GFPS School Board Meeting (October 13, 2025)

001[Music] setting C classroom for emotional uh disabilities, emotional disorders for students with that diagnosis. Um, currently we have four students in that classroom. and we'll be adding a fifth student uh next Monday. So, that classroom will continue to grow. We have had some specialized programming in the past with an ALP program and an autism uh classroom as well at Phoenix that were moved a couple of years ago. So, we're back in that specialized programming. And then we also have three early childhood special education classrooms in our building that serve our three and four year olds um in that specialized program as well. Next, you'll see a picture uh that is our our staff and all the houses after we did our house selection ceremony. So, we started out with grades 3, four, and five, and

002you'll learn a little bit more about that phasing in program uh later on in your presentation today, but I just wanted to point out that fun staff picture there. The next slide, we're going to go into some of our format and structure. And as I stated before, with collaboration from Amy Bart and her department and also I want to just give a big thank you to Jessica Sporbert. Um she is our MTSS district coordinator. You you've had her in front of you in the past. She just brings a wealth of knowledge and just some really nice expertise with data. I know Janna um Macakovsky, our instructional coach, just really values that collaboration that we get from Jessica Sporbert and Amy Bart in her department and the support that they bring to everything we're doing with

003our academic achievement results and all of our testing and everything we do with academic related work in English language arts and in math along with the interventions that we use. This next slide covers the goals. So, as you can see, uh, we started out with 38% proficient with a goal of getting to the 50% level. I know that you've been involved in this great work, uh, with the B legendary and some of the goal setting that we've all been involved with, even at the schoolboard level. So, you're starting to become very knowledgeable of where our percentages are and where our goals fall with all of our academic performance. Next, you'll see some of our North Dakota State Assessment results. Now, this is pretty fresh off the press, pretty new result information. As you know, our

004third and fourth graders, third, fourth, and fifth graders take the North Dakota State Assessment. So, you can kind of take a a peek at some of our wonderful results. Um, one of the things we want to celebrate is overall many schools in the district decreased um on this assessment from 6 to 8%. And Phoenix did not decrease. we actually increased for our state state testing. So, we're super proud of that. We're also proud of all the supports that we have in place to hopefully get to that level of achievement. The next slides you'll see are broken down um by some categories that I we think are obviously very important. You'll see the race and ethnicity category. Just a reminder too that this is pretty raw data and we're still kind of analyzing the data in

005all these areas. Then you'll take a look at our socioeconomic status. Uh right recently I just received an email that our percentages for Phoenix we are at 56% free and reduced. So our title one status is about 56%. So, if you're wondering how many percentage of students qualify for um the free and reduced lunch category, that would be at 56. And of course, because we're a title one schoolwide school, all of our children can benefit from our title one funding. And we'll get into a little bit of our title one funding and how we use some of our our dollars in the next couple of slides. Next one singles out or focuses on special education population. As you know, with a very high percentage of specialized programming, the special education population, we've seen some really

006nice significant increases. As you can see on that slide specifically, if you look at the green, the IEP students with disabilities compared to from 2022 to 2023. If you look at that percentage up to 23 and 24 school year, we went from 18% all the way up to 28%. We had a 10% increase in one year in just our special education students. So, we were pretty proud of that. And we've we've done some different things with our special education model. This year, we are attempting a model that one of our general strategists serves our literacy students, one of our general strategists serves our math students, and one of our general strategists is serving more of the emotional or behavioral students with kind of a setting B in mind. And that model allows all three of

007those general strategists to share all of their children. So instead of them just focusing on their case load of kids, they're sharing all of the students and they're really specializing in those areas. And so Angie Mercil being a former classroom teacher, she's in her second or third year I believe as a special education teacher and she brings to that position a wealth of knowledge in the area of literacy and that's why she's focusing on literacy. And then we have Marissa G focusing on math and we have Amber Rasperson focusing on the emotional or the behavioral supports. So, we're trying that just to see if we can even increase those scores even a little bit higher and see what we'll do with our academic achievement results. The next slide you'll see is our inputs. And so,

008I'm just going to read through these with you. Um, one of the uh acronyms TSI, uh, I would also say TSGI, so targeted small groupoup instruction. If you're not familiar with that, it's just something that we're doing a lot of as we identify students that need interventions. We're providing those small groups and we're having those teachers with the highest quality certifications working with those small groups. So, I'll just list those out for you. Wit and wisdom and benchmark instruction with fidelity. I know you know the financial support that we've put into our our curriculum adoptions. That's very important. TSI time with our interventionists and strategist support. Those are the interventionists and the general strategists for special education working together. intervening day one with kindergarten students because we know the kindergarten students need students need intervention

009right away. Our special education push-in model, data-driven student groupings using our early release PLC and our data dig meetings. A lot of that time is led by Jana and her role as an instructional coach. Bi-weekly support meetings with our instructional coach and our MTSS team. our coaching cycles. Uh, one thing that's unique about Phoenix and MTSS, I will say that we have a section of time weekly that we dedicate a morning and we have uh, coverage for our teachers. We have a rotating schedule at every teacher is able to attend the MTSS meeting for a half an hour and we have all of the people at the table that need to be there. So, a special education representative, our instructional coach, Carla Ortiana as a social worker or a behavioral interventionist can pop into those

010meetings if necessary. And that just provides the teachers with that on-time option to look at what interventions their students need and then what interventions can we implement right away. And so there isn't any waiting and and there isn't any requirement to meet after school either. They can do that during the school day which our our people really enjoy. Instructional rounds the Ron Clark system and implementation in house app progress monitoring schedule and then the collaborative scheduling and goal setting. We also have a full-time literacy specialist and she is primarily working on all of those literacy intervention interventions and starting with K1 and two and we're now working excl also with third, fourth and fifth grade just providing all kinds of interventions for students that need it. If you look at the next slide, you'll see

011this is our star early literacy results, the comparative to from kindergarten and first grade. This is our English language arts adaptive, our computer adaptive test, our star. So you'll see this is broken down with all students, Hispanic, Native American, Alaskan Native, white, economically disadvantaged, and special education. One thing I wanted to point out on this slide, obviously we're always looking for ways ways we can improve as well. Um, so if you look at our Native American population, you'd probably be talking those percentages. If you look at that reduction, you're probably talking one student. um because it would be about a 10 students or so is what we're talking about for that subgroup. But comparatively, when you look at the economically disadvantaged slide and you think of 55% of our students, when you go from 36%

012to 58%, I'm pretty down darn proud leader with those numbers. when you look at the 24 25 comparative data to 25 26 and then the same thing with some of the other categories with a nice percentage increase special education increasing by 5%. I think another thing I want to mention and I'll bring I'll bring this back again. I'll loop back to this as well, but another thing I want to mention on that slide that I had in my notes is that I had um our buyup money from our title one. Uh so before we get into the math results is I think a lot of our success is because we have a full-time counselor and a full-time social worker as well. And so we use our title one funds. I see Dr. Hodc giving me

013a nice uh grin and a and a kind of a agreement and an affirmation that uh she's been in a lot of schools and she's worked with a lot of administrative leaders around the state and they will tell you um having a full-time social worker and counselor allows us to take care of those basic needs and the family needs and then we can get to the learning and the academic achievement. And so we've used our title one funds to buy up uh those salaries for Linda Katkar, our counselor, Tiana Edetoold, our social worker, and then Carla McDonald, our behavioral interventionist, is fully funded out of our title one budget. All right, getting into math. So same things, our goals, our outcomes, our inputs, and our our uh outcomes. So our percentage started at 30%, we

014realize that's quite a bit lower than our literacy. You'll notice our goal was the the gap between the goal setting was significantly different. Um, so we went from 30 to 49% just because we felt like we had more room to grow. Our our numbers started lower, so we might as well still set the bar pretty high. So we're at 49% for our goal there. Also, I wanted to mention that as you know, math has not been maybe the first priority in our district. And right now, we're doing math pilot for uh upcoming curriculum adoption. As you know, our focus has been on English language arts and literacy and science of reading and wit and wisdom implementation. And so now I really focus uh being a former coach, you sometimes get really good at the things

015you focus on in practice. And so I believe we've really um improved our literacy scores and I think our math scores will continue to improve with further uh curriculum adoptions and implementation of what we will do for enhancing math instruction and interventions. We do have with the math supports, we do have a part-time interventionist. Um so Becky Mitsell is a social studies teacher at Phoenix, but she also provides some math supports. I would say it doesn't qualify technically as a researchbased intervention because she's not available available to do it four times a week, but we still say she provides a lot of math support with her position. So, that's a wonderful thing that we have at Phoenix. You'll see the next slide. It talks about our outcomes and broken down by year. Gives you some

016really nice data longitudinally from 2021 to 2022 all the way up to 24 and 25. The next slide is the same as the English language arts format. It breaks it out by race and ethnicity. You could you do see from overall are 29% to 41%. We're pretty proud of that in increase. That is the overall one thing to point out about this slide that we were confused on as as a group at the beginning is um the the left side is our school overall data. The right side is broken down by the ethnicity and the race. So the left side and each of these the the percentages are schoolwide and then the right side is broken down by that category. So if you see the next one, the same percentages exist on the left side,

017different on the right. Next slide is our socioeconomic improvement. And then this is this is one that I will point out to you um as well where the students with disabilities the percentage didn't even record on that graph because it was quite low in 22 and 23 versus what we had for a result as 21.88% in 23 and 24. and our special education students. Next slide is our inputs. I think I skipped by one more there. Go back to there we go. Oh, nope. I did that one. Sorry. Our inputs. So, I'll read through these again with you as we did on the uh previous slide. Targeted small groupoup instruction after core instruction provided modeling of math fact fluency. our push-in model for special education data driven dri data driven student groupings similar to what

018we said before with our early release PLC model and our data digs. I know one thing we talk often about is how do we communicate with our parents about what is that PLC time used for because they don't often know what we're doing in that PLC time. This is a very important time that our our staff really values assessments to drive interventions, regular progress monitoring, our math pilot teachers, and then collaborative scheduling and goal setting. Our next slides are the math star results. Bless you. from 24 to 25. Same as the last slide, we looked at this looking at our groups, our subgroups, and seeing where we can improve and then where we can celebrate. And it was very similar to ELA. If you look at some of the subgrouping and some of the celebrations

019that we had, including the economically disadvantaged celebration students and then our Native American students where we can increase. All right. Right. So, I'm going to call Carla McDonald up and she's going to talk a little bit about her position and the behavior data that we're sharing with you. >> Okay, you're good. >> All right. I'm Carla. >> You got to go. You going to stay right there at the mic. There you go. Sorry. Every teacher wants to move around and get involved with you, right? >> Yeah. Um, I'm Carla McDonald and I'm the behavior interventionist. This is my third year in this position. I was first grade teacher and third grade teacher. This is my 22nd year I believe. Um some um supports that I am able to provide with my position. The first one

020is to support the students in the classroom. I will go in and um support them with staying on task. If they need social skills, if they need small groupoup instruction, I will support them. And um the teachers, I support them. They will either text me. We have a a responder thread if they need assistance with the student. Um I will go in and assess the situation. If I can go in and sit with the student and keep them in the classroom, of course, that's best. So I will sit with them. If they need to be removed, if they're disruptive, um they'll come with me. They'll go back to my classroom and I'll help get them regulated with whatever they need. Um, and some other things that I do, of course, like Mr. Onstead said, I

021sit on the MTSS team, um, PBIS team, and help out with our Ron Clark house system. And if you can, um, look at our data, the power school log entries, the 23rd, the 24th school year, that's my first, yeah, that'd be my first year in this position. And then 2425, my second year. And in the first year we had 170 log entries and um then 189. When I first looked at this data I thought I was hoping the data would be down right with my position. I thought there should be less log entries but then when I started thinking about it I was able to assess or help the teachers utilize my position more. So I created a flowchart with some help from the other um behavior interventionist or deans of students which they were

022um gave me some advice on how to formulate this flowchart. And so the teachers were able to um utilize that and it was you know using a fix it plan and then we would talk about um if they needed a purple sheet. So a purple sheet is our what we use for our log entries and it's a way to document so we can keep track of the incidents. I can see where they're occurring at in the school, which grade levels and which students um are acquiring most of those um log entries and then I can fill in my support by looking at that data. So, I feel like there's more um log entries because I'm able to help out with those and encourage the teachers to use them more. So, we have that for documentation.

023And the pie chart is um useful for me to see where most of our log entries are happening, more of the incidents. So, third grade, as you can see, has the greatest amount of log entries. And if I would look back into the 23rd 24-year school year, those would be second grade and that was where I spent most of my time in my first year in this position. So the third grade is where I'm able to offer most of the support. A lot of pushin help and a lot of um uh different social skill groups based on our SEAL data from Panorama and um just from seeing the different um support that they need and I provide using second step behavioralmies and just different resources through the panorama um skills that they need. Can >>

024I add one comment on that? So just one comment to add to that for that grade level. We also pour most of our resources into that grade level that we have available. So we have several students that have 504 services and several students that have special education services in that class as well. >> And then I'll go to the next slide. Okay. So there's our the triangle, the PBIS triangle. Um, tier one is where it'd be the universal support for all students where they're getting their um, lessons from the counselor. They're getting the classroom meetings, all the Phoenix Pride, all those different um, like our monthly word of the month. They're having all the same lessons. And then tier 2 would be our 10 to 20% of the students. And when I look at the

025percentage I take from our school number of students and in tier one that would be about um two log entries and tier 2 would be from 3 to five log entries and tier three um is six or more. And you can see on the side in the graph 88% of our students have two or less log entries which I think is is pretty great. um 11 log entries in the yellow and then in tier three we had 16. And that number seems seems like a lot when you think of 16 students that are getting six or more. And there's a lot of different factors that um play into that. Um but overall I am pretty happy with our 88% of students with two or less log entries. Um, so that's just a little bit about

026my role and how I can support the students and staff. Um, I don't know if I also mentioned like with the um I think I mentioned my role staff. Yeah, I think so. So, >> great. Thank you. >> That's all I have. >> I'll call you back up if they have any questions for you. >> I'll call up anybody else and I'll call up our team at the end if they have if you have questions for them. They can help us answer those. One thing I wanted to mention about that 88% is sometimes we get focused on the 16 students that are six plus and we get really frustrated with that student behavior and how it's impacting all of the students and it's just a nice reminder when you see that 88% of your students

027are doing exactly what you want them to do most of the time. The next slide we have for you is some school climate data. Um, just a sidebar note on that picture on the upper right. That was Jenna Makovsk's idea to to put in the bald cap pictures. Um, we were doing a celebration for I don't know if it was principal month or it was principal something. And they all came in Steelers jerseys and bald caps. So, I think that's pretty appropriate um for their leader. Uh, and I am a happy Steelers fan today, too, by the way. So, it's been been a a nice little run to start the year, just to add that in there. Um, but one of the things we want to talk about with school climate is if you look

028at those numbers from starting at 68% all the way up to 94% overall data with with school climate, I think it it really talks about the leadership that a group like this brings. when we start a new initiative and we send people to the Ron Clark Academy in Atlanta, Georgia to study an initiative and we try it and that initiative is led by our teacher leaders rather than somebody else leading. Um it speaks to the people that we have and the empowerment that they have to trust each other and work together collaboratively to achieve some results. And so we're really proud of that school climate data. That just shows a few pictures as well of our staff having some fun with different things that we've had. Um you'll see on the bottom left, Mr. Okconor

029and I lost a Vikings bet and we had to the students and we had to dress in Vikings uh things for a day. So that was painful. There you go. Thanks for the school, whoever that was. Uh, next we have for our behavioral interventionist and and some of the things we have for SEAL and PBIS, our behavioral interventionist, our full-time social worker and counselor. These are some of those additional inputs. Our SEAL groups, all of our SE celebrations that combine both PBIS and now our our house system, family involvement and family events, and then of course student motiv motivation. Tomorrow we are having our selection for our kindergarten, first and second graders for their house selection ceremony. And I've heard so many comments in the lunchroom the last several days from kids about what day

030do we get to do our house selection? When are we going to do our house selection? I'm so excited to be finding out what house I'm in. And you'll see from our staff members when I introduce them, I should have told had them tell you what house they're in. But we have representation from all four houses. And I'll name those for you here in a in a minute. Tiana, you want to come up and talk about attendance real quick? No, I just will give you a side note. Um, that uh Tiana doesn't love public speaking. Nobody jumped at the opportunity to speak in front of you. That's why I'm doing most of the talking tonight surprisingly, right? They weren't real thrilled about getting in front of a school board and and all these district leaders.

031But, uh, thanks for being brave and stepping up here for the group. >> Thanks. Hi, I'm Tiana. I'm the school social worker over at Phoenix. Uh this is my year five, so I'm here to talk about attendance. Um this first graphic came from Panorama for the last few years. I just really want you to focus on the colors. Um so as you can see in the past couple years, our green data or on track is significantly high. And then as you go down to the yellow, that's at risk. So probably like tier 2 where we're inter intervening um with myself or some of our other supports within our school and then the red is critical and as you can see the red and the yellow pretty small numbers. So something that we're pretty proud of

032as a school. Do I just Okay. All right. So this next graphic on the top is showing the district data at 87%. um that's 80 um they're here 90% of the time. And then for for us at Phoenix, we're just trending a little bit higher than that at 88% of our students attending 90% of the time, which is great for us. We're excited to have them there. Um I think it just speaks to the relationships that our staff make with our students at school. Um and then this next graphic below is showing our 2425 monthly attendance percentage-wise. Um and as a team as we were talking about it, we were noticing that those lower numbers. Um they're still in the green, but what some of the factors we had talked about were like prime sickness

033time. Our school is a walking school. Um so just trying to meet our kids' needs um by getting them snow gear, their parents snow gear, things that they're they can come to school. We've offered batteries to get kids to school for their cars, parent cars. Kevin's gone and jumped parents' cars. So, we really work as a team to try to get our kids to school. Um, this next one is just um as a district, as you know, we're doing our attendance matters initiative. So, at the school level, we're trying to do that um with a pumpkin up the attendance, which is ongoing right now. We're in week two. Um, so just a fun competitive thing for classes to kind of go against each other and whoever um gets to school will whoever wins first place

034gets a pizza party, second place is cupcakes, and I think third place is ice cream. So just like a fun thing for kids to be excited about um and look forward to. And then this last graphic is our attendance process. And when we um developed this, we really looked at our district um attendance policy that has come into play this last year. Um and we really broke it down for teachers so they understood um that they're really the first point of contact for attendance concerns. Um, our staff does a great job at reaching out to families via Seesaw or phone calls and really trying to build that connection with families so that they know we care and we are concerned when they're not at school. And then it just works its way up. Um, tier

0352 is when I come in and then tier three we have our attendance specialist, um, Jen Little, who does awesome work with some of our families. Great job. >> Thanks. >> Beautiful. Didn't she do a great job? Nice job, Tiana. She's so happy she's off the hot seat. Um, next we just have a few celebration slides to show with you or to share with you and for you to see. Um, some assembly foam party. A lot of these celebrations are part of our schoolwide PBIS program where we we want them to earn a number of proud moments to get these celebrations and to have these rewards at the end of the year, certain times of the year. class, movie, um, spirit day, flashlight reading, some of our wit and wisdom implementation. So, our learning walks

036with our staff, math operations, our wit and wisdom speeches, our second grade parent event, fifth grade smarter than a fifth grader parent event, the witten wisdom for the the traveling library supporting literacy, little red reading bus. These are our pictures of the staff celebrating at data digs, celebrating our data. A lot of times you think, okay, what can we improve? and you don't maybe celebrate the great things. And they just that was one of the pieces of feedback that Jana brought back to me regarding data is they wanted to celebrate more and they wanted to they also wanted to dig in and and grow, but they wanted to celebrate more. So, um we brought some streamers and some fun things to have at the at the meeting for them to celebrate. And we're now at

037the Clark Ron Clark house system. Very briefly, we just wanted to mention uh team Isabindi out there. Mindy's here. How about team Ultraismo >> right here? A T R U S O. >> As you can see, every team has a chant and a cheer that we teach our kids. Team Amastad. >> A M I S A D. >> Nice job, Amastad. How about team River? >> Blue House. >> Best house. [Music] >> Blue house. >> Best house. Mr. Okconor is the head of house as I am with team review. So, um I think that had something to do with both being Steeler fans. I'm not sure. Um but this was our house selection ceremony with our third, fourth, and fifth graders. As you can see, uh we had the staff picture in the middle and

038then we uh we implemented something that we didn't think was maybe possible. Ron Clark Academy in Atlanta, Georgia has a double-decker slide inside their building. and when they spin and they select their kids for their houses, they have them go down the slide. So, we took ours outside to our new playground and we implemented our slide. And so, every kid when they got their house, they got to go down the slide and then run to their house and get their t-shirt and their bracelet to celebrate their house that they were in. Um, so it just the whole idea of the Ron Clark clerk system is to have four houses, one family to break down some barriers to increase belonging, to increase student achievement, to reduce discipline referrals, reduce uh negative behavior toward other children and

039try to get those kids to know each other better because all the grades are mixed in the house. And so we have all grade levels working together and getting to know the students. We've figured out over the years that sometimes siblings didn't even know friends of other siblings because they never get to spend any time together. And so now all of them in our house meetings and our assemblies have time to spend together. So we're really excited about um taking this initiative and running with it. I mentioned phase one, our grades 3, four, and five have been selected. Phase two starts tomorrow with grades K1 and two being selected. And then also we're hoping to increase parent involvement at Phoenix. This house system provides o- lots of opportunities for parents to get involved. We also

040did some donations this summer to start a donation fund so that we could start funding some of the extra things that we're doing. We have a house app and the whole idea is to give kids house points and then we have house point competitions between the houses and then there is a house leader at the end and we also have student leadership. So instead of a student council, we have students that are selected as head of house. So we've taken the house system from the Ron Clark Academy and we've adapted it exactly the way they implement it in their school because it's really an international goal of Ron Clark's is to get this as an international initiative so that all the schools around the country and in other countries are using this as well. So,

041with that, I would ask if you have any questions, staff, could you come on up with me in case they have specific questions for you that might be more specific to your role or more specific? And I'll remind you, we have two classroom teachers here. We have our school social worker, our behavioral interventionist, and then we have Jan, our instructional coach. So, we would honor any questions or try to ask answer any questions you may have. >> Questions from board members for the Phoenix team. Dr. L. I was curious if you've looked into the angels in fourth grade because when you look at your behavioral logs, they're like at 1.8%. And fifth and third graders are much worse. Is there something about that anomaly or or have you looked at that at all? for the

042>> come to the micro. Yes, sir. So, you're asking the you see that the fourth and fifth grade >> the the fourth the fourth grade was so low it was almost non-existent like they were angels >> and I was wondering I was wondering what what what what what the analysis of that is all about >> you know I think it's just the dynamic of kids um you know I I really don't have like a true answer for that there wasn't because our fourth grade teacher here Mr. Oconor like he said today he he texted me and he said um how do who do I give this purple sheet to because I didn't give out any last year you know and now this year he has that group of kids that has struggled in second grade

043and third grade and he's been giving out more this year he didn't know what to do with them um so with the purple sheets not the kids um he didn't know he didn't know what to do with the purple sheets so I had he didn't have to use them last year um same we have fifth grade teacher right here. And um >> you said this the other day. You you didn't give any last year, right? >> Right. >> All of last year. I don't think you gave one, did you? >> Well, no. I I gave one last year. This year, though, feels weird because >> Yeah. I now have that class that was at the 1.8%, but now I'm >> It's October and I haven't wrote one. This is odd. Not even a fix it

044plan. This feels weird, but I like it. >> And and so I don't have like a true answer for it. I mean, I think it's just the dynamic of kids, but I'm in the fourth grade class this year, and I do see growth. Like, there are some new kids that I'm working with, but those kids that, you know, were kind of a struggle in second grade and third grade, you're seeing the growth, the maturity, um, the support that I'm able to give and, you know, the other teachers are able to give, um, I think is helping. But, yeah, >> I think system has a huge part to it, too, because a lot of those fourth graders are walking up. And >> could I ask you just to use just for the the public viewing in,

045could you just use the microphone? Thank you. >> So those fourth grade kids that normally I wouldn't really have relationships with now because I see them in this house system walk by me and like BI and DI like, hey or check in in the mornings. They're like, hey, how's it going? Like it's just bringing us I think together relationships. >> Yeah. Yeah. questions from board members, comments. Yes, Miss Flynn. >> I usually ask this question for every group that comes, but um first of all, thank you for coming. Um it's exciting to to hear from Phoenix. My first uh interaction with Phoenix school was when I did junior achievement in fourth grade. And um the first time I went in there, Mr. Onsaid knew every kid's name. when they were walking down the hallway, he

046was high-fiving everyone and it was just pretty cool to see like the visibility and and the teachers. So, um certainly have seen that uh trickle down to today. So, um my question is you've talked a lot about some resources that you have available to you. Um great to have a school social worker and um counselor and those res resources on hand. Um, but if you could like get anything on your wish list, we did, we had all the money in the world. Is there something that um would take your school from good to great? >> That's an interesting question. >> That's I was going that route, too. We would love a full-time math interventionist that would focus entirely on math and working with our MTSS teams to provide the research-based interventions every day for the

047six weeks that it's supposed to to go and then reassess and see what we're doing with those interventions. And then I would say on top of the math interventionist, we would have a definite idea of all of those researchbased interventions that are available and provide those with our interventionists that are providing it. Like our literacy specialists are providing all the same interventions. the math interventionists in all the schools should be providing all the same interventions rather than trying to find different interventions that work for those um skills that were were lagging. >> Good one. You want to have another one? Do you have another comment? >> Go ahead. >> To build on that too, our literacy interventionist or specialist works with like Jenna Makovsky as well um with teacher support. So tier one and so

048I think building on that with the math interventionist like providing that tier one support and interventions um for math would be beneficial. >> Other questions from board members? I have one maybe it's a question for you or for Mr. Baky was intrigued by this house system even though there's no Gryffindor. Uh is this something that we should expect or could expect to see at other elementary schools? Is there a longer term vision or plan maybe a bit about how that seed was planted? What what does the landscape look like? >> So, so a couple of elementary schools have tried it, but they've adapted it and modified it is how I would say that to meet their own needs and their own staff. We were fortunate to have enough funding last year with our title one

049budget to um Carla and Tiana came to me the year before and asked if we could start doing the house system because they had heard about it from the other schools. And I suggested we if we had enough money, let's send a leadership team to on-site to the conference because Ron Clark uh Academy provides a conference for educators around the world to come and learn how to do the house system and we were there for two full days to learn how to do the house system and implement it. So I think it really will depend a lot upon and you can add to this Matt if you'd like but federal funding because if that federal funding is not available we will still be able we hope to continue our house system and continue because the

050really the biggest cost right now for the house system are the supplies and the app that we're providing every year because it's a yearly fee for that app and that was what we we paid for that with donation money. It wasn't anything district paid. Same thing with our supplies. That's why we had to go out and get donations and do some things above and beyond because it is not a district- funded initiative. >> Thank you, Mr. Baky. Anything to add? >> No, not at this point. I think he covered it pretty well. Um, again, primarily all of it was through title funds and so that's how other schools have done it as well. >> Thank you. Any other comments or questions from board members? A heartfelt thank you for your time, for your work, for

051your presentation. [Applause] Moving on to item four. This is our public comment period. I don't have any public comment cards turned in. Are there any members of the public who wish to speak during this comment period? Moving on then to five. These are recommendations for discussion. We have three tonight. 5A is our fall enrollment report. This would be both Mr. Baky and Dr. Glatch. >> Yeah. Thank you, President Burgerer, members of the board. It's my honor to present to you the fall enrollment report as you'll see in your board packet. Um, I want to just point out a couple things on each one of them that I think is important for all of you to be aware of. So, the first graph, as you'll see on your memo is a comparison between the May 2025

052to the fall of 2025. And so, as you'll see on the right hand side, you'll see the changes as it reflects elementary, middle school, and high school. And then overall as a district. Um, so when we look at our where we ended last spring in May of 2025 to where we are now in September 2025, uh, we're sitting at an increase of 17 students. Um, in comparative data. Now, where you see a drop is when we compare the next graph, which is the the fall of 2024 to the fall of 2025. And primarily, as you as you remember from last year, we saw a drastic increase in students last fall. We're in the opposite end of of that this year. Um so last year um when I presented this data to you um just this

053time last year, we were at an increase of 220 students. Um and now on on this graph, you'll see that we're actually um 91 students less across our district. And so a swing of, you know, just just about over 300 students that we've seen the other end um of. So just so you give you some comparative data, the last thing or the last graph you'll see on there is the demographic or the demograph graph the demographic pre projections sorry excuse me to the fall 2025 actuals. And so uh as you'll see on the projections the overall district projection was to be at 7,75 students and this year um to start off the school year uh September 2025 actuals were 7561. Um so that is a decrease of 144 students. Um that still does give us

054a rate of accuracy of 97.97 um in comparative to last year where we saw an increase of 212 students to the projections which was a 97.1 accuracy um projection. So again these are going to ev goes on um as the school year goes. We're going to see some students added. We're going to see some students uh move elsewhere. We're going to see es and flows throughout the school year. Um when we look at our enrollment data throughout the years um projection-wise historically we typically start high and end up decreasing as the school year goes on. However, the last couple of years that's actually been quite the opposite. And so we'll see if that projection continues or or what happens as the school year goes on. So then I would gladly stand for any questions or

055Dr. Glatch is here as well too. >> Dr. Glatch, anything to add before we open this up to board members? Okay. Uh, questions from board members regarding the fall enrollment report. Okay. It's my understanding this is just an item for discussion. No board action is required to accept the report. These are just items for our knowledge and information. So, anything final, Mr. Baky? >> No. Thank you. Yep. 5B Head Start orientation and student outcome data. This may be Mr. Baky and or Miss Tracy Johnson who's working her way up. So perhaps you can kick this one off, please. >> Yeah. Um again, I'm just going to hand it over to uh Director Johnson who will present some data and some information relative to our Head Start program. Um again, just a reminder that this is

056typically something we do every year um around this time annually. So, um, you will also see Director Johnson come back to us, uh, later on this year and present some additional information as well. So, thank you, Director Johnson. >> I thank you. Thank you for having me, President Burgerer and members. Sorry, just trying to get my presentation up here. There we go. Thank you. Okay, we are in the second year of our five-year grant. Um, this year we were given about 3.1 um million to run our program. The non-federal share that we have to come up with, we call it INCIND, $792,000. I just want to mention from last year, we were 300,000 over our inind. So, um, kudos to our school district, our community partners, and our parents, um, to really go well above

057that goal. Another thing I'm super excited about is we, um, are fully enrolled. We have we serve 154 students who fall within the US Census Bureau poverty guidelines. The last two years we've been underenrolled because I've not been able to find um an 11th qualified teacher. So I'm really excited that we have 11 classrooms serving 154 kiddos. This year we serve our kiddos Monday through Thursday 8 to 3:30. We have seven classrooms at our main site. We're connected to Lake Egassy Elementary School. one classroom at Louiswis and Clark, two classrooms at Ben Franklin, which is new this year to us, and then we're still doing the intergenerational programming at Valley Senior Living. Head Start is made up of seven components. Um, I listed the performance standards in here as well. Uh, we have a really

058big thick book. We have to follow um the federal performance standards and make policies um from those. So, um I'm I'm not going to go in order of there, but first I'm going to talk about the education piece. That's that's why our kids are there, right? Um we are getting those three and four year olds ready for kindergarten. And not only the kids, but we're getting those parents ready, too. Um we're not the first teachers, those those parents are. So, we're really helping prepare the parents um to get their kids ready for kindergarten. We have um health and nutrition that I combined together. Head Start has a lot of performance standards that we need to meet within um a certain amount of guidelines. We have dates that we need to meet all of our children's

059we children. We need to make sure they have um physicals, hearing screens, vision screens, dental work, um dental checkup, dental work completed, um immunizations. And so the goal of that is to make sure that our kids are healthy to learn. Um, we have a mental health disability component manager and we're just really focusing on those big emotions. Um, the just that social emotional well-being. If our children aren't ready to learn with those big feelings, it's going to really be hard to be teaching them shapes, colors, numbers, things like that. Um, [Applause] oh boy. Sorry. Hold it down. >> Hold it down. >> Sorry. >> Okay. Disabilities. Um we ended our year last year with 21% of our students receiving individual education um service minutes. We work very closely with the school district special education department

060and the early childhood special education team um to make sure that we have children in their least restrictive environment serving those minutes. Parent engagement is our cornerstone of Head Start. Um not only are we working um with our students on those school readiness goals, but we're also working with parents on maybe some goals that they have as well. And again, really preparing those parents to help get their children ready for school because they are their first teacher. Um, last but not least is the program governance and management which you are all a part of. Um, we have really strong leadership within um, our school board, our policy council and our staff. Um, we have Sherry Hodc who is our policy council representative and Dave Berger who is our rep our our school representative. Um, so

061without um their their input it we it just wouldn't be a welloiled run machine. We have the staff who run those day-to-day operations. Um we have policy council which I describe kind of as an amped up PTO. um they are helping us with um in kind. An example um our parents were doing in kind but the forms that we had were a little tedious and the policy council got together last year and they developed a form that was much easier to gather the data and then even um established a QR code to be able to go online. Um, so without the input from um, of course our staff, but the parents and the representatives that we have through um, school board, we just wouldn't be as great of a program as we are. And I'm

062a little biased, but um, so those are really the three Oh, I'm sorry. Now I'm forgetting to do this. Um, oh, I'm sorry. Let me go back. um the other areas the that um other components within Head Start I mentioned the seven are really the cornerstone and then these are the other ones that that I'm responsible for and here's the shared governance. Um I think that why the shared governance matters as well is because it gives us um oversight. It gives that the parents the input um to make sure that we're doing we're hearing the the concerns from parents in the community and um we're doing what our parents need us to do for their students and their families. We have um school readiness goals that we have developed. They are aligned with the Head

063Start early learning outcomes framework and the North Dakota early learning standards. uh we have approaches to learning, social emotional, language and literacy, math, and then fine and gross motor. And then under each goal, we have objectives that we would like our students to meet by the time they go to kindergarten. If our students are enrolled in Head Start at at the age of three, they are automatically eligible to be served that fourth year as well. So, in a little bit when I go through the the student outcomes, which we divide into the three-year-old data and the four-year-old data with the four-year-olds, I don't have that divvied out into um second year versus first year four-year-olds. We do um collect data three times a year, and I'm really proud of this data. Our teachers are rock

064stars. Our parents are rock stars because not only are our teachers working on all of these skills um in the classroom, but we're working really hard um to help our parents work on these at home with their kiddos, too. So, we've have some really nice gains that you see here um with the three-year-olds as well as the four year olds. And so these these are students who have met or exceeded the school readiness goals. Um attendance. So we took some data last year. I know Kevin was talking about attendance. Attendance matters. Um it's important we really lay that foundation about that routine, the structure, the stability. Um, and we have data here that shows when we have kids in school, they're learning. Um, it's hard when their attendance is at 85% or below to get

065them to meet those school readiness goals. Last year, our um, attendance rate fell at 86.87%. We work really hard with parents on relieving those barriers that are preventing children from getting to school. We also have performance standards that state um if we don't haven't heard from a family within an hour, we have to call. Um if we haven't heard from them within a day, um we need to be reaching out to emergency contacts or we're doing home visits. Um, so I really pride um our staff too on on really working hard on attendance and getting our our kiddos to school. Um, in 2425 it was at 86.87% and then the 2324 school year was at 88.73. Um last year we really struggled a lot in December and January with um parents vehicles not starting. Um

066so that we took a huge hit with attendance um those particular months but something that we're continuing to work on and that is what I have. I would um be happy to answer any questions. >> Any questions from board members? I have a comment and a question. I was able to be at the open house and it's such a wonderful environment. There's lots of excitement and energy. I was so very very impressed. My question is, and you mentioned having an 11th certified teacher going, you know, serving 154 students. Is there still an unmet need? I mean, what what does that look like for community members to hear, yes, we're able to serve this many three and four year olds? what what would what would a stretch goal be uh for this program or and this

067may be just coming out of my naivee um is this what we have the funding for? So could you just walk through is there a wait list? Is there a process? What are the guidelines? Are we talking x number of additional students who could be served? Yes, we do have a healthy weight list um of students that fall within the poverty guidelines and we have a healthy weight list of students who will never get into our program because they do not meet the the poverty guidelines. Um a very healthy weight list of students um way above that that poverty guideline level. Um I think a goal um as you saw we are in a lot of different buildings and um sometimes that can make feel just you're a little divided. You maybe you're not a

068um you know listening to Kevin's presentation they're all under one roof and um you know all that teamwork. Um I sometimes I think we have to work really hard at feeling that just because we're in in lots of buildings. Um right now because we couldn't find um an extra room um in the school district, we are in a a small room at Head Start. Um it was our kind of little gross motor room. Um and because of Head Start performance standards and square foot usable square footage per students, we can only have 10 kids in that classroom. Um so space I think um you know I think a stretch goal for our community would be Head Start um early childhood um special ed and and a prek um in one building under one roof. >>

069Thank you. >> Yes, Dr. Glatch. I recognize this coming out of the mouth of the secondary um associate superintendent, but the data that Tracy displayed is really a compelling tale about why early intervention matters and the earlier the better. She all those kids um trajectories for learning have been changed by being part of this program and so when we talk about swimming upstream, this is the the quintessential example of that. So kudos to you and your team. >> Thank you, Mr. Baky. >> Yeah, thank you. Um I also want to echo uh what Dr. Glatch just said, but also from the data relative to attendance and attendance matters. You can see from that data that the more kids are in school, the more they're going to see the learning happening within uh the confines of

070our buildings. I also want to echo what uh Director Johnson stated in the fact that really the challenges we face right now from a from a Head Start component, but also from an early childhood learning opportunities is the physical space and the staffing um is really where our challenges lie. Um because I want to again echo what Dr. or Director Johnson stated in this fact that we have a healthy weight list when it comes to early childhood opportunities for students within our community that we need to start thinking about proactively long-term. What does that mean for Grand Forks Public Schools and how do we uh provide those opportunities for all students, not just the students that qualify within Head Start? Um and so, you know, as we start progressing and having further conversations, how do

071we continue to provide those opportunities? um while also recognizing the challenges we have in front of us. So, thank you. >> Thank you. Any others? Dr. Hodc. >> Um since this is just discussion, I completely agree with everything that's been said and again I applaud Tracy for what um she is doing. I actually heard from um in the grocery store a lady said, "Oh, you're with Head Start and that's the greatest program. My son started it many, many years ago." But I'll segue into I really do believe that this is a community school district um issue that we should be trying to address and especially when I think of the university, the college of education and preparing what we could do if we put those three entities together. Um we could do some staffing through

072the college of education. We could do educating of the future um teachers that are going to be responsible for that. We have a community that is in high need of daycare >> and so if we worked it through the daycare um possibilities and because there's so much monies out there um for writing those as well and then the school district. So, it'd be a university um citywide and school district coming together trying to find the one place to house it together. And you could see there's just immense um goals and objectives that would help um because it is an absolute need that we are educating these kids younger and their parents. >> Thank you. Do you want to respond to that in any way before we open this up to board members again? Do you

073>> I I just think um what Sher said, it's 100% she's she's spot on. I think that we have enough community partners um that we could get around the table to really work on a systematic approach to serving more three and four year olds and getting those kids ready for kindergarten. We do kindergarten transition uh meetings with all elementary schools every May and um I talk with the kindergarten teachers in the fall just to follow up um to see how our former students are doing um and they've all said that they can tell um those those students who have been through quality programming um versus those that didn't have the chance to. >> Thank you. Other comments, questions from board members? Okay. Again, as Dr. Hodc said, this was a a discussion for us this

074evening, so no board action is required, but thank you for your time and your work, your your report this evening. >> We have one more item for discussion, 5C, extracurricular pay scale update. Dr. Brener. >> Yes. Uh, thank you, Mr. Chair. uh you have a memo in front of me and I'll just u uh go over the memo so it's very clear about what the conversation is uh tonight regarding extracurricular pay. Uh so given some of the questions that have arisen regarding the newly adopted extracurricular pay scale uh school board has expressed interest in receiving an update on how determinations were made in the development of this revised structure. Uh and to be clear, uh this discussion tonight is not about reopening negotiations as the teacher negotiated agreement was formally ratified by GFA and approved

075by the school board. Uh rather this is an opportunity to provide background and context for the process that led to the final recommendations. And you'll see that uh in the memo I've uh referenced Mike Barmy Meyer, district activities director and GFA uh vice president and uh one of the chief negotiators Joe Drum uh as the key uh reporters tonight uh in the conversation. So I would just invite uh both Mr. Barer and Mr. Drum to the podium at this time to uh essentially talk about the process and I would imagine board members will have some follow-up questions as well. Well, good evening everyone. So, we'll begin the the process talking we'll begin by talking about the process that was involved. And I'm not going to go way back to 2 and 1/2, 3 years ago.

076Um, but we did spend some considerable time in the last, I would say, year and a half, um, going through the activities fee schedule. And the main goal, you know, of the fee schedule that we had was as we looked at it, we were able to identify early on and the reasons why we're doing it was there were possibly some errors and some inequities that have been just left going on for years. And an easy one to understand is in sports, if we have an athletic event and the high school association says from start date to the end of the state tournament is 12 weeks, we should compensate our coach for 12 weeks. We shouldn't compensate for 13 or 14 and we couldn't shouldn't compensate them for 8, 9 or 10. So that was some

077of the things that we looked at. So, and again, the goal was not for any one of us to look at this and say, how can we pay our coaches more or how can we find ways to save the district money? The goal is to purely find where errors had been, where there are inequities, how can we rightsize things and looking for all those possibilities. So, what we did first of all is we looked at the number of weeks that I talked about. Um, and we found that there were there were a few that we knew and and I'll stop. I don't have any handouts for you guys, so I'm not sure um if there's anything to reference with with what I'm talking about, but we found some that needed to be increased based on

078their their schedule. Reference things like student congress, uh, middle school music production. Both of those we found that they needed to be doubled. Student Congress was getting paid six weeks and their whole season was for 12 weeks. And when you also look at the rest of the state as we compare to the the four big districts, that was clear and evident that we were not only underpaying, but I don't know the right words for it, but when you're only paying someone for half the time when they're working for 12 weeks, it needed to be adjusted. So there were a number of those. We also had some that were decreased. In particular, we had debate, speech, cross country, volleyball, basketball. Those are just some of the highlights that that they needed to be brought down in

079a number of weeks. There were others that were adjusted by one or two weeks. All in all, we had 16 different activities that were adjusted and I think five of them were adjusted between four and five weeks and 11 more were adjusted by one week. Then we started looking at base salaries and compared the four districts. We didn't adjust the factor on the base salaries for hardly any of them. There were three or four and they were in the music department in particular middle school where we may have changed the factor from a 0.14 to a 0.2 22 or a8 to a.16 and I worked with Jeff Seablum on that but it was a very small portion when it came to the actual base salary and I think we need to make a big distinction

080on the base salary versus experience pay but to stop there with the base salary let's just let's be clear that some of the base salaries changed because of weeks that needed to be right-sided and very few of them were changed by the factor the the co-actor of um what the teacher salary is and then we look at the experience pay and there were some major changes and I think this is where where some of the questions come in experience pay before this change in Grand Forks coaches and advisers whoever was on an activity fee schedule was getting $6 per week times the number of weeks of their contract times the years of experience. So, we'll go simple. If you had a a 10-week contract, you would get paid $6 for every week of those 10.

081So, that's $60. And then if you had 10 years of experience, you would times that by 10 again and get 600. We did that all the way up to 15 years. When we looked at other districts and how they how they utilize their experience pay or how they compensate for that, of the big five that I specifically asked for, none of them pay on a flat dollar rate. I can also say in my 20 years of experience in doing this, I can't think of another school district that I've been involved in in Minnesota or North Dakota that I knowingly understand them to do a flat dollar rate. In my opinion, it's just unheard of. Vast majority of people that I know, all of them that I know, the school districts pay on a percentage of

082the base pay. And the reason for this is it creates more equity. So let me paint you a picture. If you're getting paid as an activities advisor and you're working for 30 weeks, but your club only meets twice a week, you still got paid $6 per week for every week for those 30. Compare that to another club that would work that meets five days a week, but only for 10 weeks. They got the same $6 per week, even though they're working five times a week compared to the other club that got paid $6 a week, but they only met twice. You compound that by the length of the contract. A 10 or 12week contract is very different than a 30 to 36- week contract. Therein lies why most schools use a percentage. I will say

083when we looked at it, here are the the results of the the school districts in North Dakota, it's a it's a little bit there's a wide range here. May not pays 1% of the base for 13 years. So if you do the math, the most you can get is 13% more of the contract. Fargo pays 2% up to 10 years. 20%. Grand Forks Public Schools now pays 3% up to 10 years. So they're at 30%. two higher than us is Bismar. Theirs is kind of graduated at 7% 7% 665 and in the end they're about 32% over five years they really frontload their experience pay in the beginning to try and keep those coaches keep keep them on board. West Fargo was the highest one. They pay 3.5% for 10 years. the most you can

084get with them is 35% of your base pay. So I think that's where we kind of fell in line with talking to different groups that you know in theory a 3% over 10 years sounds like a good fit. And it is and it is a theory when you're first looking at making a change like this because it's very difficult to nearly impossible to try and extrapolate exactly how much everybody is going to get paid when a lot of contracts and a lot of people switch positions. If you switch position even from as simple as a head middle school volleyball coach to an assistant volleyball coach, that's a difference. So, I I do remember the school district looking at this 3% and saying, "If we applied that to last year's contract, where would we come out?

085Are we saving a lot? Are we spending more?" And again, the goal wasn't to save or spend more. And in the end, it was pretty much a wash in my mind. In my faded mind, I'm thinking that we were in a less than a 1% difference between more or less. And that's a pretty good guess, if you want to call it that, that when they ran the numbers, albeit, and I'll explain, there are some individuals that lost more than others, and there are some that gained more than others. I'm just going to reiterate one more point. We have to keep the base pay separate from the experience pay. The base pay is what we look at throughout the state. We try and make sure that we're we're equal with people. And then our experience pay

086is also something that we looked at and compared to the rest of the state. All in all, there are a number of individuals and they're ones with longer contracts that have a substantial decrease in pay and I think they'll they'll come up with the numbers and they'll be able to tell you that. But when we look at everyone involved, it's a redistribution of the experience pay. And in my opinion, it's a more equitable way to pay our experienced coaches. At some point, when we're paying in an archaic way, I'll call it at a flat dollar amount of $6 per week. At some point, some board has to make the decision to say we have to switch over to a more equitable way of doing this and base it on a percentage of the base pay.

087That I think is our biggest issue that we're probably going to be talking about tonight is how did this happen? How did some coaches lose some money that way? Keep in mind we have a lot of coaches also that gained more their experience pay increased because it was 3% not just the six but also some coaches as we right sized we had to add a week we had to add two weeks as we as I just said we had five different groups that we added four or five weeks to the salary. So keep those things in mind. Um, I don't need to go into a lot of details, but with everything I just said, do is there any questions on on from for myself? >> Questions from board members for Mr. Beer. There don't appear

088to be any at this point. So, we'll continue the discussion and >> I'll hand it over >> to Joe here and I'll be right over here in case we do have questions. >> Sounds good. >> Just like he was for me. Yes. >> And just to kind of open very briefly, um I have a prepared thing that I typed up just because I meander a lot when I talk if I don't have a script that I keep to um I I'm coming at this from the perspective of a negotiator of GFA's perspective. Um factually, uh what Mike said was true about the process. I'm looking at it from my perspective and then bringing artifacts that I'm going to reference. um the artifacts that are in front of you, I sent a digital copy via email.

089Uh I was supposed to send that as Dr. Brener reminded me by Thursday of last week and I didn't know that I was going to be doing any handouts. And the more that I dug into it this weekend, the more I realize that I probably should. Visuals help. Um so as I reference those, if you want to flip through the pages, you're not going to offend me. I teach high school. I'm fine with that. You can also uh look at it online. Um but just to go through my uh statement, good evening. Tonight I've been tasked with bringing information talking about the process of theou for extracurriculars. My hope is to inform all parties and the public about the process, assess the shortfalls of our methodology, and offer a solution as well as information for

090anyone interested. To start, it makes sense to quickly set the background. This process began nearly 3 years ago during the 2023 negotiation cycle. At that time, a need was brought forward by our members related to extracurricular pay, specifically coaching. Through conversations and factf finding, we decided to attempt to adjust the extracurricular pay to allow coaches to be better compensated compared to our peers in the state as we were beneath market value in sever several situations. Upon further discussion and factf finding during the 2023 cycle, gaps were found in information and it was determined that anou was the best solution. The goal outlines the intent of theou and was listed as the following. Thisou will ensure the following action items are completed before the 2025 negotiating session. Point one, an accurate FTE, full-time equivalent count for

091extracurriculars will be created and confirmed for costing purposes related to proposals. Point two, changes to the weeks worked uh for seasons will be aligned to current and known schedules with updates and adjustments noted for negotiations. These suggestions shall include sound reasoning. Point three, current rates will be compared to a local level, the other large North Dakota school districts at the discretion of the extracurricular administrative/ department leadership. And then point four, additional conversations and factf finding will be summarized in a written format and presented in a timely manner. At the conclusion of the negotiation cycle, the activities office began work on their end of theou. I assisted with some data scaffolding, shared resources for comparisons, and shared tools early on in the process. I was involved sporadically with check-in style meetings to cover progress, offer data,

092and generally assist in any way that I could. Handouts A and B were the data that I was responsible for assisting with and by no means were my own work solely. This was intended to be a collaborative process that fell in line with the intent of theou prompting the activities and athletics department to generate facts and solutions that could be discussed at the negotiations table. As we grew closer to negotiations opening, I stepped away from the process to ensure the data being generated was done by the activities department, a stipulation of theou. My intent was to not call into question my involvement or to be seen as negotiating under the table and I felt that my role in ensuring theou was completed and it was more than satisfied on that end. In my conversations and

093work during this process I focused primarily on athletics while activities admin team focused on activities with or excuse me during my time where I was directly involved some sample calculations were indirectly sent to me which I've also included in handout C. With that data, I felt confident that theou would be accurately completed and be able to be discussed in the 2025 negotiation setting. I didn't have access to all the contracts nor data until after the fact, but it appeared that the administration team had access to that data and had started the process of analyzing different solutions. In conversations with the data presented, it was noted by the admin team that some positions would see a little less in their pay while many would see much more. The athletics team presented the factf finding in a

094summarized form which is listed in handout D and that was at the negotiations table. Please note that the positions that were going to be negatively impacted on starting pay were outlined in red which did not copy well in black and white. The ones that are very very dark were the ones that were in red. I would reference you to the one that I shared via color copy on email. Uh at this point I had no reason to doubt their findings and the data was considered accurate based on what I had access to. In doing a review of the facts presented, GFEA and the board team agreed to the spirit of the proposal presented as well as the information we were presented with. Questions about pay were specifically asked about how this would impact veteran teachers

095and the same line of some would go down but most would go up was stated. In conversations that I and others had with the athletic department throughout the process, the same asurances were made that nobody save the individual positions in red should see a major step back with these changes. Moving to the start of this year, once contracts were issued, the error in calculations was made clear. Once I heard of these errors, I petitioned HR department to generate a list of previous contract amounts as well as the new amounts for coaches and activities to run a comparison. With that list and with the help of data tools and personnel from NDU, handout E was created which has a front and back side. Using that handout as a tool, it's clear to see where the perceived

096error or where the error happened in this calculation. Individuals at the top end 15 plus years of experience so far to this year have seen a decrease in their pay anywhere from $1,000 to over $3,000 for their contract. This can be seen on the far right of the handout, as well as the total loss of over $15,000 from individuals who were told there would be no great negative impact to their salaries. During the negotiation process, we were also told this change would cost uh $93,600, which is noted on one of the handouts. Upon requesting facts from the business office, which I'll double check and make sure, uh the total cost was only estimated at about 15 or $55,000. My goal is to present the facts that I have, but also to present a solution. I

097understand that this is a discussion portion and no action is going to be taken, but uh I just wanted to present it for your consideration. Handout F presents a solution, which is by no means a full fix, but will alleviate the perceived error in the short term. The goal is to utilize section 12 of the no negotiated agreement to get the individuals who saw a significant cut in back in line with what they were making in the previous year. And I'm willing to stand for any questions that you guys have about any of the handouts or anything else at this time as well. >> Questions from board members for Mr. Drum. >> Yeah, we'll we'll come back to you, Miss Flynn. I'll see if there are others. Okay. Yes, Mr. Cleven. >> Thank you. Will

098there be a proposed to change the negotiation? >> Will there end up being a proposal to change the negotiated agreement? Like maybe not today, but is that the end goal? Someone from leadership wish to speak to policy related to negotiations? I I can speak to that. I'll just reiterate what I uh put in our cover memo, my cover memo, that it's it's not about reopening negotiations, but to prepare for negotiations in 2027. That part wasn't in the memo. >> Miss Flynn, are you accessing some of these handouts electronically? Are you ready to go? >> Um, I can. Um, Brandon, what's the base pay for like a year zero teacher in the in this current year? >> Just under $50,000. 49 >> 49477. Okay. >> Um, so I have a couple questions. First of all, thank

099you. Um, I think everything that both of you said was accurate based on kind of what I recall as as being across the table. Um, I just have a couple questions. I um also have had some individuals reach out to me um talking about some of their own experiences related to their salary. Um uh I have some questions that may or may not be for you or the business office and they may or may not be able to be answered now. Um so if that's the case um I'm still going to ask them. But um I know a couple people had mentioned that one of the impacts to um or unforeseen uh impacts is uh some people may be at the uh close to retirement. And so there's a three-year sort of average of and

100I may not be explaining this correctly, but there's kind of a three-year um rolling figure that they then use for the pension. Um and so there was some folks concerned that as they were projecting um they were projecting based on kind of what was previously negotiated and so that figure might change for pension. Is that accurate how I'm kind of explaining it? >> Someone want to take that particular question from board member Flynn? >> Dr. Brener, Mr. Bombach, >> I can take >> uh TFR is based on your highest three years. Three best. Yeah. Sorry. No, I'm not trying. It's Dawn Mor was in my head the whole time while she was stuck. >> Yeah. Highest three years of salary. Your pension is based on that. >> Okay. Um, we knew that when we were

101negotiating back and forth and there was a lot of um, uh, questions kind of back and forth, but we did know that on the base salary there would be some adjustments that would decrease um, cuz those were really well laid out and we knew that there would be some increases and some that would remain unchanged. Um when uh the proposal for the experience increment was kind of adjusted, we talked through that. Um did that did GFA send that proposal out to its members so that the members could review what was being proposed and do their own calculations based on what was proposed? Because in in my question, if that were me and I saw, oh, GFA is changing, I'm a coach, then I'm going to go and do my own figure to see if that

102impacts my salary based on my experience. So, that's my question. >> Yeah. And just to walk through that process, when uh those proposals came forward, that's part of my role is to go through and uh double check and triple check. Um, I ran into a little bit of uh a conflict on that end as well where theou is pretty clear on uh who's supposed to do what. Um, that was partially what guided my actions or my lack of actions or lack of jumping in a lot harder and requesting this information more quickly. um after the fact was when I really started to pull the information as best as I could to look deeper on that end um on how this is going to directly impact each individual member um coming to the table because from

103uh my perspective from where it is that we were sitting um that was something that we were supposed to talk about at the table or was supposed to come forward um and I'm not here to throw anybody under a bus or any kind of perception that way but um when we were discussing things that would relate to impact act. Um that's part of what one of my calculations was trying to show. Uh one of those evidence factors was that uh the work was done in the background was the assurance that I had had and that people that were going to be uh really negatively impacted were going to be discussed to. Um that was what was talked about at the table. Um and it was after the fact that I realized that uh that wasn't

104necessarily the truth and that we needed to come to a solution that we needed to try to rectify the problem as best as we could. >> I appreciate the history. I I don't feel like my question was answered. So my question is did GFA send the proposed changes to their membership >> all proposals >> for their membership to look at potential impacts for themselves? >> Yeah. >> And were did anyone come forward and say this is going to negatively impact me based on my own calculation of what's being proposed? the individuals who came forward in the negotiating process were individuals um for weeks that they were concerned with. So it was like a robotics coach came forward and had the discussion about the amount of weeks that they were concerned with. Um but we when

105proposals are at the table we do end up uh posting them, talking about them, putting them out there. We didn't have anybody that reached out at that time after we did our outreach on that end of it. Um, I think a lot of them were of the same mindset that I was, which was if they were going to be negatively impacted, we're going to be talked to about it. Um, and I think that's where the core of the issue is, is that the that communication didn't happen from our perspective. Communication of negative impacts. >> Correct. Yeah. >> Okay. So, in full transparency, I I do believe that the the board and GFA both have different perspectives and different abilities to do calculations, right? So, we're going to take the information and do the calculation. We're

106going to prime example is when we do the calculations on salaries we come together and say is this accurate based on your calculations number of employees is this accurate based on your com right and there was agreements along the way based on if I'm just using the example of salary if I were to put myself in the perspective of of GFA I believe and This may this is just me that it would be GFA's responsibility to take the proposed changes send it to their membership and do the calculations on their own just like we would do for salary just like we would do for someone else. So, I don't think there was a malice effort on anyone's part, and I don't think you're saying that, but to me, it seems like if I was a

107member of GFA, I have an onus on myself to look at what was being proposed based on what GFA is is communicating to do my own calculations. So, it's it's interesting to me that no one came through that process to say, you know, if if we have however many positions on here, I don't know how many this is, 150 or or whatever, that not one person came through and said, "This calculation of experience is going to negatively impact me." Now, I I I understand and I feel for those individuals who are impacted by that, especially the ones that need their, you know, best highest or whatever. Um, so my question for Brandon would be, um, knowing that there was an increase in salary and potential decrease for someone's extracurricular pay, we can we can see

108the decrease in the chart that may have negatively impacted someone. But did the increase in salary uh, mit mitigate that is is what I'm saying. like are we still seeing um you know overall so if someone said I lost $200 in my extracurricular pay but they got let's just say a $400 increase in their salary you know are are individuals losing money um just based purely on their extracurricular contract some all none >> sure >> could there be >> I can I can take an attempt at the the question so to correct the number before. It's actually just over $50,000 for the top leftand corner. So that's a BA1 50,477. And I just did a quick 3% increase. I think the teacher negotiation was just under that. But to put it in perspective, that's $1,500

109from year-over-year increase just to try to attempt that. But I think Mr. Beer might have a finer answer to that. >> As best as I could try and pull contracts out. So, a lot of those contracts that I talked about where we we increase by five weeks or decrease by a week, I it's very difficult to say, well, what would they have been what would they have been paid? So, I tried to pull those major ones out. So, I'm only I'm down to 109 contracts. So, that's not all the contracts, but I looked and said, this is my best 109 where it's Brandon, ninth grade volleyball coach last year, and he's still the nth grade volleyball coach. The only thing that's changed is the teacher salary and he has another year of experience. So when

110I looked at 109 best examples that I could come up with, we have 68 contracts that increased and 41 contracts that decreased. Some of the higher decreases are what they talked about. Some of the highest increases, the highest one that I could find was $1,600. So it's it doesn't compare to the 28 to 3000 iPhone 28, but we're close into that range. So that is unfortunate. But when you look at all of them together as best we can, there are more people who are making more money with this compensation than there are that are losing money. I hope that answers part of the question. >> Part of it. Yeah. >> Okay. Um my other question would be um Chair Burgerer, would you allow if there's any teachers in the audience that would have been impacted

111by this and would give their perspective. Um they may not have known public comment would have been appropriate for that, but I'm curious if there is any individuals who have been affected if they either negatively or whatever. I'd like to potentially ask a couple questions. >> Yeah, I I would recognize uh members of the public uh with with a reminder um again that uh during this time board members aren't going to engage uh personally, aren't going to answer questions. Um comments aren't to be directed at personnel. Um that's per policy. Um I don't need to give a full accounting of our public comment period uh boundaries and and guard rails. Um, so I also so I'll I'll um uh I'll allow that um without a a time limit like we normally would with the public

112comment but um let's stick to the the comments at hand, the discussion at hand. And also please remember um this is just factf finding. This is just context. Um and I don't know if you know of any who are here. If those if there are some who who wish to uh come forward, you can just kind of make your way. Um if you have something to uh that's germanine to the conversation. >> Um just a point of order. Uh to be clear, if we have a question of the individual, can we ask them since it's on the agenda item? >> That's right. Yeah. What I was trying to be clear about is that um someone coming to the podium at this time um don't expect your questions to be answered, but but if you want

113to stand for questions from from board members, you may have some that come come to you. So, would you just state your name and and then um make whatever statement or or share whatever information you have. >> Yeah, my name is uh Brian Stum. Um I work at Trader Middle School. Um I coach football, basketball, and track. Um, so I've coached football for 22 years. Um, so I was on the higher end. So I coached middle school football last year and I did this exact same thing this year, the same position as an assistant coach. Um, I had, you know, 15 years of experience was the max that we had before. And with this new negotiated agreement, it went down to 10 years. So um, my total contract for doing the exact same thing as

114last year and I don't is like $120 less than what I made last year. So, I essentially coached the same thing and making less money. Um, and I'm assuming by co my coaching basketball in December, it's going to be the same thing, less money and coaching track, I'm assuming it's going to be less thing too. Um, just I mean I think in the long scheme of things, this would be a good plan with the experience pay, but for all those veteran coaches that have been coaching 15 years or more, we are seeing less money because of our experience, which we should be rewarded. So, um, just the fact there I make I made less money coaching this year than last year football. >> Questions from board members for Mr. Stum while he's up at the

115podium. Do you have something, Miss Flynn? >> Did you receive or did you pay attention to the proposed changes and do any calculations during the bargaining? >> Um, I am not a member of GFA. Okay. Um I did see some of the numbers but myself I I mean I saw the formula >> but I can give you a formula and should I have ran the numbers? Yes. But I didn't know what that what our current base salary would have been >> to run those numbers to see what that would have been. So in hindsight >> sure it could have been on me but it's it's a yes. >> I did not run the numbers. No. And do you did any of your weeks so you're you're saying like okay it's maybe 120 less did any

116of your weeks okay >> 8we season 8 season same thing >> sounds good y >> thank you Mr. Clavven you have something for Mr. Yeah, I want to make sure I heard this right. It was $120 less for your extracurricular contract. >> Yes. My total contract was about $120 less and that I mean 115 125 somewhere in there. I don't know the exact number but it was less >> but just >> just just for coaching football just for my eightweek my eightweek football contract coaching at Middle School this year. Yes. Was the exact same in the exact it was the same weeks as last year to this year. And so I just I'm trying to do a little math in my head. That does not include that statement doesn't include the pay raise that you

117got on your base salary. >> No, this is just my separate my separate football contract. >> Thank you. >> Yep. >> Other questions for Mr. Strong? Okay. Thank you for your time. Are there others who wish to share a statement or information or Yes. Make your way up. kind of the same format if you just state your name and I'm >> Jeremy Sabula. I coach at Trader. I'm a lot like Brian. Uh the big thing for me is someone brought up the the raises and things like that. I checked my contract from last year to this year and I made $10 more this September than I did last September. That was my final contract. Uh and that's with losing money off of my coaching contract. And you know, you take that times three. If I

118coach three sports, I'm easily looking at $400. If we do inter murals, that's going to be another some more money. So, you know, us veteran people are the ones who are really getting hammered here. And, you know, you could say again, we should have looked at it, but I think we kind of trust our people to look out for our best interests, too, I guess, in a way. Um, and maybe that's naive of us, but um, so that's just my situation. So, you know, you there was a raise for us, but again, and I didn't change any of my insurance or anything like that. It's the same as I had last year. So, my check was $10 more this year. So, so yeah, >> questions from board members from Mr. Sibil. Yeah, Mr. Manley, >>

119when you say that you expect people to look out for you, is that the school board or would that be your GFA? >> I think both. Yeah, I would say, you know, says they're they obviously negotiate for us, but I think you guys too are should be out looking for our best interest, too. I think other questions for Mr. Sibila. I thought I saw one other hand. Okay, thank you very much. >> Any others? Want to make sure we don't miss anyone? Yes, Mr. Olsen. I don't know if I need to go over to that microphone, but um >> I don't know how the cameras are set up, so perhaps just I I don't know about our viewing public. >> I think they'll get they'll get me on here. Okay. But uh I am one

120of the ones who is more uh impacted negatively. My my uh pay is about $2,100 less than last year for doing the same amount of work. And I think uh in discussions like the the thing that um we were told via Jeff Seabloom who couldn't be here tonight is that there was assurance that nobody would be going backwards you know like to that degree. So um when when the talk of we we trust that those those facts and figures were going to be um honored then uh then we didn't didn't need feel the need to do our own calculations and and just like others who have said you know the the knowing the base pay from the previous year we would have to go back and look at um uh look things up on our

121on our end too. But um I think the thing that um we that everybody didn't uh expect was that the the most veteran and uh people who had been in the district the longest doing these positions didn't think they were going to be the ones who would get negatively impacted. So so much so the ones who have put 20 some odd years into uh coaching every season and uh and doing these positions. I think if if there I think e both sides the board and the and GFA no one had had that been made clear no one would have I don't think that we would have agreed to that because that's that's not what what this the spirit of the the process was all about. So, um that that's kind of that's kind of where

122um we're we're looking at is these it is the ones who have done the work the longest who have gotten the short end of the the stick here. And uh and I know that for for veteran teachers, it kind of feels like um what what did we do all that put in all those years of service for if we're just going to get uh have our pay cut um as as we uh as we go along here. So, I think that was kind of the the concern is that we weren't that that was not the the spirit and the point of the uh looking at the extracurricular contract. So um that that that's why uh I know that we have we have asked to discuss this this point just to see what what happened and

123where things didn't end up the way we thought they were going to end up. >> Good questions from board members for Mr. Olsen. >> Yes, Miss Flynn. >> I don't have any questions. Um Mr. Olsen, I respect you immensely. Um, I think you're a great teacher. Um, respectfully, though, I disagree with the assertion. At the very least, I would have expected members of GFA and the negotiating team to run their own calculations on their salaries given the information that they knew. because if it would have affected anyone on that as a proposal, it would have been easy to do a calculation and to identify some of the behaviors or the um the numbers. I think there's a lot of numbers thrown around in negotiations and our resource people try our best. I don't think this

124should be placing blame on each other. Um, but I also think that if we're if we're if the the board is receiving proposals and it was a result of a negotiating session, both parties should be responsible for running numbers and something got missed which means that it got overlooked by many people and sometimes there's unintended consequences for how we do things and setting a new standard. Um I I think that sometimes when we're in negotiations, the board asks questions about how has this been communicated outward? Do you have any questions? Things like that. And so I don't recall hearing that there would be no one that goes backwards because I believe multiple times it was said that there could be people and there would be based on highlighted red columns that showed decreases in some

125areas based on weeks. I don't know that we ever had a calculation though on um the 3%. It was rather a um base pay uh than increment of what what would be a equal standard throughout um based on comparable models. I I am I struggle with this because while this is discussion, I appreciate um you bringing forth a solution. Um Joe, I think whenever we have a problem, um it's important to discuss solutions and how we can move forward from here. Um I I think sometimes we face un unintended consequences of some of our decisions and sometimes we can make a a solution to change it and sometimes we can't. Um, I'm curious, uh, based on what I know about negotiations, it's my understanding that we can't reopen negotiations, but rather if there were any

126modifications that could be done on the annual anniversary. So, the soonest that anything could be done, if there was a modification to go backwards or or do anything, would be on the annual anniversary of the contract. I would like us to get a legal opinion from our attorney. Um, not saying that there's any action, but that is a piece of information that I'm missing on what we can or can't do. Um, but it's my understanding that we can't just go back and change it. And so at the very least it would be a year before anything is done. Um I I do believe that it is important to retain staff especially for extracurriculars. Um, I do believe that it's important to have these conversations, but I think this kind of brings up something else that

127not all teachers are in GFA. And so those who may be impacted, how are they receiving information? How are they giving in opinions about decisions that are made? when we're negotiating, there's going to be impacts positively or negatively. And I think that brings up a conversation for this board in that time of what do we do in the interim? How are we communicating? Are we working together to communicate to all whether it's not this side over here communicating and this side over here communicating to only members in GFA? So I think the solutions could also be how do we communicate better with each other? Um how do we seem less adversarial and more collaborative which I think we've taken steps to do. Um but when we get to points where um it feels like maybe

128well someone missed a calculation or they didn't calculate right or whatever. Um, we're at a place now where people start bringing up, I mean, some of the emails I got said, if you really value teachers and teachers experience, you'll, you know, make it right. And, you know, I don't think that's fair either. Like, it wasn't um it wasn't a malicious thing. We both agreed numbers, you know, unintended consequences happen. Um, I want to try to find a solution. Whether that be we talk about it in 2 years and at the negotiating cycle, whether that be we we figure out something else, or whether that be things remain the same and we just say, you know, unfortunately we can't do anything, but we do value those veteran teachers. and you know and hopefully this will result

129in across the board that our extracurricular individuals are are getting more pay. Um so those are my comments. I don't know um that that really solves a solution focus today. I think you had said at the beginning that you know there's it's not up for action but it's a a tricky situation that we're in. Other comments or questions from board members? We have something going on here. That's No. >> Yes, Mr. Cleven. >> But everybody involved in this process agrees that this was a it was a discussion. It wasn't discuss, you know, closed door discussions. Everybody was involved in this process. Right, wrong, or whatever. Do we agree to that? So it is collaborative and open. Uh I if one were cynical or take the coin on the other side comment about valuing long-term teachers,

130we might value all teachers to a degree and the younger teachers in this case seem to be having a little bit accelerated pay scale on the extracurricular contract. one could equally look at as valuing that as well. And I'll go back to what's been said a few times. Um there's so many nuances here and so many permutations that I think it'd be very hard to get everything exactly equitable without totally doing things that address every every single permutation. So when you're negotiating for a broad range of people, these unfortunate outcomes happen. And I I also want to point out that in the end there's more contract amounts being paid out than there were under the previous negotiated agreement. So on the net there's a benefit here to our extracurricular gear contracts. Um no particular comment

131in there about a way to go forward but reflecting on what seems to be the reality of the situation here as I see it at least. >> Thank you. Are there others? anything from either of you as we've seen this discussion play out that you want to add or clarify something that um and and sometimes we have to process that and sleep on it and and come back and so on, but in the moment is there is there anything that uh else that would be helpful for us to know information that um that would be helpful to make public as you've seen this discussion go so far? Mr. Trump. Yeah, just just a very quick point to that as well. Um talking about uh something that Mr. Cleven brought up too. Um looking through I

132think uh the handouts that were there. Um you can pretty clearly see what the process was. Um I think that that's talking about the collaborative piece. That's something that I do want to put out there. And then to talk about something Mr. Mrs. Flynn brought up as well. um the concept of uh you know this wasn't something that either side intentionally wanted uh when this was brought up to me. Um the same emails you have been getting I have been getting about three times as many um everybody that is at that top end has been reaching out to me in particular looking for a solution. uh by intent and by design uh from what it is that we started in negotiations and the spirit of what the negotiation was uh we were not looking to

133take money away as part of our conversation. Uh we were looking at a realignment that would impact people in a small way if at all which is hard to do from a moving target. Um and you brought it up and Mr. Beer brought it up. When you're pulling contracts, when you're doing uh when you're doing all of the moving work, right? Uh you're you're trying to shoot at a moving target, for lack of better term. It's you're you don't know where you're going to end up. You're not sure of all the different factors, which was what theou was designed to do. Uh in the first time that we tried to address this was to get the data to make a better assertation as to what it was. Um, you know, I feel that we missed

134I feel that we tried to make a change that wouldn't impact people too negatively and it ended up doing so. Uh, and I would I would be open to and hopeful that there would be some kind of a solution uh going forward as well. Um, but uh not not holding any malice towards the board, not holding any malice towards what had happened. this was very clearly uh an oversight and uh I feel that if we're able to we should do everything we can to correct it as well. >> Thank you Mr. Bermire from you Dr. Brener. Probably not comparing apples to apples maybe more like apples to oranges but during negotiations over the last couple of cycles we've changed the years of experience factor that people could bring in from from 11 to 15 to

135now 25. Uh and invariably we have people new to the district who are going to leaprog over people who have experience in the district. Uh and there's major heartburn over that. But the plain simple fact is we don't go back and reopen negotiations uh because somebody missed it by a year or two years or three years. I'm going to defend Mr. Beer Meyer. Um there's nobody I've worked with uh over the last 3 years who have worked more diligently and more detailed, focused and oriented on top of his daily routine to try to get this right. Uh and there certainly has been implications um that uh Mr. Drummond in your writings that um I I would characterize as misstatements um that Mr. Ber Bear Meyer never said. um you know using using words that seem

136to imply that uh there would be very few people who would lose and very few people who would win. Um I I take issue with that. I respect Mr. Bear Meer's work and uh I don't think it's been characterized fairly for the amount of work and detail that he's put into it. So I just want to thank you Mike for your work. Thank you. This has been a robust conversation uh and a good discussion uh for the good of this topic. Is there anything else from board members uh in the way of comment or clarifying question? Okay. Thank you all for your input and your conversation. Thank you both for sharing the perspective and the context the information with us this evening. As you'll note, uh, we're now moving on to recommendations for action. Make

137sure I'm back on the right agenda since I flipped my page over for some additional white space. All right. So 6A, this would be our consent agenda. I would seek a motion to approve the consent agenda as listed in your packet. >> It's been moved by Dr. Lun, a second by Miss Flynn. We'll take a roll call vote. >> Yes. >> Manley, >> yes. >> Hold. >> Yes. Yes. Anderson, >> yes. >> Flynn, >> yes. >> Larson, >> yes. >> L, >> yes. >> Burger, >> yes. >> HS, zero, no, zero absent. >> I heard you say >> my correction is nine. >> Thank you. With nine, yes, the motion passes. 6B, Superintendent Evaluation Committee report. Mr. Anderson, you chaired this meeting. Do you want to kick us off? >> Absolutely. Um so the super

138superintendent evaluation committee met uh Monday September 29th. Um as you can see outlined in the meeting minutes in the packet. Uh the committee discussed feedback received um following past evaluations. Committee also uh had discussion centered around the evaluation as a whole and the length of the evaluation. Uh overall still feeling that uh the length is appropriate and aligns directly with uh policy and sentry code. Um along with that um feedback was received prior on uh um some other items and one of those items being uh how to include superintendent guard rails that was discussed and uh you can see in the minutes that uh um uh those will be provided as supporting documentation in the upcoming superintendent evaluation. Lastly, we discussed um recently approved strategic FL plan and felt um as it is a a

139new plan and was just recently approved uh early September um that we would we felt that the that it was best to remove those questions uh related to the strate strategic plan uh from the November evaluation with the full intent that these questions would be reworked and then back in for the spring evaluation. So, um, that would be my report and I would open it for other committee members. >> Yeah, as as per our practice, we'll we'll have other committee members weigh in and then board members as a whole. So, Mr. Manley, anything to add from your perspective? >> Uh, just an idea on that strategic plan, removing the questions on the strategic plan. I heard some questions from members of the public about removing that, but I don't think they really realize that that

140was a 25 to 30 uh strategic plan and it hasn't um been around long enough to even really work on yet. So, I support removing those questions relating to that strategic plan. >> Yeah, I was going to issue the same comment related to the work just beginning. In fact, we haven't even stood up the full framework around uh the 25 to 30 strategic plan. We do have the four pillars at our uh workstations here, but um that has not fully begun to take shape. Uh any questions related to this report from other board members. Seeing none, uh we do have a recommendation uh from the committee to approve the use of the same instrument as last year uh except for uh the removal of the strategic plan questions uh from the last um from the

141last cycle of of evaluation uh and then the addition of the superintendent guard rails and 2025 2026 goals as reference documents. So I would entertain a motion uh to approve the use of the evaluation instrument with those changes. >> It's been moved by Mr. Cleven. Is there a second? >> A second by Mr. Manley. Any further discussion? >> We'll take a roll call vote. >> Flynn, >> yes. >> Cleven, >> yes. >> Anderson, >> yes. >> Hodc, >> yes. >> Pomino, >> yes. >> Lun, >> yes. >> Manley, >> yes. >> Larson, >> yes. >> Burger, >> yes. Nine yes, zero no, zero absent. >> Motion passes. 6C policy review will take the same shape with this. So we'll start with Dr. Hodc and then perhaps comments from Dr. Lond and myself uh related to

142the second reading and and adoption of these policies. So Dr. Hodc, >> for some reason my computer is just being annoying tonight. So I'm going to ask Well, thank you very much, Jeff. There we go. um that we took the board action on September 26th or 22nd, excuse me, to complete their the first reading. So the following policies 1 through 13 were forwarded for consideration and so we need that second reading as amended and adoption. Um we have made no additional changes um made to the policy since their first readings as um this committee has not met yet. We will meet, we're scheduled to meet in November. So, >> very good. Thank you. Uh, as you can see, there are 13 policies here >> uh for second reading and adoption. Uh, I'm open to proceeding

143either way if the board wishes to take these all together or if someone wants to pull out any any policy. Dr. L, do you have anything? I'm just thinking policy BDD was not a unanimous vote last time and we maybe should just pull that out because I don't want people to have heartburn of having to vote for something they don't want to because it's bundled together. >> Sure. How about we proceed that way then? So, uh, we'll take BDD separately and then in the absence of any other comments and I'm looking around at my board members as we look to proceed here. Of the other 12, are there any others you wish to pull out and discuss separately for second reading and adoption? Okay. Thank you, Dr. Lun, for that uh that idea. Yes, Mr.

144Cleven. >> Just point of order. Do we need a motion to take action on I'll call them numbers 2 through 13? >> Yes. What I intend to do just because of how they're laid out in your packet is we'll discuss BDD separately for second reading and adoption and then I'll I'll seek a second separate motion for the other 12 and mass. Uh so at this point I would seek a motion uh to complete the second reading as amended and the adoption of policy BDD. >> It's been moved by Dr. L. Is there a second? >> Second. >> A second by Dr. Hodc. Any discussion on BDD? You have these uh amendments as we discussed last time. Uh as Dr. Hodc said, there have been no changes. We're on the second reading. Any discussion about policy

145BDD? Mr. Cleven, >> no discussion, but I'll just reiterate comments made when we first heard this. I'm going to vote no just given our financial considerations and the hard work we're going to have to do on that. >> Thank you. Other comments from board members? Yes, Miss Flynn. This may be a silly comment um but a member can choose not to receive the payment and currently federally in a furlow and there's probably some federal employees that are still receiving money who are working for the people. So, um, if we're making decisions based on our, you know, where we're at, um, or comparatively to other people serving in office, um, that to me that's kind of a mute point, um, overall just because we can choose to decline and, um, this impacts our budget by, you

146know, a 0, however much percent. So, >> thank you. Any other comments? Discussion. We'll take a roll call vote. >> Anderson, >> yes. >> Flynn, >> yes. >> Hodak, >> yes. >> Cleven, >> no. >> Larson, >> yes. >> Lun, >> yes. >> Manley, >> no. >> Pomacino, >> no. >> Burger, >> yes. >> Six, yes. Three, no. Zero absent. >> Motion passes. I would now seek a motion to uh complete the second reading as amended and the adoption of policies 2 through 13 in your packet. These are ABAA, FAB, ABDA, ABCB, ABCA, ABF, DGA, FBA, HBAA, HAC, ICCB, FGCB. Please don't make me read those a second time. >> It's been moved by Mr. Anderson, a second by Mr. Cleven. Is there any discussion? >> Yes, Miss Flynn. um under the disposal of equipment.

147Um I know like UND has a public surplus um like where they like we'll auction off unused items. Do we have that here for the school district or do we actively sell like old what's that process like? >> Sure. Mr. Bombck. >> Thank you. Chairperson Burgerer, members of the board. Uh we don't have anything set up like that. we just simply don't have that much that's going out periodically from time to time. We may have to where we will go through a bid process to establish value on it and sell it before we would ever throw anything out. But most recent example would have been ahead of the child nutrition relocation. We downsized our our warehouse and so we first looked to all the buildings. We have some inner code uh inner account codes that

148take place. So we basically bid it out to a lot of our internal schools before any outside vendor and then before actually tossing anything out. We simply don't have that much that we throw out or sell. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Other questions or comments from board members related to any of these 12 policies for second reading and adoption. >> We'll take a roll call vote. >> Pomacino. >> Yes. >> Manley. >> Yes. >> Lun. >> Yes. >> Larson, >> yes. Cleven, >> yes. >> Hodak, >> yes. >> Flynn, >> yes. >> Anderson, >> yes. >> Burger, >> yes. >> Nine, yes. Zero, no, zero absent. >> Motion passes. 6D, land exchange agreement between park district and school district. Dr. Brener. >> Thank you, President Berger. Uh you have a memo in front of you

149um that really articulates uh some land exchange exchange mints if that's a word uh between the park district and the school district and it really uh really falls under the umbrella of who's using the land the most who's taking care of it most often and is there a more reasonable way uh to share or to exchange uh exchange some of these parcels. So, the good news is Laura Cobb is the attorney for both the park district and the school district and we had an initial meeting uh Mr. Bermire and myself um met with George Helier and his team just to talk about some concepts um starting really with uh Williamson Field which would be the the green space near Purp Arena uh that's used for Grand Fork Central football practice and we use it all

150the time. It's park district land. Um, we just asked if there there was a way that that could be given control to us in exchange for something. And the park district came back and said, you know, we use the the land on the south side of 47th Avenue South, just east of South Middle School for youth soccer. Um, uh, what's the other sport I can't think of? >> Lacrosse. Thank you. Thank you. I knew it had a net. uh and and they use it quite a bit and they've had uh lots of community interest to use it and we take care of that land in the summer, fall, spring, we water it. We spend about $800 to $1,000 a month, you know, really tidying up that green space. So, we looked at swapping those two

151parcels. Um but the Williamson Field was much smaller than uh than the land east of um South Middle School. So, we furthered the conversations and Laura Cobb came to a meeting and we started talking about some other properties that might make sense. And uh the park district offered and said, you know, we we already did that agreement between Valley Middle School flip-flopping that green space uh near University Park. What if we gave you that control of the new green space? And that made sense to us as well um because we're going to irrigate it, we're going to water it, we're going to take care of it, and our athletic teams will be using it from Valley Middle School. And then we started looking at the acreage and how close are we? We were getting closer,

152but the park district was still winning just a little bit. Uh so they brought up the the notion that there's some some land around Lake Agassy Elementary School that we've actually been using part of the parking lot, part of uh a playground area. And George Helier, our executive director of the park district, said, "What if we just squared that off?" And said, "That's yours now." And now we're really close. So, we're probably an acre off in all of this land swap. So, that's kind of a mouthful in saying these are the parcels uh that we would like to exchange. Uh nobody's benefiting financially, nobody's losing financially. Um and I did have a conversation with uh with George Helier along with Laura Cobb before our board meeting tonight. Just just to ask the courteous question um

153of of Mr. Helier, would would you potentially do something with the land that we're swapping? You know, it's pretty valuable land uh near South Middle School. And he said, "Absolutely not. We just have a number of community usages for it. It sits adjacent to park district land that's uh on the north side of 47 Shields Field and those soccer fields. It makes sense to keep those parcels together. So, um, if nothing else, it was certainly, uh, a gentle person's agreement that there would be nothing nefarious about swapping land. And, and, and he asked me the same question. Would you turn Williamson Field into something else? Would you sell it to five Starbucks? Um, and, you know, the answer would be no. I don't know why I said Starbucks. They're just popping up all over the

154place. Um, so that that is what is being proposed to you. Uh, you do have some maps in the back. Um, I'd be happy to stand for any questions if you do have any. Um, and so it would be the administrative recommendation that um that the school board approved the land exchange agreement as presented tonight. And um but we if there are questions, we'll respond to those. Questions from board members. Dr. L. >> Not a question, just a comment. If you stick around here long enough, like Bill and I, you can swap land more than once cuz the school district, the park district used to own that land where east of south and then we traded Shields Arena or Shields Field and now we're trading it back to them. So, if you stick around long

155enough like us, you'll get to see things pass through two or three times. I >> I'm going to piggyback on that comment. To me, when you were talking about no winners, no losers, I think it's a win-win. Uh I I think it's another uh example of our taxing agencies working together for the good of the whole. Uh and in in a sense aligning with current community use and norms and such. And just to reiterate because I don't think this went out publicly, uh, because I know the public reads this board packet thoroughly, um, but there will be this continued commitment to collaboration around shared use for all of these spaces. Uh, and that shared use agreement will be updated by July 1 of 2026. So, that's a part of this recommendation as well. Uh, just

156wanted everyone to hear that piece. Other comments or questions from board members? Mr. Cleven, >> thank you. Uh, I did notice there was something in here about legal costs being split 50/50, but replplat and land ownership transition costs are costs are covered by the school district. Why aren't those shared? >> That is correct. Because we approached them and so that was a concession that I made. Yes. >> And do we have an idea what that cost will be? >> I I don't. Okay. Well, I can find that out. Um, but uh, so there's that. Um, and as far as development or not development, with profound respect to both parties, like I don't doubt anybody's going to go back on their word. But leadership's transition, people change, we should get that in writing at some point,

157whether it's in the shared use agreement or in some other document. Uh that's not going to affect the way I evaluate this personally, but I do want to urge us to get that in writing. Go ahead. I I would say that uh we did talk to attorney Cobb about that and it would be it would be a little similar to uh when we sold West Elementary School to uh Oxford Realy. We really wanted to make sure that that land was going to be repurposed into affordable housing and we couldn't put that stipulation in the exchange. Uh that would be up to city planners. But I I will still pursue that a second time. Mr. Cleven, thank you. >> Other questions, Miss Flynn? >> Just a point of reference. We don't have any maps in our

158agenda packet. I think I know which land you're talking about, but just a point of reference. >> We will still get the maps out to you following this meeting. >> Any other questions or comments from board members? >> It's been moved by Dr. Lun uh to Let me just make sure I get the wording correct here. uh to approve the land exchange agreement as presented and a second by Mr. Palmino. Is there any further discussion, Mr. Cleven? >> Yeah, just a point to make uh more so so we all hear it. We've read that, but there are no special assessments on either of the land being exchanged. So neither party's taken on an incumbrance that's present on the land. >> To my knowledge, that is correct. But I will follow up as well on that

159one. I think they were they were paid last time around. >> Any other questions or comments from board members? >> Okay, there's a motion on the floor to approve the land exchange agreement as presented. We'll take a roll call vote. >> L >> yes. >> Flynn, >> yes. >> Pomcino, >> yes. >> Larson, >> yes. >> Cleven, >> yes. >> Hodak, >> yes. >> Anderson, >> yes. >> Manley, >> yes. >> Burger, >> yes. >> Nine, yes. zero. No, zero absent. >> Motion passes. 6E, contracted staff resignation and release from contract. Jonathan Elwine. Dr. Brener. >> Thank you, President Ber. This is a this is a hard one. >> Um, it's it's a hard one for two reasons. One, Jonathan has been a a terrific director of buildings and grounds and has taken on so

160many responsibilities with close to $200 million worth of projects going on in our school district from start to finish. Not all of them have been realized yet, but he certainly has been central to making sure all of these uh projects have happened. He's been communicative with principles. Um he's he's been just terrific to work with. Um, and this this second part and more importantly, uh, the difficulty of this is he's making the move, as you saw in his letter, um, that I I just don't I don't want to violate any HIPPA things online here, but it's to take care of his family. Um, and I certainly respect that. I think if it was up to Jonathan, if all things would work out, they would stay here and, uh, get the attention that, uh, that his

161family needs. So, uh, so it's our it's the administrative recommendation is to grant Mr. Elwine release from his 202526 administrative contract effective October 24th, 2025 with a waiver of liquidated damages under policy DKB. Thank you. Questions from board members for Dr. Brener. Let's seek a motion. Oh, do you have one, Miss Lint? Your microphone is not on anymore. Uh, Mr. Cleven, >> just administratively reading the the document here. The motion would would wave the liquidated damages, but the paperwork doesn't necessarily have a checkbox to that effect. How do we affect that change? It was included in your packet because we just wanted you to know that he signed the document and then it's really up to us >> to make the recommendation. Other questions from board members and seek a motion to grant Mr. Line

162release from his 202526 effective 2425 with the waiver of liquidated damages our policy DKBB. It's been moved by Mr. Cleven. Is there a second? >> Second by Mr. Larson, any further discussion? >> Just a comment, a correction that um it reads um for the following teacher um but should just say that for the following director. >> Please find attached letter of resignation effective from the following teacher. >> I see. Thank you. So the second paragraph of the cover memo. Thank you. Uh any others? Uh before we take this to a roll call vote, maybe this better served in announcements, but just a thank you to Mr. Elwine for his work. Uh there's been a whole lot going on in this district that he's been a part of and um just very appreciative. Uh we'll take

163a roll call vote. There's a motion on the floor. >> Larson, >> yes. >> Pomacino, >> yes. >> Cleven, >> yes. >> Lond, >> yes. >> Manley, >> yes. >> Anderson, >> yes. >> Hodak, >> yes. >> Flynn, >> yes. >> Burger, >> yes. >> Nine, yes. Zero, no. Zero absent. Motion passes. Under item 7A, announcements. Are there any announcements? Yes, Dr. Glatch. Uh, I just wanted to say thank you to the board members that were able to attend today's blue ribbon celebration at Shrader Middle School. They are in the top 3% of all schools in the nation with that award. So, that's really deserves some celebration. >> Yes. Thank you for that. Other announcements from those gathered here. 7B board requests for future consideration. >> Yes, Miss Flynn. >> Um at some point if

164we could hear from the Foundation for Education. Um doesn't have to be now, but um would love to hear the work that they're doing and collaborating with the school district. And then um we have some board committees that um meet out or uh committee appointments that meet outside of the table. For instance, Lak um and I think we've always kind of struggled with those members and how they can officially like bring back information and I would love to consider how we could um potentially have them give a report or something from those meetings. >> Thank you. and other committees that are outside the school district. >> Thank you. Other board requests for future consideration. >> 7C school board meeting norms. Mr. Larson, how did we do? >> They were incredible. >> Incredible. Thank you. We

165are journed.