights our high school robotics team, highlights a lot of other partnerships that we do. So we're always exploring those opportunities to look at community partners to partner with to help offer these opportunities for our students. And just rather than going to a lot of other specifics, I mean, it goes without saying that we have individuals and teams, and programs qualifying for state competitions, national competitions, and accolades every year, each and every year from our Opus Honor choir, and band, and orchestra, so our robotics and Lego leagues, I won't go through the whole list there, but this
012is only made possible by your support, like I said, with allowing us to explore different programs and with your support with helping to provide outstanding facilities for our students to be able to engage in those programs at. So, just wanna thank you for all that you do. - Thanks, Joe. - Thank you. - Yeah. Especially after that swim team title. We really thought you should say something (indistinct). - Yeah. - Yeah. Yeah. That fast pool's been worth it. - There is, you know, outside of the state title there. 'Cause I personally replace all the vinyl on the record boards, you know, so we can... (Amy chuckles) You know, it's a little bit cost savings so we can save some money by us doing it ourselves. We have lots and lots of school records and pool
013records that were broken the last couple years in that pool. So that just tells you that those are outstanding state-of-the-art, top-tier facilities for our students to be able to achieve their goals and stuff with. - It was worth every- - Because you replaced it or what? - No. (laughs) - No, no. No. Just trying to do our part to be as thrifty as possible, so- (group laughing) - It was worth our money to spend on that pool. You know, there's so many kids that are benefiting from that, and the families that just are watching spectators. - Yep. 100%. It is definitely used all the time, either by our students or by DASH and their programming. So it gets used pretty much from 6:00 in the morning till 8:00 o'clock at night every night. - I
014think it's pretty incredible. This was also the first year that the marching band came to play for the (indistinct). - Yes. - Which was a really- - Yeah. - rocking loud event- - Yes. - the marching band indoors, in such a facility. I thought that showed good sportsmanship, good respect between music and athletics. - Yep. - And even in the new auditorium at senior high tonight, there's four different jazz bands, from four of our schools, all performing tonight. - Absolutely. Yeah. We have our district jazz festival tonight over at Senior Auditorium, and I'm glad you said that. - [Sarah] I thanks that's where we're going next. - Yeah. (people laughing) And it's great. We're working really diligently to have more and more live performers for, you know, the national anthem and stuff like that. We
015just have such talented musicians in our district. So whether it's the band playing, or individual soloist, or a group playing, I think the more we can highlight those students and what they bring to those events is we want to continue to look at those opportunities. - Agree. - Yep. - [Sarah] And with success, that probably will bring more participants. - That is the hope. - That's what we hope. - Yep. (Amy laughs) - Yeah. - That is the hope. So we see that that will definitely have a direct correlation for sure. - I hope so. - Yep. - Thanks, Joe. - Thank you. - Thanks, Joe. So now, we'll move into our '24-'25 priority initiatives. And we changed how we kind of track those than we did in the past when we got our new
016strategic plan. So just as a reminder, if you remember what started on track, maybe something's on hold, something might be completed, some things we try to make operational, and then there's times when things have to get canceled. So, just to remind you of what that code looks like. And if you remember, in October we have five priorities. In October, we really focused heavily on priority one, two, and three. So we're gonna do some reviews of those and then try to do a little bit more emphasis on four and five this time. So if we look at priority number one, this is really to ensure that regular conversations with families about a student's progress toward graduation, occur early. Okay? And so when you look at what our priority initiative was, it was really around 1.1, which
017was review and modify parent-teacher conferences to add focus on graduation progress and post-graduation plans. So we're saying that that is on track. Mark and Lisa are leading that group with a lot of others that are sitting in this room, and our guiding coalitions, and then just staff members from throughout the district. And it's been really good and rich conversation. So I'm happy to say that that's on track. And then for 1.2, systemize the process of reviewing, tracking, monitoring, and utilization of post graduation plans for all data for students is also on track. And then if you can see, if you go back, this shows you which pillar those align to and then which action set is that shows the alignment. So key actions around the Re-Thinking Conference Committee. Again, this committee is looking at elementary,
018middle, and high school. So how do we reformat? And do we need to reformat all of that? You know, if you remember, our data from elementary conferences is very high. And then as we go middle and high, it gets a little bit lower. So how can we reengage parents into that conversation? And they've broken up into subcommittees that are planning for conference content, professional learning for staff, you know, what things do staff need to know that they're gonna be sharing at that conference with families? How do we communicate with families? And then how do we make sure it ties to career and college readiness as they go through that process at all grade levels? And then the Post-secondary Plan Data team, they're really looking for a systematic framework for how we collect, review, track, and
019we utilize that post-graduation data so that we can have all students that we know where they are, are they on track, and what comes next for them. And that really will be an approach through the VERTEX dashboard, which again, they're working with that committee and trying to find a new information system that will get all that information put together into one spot for families to utilize. So next steps, obviously we're gonna continue to meet with our group and strive to have a recommendation to the board at one of our Ed programs meetings this spring, okay? And then same thing is really around the VERTEX dashboard. Really, how do we get consistent practices? So we regularly review individual progress and that we're having a way to celebrate the progress that those kids are making with their
020families as well as their staff and teachers. So, okay? Any questions about priority number one? Okay, we'll move to priority number two. So really, we're looking at best practices in how to engage students in their learning. Okay? That's our main priority for number two. If you look at our priority initiatives for that goal, it's to really explore use of standards-based grading at the middle school level. And that work has been started. For the next one it's lead dedicated professional learning for teachers on how to review and use student growth data to inform their instructional practices. And then the last one, is how do we look at collaborative learning communities where you might hear them being called CLCs or PLCs? And how do we ensure that there's consistent implementation and alignment with our strategic goals? So
021the first one, the key actions around the standards-based grading, the Middle School Guiding Coalitions, they meet monthly, and they talk about the standards-based grading and they develop a rationale, timeline, and common grading purpose statements. The thing that we also know is that right now, in the legislation, there's a bill that's being proposed that you could only have standard-based grading in K through 5. So if that would pass, and they would not allow that to be in 6 through 12, that's something then that we would cancel as a priority initiative. But just know that we're continuing to watch that bill and see where the progress is on that bill. And then the next one, I think Lisa's here to give us some chats about that. - Sure is. - Yeah. - Thank you. We're going to
022share a little bit about some of the growth data we continue to work in our CLCs or PLCs. And so, this all came from a question on a story of a community initiative to provide books to students in our title schools, and the impact that that may or may not have. And so, I went ahead and dug into the data around our screening data, which we do three times a year. So this is based on our winter screening data results. So if you look at winter '21, '22, that is the first year we were back full-time, no hybrid model. And if you look at district-wide proficiency, we were at 55%. If you look at our title schools, we were at 32%. So then I took a look at last year and this year, and you
023can see we went to 71% for our district and K through 5, and then to 73%. And if you look at the title growth, 51%, 54%. So if you think about a normal trajectory of growth, you would expect 3% per year. So in our district, district-wide, looking at that bucket, we had 18% growth in that period of time, which you would expect 12. And then in looking at our title schools, we had a 22% increase in growth. Again, you would expect 12. So that just really shows us that we're accelerating the growth and closing gaps, and really helping students get back on track. And also, that really ties to the fact that we're looking at formative assessments, cognitive assessments, our PLC structures, our MTSS, how we're meeting students' needs. And I would also say your
024support in making sure that we have high quality researched evidence-based curricular materials in our ELA program, as well as the chance to continue our focused PD and having it be cyclic and aligned with everything that we're doing. Oh, which ties right in- - Yeah. (chuckles) - to our PLC coaching academies. This is something that we're continuing to do, where we're looking for that deep integration with our effective CLC model or PLC model. And so, one of the things that we're really diving deep into is that establishing a common definition of mastery. And I've mentioned before our KUD work, what students should know, understand, and do, and then what is the assessment that aligns with that, that also aligns with our core standards across the board. - So next steps for the middle school standards-based grading
025is obviously to watch our legislation, but also they're developing grading logic rules and professional learning to connect that work to the CLC work that they're doing back of their buildings. And then for professional learning and student growth data, is really to continue supporting the coaching of our instructional staff and the creation of even more informative assessments that align with our standards and learning targets. And then the PLC coaching academy, we've had... Who's all been in the coaching academy? That's been our... You wanna share that real quick? - Sure. - Principals. - It's been all of our principals in our elementary and secondary buildings, as well as coaches and some of our EST. So a great group of leaders coming together to help move the work forward. - And then each of them are developing their
026action plan back at their buildings, so- - Yeah. - Yeah. Thanks, Lisa. Any questions for Lisa or on priority number two? Okay, priority number three, it's "To lift all students towards successful learning by minimizing distractions and barriers at school." And so when you look at what our priority initiatives are around reducing those barriers, in 3.1, it was to implement the behavior solutions training for teaching staff, and incorporate the model into our building practices. And we would say that that's on track. 3.2, go ahead, Becky. I'll let you share that one. - Thank you. 3.2 is aligning the attendance practices with new state laws while taking a proactive student and family-centered approach to address chronic absenteeism. And we are on track with that. We continue our attendance work, and data is showing improvements from the beginning
027of the school year until December 16th. You will see an increase in the percentage of students in the satisfactory category, and a decrease in our chronic absentee categories. And that's a comparison from last year to this year, using the same timeframes. At the last priority update, I highlighted what one of our elementary schools was doing to promote daily attendance. And this time I would like to highlight one of our middle schools. Jefferson Middle School is holding attendance competitions. They set a building goal of 85% attendance for the month of January, and exceeded that goal by having 88% attendance for the month of January. In addition, each grade level with the highest attendance rate in January, received a free pass to fund station. - Ooh. - They plan to do this competition again in April. (person
028laughing) So, our next steps will be to continue to promote daily attendance. We will look at the data as we head into the second half of our academic year. And then we will continue to work with our families and students on breaking down barriers to why they aren't attending school. - So really, we want the green and gold to go up, and we want the orange and the red to go down. And so that has really happened across the board. So, it's been great work and great conversations and relationships with families, so- - Hey, I got a question. So it was good, 49 to 56. Let's just say like my son, sometimes I'm late and so I drop him off. So does that mean he's missing class because he's late? Is that part of that
029story or- - Well, he is missing class because he is late. However- - Be honest, (people laughing) Be honest, say that with (indistinct). (people laughing) Say I'm wrong, hopefully. - I think she's telling you, you need to leave a little earlier. (people laughing and chattering) So depending on what level they're at, I mean, they would be marked tardy, and tardies do add up to full absences. So, we do wanna promote daily attendance on time, all class periods, all day. - I'm not the only parent that that happened, (people laughing) Just in case you quit that in the (indistinct). - Yeah. (people laughing) - Becky, with concentrating on this more than we ever have before, which was always high priority, are you finding a barrier that we're kinda pushing through and making better for the families
030that you're seeing better attendance? - I do think the communication that we have increased with the families is really making a difference. I think the work we are doing to really connect with families and make sure we're supporting them and helping break down any barriers that exist, is seeing an increase in daily attendance. And I think as a district we can't go wrong with that. - Yeah, so the fact that we're bringing this topic to high attention- - Yep. - Yeah. Thank you. - [Becky] It is making a difference, so- - Yeah, the awareness has definitely helped for sure. Yeah. Thanks, Becky. And then the last focus in this priority has been around establishing a district advisory group to explore research and best practice around student cell phone use at school. And we know, again,
031that legislatively, there's gonna be a bill out there around cell phone use at school. And the committee that Mark and Colby are heading up has really done a good job of having conversations. They've sent out parent surveys, student surveys, staff surveys, so that everybody's been able to give them feedback. And what we're seeing from majority of the staff is "No phones." Parents, "No phones" except for an emergency. And for kids it's, "We want our phones," (chuckles) which is all what we would expect. And so as that bill goes through the legislative process, we are also working on developing a policy that we would then expect all of our staff, students, and families to follow moving forward to start in the '25-'26 school year. So that's exciting for sure. Okay? Next steps here are... Oh. -
032Sorry. - Behavior solutions. We are sending some additional staff members to be trained at an event in Des Moines. So some of that may be missed out on some of the important key work that happened at the beginning where we want them to be a part of that behavior solution piece in their buildings. And then obviously, Becky talked about next steps with attendance. And then same thing with Cell Phone Task Force, that we will really work with having a policy and a recommendation to the board by the spring. Okay. Priority number four is really talking about to ensure that our district facilities provide the modern efficient learning environments expected by today's students and their families. And so as we look at this priority, priority 4.1 was really to look at our facility needs, and align,
033you know, in alignment with infrastructure needs and our enrollment patterns, and that has been on track, Engage community stakeholders in the facility planning process to see what the district needs are and how does the community feel about that. And we feel like 4.2 is also on track. Key actions in this area. Really, you were a big piece of the key actions, you know? I mean, making that very difficult decision to close a school is never easy for anyone. And knowing that, I think we did a really good job with our community talking about the why, why was this disclosing, what is the financial impact on both the district and the community, it really has been a fairly smooth transition. And I think the feedback is, when people understand the why and what the financial impact
034is, they understand, you know, why we had the room to move students to other buildings. Also, just as a reminder, the work is underway as we, you know, ensure smooth transition for our families. On Thursday, there's gonna be an event at Hoover for all of our buildings that students are going to attend next year, that are currently at Hoover. They're gonna come to Hoover and have a open house, meet families, talk about their building, show them things about their school. And that's the first step in our transition piece, 'cause then we'll actually take students to their school and we'll have evening open houses for families to go and visit their school as well. The key actions for engaging community stakeholders. Again, we are re-engaged with INVISION's architect, and we had our first meeting with our
035Community Planning Task Force, and we ask every principal to send us one parent from their school that is passionate about Dubuque schools, passionate about their students' education, and we brought them all together. So every school in our district is represented of the task force. And the conversation was extremely chatty. (person chuckles) It was a rich conversation, and people that really wanna see Dubuque Community School District be successful. So I'm excited for that work that we started already, and we're gonna continue to meet on a monthly basis, with again, the plan is for that task force to bring a recommendation to the board as well about what their recommendation would be for next steps. Okay? When we look at next steps for the engagement sessions is we're looking at developing a district and community survey that
036Mike and his team are working with INVISIONS. We just had a meeting about it today, that we're gonna distribute in March in order to get a broader input on what do people think about some of the ideas we have about the future of the Dubuque Community School District as far as facilities, you know, do we do something with the middle schools? Do we need to air-conditioned buildings? What things do they find as a priority? So we can take that back to the community task force to make some recommendations. Okay? And then the last priority, is priority number five, and that's really about maintaining, enhancing our reputation as an employer of choice in the Dubuque area. So Brian is gonna talk to you about priority initiative number five. - Good evening. It's been a busy year
037in Human Resources, I could tell you that. And it starts with the summer when you saw the mobile registration bus that we go out and we set up in different locations around Dubuque, and we'd recruit from that as well. So we had our five or six stops in the summer, and then we decided, "Well, let's see if we can have a career fair here in the building." And so, on a January day, we had people come to the district office, and we had probably 20 people show up. And we're a little unsure what are we gonna get. Out of those 20, we hired four of them. And what we found through that process was that not only did people come to us, but we also had multiple people here to help with them. So sometimes
038that onboarding process, or not even that, the application process can be a little bit daunting. There's a lot to do there. And we had five, six people that could sit down and work with them for as long as we needed to. So we found that to be very successful. And that was just what we experienced in our own setups. When we go out and we travel out to the local colleges, we travel out to Platteville, we go to Iowa, Iowa State Uni, it's been really successful. We've had over 20 stops on that this year. Laura Kunkel has been all over the place and just making the connections that you need. And so many times when people talk to us about the recruiting aspect of things, we have a large number of teachers, but there's so
039many other positions that we have that we really need to recruit for year-round. It's not just something that we can do in the summer months. So we've really upped our game and it's paid dividends. So we're excited for that. We also had our leadership academy that we had a symposium where we had 15 different teachers in the district come. That is something we would love to expand on. I know I talked to you earlier this year about that, but it was very successful for us. So to try to find ways to encourage leadership with our teachers, and get them to kinda take that next step, that leap of faith that we believe that you could be great as an administrator in that district. Bless you. And we're hoping that we can increase the number of
040participants with that, not just with the teachers that attend, but also with the universities that are there as well. The next part I wanted to talk about, the 5.3, broadening staff recognition efforts. Really, Joe and Mimi have done a fantastic job with this. And it's just like finding ways to get the staff to come together to do activities that are enjoyable, that build Camaraderie. And when you have that experience, I think it pays such big dividends in the classroom with the students. They know when teachers are happy. We had a euchre tournament. We had pickleball. We've got volleyball coming up. We had bingo. And it's really surprises you like, when the word gets out... Actually, the euchre champion is in this room if she just... Julie Lang. (people laughing) So it was great. And you
041just see not just a group of teachers or not just a group of paraprofessionals, but you see really every group that we have kind of come together and be a part of that. And it feels like that family atmosphere that we're trying to create. So we're very happy with the work. Thank you, Joe, and thank you, Mimi for the work that you've done with that. We've also experienced some success with the grant program that we applied for, and we were very fortunate to be selected for that grant. And it's the Teacher Paraprofessional Registered Apprenticeship Grant 2.0. And we are underway with that right now. We have currently... We started out with about 14 or 15 paraprofessionals that either have an associate's degree or a bachelor's degree not in education, that's one program. And then we
042have 10 spots available for anybody who does not have an associate's degree to work towards that degree while getting their para certification. So we've got two different groups there. One is through Western Governors University and the other is through Kirkwood. And they're both completely online programs. So it's been fun to navigate that and to see the excitement in people's faces when they get the opportunity to take classes, and have those classes paid for. It's a big boost, but it's also a lot of work. And the apprenticeship is a piece of that as well. So that goes along with it. So you don't just get to take the classes, there's an apprenticeship program that the state provides. So it's kind of like three different things going on at once. And it's a really short window to
043get this in. So everybody's kinda hurrying to get their ducks in a row so we can get moving on that. And those classes start next month at Western Governors, and they won't start for a little while yet for Kirkwood, but it's exciting to be a part of that, and to help people kinda overcome some of those barriers that may keep them from getting that education to begin with. - I guess I have one question with that education. There's always talk that, you know, you educate them and then they go somewhere else for a job. So is there anything that, you know, if they're taking that program through our district, that they are signing up to stay with our district- - There isn't. - or the state of Iowa? - No, there isn't. And the state
044was pretty clear about that to us when we've had those conversations. And the thing that they pushed is remember that they're already here, and for the most part, they're already working for you. That was a prerequisite. And so, that is the big plus for us, is they're already working for us and that'll give them the one up on the hiring process, and us the one up getting to watch them work with students along the way so we can kind of take them for a test drive, so to speak. Like, is this the kind of person that we want in our classrooms? And we're seeing just great results from the people that are motivated to do that, that are already in-house with us. - [Lisa] Good. - Because a lot of times with the local universities,
045they provide, you know, great student teachers for us and great teachers, but a lot of times those students wanna go back to wherever home was, and they'll work for us for a couple of years and then they'll take off. And we're trying to get ahead of that so we don't have to do the backfill game. - Yeah, and if we can help educate, make them reach their goals and retain them, that's a win. - [Brian] Absolutely. - And I think next steps for this area is just to keep doing what you're doing. (chuckles) Because like you said, I mean, the recruitment, and the retention, and the onboarding has really become a full-time job in our district, you know? Historically, we would do most of our hiring in the summertime, spring and summer. We'd get everybody
046to start the school year. And then we didn't really hire anybody until the next summer came around 'cause people were staying throughout the school year and things. So that has shifted, and so it's shifted the work a little bit in the HR office. But I think you're navigating that well, so- - And I don't know if I shared this with you last time, but I know that we had... Compared to last year's data, we had probably about a 50% retention rate with our paraprofessionals from the start of the school year to the midway point. And we've changed our onboarding, we've kind of amped that up a little bit, and the training they're receiving. And because of that, our retention rate was at 74%. Out of 100 that we hired this year, 74 was still with
047us in December. So we're definitely seeing the fruits of our labor. - Yeah. - Sweet. - That's excellent. And that's best for kids too. So that's a great stat. Thanks for sharing that. So really, those are the five priority initiatives that we have for you that we've, you know, continued to report out on. Like as always, we appreciate your support. I say it every time, but it's really not... It's the work of the people sitting in the gallery over here. We've got a great team that lead us through many of these priorities, and they work tirelessly to get people involved, get people engaged, and make sure that really nobody's caught off guard when we're introducing a new piece into our schools and into our system. So, do you have any other questions for myself or
048anybody from the team? - I just have a comment, like we just talked about, we're helping people educate themselves to reach their goals and retain them. I love what we're doing with the community. Parent's choice is the most important thing. That's what is happening now. And parents, with the education savings accounts, they're choosing what school to go to. So the more we engage our families in decision making, getting their feedback on everything that we're doing, we're gonna retain them. They're gonna see that this is not just a one-way street here with the Dubuque schools, that we're listening to families, and they're listening to us. So that's gonna build connections and hopefully these families stay with us. - Well, I think it's, you know, great that we highlight too the opportunities that students have when they
049come to our district. - Right. - And so there's been lots of success that's happened through that. And we know that when students are engaged in extracurricular activities, are engaged in their school in any kind of way, they're more successful academically. - And the families too. Then you're doing a wonderful job of engaging the families. So thank you. - And I do have a comment. So, first of all, thank you and your team. I always appreciate when we get in spaces like this, how you always acknowledge your team for the work. So that just continues to remind us the type of leader you are. So thank you. And, you know, your great team. So I'm pretty sure many of us read the TH, that's my shout out to them, and I happen to read about
050the bill coming down the pipeline pertaining to math, and what we need to do to make sure we're screening our students multiple times, and just to see that we're already ahead of that, and how, if we're going to do more, we're gonna need more resources. And as I was reading through that article, one of the things right away, at least for me, I thought about, in my role with the city, how can I help, right? How can I help from my city hat to support the school district? And I'm curious down the road if we should explore how we can infuse some of the needs that we have that community members who are watching this video can say, "Oh, I can help out with that area right there as well." So just something just to
051think about if there's specific things we need from the community where they can play a vital role, especially moving forward. Maybe we can infuse that in some way somehow. - I mean, that's a great comment. I think we... You know, currently there's ways that the community has given back to us. You know, I think about even robotics, you know, the way that John Deere has partnered with us and supported our students and helped them through that process, because part of it is, you know, we talked about this earlier in my evaluation, it takes a village, you know, it's not just in a classroom, it's parents, it's the community, it's the support from all to help our kids be successful. And so, you know, how do we expand our mentoring program? Is there a way that
052some mentors can come in and support our students in math or other academic areas that they need supported? And so those are things that we constantly are looking for, and we encourage people to come and show support of our kids too. So, thanks for saying that. - I would just acknowledge and say thank you that this is a living, breathing guiding document. It is not a piece of papers that sit on the shelf and get pulled out quarterly. It is the work. Not all of the work, but it is priority initiatives. And this community can feel very good, I think, about the integrity of a school district this large, that not only has a meaningful strategic plan, but one that is in full operation including these reports out. These are not just your and your
053team's reports to the board, they're to the community as well. And I just say thank you to each and all who have a role in this. It's important to have this guiding work. And it has been sustained over many years. I appreciate it has a new look, it has a new format. I'm still figuring it out. (people laughing) I knew the other one so well, but- - I think it's both operational but it's also very easy for folks to follow along with, you know, especially through the last couple weeks, months, thinking and talking about efficiencies and whether or not we would have to make the very difficult decision to close Hoover. I value it, as a relatively new board member, that this is transparent. Like this is the roadmap that we've committed to each other
054and to the district to follow. And so I'm very grateful to be part of the team. - Oh- - Anybody else? - is there any other items that we need to cover before we end this meeting? Okay, we are adjourned. Thank you, everyone. (bright music)