GFPS School Budget Hearing & Board Meeting (September 8, 2025)

001We will call to order the budget hearing and the regular meeting of the school board for Monday, September 8th. First item on our agenda is the pledge of allegiance. We invite you to stand as you're able. Agenda item two, the public hearing on the preliminary budget and certifi certificate of tax levy for fiscal year 2026. Mr. Bondock, >> President Burger, members of the board, um this is the opportunity for the public hearing for the preliminary budget that was um put in front and adopted by the school board on July 29, 2025 2025. Overall, it's 130.68 mills in the preliminary budget, not yet the final budget, which is the same number of mills levied the prior year. And so, this would be the appropriate time for any public comment. >> Do we have any members of

002the public who wish to speak on this preliminary budget? and the certificate of tax levy. Seeing none, I'll just uh remind everyone that the final consideration for 2025 2026 budget uh and the property tax levy will occur during our next September meeting on September 22nd. Do you have anything else to add, Mr. Bomb? >> No. We'll move on then to our regular meeting 3A. The reading of the schoolboard meeting norms. Mr. Palmino. >> Yes. Be prepared. Be on time. Value and respect each other. Exercise thoughtful deliberation and conversation. Be professional at the board table when visiting with the general public. Speak up when the norms are not being followed. Advocate on behalf of students. And keep the community in mind. >> Thank you. Item four is the approval of tonight's agenda. seek a motion to

003approve the agenda as listed in your packet. >> It's been moved by Mr. Palminocino. Is there a second? >> Second by Mr. Larson. We'll take a roll call vote. >> Larson, >> yes. >> Palmino, >> yes. >> Cleven, >> yes. >> Lun, >> yes. >> Manley, >> yes. >> Anderson, >> yes. >> Hodak, >> yes. >> Flynn is absent. Burger, >> yes. >> H, yes. Zero, no. Zero absent. >> Motion passes. Excuse me. >> One absent. >> Thank you. One absent. if you if you missed that. Uh eight yes, zero no, and one absent. Um moving on then to item five on the agenda. This is our public comment period for the regular meeting of the school board. What you heard earlier was um simply for the budget and tax levy. So now we do

004have an opportunity for citizen comment about any topic. I don't have any comment forms turned in. Is there any member of the public who wishes to speak during tonight's public comment period? Seeing none, we'll move on to uh agenda item six. These are recommendations for discussion. 6A, we have summer school reports. I'll turn this over to Dr. Glatch, Mr. Baky. There's a consortium of folks back there, but I'll let you two lead this off. Thank you. >> Thank you, Chair Burgerer, members of the board. We have an exciting lineup today to give you their annual summer school reports. We have a couple of substitutes in tonight's lineup and I'll go through that in just a minute here. So, um, with us today are, uh, a cadre of wonderful human beings. I'm going to give you

005your, I always call it the batting order. I look at, uh, Mr. Bohan there and a little homage to him. Um, but we're going to start off with the intro to K and elementary updates including Encore and that's going to be led by co-led by U. Mr. Baky and Jess Sporwbert as I understand it. >> Yep. >> Um, we are then going to move into the high school report and we have Mr. Dr. Trevor Lenin here, our director of high school summer school to give that update. The middle level report um for the regular programming will be given by myself. Unfortunately, Miss Teresa Ogarden, who's much more entertaining and articulate, um is adding a picnic for the CIA today in her new role there. So, I'm subbing in for her. Um followed by Mr. Nick

006Peterson, who's going to report on the unique summer rise program once again um at Valley Middle School. We then have our driver's ed program with Mr. Bohan, Mr. Terry Bohan and we will wrap it up with the summer performing arts report from Miss Allison Peterson. So, we're going to pass the microphone here to Matt and Jess. >> All right. Uh thank you, Dr. Glatch. Uh President Burgerer, members of the board. Uh it's my opportunity to present to you our summer school intro to Kay and Encore report um from this past summer. Um I'm actually going to start with um actually now I'm going to adjust and go back to summer school. Um so we are going to we're going to start off with our summer school and intro to K. And as you'll see in

007your memo, I've provided some um surface level information for all of you as it relates to elementary summer school sessions um and as it re uh relates to intro to K. And we're going to kind of couple both of those together um as we present some data and some information um from this last summer. But I'm just going to give you kind of an overview as we get started here. And and first from an elementary standpoint, we enrolled 583 kids at five different uh campuses across uh Grand Forks Public Schools. Um and you'll see in in your memo in enrollment report. And you'll see that in that enrollment report that we are starting to creep up as far as our enrollment goes back to uh you know a number that is more equivalent to what

008it was precoid. Um we still aren't quite back to the same level um but we are starting to creep up every single year um as it relates to um precoid numbers. Um as you'll see in your memo you'll see that we increased um just about 50 students um from this year to last year. Um I will also while I'm in that memo will also reference the intro to K numbers as you'll see um was about um 219 students. Again um not to the level that we wanted it to be um but um we took a year off last year um and so we anticipated a little bit smaller number and we hope that those numbers will continue to grow as we move forward. Um additionally when we talk about um our intro to Kay and

009our elementary summer school I want you to understand kind of some of the details here. Um, again with some of our building projects going on, we're not happening it. It's not happening at each one of the elementary schools as it has in the years past. Um, so we're limited on what buildings we can use. However, we've been able to capture some efficiency from that standpoint as well when looking at staffing and and looking at the use of the building. Um, overall summer school uh went from June 2nd to June 20th. again in the mornings Monday through Friday 8 to noon. Uh lunch was served at the buildings that were um eligible for that free um summer lunch. And so not all buildings were able to participate in that because they weren't eligible. But the buildings

010that were eligible, we did serve lunch. Um additionally um intro to K, we had the second part of the summer. We had that right before school year started. And so that last went from July 28th to August 15th again in the morning Monday through Friday. a reminder on that that that's a new um avenue that we've been able to uh participate in in the fact that we're able to claim those students on our foundation aid formula. And so we were able to make that happen um with collaboration with the state um making that a new program that we're able to offer. Um again we had it uh spread out between seven campuses, 219 uh students and um here today um Jess Sporbert is here to uh present some data and some information as it relates

011to what we saw from our summer school and from intro to Kay as far as growth and academic success that we've seen um and comparative data um regarding elementary summer school and intro to Kay. So >> perfect. >> All right, I'll hand that over. >> There you go. Yep. >> Okay. I shot you. >> All right. I'm Jess. I'm the elementary MTSS. >> If you just grab that button so those online can hear you. Thank you. >> There we go. Was it on now? I There bright yellow button. And I missed it. I'm Jess. I'm the elementary MTSS coordinator. Um and so what I usually do, my role here, I I was not the director of summer school or anything like that, but I helped um collect the data and run the numbers and kind

012of do some key things with that. So that's what I'm going to present for you tonight. So, just a little bit of background about what summer school looks like and we're going to break it into the what we're going to call the elementary part of it and then the intro to kindergarten. So, the June elementary part, what we do is we have curriculum that we have our teachers teach off of and it's really based on kind of a continuation of the school year because anyone can enroll in our June elementary um summer school. In years past, like quite a while ago, before it was state funded, it was more of a like a catchup month where we take certain students that would maybe need that extra time and catch them up. But currently, it's anyone

013who would like to participate in summer school is able to. So, we try to match it up with what curriculums we're teaching during the school year. So, for our phonics program, we use really great reading. Uh, but we don't use a really great reading that we use during the school year. They actually have a summer program that's called Soaring to Summer Success. And so teachers were given access to that. For our ELA part, we continued with the curriculum that we used last year, which was called benchmark. And the summer school teachers taught unit 10 within that because that's according to our pacing guide, a unit they do not get to. And then in math, we used our everyday mathematics curriculum and they again taught the final unit in that. So they collected the math journals,

014all of that from the students who had done it during the school year and continued on. So really what we did is we said we're going to take these next three weeks and just continue to build upon those. So last year when um we looked at assessing them, we do assessment in a couple different ways. We have what's called um our STAR computer adaptive test and that's a big broad general test where it takes the students about 20 minutes and it gives them a whole bunch of different skills and they clicked on the correct answer. And really what we thought is in three weeks it's going to be really hard to show growth in that because it's it's such a large array of skills. So this summer we determined that we were going to use

015what were called curriculum based measurement and those are one minute probes that really dig down into a specific skill. So for reading we do um in the kids who had completed first grade and up they did what was called um the passage of oral reading. Our kindergarten students still worked on letter sound fluency. So in kindergarten those would been the students that just completed kindergarten. First through fourth grade they did a passage of oral reading. In math you can see kindergarten they did number identification. First grade quantity comparison. So these are things that we give throughout the school year already three times a year to all students. But they're also things that we use to measure our intervention students to see their growth. So I wanted just to kind of show you what they looked

016like. So they the the thing on the left is our pastoral reading. So the teacher sits down with the the student and says, "We're going to read for one minute. I don't want you to do your fastest reading, but your best reading." And then you can see the student starts reading. Any word that they would get incorrect, the teacher would highlight and it gives us a score. And that is a national cut score. Then that tells us this student is on track. maybe this student needs a little bit more help. Same with the one on the right hand side is the is the math where they would sit down and do the math probe. So we thought in three weeks we should be able to see this is a little bit more sensitive to showing

017growth for our students during summer school. We also did something with our students who were getting interventions throughout the school year. So we had six of our literacy interventionists and they worked with students that um had ended the school year still getting an intervention. So, we knew that there was a little bit of catch-up growth that needed to happen. So, they were hired during that 8 to noon time to come in and work with those students um either one-on-one or in a small group. And the students were selected based on those that were receiving the interventions. So, what we did is we said, let's look at how our reading growth happens. So, you can see where you see CBM start and CBM final. What we did is we took the students and we knew this

018is where they started because we had that data from our school year. And then the teachers were asked to complete another one the last couple days of school. And then what we did to figure out how they grew was we looked at their growth. So you can see the top the color coding where you see red, green, blue. That's how our students are colorcoded. So red would mean that you were at risk and you needed some intervention. Green means you're on target and blue is kind of that on watch. So you can see some students grew, some students maybe lost a little bit. What does that look like? So that all relates back to that this probe right here where they where you saw that and so then we just did it based on grade

019levels. So really there's a we averaged all the first graders who came all the kindergarteners who came and we said what is that? And so for kindergarten what we found in letter sounds is all students maintained the baseline which is what we would expect when we're continuing a curriculum and our intervention students actually showed growth. So they made more growth than the students who were just um within the regular classroom. First grade all students showed growth and our intervention students really just maintained that baseline like they kept growing like everyone else but they didn't maybe make that catchup growth. Second grade both maintained baseline. Third grade both showed growth and fourth fourth grade both maintained baseline. Um very similar in math. So we did the same thing. We took the math and you can see

020they all kind of maintain baseline. I will say in math we did not have interventions um for our students that we just did that for the literacy part. So that's just all of our students. And so we look at that and we talked about what are our key takeaways from this when we look at that data now that we have some data to look at. And one thing we had talked about is do we need a more robust and intentional targeted curriculum for summer school. Right? Right now, we're just doing it as a continuation, and we saw that that helped us maintain baseline, but is there something we need to do if we really want to start closing the gap for certain students? Do we want to make it more targeted to the skills they

021need versus just that continuation? Do we look at doing some things like aligning teacher expertise with student needs? Right? So, right now it was just 8 to noon. We had lots of students. Summer school is 3 weeks. Maybe we want to do something different. Do we say here's students that have these certain needs within like phonics or reading and we put them together with a teacher who's more targeted to do just that skill? Do we group them for how does that work? Knowing that we could have students who came very above, very on, or maybe some that need some more support. How do we take those three weeks and make that the best use of all of those students time? And so that's what we kind of found from that data. Now that we have

022some data, how can we continue what we're doing and how can we continue to make it the best for the students who join us? I think too one thing that we would also like from a data standpoint is even within those 3 weeks um what we didn't have on that spreadsheet was attendance and we know that that's really only 15 days, right? So when you think of that and we have students that maybe leave because they have to go to te-ball or baseball or they don't come here or they don't do that. So it was hard to know, you know, in 10 days are you going to make a lot of progress? We don't know. How do we look at those different things to have even better data um on that part? So I'll stop

023there and see if there's any questions related to just summer school before I go on to the intro part. >> Questions from board members for Miss Warberg? >> Yes, Dr. Len, >> you talked about um that this was a volunteer, the families could volunteer. Well, you know, in the old days, we used to teachers would recommend do do teachers some teachers still recommend students that are at risk that that they do this that they still kind of nudge them along a little bit. >> They did and especially um the students that were receiving those literacy interventions um the schools sent a separate letter saying just so you know we actually get to continue with literacy interventions during this time. So, they were encouraged to come. >> Other questions? Mr. Baky? Uh before we move forward,

024I also want to recognize that um we had other people that obviously were involved in summer school. Um our director Evan Peterson has moved on from from the district and so he typically would be here and you've seen him in years past present this material. Um but I really want to compliment him for his work and his leadership in this. I also even though uh Jess had previously mentioned she's here presenting the data, she also took a leadership role in helping provide interventions and some of the things we did this year that we haven't done in years past. And so I want to recognize both of those individuals, but I also want to recognize our our staff who did a remarkable job working with our students. And I think when we go on to our

025intro to K, you're going to see some really uh not to steal justice to show, but uh there's some really amazing data that we did some different things with intro to K and with elementary summer school this year than we haven't done in years past. And we're seeing some really good remarkable results as we move forward, especially at Intro to Kay. Um and it's because of the work that the staff the leadership is doing with all of those students um and alongside those staff and again the literacy specialists working with them. So I want to thank them publicly. So >> other questions before we move on to the intro to K section. >> Okay. So introduction to kindergarten was a little bit different um because this was really the first year that the state provided

026us funding to be able to do that and we had taken the break. And so along with that um part of the funding was that all of the intro intro to K teachers had to have their kindergarten endorsement to teach it and that we also had to provide some curriculum that was a little bit more structured. So we always know like the big thing when you come in to intro to K is a lot of those students have never been in school before. So, it's really building up those routines like how do I put away my backpack? How do I sit on the carpet? How do I line up? Like all those things that we take for granted that when our five and sixyear-olds walk in the door, they have no idea how to do

027that. But along with that, we thought what a perfect opportunity to try to introduce some of our curriculum and build up those routines and see what can happen with that. Um, you know, the state has pa passed a lot of laws about dyslexia and dyslexia screening and that early intervention piece and really wanting to make sure that we can watch students and intervene as early as possible with some of those early reading skills. So Nicole Crafting, who is our elementary curriculum coordinator, myself and a couple of the kindergarten teachers sat down last spring and said, "Let's pick out some key things to work on along with building those routines and those structures with um intro to kindergarten." So, our um phonics program is called Really Great Reading, and they actually have an alternate start. So,

028they had a three-w weekek alternate start that really works on foundational concepts, things like before, after, beginning, middle, end, all of those things that are important when you're reading. So, if you say, "What's the first sound?" They need to do that. So, they taught that every day. Um this year, we adopted our new ELA curriculum, which is called Wit and Wisdom. and Wit and Wisdom actually had a module zero which really introduces all of the routines and how that structure looks all around the book Wild Books. So they did that for math we took we went to achieve the core which is a website that allow that outlines our essential skills needed. Their goal is they will say math the goal is to be able to successfully complete algebra 1. So they outline exactly what

029concepts that you need to leave kindergarten having and able to do first grade to do second grade all the way up until you get to algebra 1. So we picked out those essential skills and they built some curricular materials from our everyday math program around those. And then we added some additional skills like handwriting and namew writing practice. Right? Just getting that initial how do I hold the pencil? How do I make some of those lines so that they were ready to do that. some phonological awareness activities like listening to how words go together like guess my word cupcake and the student would say cupcake rhyming those type of things and then routine building. So that's what those four hours look like when the kindergarten students were there. Um this is just a little bit

030how we did assessment is we didn't do a curriculum based measure but we wanted to know what do our students come in knowing. So our really great reading program actually has a normed measure for the beginning of the year on foundational survey and what it does is it looks at targeted functional vocabulary. It has a phonological awareness piece and then it has a letter sound identification. So this is what it looks like. So for the functional vocabulary you can see the student would see three pictures and we would say point to the first picture and they would point to the cat point to the last picture. Then it did different phonological awareness activities like which two words rhyme? Tell me the first sound that you hear in pencil. And then it showed them a set

031of eight letters and said can you point to the letter A? And then it would say can you name this letter or do you know this sound? So we screened all of the um I came the the literacy specialist who helped me out. We came in and we screened all of the kids the first and second day of summer school. I had five literacy interventionists that work with me and we screened all of the students and then looked at their data and said, "What if we pulled some students and worked on these targeted skills for 5 to 15 minutes a day?" Some were one-on-one, some were in a small group. So, they were getting the core curriculum in the classroom and then we came in and selected those students. So, you can see here the

032bottom chart where it says functional vocabulary. Again, it's colorcoded. Red was that you needed intervention. in yellow you were kind of on watch and green that you had um pretty solid skills in those areas. And you can see the first column on functional vocabulary shows where they started and in 3 weeks how far they got and the next the PA is funological awareness and then the last one is letter knowledge. I think what we were very surprised about is the chart above it. So overall the ones with the little B meant that was the beginning. The E is the end that the students overall we had 188 students that were there for the first day of testing and the last day of testing. Obviously, you know, we had more students enrolled, but maybe they weren't

033there that last week or we missed them. They all grew a lot and especially with vocabulary and letter, they actually grew to the green. So, we had 84 students who we did not select for any sort of intervention. Um, and you can see there was growth there just from participating in the classroom activities that we had planned. But it was the intervention kids that we were really amazed at that that 5 to 10 minute intervention made a big difference especially within phonological awareness which is really a key foundational piece to being able to read. So they went from red to almost all the way up to green, right? Like the the bottom of the green is a 10 and they were almost up there at an eight. And so that was like wow, what do

034we need to do with that to keep that going? because if we can do that little chunk in three weeks, what will that look like and how we can intervene in kindergarten? So, what we took away from this was that really three weeks of direct instruction and small interventions can move students really quickly in kindergarten that we really can't wait to intervene in kindergarten. Um, in years past, we were like, how do we know most of our students not having universal preschool? We'd wait for them to come in, we'd screen them, we say, yep, they didn't know a lot of letters and sounds, but we haven't taught them. Now we know we can actually do a little intervention and they can move really quickly. So what um they decided to do now in the fall

035is we took all of our students and screened them and they're again starting interventions with any student that needed. The other thing that we really learned is that students come in with weaker phonological awareness skills than what we thought. So when we go look back to here that was really that lowest area and it was across from all students. So how can we use that piece as almost a parent awareness piece right? So, I think we know as a parent like, oh, they should know their letters and maybe they should know their sounds, but how can we work on other little things like rhyming or how, you know, what word around here might start with a f sound or all of those kind of things that we could really help with even before they're in

036kindergarten. Um, we also found that it was really easy to determine students who will continue to need support and those who respond quickly. So even in those short three weeks for like five to 10 minute interventions, our literacy specialists would say some students caught on right away and we're like they're going to be fine. They're going to do just great with our core curriculum. Other ones are like, "Ooh, this one maybe had a little bit more of a of a red flag that we need to do something more with and we can actually start and do that right away." So that's um what we did. We have a screening process and we're now really ready to start and and hopefully continue to analyze this data. Um, the other neat thing about this is we're tracking

037these students to see how does it go throughout the rest of the school year so that we really can continue to build upon that information and say so to these students that we took here and even in 3 weeks of introduction to kindergarten, do we maybe never have to see them again for another intervention and how can we use that? And I think too um when we had chatted with some of the um introduction to kindergarten teachers, they were like, "We really need to share this information out with parents of look what students get by coming to 3 weeks of introduction to kindergarten. It's not just doing this or you know doing these little things, but we can really move them on skills and to really figure out a way to help um promote that

038in the spring when we have students register so that our enrollment um continues to go up there, too. questions from board members on the intro to K program this report. >> Mr. Cleven, >> so that was really interesting information there about the I'll say it wrong, phonological skills. >> You got it. Uh did parents did the kids who who you identified as maybe being needing more support in school, did parents get that information and was there like a follow-up process to bridge that? >> We did not send out any sort of information um that's a great idea, something that we can definitely do. I think now um that we're rescreening all of the kids. That's something that uh the literacy specialists will send out now during this school year. For intro, we didn't send that

039out. We sent it to the kindergarten teachers. So they got all the information of like these are your kids and this is where they look or this is how they came in. This is where they looked at. So those kindergarten teachers had that information for the students in their class, but we didn't communicate that out with parents. >> I do want to highlight that though what Jess just said is that based on the results and the things we saw from intro to K, we have now implemented this in our school year right away. So the students are receiving this assessment and based on those results are then re be are receiving those interventions because we saw such growth at intro to Kay that we're going to replicate it at every one of our building levels

040and then we'll be able to identify those interventions that are going to be able to take place right away. Um when you see a growth from a red to a green that's huge growth in a 3-week window. >> Uh if we can identify that right away we feel like we're we're ahead of the game before we even were um a year ago. So, um, and really a compliment Jess and her group on on making that happen. >> Other questions? Dr. Hodc >> just to piggy back off after uh or on Jay's comment, I do think it's a critical important piece that we do share that individual um data to these parents because that's data then that they can see with the growth or the maintenance or such. But it's also then that's another parent talking

041to another parent and to another. And once the parents start talking about the value, that's when it's going to definitely increase our enrollment. So >> yeah, I would agree with that. >> Yep. >> Other questions from board members. >> Any final thoughts before we move on? >> No, I don't have anything unless Matt, did you have anything else? Again, I would just say thank you for um the opportunity to present and to just highlight some of the great work being done at the elementary and intro to K level. So, and thank you to Jess and the team and uh for all the work the staff did over the summer. >> Very good. Thank you. >> All right. I will also take the opportunity to present um on encore. Um uh Dr. or uh director Erikson

042was not able to be here this evening and so I will present on summer encore which actually went uh right in the timeline of our elementary um our elementary summer school as well. So it went from June 2nd to June 19th um covered the afternoon. Um so again parents had the option and opportunity uh to have encore available to them um right after summer school. And so the way that would look is is that at our buildings where it was offered, which was Century, Phoenix, and Ben Franklin, um we were able to provide it according to the numbers and the enrollment. At the other buildings, there wasn't the enrollment to match um what was needed at those buildings um for staffing purposes. And so we were able to provide it at Century, Phoenix, and Ben

043Franklin. Um and those were the host schools. So, right after summer school, um they would have the opportunity to go and and participate in the the meal, the summer lunch, and then they would go right into encore, which was provided from 12:30 to 5:30. Um and that was Monday through Friday, um all summer long, or all during elementary summer school, excuse me. Uh again, students were given that free lunch, multiple recesses, worked on STEM activities, um partnered with health careers with a partnership with Gateway of Science, and then craft projects. Uh down below you'll see the enrollment at both Phoenix Century and Ben Franklin. And then you'll see the staffing and the home schools where those students came from. Um again, we combined schools. So it wasn't all just from their neighborhood school. And that

044is what I have for Encore. Questions from board members for Mr. Baky on the Encore program. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you. Hello, members of the board. My name is Trevor Lennin. I am the director of secondary summer school. Uh this past summer, uh summer school was held for high school at Red River High School, uh and met for 26 days from Monday, June 2nd to Wednesday, July 9th, uh from 7:45 a.m. till 12:25 p.m. Uh if you were in a half credit class, that could run from 7:45 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. or 10:15 a.m. to 12:25 p.m. Uh students were able to attend two half credit courses or one full credit course for the summer school session. They were also eligible to uh enroll in a new course this summer uh the career

045connection course taught by Paul Zetler. They could up earn up to one and a half credits during the summer school session. In all, there were 460 students that enrolled uh to start the summer school session. 132 students were dropped because they did not adhere to the attendance policy. We have a very strict policy where they have to um maintain a certain amount of minutes throughout the summer. Um and so uh about 132 students were dropped due to not meeting that time requirement. Uh 307 credits were issued to students in the high school summer school program. So with a state reimbursement of $83040 per half credit earned, there was a total revenue of $263,236.80. um eight students who attended the entire school session failed their courses and did not receive credit. Uh and I have a

046breakdown of that on the uh following pages there. Um so the cost associated with paying staff accumulated to a total of $166,000 which leaves a profit of $97,000 for running summer school this summer. So very good successful program. Um this summer we also again uh coordinated with uh the credit recovery option for any central or red river student who failed a spring semester class with a percentage grade between 55 and 63%. Uh students had the option to earn credit in the failed class by finishing the final unit of the class on egeneuity an online learning platform. Students who suess successfully completed the final egeneuity unit received a 64% or a D in the spring semester class they had failed giving them the half credit for the semester. We had 28 half credits recovered by Grand

047Fork Central students and 22 half credits recovered by Red River students from June 2nd through June 6th. The special thanks to uh Mike Wilbur, Jay Heerley, and Katie Arthur for helping students throughout that week. Um, a cool story about that was that a student showed up for the credit recovery option. Um, and while he was there, uh, he realized that he also needed to make up a credit for English one. And so, um, we were able to get him signed up for a class right there on day one. Uh, so he was able to get his English one A and B credit as well as recovering that, uh, other credit as well. So, uh, that was pretty pretty, uh, special to see. Some other projects that were included in summer school were the international trips

048for students in foreign languages. Uh all three languages, so German, French, and Spanish were able to take students abroad and learn about cultures and deepen their knowledge of their studied language. Uh heard a lot of great stories from students that uh were able to attend that and they had a lot of fun. They learned a lot and got to see a lot of great uh scenes and um tour a lot of great places. Um, also Zach Bukop offered the summer networking academy which offered students the opportunity to learn hands-on skills regarding networking and IT. This past summer they uh did a lot with moving um a lot of the CTE courses that were offered in the Central and Red River campuses to the Career Impact Academy. Uh so they did a lot of work and

049a lot of movement with that. So great job to them. And then as I said, we offered the career connection class overseen by Paul Zetler where students worked as interns to learn skills on the job. Um on that following page I have the list of the staff members that and their assigned roles. So we had we taught courses in ML uh economics, American government, English 1, two and three, world history, health, informal algebra, physical education, physical science uh and speech and uh oh and United uh US history as well. So, uh, really successful programs. A lot saw a lot of engagement, a lot of students that were, um, really enjoying their classes and their teachers. And so, nothing but the highest praises to these, uh, individuals that help teach and guide students along throughout the

050summer. And then in that last page there, you can see the breakdown of students who received grades and less than 1% of students um, received an F. So, very successful summer overall. questions from board members for Mr. Lennon. >> Yeah, Dr. L. >> You mentioned how many students were were dropped because of time. How does that compare to previous years? It just seems like a little higher number than I'm used to. And I >> It's about the same. Is it? >> It's about the same. Yeah. Um uh for whatever reason, students sign up and then they just decide to not show up. So, uh usually that first two to three days is when most of those students get dropped. Um, and then by week two, end of week two is when most of those students

051that uh time out are going to time out. So, um, yeah, usually it's the first three days is where most of them drop out because they forgot they signed up or just decided not to show up. >> Just to piggyback on that, you you alluded to this, the attendance requirements pretty strict. Every every, you know, every section of day in summer school equates to x number of weeks in in regards to that semester long learning. So, it's by design that we want students there to to earn to earn the credit. Uh, while I have the red light, I'll just add a comment. I know summer school serves lots of purposes. We have students who are trying to free up a credit during the year and families appreciate the opportunity to do that, but I particularly

052am appreciative of the credit recovery option. Yet another pathway to graduation. So, uh, much appreciated, uh, as we as we look at, um, keeping our students on track. Uh, other comments or questions from board members. >> Thank you very much. >> Thank you, Mr. Lennon. Um, as I mentioned at the onset, I'm going to take over the typical middle school summer school program report in place of Theresa Oscaren. So you can see in your packet uh she starts with a few of the logistics. So summer school session was held from June 2nd to June 27th. That was a oneweek increase over the previous year. I don't know if you recall last year when she reported there was a question from the board about why summer school is three weeks where summer rise at Valley is

053five weeks. You know kind of what's the haps there so to speak. Um after staffing with the teachers involved and looking at the possibilities there in the century code, we added on a week um to the programming which was really largely successful. Um Teresa did a really great job of recruiting students and recruiting them early. She tried some new mechanisms such as putting QR codes out at conferences so parents could just scan and and register their students on the spot. Um, with all of that, she ended up hosting students from both Shrader and South under one roof at South Middle School. That was because of the construction project at Shrader, but there are all kinds of positive effects. And moving forward, I anticipate that typical summer school will probably combine the two sites just from

054an efficiency standpoint. Um, 143 students originally registered, similar to what Mr. Lennon described. We had some attrition, 106 actually showed up. um and 80 of them finished the full uh four weeks in there. Um as mentioned by Miss Sporbert, there were camps and um activities and family trips and things of that nature, things we don't necessarily control, but overall a lot of great success with attendance there. There was a section added at Twining this year. There wasn't one the the previous year because numbers didn't allow. Um the initial registration anticipated eight students which gave us enough to schedule a multi-grade level section in the middle level. um in the end because of PCFing and things of that nature, six showed up and then four again because of those same dynamics ended up um ending the

055program. So that was one of the logistical challenges but still um I think it was worthwhile to offer that out at at Twining. Um a few of the successes she talked about the early registration she also talked about um the additional week was very wellreceived. Um uh something not measured but of note was the socialization piece of combining multiple schools plus the ML program under one roof. In fact, I have a really great quote here. Um she said by the end of summer school, everyone had someone they connected with and spent time with during the breaks and during game times. When talking with students the last week of summer school, some of them even stated that they will miss summer school. So, they're taking that as a win. So, new connections um and hopefully some

056connections for life that were made, which um really helps with that student engagement and wanting having them want to come to school when they get back to the regular school year. Um there were some donations from community um businesses such as Walmart and Sweetwaters as well as donations from the SBA, the student account funds from both South and Strader to allow for snack time. There were not lunches served. um just kind of uh explained how that is title tied to title funds um and that did not apply to the middle level. The sixth grade schedule um was comprised of a three-teer rotation. They also instituted a short advisory period just so that our incoming sixth graders could kind of adapt to a typical middle school schedule and how that might be different than a an

057elementary level schedule. Um and they allowed them to transition between classes. It worked really well that way. um seventh and eighth grade did as well as sixth grade did a math section and an ELA section and both of those sections utilized our approved curriculum for the district. So the envisions math curriculum was taught in the mathematics classes and the language arts classes used the wit and wisdom curriculum which you have heard a couple of different reports on um but really solid um evidence-based practices in play during summer school. Um special education accommodations were made starting back to April. One of the challenges there, just to let you know, is that when uh our power school system rolls over, there was a lag of information. So, we have some mechanisms in place to try to have

058that be a little more seamless next year. There's a lot of back and forth with buildings trying to get the right information and kids scheduled with the right support so that they could be successful in summer school. Um, a couple of things again about being under one roof that allowed for really efficient coordination of the paras of absences, things of that nature and as well as um having just one secretary then stay on to help manage some of the logistical challenges. Um, coming into next year uh we will have to plan for some h uh different locations. So this year Shrader was under construction. We didn't find out about that building being off limits until after the registration process. So that resulted in some back work by Teresa Ogarden. She called all the families and

059it ended up at like I said being a positive. Next summer the converse will be true. So I imagine Shrader will be the host site south will be under construction as part of our district upgrades um for safety and security. Um we also had some ML registration challenges and I think that part of that was as we have grown programming across the district and extended that to Valley Middle School. I think there was some confusion. There was also some different processes in place where our ML teachers in the past called specific families to help them register. Um and there was there just needs to be a more seamless um registration process there. The ML students who attended um really had some strong success as summer school went on. There was attrition there as well. Um

060but we did provide busing and we hope to do that again going into next year. Um at the bottom there you can see some of the data. um of maybe no surprise, it kind of mirrors our a data that we've been exploring actually for our attendance task force is that the students who attended um more frequently. So you can see a breakdown by students who missed two or less days um 65% of them increased their ELA scores, 61% increased their math scores. For students who had 3 to four days of absence, 64% um improved in ELA and 50% in math. And for students who missed um five to six days of school which was 70 to 80% attendance um they improved their scores by 30% and 40% respectively. Overall the students tested in the star

061um assessment there was uh 60% increase or 35 students increased their score in ELA and 34 students in mathematics. Um out at Twining you can see the the student group is a little bit smaller there. So only four four students were assessed. So 75% of them improved their um ELA scores and half of them improved their mathematics scores. Uh you can see the wonderful team of teachers, you know, similar to what has already been acknowledged at the um elementary and the high school level. We couldn't do it without really excellent educators um who spend time in their summer to work with kids. And so we can't thank them enough um for their contributions to our students as well as Miss Theresa Oscar again who is not here tonight. Um, so I will do my best

062to field any questions that you throw in my direction. >> Questions from board members for Dr. Galach about middle school summer school. >> Well set. Thank you. >> Sounds great. Um, we have Mr. Nick Peterson coming up. I I think that you're familiar now. For the third year in a row, we are offering the summer valley rise program. uh summer rise is specific to Valley because of their comprehensive school improvement efforts. And so there are u many similarities what I described but really a lot more intentionality and some of the targeted growth that they hope to procure. And um so I'm going to pass the microphone to Nick. >> Thank you. Uh and thank you for the introduction. Um going there we are. Um, as was said, uh, our RISE program, this was our third

063year putting it on. Um, it stems from, uh, partnerships with Levvenia that we done, um, related to our CSI status. Uh, it's always been a five-week program for us with an emphasis on reaching those incoming sixth graders. Uh, but we did this, uh, this last third year, we had an eighth grade class where 18 students have gone through all three years of summer school uh, and have come back again and again. and they're wonderful kids. So, the Lev Levvenia group um we have kind of walked back that partnership as we've built up our own inbuilding capacity. Um we've substantially reduced our cost in three years going from our first year where we had a week of synchronous training as well as a Levvenia trainer that was here for different weeks of summer school. Uh the

064second year we were able to do just the synchronous training uh without the coach and then this year we did a lot of that in-house. So we did asynchronous training which our biggest goal as far as scheduling went was to have families done by July 4th. That was a huge attendance issue. Um families don't like to come back for 3 or 4 days after July 4th. So by doing the training inhouse, by doing that asynchronously and kind of doing that ourselves, uh but holding to that high standard, we were able to accomplish that goal and fit that schedule as well. So planning, I worked together with Teresa really closely as far as um outreach to families. Um followed a lot of the same communication lines. Uh our staff was expanded this year for a lot

065of reasons. Uh this was the first year where we had enough students and the program has been around long enough to have discrete sixth, seventh, and eighth grade math and ELA. Uh we also were able to coordinate and at the same time run our um ESY program with Marty Putman um and incorporate ML and so our ML students followed a modified schedule I'll show in a moment here. Um but huge thanks to all the people mentioned here or not mentioned here. Um it was a it was a great effort this summer. So program changes um like I said teacher preparation we did a hybrid model um that that I sort of managed a lot of um but we have three years of experience and like we hold ourselves to a very high standard um we

066have a lot of returning teachers uh multilingual services huge thank you to Miss Dantis for coordinating and like doing a lot of the communication with with home um that kept our attendance high and like I said, Marty um having ESY was was great that we could do that at the same time as well. Give those students an opportunity to be part of both worlds there. Uh this is a very similar schedule to the one we used the year before. Uh again, we have our 24 days of programming. Um we have 80 blocks of math or 80-minute blocks of math, 80-minute blocks of English. The close reading side is a little different this year with the LA. um they've modified their curriculum into what they call like red thread is the relaunch of that. It um

067it continues to mirror or echo Whiten wisdom. Uh and it has like you can clearly see the different parts of like the Scarsboro's rope of um like ELA side where we've always had the background knowledge but now we have explicit um like language structure phonms graphimmes worked even to our middle school content which was neat to see. Uh we continue to be big fans of the curriculum they give us as far as books. Um like I said our EA ELA blocks are two 40inut blocks. One is uh genre study and the other one's going to be their close reading red thread. Um the curriculum is very big on like graphics like this. Um, a lot of the material we see at the end of the school year or at the end of our summer program

068is is is fantastic teaching material that we keep. Uh, closing activities every day when we finish our ELA and math blocks. Uh, this is our chance to do a lot of that programming that's aimed at incoming sixth graders. Uh, we have a lot of kids coming in from five, sometimes six schools coming in as incoming sixth graders. So, this gives them a chance to like gel together, have sort of a valley identity as they come in. And these are students that on the first day of school walk around and help everybody else open up their lock because, you know, they're not new to the building. Uh, they know how to use their locks. Uh, we continue to provide access to the library. Uh, and like I said, we have these 18 or 20, well, 22

069was the number of eighth graders we had, but this core of 18 that's done it three years in a row. Uh, we've relied on them to be leaders. So, when we do our tour of the valley school, um, this year we worked with the eighth graders so that instead of like doing something else during closing, they came up with the scripts, they were the ones leading the tours. And then a lot of those students returned when we did registration and did tours for families, which was great to see. Um, but pictured here, this was students from our incoming sixth grade class getting questions answered from our older students. Uh, they also did book talks in the library, things like that. Um, just going to mention at the top left there, uh, we try and do

070our closing activity to be grouped similar to like the middle school model we use for royal time or Spartan time. um where we build kind of a smaller community of kids. Uh pictured here is all our different 678s um their royal time of sorts. Uh we continued to rely on a model and this was easier because starting earlier we have more overlap with our secretaries at the building. Um but communication was primarily handled by me with teacher discretion on reaching out with academic or behavioral concerns. Uh we continue to have a very open arms policy. Parents, families are great about communicating when we have like we had students that started spa and then kind of had a modified schedule going through that with homework sent home until that went through. But um we we continue

071to just tell families like this is this is what we want you to be at and we accommodate schedules as best we can. So thank you to all the parents and kids. Um, our sixth grade students for the third year have read the night diary. And so again, thank you to House of Punjab. A lot of the vocab in that book is very food oriented. That's how she provides for her family. Um, so it's great every year that we've had the chance to have students write letters to House of Punjab and then in return they they provide a lot of those meals uh and spices and things that the kids get to read about. Um, this year was really special for us. Um, this was our last hot summer school. Um, so, uh, we got

072we got the chance, thank you to Brady McDonald and everybody over on the site for, uh, getting all of our students through. So, it was really special to see some of these incoming sixth graders, our seventh graders, our eighth graders. Um, you might not believe me, but I heard I heard students say like you like we have to take care of this. This is ours. This is nice. So, um, sounds cheesy, but it is true. I promise. And then academic data. Um, looks a little different. We don't star test. Uh, part of the package we get from Levvenia is they send us their own like norm to our state standards curriculum. Uh, we always do that on the first and last day. This year we did it all paper copies because kind of with intentionality

073our summer school we were no device um which worked better actually. So attendance data uh we're we're up from last year which was one of our goals. Uh with an 80% threshold we had 35 sixth graders which is down from 42 last year with regular attendance but then we have a a much larger number of seventh and eighth graders that we hope to kind of continue. I I would expect that seventh grade slump every year. We just have so many sixth graders and then it kind of bounces back in eighth. But um that's a goal is to kind of level that out for students. Uh results for eighth grade as we go through these results for all our grades are are excellent. Um but it is important to keep in mind that this is a

074curriculum that's very like next year focused. So, I would expect that when you pre-EST them, when they come in, they're not going to be very familiar with the math content for the next year, the English standards for the next year. So, frankly, I would expect that we would see increase when you're presenting them new material and then testing them at the end. Um, but this fiveweek program for us has worked really well. This is something we aim to continue. questions from board members for Mr. Peterson. >> Thank you very much. >> Thank you. Have a good night. might need some help. Mr. Bombach, I'm in. Good evening, members of the board. Terry Bohan, principal, Community High School, director of driver's ed. A couple of highlights for our driver's ed program this summer. Uh again, a

075six-week program offered uh June 2nd to July 10, sorted into sessions that were two weeks long each. Uh it's important for the board to know uh we opened a registration last year uh on March 10 for our June 2nd registration. Uh we sold out our 288 seats in less than 3 weeks. It's a high demand program continues to be. Um it's also important that the board knows that at this time last year we decided to increase the fee for the behind the wheel portion of driver's ed. um and and that didn't that that held its own and uh is of value. Uh suggestion would be to leave it the same. Uh although that's my initial recommendation after talking Brandon and I are in the course of talking about next steps for that too. So uh

076high demand program continues to be those 288 students uh participated in our our program as we've always run it. A great big thank you to Ryell uh six vehicles this year. Um, again, they're driving comfortable, safe, clean, uh, road ready vehicles. Uh, and and they drive them well. And for the record, this year, uh, only one flat tire, 24,000 some miles, uh, no curbs, no, uh, no other incidents, just one flat tire. We'll take that. Uh, and then the last key thing I want to, uh, well, maybe a couple, uh, our instructors, again, solid work. uh 17 instructors, one of which was a brand new instructor this year, hoping to get two additional new instructors next year. Uh these are some plans as we move forward for the future. Um these instructors uh were working

077with some very good drivers in 2025. Uh we for years now have been uh awarding what is called the completion certificate which allows a student uh who has met particular driving criteria uh in the judgment of one instructor. often there are two uh and that allows them to not have to take the road test uh once they meet the age requirements for earning their driver's license. You know, we've done that now four or five years. Uh this year, one in three students uh was driving at a level uh that our instructors felt was worthy of a completion. And I want to be clear to say we have a very narrow strike zone. uh when in doubt it's no. Um and so that that's really a tribute I think to families. Uh for years we've been

078trying to get more and more families to get in the car with these kids before drivers ed. And I wonder if maybe we're seeing movement in that direction again. For a while we didn't. I don't have any data to prove it but it's a hunch um that maybe some younger kids are getting into the behind the wheel or on the lawnmower riding their bikes. All those things are relevant thing for things for uh quality drivers. Uh looking forward to summer of 2026 and I'd be happy to answer any questions you have about driver's ed. >> Questions from board members for Mr. Bohan. >> Yes. Dr. L. >> You talked about trying to hire new people. Do we have an aging population of teachers that we're going to need to be replacing over the next few

079years? >> Yes. Of our 17, five are currently retired. Um, however, uh, of the 12 remaining, about half of them are relatively new to driver's ed. So, but I'm always keeping my eyes on that. You bet. Other questions from board members. Thank >> Thank you very much. Good evening, members of the school board and district administration. My name is Allison Peterson. I am the director of the summer performing arts program. Thank you for allowing us to share the successes of our summer programs. All in all, 1,156 children and students participated in spa activities this summer. This is steady from last year. As you can see on the chart that was provided, some programs were up in enrollment and some were down. Uh notably, middle school was quite down in enrollment. Uh we're not in panic

080mode. We don't know if that's an anomaly, but we're going to uh kind of focus our recruitment efforts for next year and kind of uh see what we can do to see if we can get enrollment back up. Um but preK and elementary were up pretty significantly from the year before. spa- held programs at Red River High School, Grand Forks Central High School, Sharon Lutheran Church, Discovery, Phoenix, and South. And as always, I want to thank the administrative and custodial staff for those facilities for allowing us to use those spaces in the summer. We know that time is precious for cleaning and all of that. And the buildings are sacred spaces, so we really appreciate all the building usage that we have. Spa had 51 staff members. 16 were hourly, 34 were contracted, one was

081salaried, that's me. Uh 11 full-time positions were paid solely by grant funding at a cost of $57,736. $9,420 was awarded um because of our um our scholarship program. So 120 students received that funding. Most of that is partial um scholarship waiverss for the programs. There are some cases where we hardship cases. You know, we had uh this summer we had a family who had a fire, a house fire. And so we will give full scholarships to special circumstances like that. 177.25 fine arts elective credits were awarded to the high school students in um High School Spa. The high school spa portion of Spa is our most public facing of course and we did two musicals this summer. We did Guys and Dolls at Grand Fork Central and All Shook Up at Red River High School.

082Both shows brought in full houses over their runs with six of them of the eight performances being what we consider to be sold out, which is very exciting. Uh that means that 6,000 patrons were in attendance for Guys and Dolls and All Shook Up and approximately 8,000 more for our other concerts, events, recital, and performances. One of the greatest things about Spa is its longevity, 39 years in 2026. Longevity means the program has had a profound impact on a lot of people and I'd like to share an example of that with you. This is a quote taken with permission from a post from spa parent Hillary Kempenik. She posted this on social media after our senior recognition event. We call it senior spotlight. We allow the senior spa students to give a few words about

083the program and their time in the program and we recognize their years of involvement. Quote, "What moved me most was hearing student after student, some with one year in the program, others with 12, speak about what SPA gave them. An escape, a family, a place to be seen, and to grow, a place to become. This is why the arts matter, why after school and summer programs matter. Regardless of the chaos of the world, these spaces remind us of who we are and who we can be. Too often, the arts are dismissed by those peering in from the outside. But make no mistake, what happens in these programs is nothing short of essential education. Students learning how to support each other, use their voices, build sets, master math and science through lighting and sound, use power

084tools, navigate language, unlock creativity, and build lifelong confidence." End quote. This is a perfect reminder as to why programs like this are so important and so special to this school district. It's far more than just kids singing and dancing and being up on a stage. It's over,00 kids having a place to feel like they belong. And uh I just want to say thank you to all of the staff, administration, um the patrons, the supporters, and everybody who makes the spa program happen. And I would be happy to entertain any questions about the summer. >> Questions from board members for Miss Peterson? Mr. Palmino? Yeah. My only question is, are you planning on adding Valley next year to your locations? Cuz if your middle schools are down, it could be North End Kids opportunity getting to

085the location, >> right? And we'll start talking about this a little closer to the Thanksgiving Christmas break and we'll we're going to talk about as a staff because we we know I did I wasn't aware that South was going to be under construction until this meeting. So, um yeah. So, we will definitely have to talk about that and look into that. Other questions from board members? >> Thank you very much. >> Yeah, if I can just and I think it probably goes without saying, but I just want to thank again the the leaders that showed up here tonight to um present on the summer programs. They put in a lot of hours prior to summer, obviously beginning on top of their full-time jobs. um when if you add up the total number of participants uh

086throughout what you just uh heard, it's really an astounding number of kids that are touched in a variety of ways by what we offer. So, I just want to give a sincere thanks to the people who showed up tonight and I think you're even if you're a fan, you think you can still make it out of here in time to get to the Vikings game. So, thank you very much. >> As a reminder, these reports are for discussion and not action. anything further on 6A either from Mr. Baky, Dr. Galach or uh board members at large about any of these reports. Okay, we'll move on to 6B, boundary lines discussion. Dr. Brener, what a segue from spa to boundary line conversation. Um, you have a memo for me in your board packet and I'm going

087to uh skip over the first paragraph, but I am going to highlight the second paragraph because this really is a a conversation for the public in the public. Um, and I want to make sure that um uh while this meeting is both live broadcast and and recorded uh and uploaded that people can go back and and listen to the conversation. So for historical purposes, it's important to note that the demographic task force was designated by the school board to create an overall boundary lines adjustment plan during the 2526 school year. The school district held two public listening sessions on January 15, 2025 at Central and January 16th, 2025 at Red River High School, highlighting the proposed changes. And given public feedback received during those meetings as well as further conversations at the board level on

088February 10th, February 24th, and March 17th, uh, schoolboard meetings, two subsequent work sessions were held between the demographic task force selected administrators and the school board on April 24th and May 22nd, 2025, respectively. It was through these meetings that a consensus was reached on the proposed boundary line changes. And for those watching at home, tonight is um a conversation discussion. Uh no action will be taken uh on this conversation that we're having at the table tonight. So if you go to the next page, and I know we talked about this at the board retreat, uh but not everybody uh was was privy to the conversation. So uh I'll highlight what was discussed and and we can certainly have uh free flowing uh communication um about the boundary lines adjustment. So, uh, I'm going to go

089ahead and and, uh, and go through this document. These are what I would consider community communication talking points, uh, so that there's consistency and messaging and that everybody is on the same page. And so, we defined key terms uh, during all of our work and during those work sessions. Uh, one of the terms is called trailing siblings and those would be younger siblings of a student already enrolled in a school. Enrollment decline. We want to be consistent with how we use that. That would be a decrease in the number of students enrolled at a school or district which in which can impact uh funding and also staffing. ML or multi-ingual learners, students who are learning English in addition to their native languages and AVID and we've heard a lot about AVID at this board table

090uh which is advancement via individual determination. Uh and we have pilots going at uh some of our north end schools, our feeder schools in particular, uh that feed into Central High School and Title One, a federal program that provides financial assistance to schools with high percentages of children from low-income families to help ensure that all students meet academic standards. And the final key term defined would be magnet programs. Uh specialized school programs with unique curriculum themes that attract a diverse student body from across the district such as our ML program. Uh that we do have magnet programs across our district. We want to make sure that there's consistent language across all school levels. And so we're going to standardize uh some some ways in how we use vernacular. So instead of saying based on enrollment,

091which is probably something that we used a lot of uh historically, we'll use based we will use the phrase based on school capacity because that does mean things uh that means something different to every building because some buildings have additional programs, special education programs, ML programs that other schools may not. And so that uh simply reflects more accurately how decisions are made based on available space. We want to provide clear timelines and considerations. And you know what we'll be talking about tonight is the uh 2526, excuse me, 2425 school year was the planning year and uh 2526 is the communication year and then implementation would be the fall of 26. And I'll get down I'll get into the breakdown of what that will look like for each of our levels. Uh boundary change timelines. We

092want to make sure that clear dates are communicated to all of our patrons because what we've heard from people is look, I bought a house in a certain neighborhood because that neighborhood feeds a specific school and we know those with boundary line changes that could affect where people choose to live. um referendum timelines. Uh there is a possibility that uh that we could have a referendum, you know, within the next year to year and a half uh based on school capacity um concerns. Uh on on a positive note and contingency plans in the event that we have a referendum and that referendum does not pass, uh what would the plans be then to make sure that we're not uh overloading one building uh versus another? Also under community communication talking points, we want to make

093sure there's transparency in planning and you know transparency means something different to uh lots of different people. So uh from my perspective it's just making sure that we are communicating our intent, we're communicating our plan and that people have an opportunity to understand and to find where that information is and to put it in places where it's not difficult to find. So whether it's uh pushing something out, whether it's uh uh directing people where to go, whether it's a phone conversation, whether it's community conversations, those can all be uh pieces of that transparency and planning and transparency and decision-m. Not not everybody in the community is all always going to understand how we make decisions about how boundary lines change, uh who gets to move, who doesn't get to move. Um but there there is

094rationale into what we do and how those decisions are made. They're not arbitrary and they're not made in a vacuum. Uh and they're not made in isolation, but they're made through uh committee work. They're made through subcommittee work uh etc. So we want to make sure that we are providing objective and publicly available data based on those decisions uh that can include enrollment thresholds uh course offerings and maintaining schools of excellence at all levels. And so when we uh I'm going to get a little bit ahead of myself. When we talk about equity and programming and what what schools do have and what schools don't have, by and large uh and I think board member Cleven said this at our retreat, all of our schools are excellent. And it shouldn't matter what neighborhood you live

095in or what grade level you're in. Access to highquality instruction, access to curriculum that's been approved and adopted and purchased by the board should be available for every one of our students. um in our school district uh decisions such as boundary changes and program shifts or school closures um we need to be very uh consistent in how we communicate that you'll see that um I put in here for example board policy it's actually not policy it's been more a administrative practice with board support so we've had our public forums in the past we've talked about uh what class size what class sizes ought to be at the primary level at the intermediate level middle and high school but school sizes should be to operate efficiently. Um so again those are guidelines that uh we want

096to make sure that are part of a document uh that is promoted u publicly for our people to see. I already talked about a little bit the referendum contingency planning um if we do need to take pressure off of schools like Discovery and I think we already know that we'll have to take some pressure off of that school as early as the fall of 26. What does that plan look like? Uh if we don't if we're not standing up brick and mortar by the fall of 26. Um Kelly Elementary School is another one. Century uh in Midtown, West Midtown um has seen some rapid growth this year as well. So while overall we're down a bit in enrollment K through 12, we still have what I would call some hot spots across the district where

097we're going to need to relieve uh some of that pressure. So with some of that contingency planning, um some of the conversation that we've had from a leadership perspective is as those boundary lines move and shift and let me just give an example so the public really understands. When we put out our first iteration of boundary line changes, uh what we heard loudly and clearly from our Viking Kelly uh Viking Kelly neighborhood was look, you're creating an island south of town that's going to leaprog past Kelly to go to Viking uh or to leaprog to go to Lewis and Clark. And that was all designed based on trying to use the buildings to our fullest capacity. But we what we heard from parents was that's crazy. you know, we we shouldn't be leaprogging over buildings.

098When I when I can look uh you know, diagonally and see a school, I should be able to go to that school instead of skipping that school and going to another one. But that was an attempt to make sure that we're using a school like Lewis and Clark to its fullest extent. But based on uh based on the new iteration, uh we'll really have to watch consciously how some of our enrollments fluctuate uh in some of our schools because as neighborhoods turn over and churn, we may find ourselves with a building that's not at full capacity, but we do have other programs that are looking for other spaces. So, uh, so my message today for the board and for the public would be there's no reason to take a school offline, but there may be

099reason to repurpose a school for other school district programmatic initiatives, if that makes sense. Um, if a referendum wouldn't pass, if we decide to stand up a referendum, probably need to talk about adding on perhaps to a building or two to alleviate uh some of the spaces, but brick and mortar does take time. So, what are we going to do in the interim? And we have had conversations about implementing a kindergarten academy where we have all of our uh five and six year olds uh in one space. Uh some other school districts have done that with great success. Uh professional development alignment of curriculum instruction is is pretty seamless. Um and school districts that have done that such as Devil's Lake and West Fargo um have yielded some tremendous results. That doesn't mean we're going

100to do it, but I think it's important to know that we're having a conversation about that. So, um I'm getting down to the bottom of uh whatever page that is. I don't have numbers on mine. Uh clear and consistent language where we're going to avoid using vague or open-ended terms. And so instead of saying uh to to a parent who calls or somebody who's reading an article or how we might want to message something, instead of saying tri triggers would be in order to make a change or a decision, we'd say considerations could include but not be limited to dot dot dot and then the timeline and clarity matters. We heard that from from our public. Um, so we will we have already distinguished between our planning years and implementation years. So again, last school

101year planning uh more conversations this year, but what we'd like to do uh with the board is make a decision fairly early in the school year so everybody has time uh to plan for the 2627 school year. And you can see uh the the graphic that talks about our four-year stepped plan for high school. uh this wouldn't be uh anything different than what we explained on January 15th and 16th, but I think it's worth uh talking about again this evening. Uh in the 26 27th school year for high school boundaries, uh the new lines are 10th through 12th graders would stay at their current school and the 9th graders would attend their new school based on the new boundary. In the 2728 school year, our 11th and 12th graders would stay at their current boundary

102and 9th and 10th graders would attend their new boundary school. 2829 12th graders stay at their current school and they'll be joined by 9th through 11th grade students attending their new school. And then by the 2930 school year, all students would be attending their new high school boundary lines. And again, there will be um uh trailing sibling conversations uh particularly at the high school level. Uh we've we've talked about what does that mean to be a trailing sibling if the gap is 10 years between uh somebody who has graduated from Central High School and somebody who isn't quite there yet. And our high school principles will work through that. But what we did discuss uh internally is because families have made connections and relationships at those buildings already, it would make sense for that trailing

103sibling even that many years apart to attend the school where their sibling went. Uh community communication talking points. Again, moving on to a different topic or theme, uh transportation and access. We want to make sure that we have plans and that we're communicating those plans to Valley Bus and you know uh we we still have what I would say ongoing challenges with busing and the amount of time that students are on buses. Um and we're we continue to work through that uh with with our contractor and John has been really good about u being responsive to what our needs are. So I'm kind of talking about real time right now as opposed to moving in the future. But we want to make sure that parents know that there will be a choice if a bus

104runs through their neighborhood uh or if a bus won't run through their neighborhood, you know, based on ridership and based on needs. Um there are some neighborhoods, you know, where the where the boundary lines are drawn. There might be people on one side of the street going to one school and somebody on the other side of the street going attending a different school. And what does that mean for that bus route? We want to make sure that those clan those plans are clearly communicated to our community. Um, same holds true for our ML students and right now we believe we have a good transportation system for our magnet programs. Um, there aren't any concerns about getting uh our ML students to their magnet schools on time uh and getting them home as well. And then

105of course what typically comes up is you know when boundary lines change uh when we're working with demographer Rob Schwarz uh we all tend to look at these major thorough affairs like Washington Street uh Belmont 32nd Avenue South 47th u Colombia um and how do those factors play in to the boundary lines and sometimes they are good barriers to make sure that kids aren't crossing but we know fully well where our discovery students uh where most of them reside. Most of them reside almost three miles away from their school and they cross Washington and they cross Columbia to get to Discovery. So, it's not always really really clean when we're talking about this concept of neighborhood schools. Um congressional neighborhood on the west side of I29. Uh there's what I know as congressional one and

106congressional two. There's one on the south side of university and there's one on the north side of university. and how those um how those neighborhoods will feed into either Red River or Central High School. And then equity and access remain central to the transportation plan. We want to make sure that we don't have any students facing barriers because they can't get to school. And I believe I'm on to my my last page of talking points. Um, we will create uh through uh Melissa Vaky, our communications manager, um more of a cleaner, shorter version document uh so that it's going to be a quick trifold that uh parents can have so they can figure some of their planning out, but we'll also upload that information on our websites. Uh make sure that we push it out

107um in terms of uh making sure that parents even understand that they have access to that information. Uh Melissa actually did put together a a pretty document for me already with some similar information. Um but I'm going to hang on to that just uh for the time being. So finally, we're we're talking about equity and program access. And our goal is to ensure that all students, regardless of background, have access to strong, well-resourced schools. And again, nobody should be disadvantaged based on where they live in our community. So, we want to promote equity across our schools and we want to avoid concentrations of poverty that can impact learning environments and we certainly uh had very deep deep conversations at the high school level with our high school leadership teams about how the community is growing

108south and uh what kind of challenges that can create when the sale of homes on the south end south end of town can be 3504 400, 500, 600,000 uh dollars in um homes on the north end aren't selling for that and there's really nowhere to build on the north end. So, we're also as a school district at the mercy of how housing has developed uh across our community. I, you know, sometimes I take people down a little bit of a rabbit hole. Um and I might do that right now. Um it's not part of my presentation, but I think it's just really important to reiterate how our community has grown. Uh you can look at the timeline in our hallway here, but because people aren't able to see that while they're listening to me talk,

109how our community grew around public education was really centralized around the original central high school, which isn't the existing building. There was a building before the building as we know it uh existed there. That was our elementary, middle school, junior high, and high school. Uh, and then if you just think about that corridor of North Fourth and North Fifth with Wilder, uh, the old Washington Elementary School, which is the rectory for St. Mike's Church, and then you sprinkle in a private school, St. Michael's School, um, and you work your way downtown, you've got Central, and then you uh, you cross that access, you cross Midtown and get to the other side, and you had Belmont, and which is now Phoenix. But after Belmont, then you'd go a few blocks uh on Cottonwood and you hit

110Roosevelt Elementary School and you go a few blocks and you'd hit Lincoln Elementary School and then the old South Junior High was there. So, as you can see, we were pretty tight at one point, but then as the city grew to the south and as lots became available, planning uh and zoning just pushed everything to the south. So, that's just something that we have to work with. And that's something that I hope our public can understand as we're uh trying to make the most sense of how we uh how we move our lines. Uh again, program equity, I already talked about AVID, Title One, ML, uh and then access to extracurricular activities. Um I I here's a piece that I'll highlight. We may need to reduce or consolidate programs at some point in the future.

111And that's not anything that we haven't done in the past. If you think of our Nightriders girls wrestling program that started four years agoish, uh we started with two wrestling programs, one at Red River, one at Central, and we just didn't have the numbers. And so the two schools came together uh through our athletics conversation and now we have Night Riders wrestling and we have a really really rich um girls wrestling program. Same holds true for our Nightriders girls hockey program and uh boys swimming. Boy swimming. Yes, boy swimming. I'm just trying to think of some of those that have consolidated and come together. So, without taking opportunities away, we can find ways to uh be more efficient and and provide solid teams. So, that takes us through kind of the community talking points. And

112then the final page uh is just a a shorter iteration of what I just went through. So why don't I do this and pause and certainly turn it over to board president Burgerer for conversation. >> Sure. Again a reminder this also falls under the category of uh recommendations for discussion. The action on this will take place two weeks from tonight on September 22nd. But for tonight's discussion before we move on to this tighter page six in your packet that will delineate considerations by elementary, middle, and high school. Any questions from board members, comments so far about the process, about this information, about where we've been, where we are, where we're headed, either for Dr. Brener or for um the um the others in the room. Any board member want to kick off our discussion? >>

113Dr. L, >> we'll take first swing. I I just am am so appreciative of the demogra demographic task force and administration all the way from central administration here down to the individual building level. I don't think anybody including us at this table except for our administrators understand the time and effort that has gone into all the work and it wasn't just the the the task force. It was other administrators and and I just really appreciate that and I actually am fully supportive of of of this. I think I think this is a good plan. I think it's compromised. I I I have uh I have full support in it right now. >> Thank you. Other questions or comments from board members? Mr. Cleven? >> No, I I agree with Dr. London. The work has been

114done. Like at some point you study a problem too long and you just go right back to the beginning point. And I think it's well thought out, well organized. Everybody's done tons and tons of work. And like Dr. long. I agree with what we're going to be seeing in two weeks and look forward to voting in favor of it. >> Other questions or comments from board members? >> Mr. Palmino. >> I guess my only question is when we talked elementary schools and and we talk about capacity and that and I'm I'm still wondering Discovery School when we built Discovery School, have we ever had a before we go to the public and ask for a new school, have we really had an architect looked at Discovery School and decide, okay, here's what you have for

115square footage at Discovery school. Is there an opportunity within the walls to create more uh classrooms? Because there is a lot of open space in Discovery School versus any of the other schools. You know, it was built that way with those common areas that are there. Could we do, you know, that might delay the new school two years down the road, which would give people a little more more growth in that area to to feed it. Have we have ever done that or should we do that? I just a thought. >> We we haven't done that, Mr. Palmino. Um the the learning commons areas are uh uniquely designed to handle some individual or small group instruction. Um so no, none of us have ever suggested should we repurpose that space for additional classrooms. Um it's

116certainly something that we can explore. The other piece of that is we're at about 560. Matt, I'm kind of looking at you. I'm trying to recall that number. Uh, K through five and our our elementary school guidelines are 150 to 500. So, let's just say we put five more classrooms in there, then we're going to be at 675ish, you know, 650 to 675. >> I guess I'm not talking five classrooms. I'm talking maybe two, you know, that we need. we have a bump in just a certain ages or we have some and it would not you know throw this out there next year we need a new school right now it would say in the future we need a new school but very soon but and if it might come back it would you know

117we used a consultant that designed the school helped us put it together to ask him here's what we have does that make sense and he might just say no it doesn't make sense I know it's great for individual works but then when I go to other schools and they use little tiny hallways that are 8 ft wide to do their individual works. You know that if they lost some of that, it might be worth time for us to get ready for a new school. >> Mr. Baky, did you have the number just for the sake of conversation? >> Yeah, current enrollment is 573. So, you're very close, Dr. Brener. Other questions or comments from board members on this piece? How about we review the last page of the packet if there's anything you want to

118lift up and highlight from page six. Again, these are just the as we've seen the overview, but now this communication year sets in and we're talking about, okay, what does this look like at the elementary level? There's certainly some things that have been worked out differently than middle school, particularly as we talk about trailing siblings and and the high school. So, is there anything you want to lift up before we dive into this last piece, Dr. Brener? >> No, I'm fine to move on. >> Okay. anything from board members about this these considerations? You know, we we did take a look at these at our board retreat, but now that you've had an opportunity to digest them, and now that we're two weeks away from from voting on these, is there anything you wish to

119speak on, Mr. Cleven? >> Yeah, thank you. uh on the elementary implementation the very first row in that column it's basically committing us to that referendum that how I read it. So that's a referendum coming up within the next year. Am I interpreting that correctly? >> We no that's that's a very good point and good feedback. We can change that to consider consideration of >> Yep. No. Thank you Mr. Yeah, Mr. Palm. >> Yeah. On that same note, my question is on high school 2030 plan. Is that are we committed to that or is that just a picture that we may be at at 2030 cuz you know if building slows down or building moves to the west or the north it you know may be a different look. That's putting a date there I

120think commits us to that date. And I don't know if that's what was meant to do. >> Yeah, we we really, you know, based on the feedback that we received from principles, we really wanted to signal um we didn't want to leave any gray area, but we can certainly words smmith that um to suggest that it would move to 47th Avenue South for high schools in 2030 unless and then we can use some of the language that I previously discussed. Yeah, my my opinion on this is it is helpful to to communicate that there are future uh line changes. I think part of the reason why we were here and I I I say here kind of in the sense of um stuck for a bit or wrestling with where where we were going to

121land is there may have been some public perception that the lines have always been this way. the lines are always going to be this way and that's maybe where some of the initial push back was from from some segments of the population writ large. So I find it helpful uh for future boards to have again some language that says this is an ongoing transition. Uh I do agree that some caveat in place is helpful to say uh this is the plan unless there's information that comes up there's data that suggests otherwise rather than let's think of the alternative. The alternative would be we might do this in another 5 years and now here in another 5 years again some people may have forgotten that we've had this conversation. So, I I personally uh am in

122favor of and I've had individual conversations and really landed in a good spot with folks saying this is the way these lines need to continually evolve and shift to match the growth. Um to Dr. Brener's point about here's where the the buildings are. If they were Lego bricks and we could pick them up and set them in other places in our city's map, we would set them in different places than they are currently. Uh and yet we know that's where they are. So uh I know some of this is um is difficult. Change is is difficult. Um I've said probably a hundred times if there were an easy solution, we would have found it already. the fact that we're here at what we I think all reasonably think is is a fair place to land

123for now, a great plan and um I I particularly uh again am in favor of a future movement plan. Um all while saying and I appreciate the fact that the sentiment has been shared, these are all great schools. This is not a zip code lottery. This is not a geographical lottery. These are all great schools with great staff and a guaranteed viable curriculum that will support all learners in all classrooms. Um so thankful to have this conversation tonight and and also thankful that we have some time and the public has some time um before we'll vote on September 22nd. Yeah, Mr. Cleven. >> Yep. Thank you. Um and not the 2030 plan itself. I understand it to be a kind of a negotiated compromise of a variety of opinions that existed on this specific boundary

124line. So knowing that it's a a negotiation amongst many many people I think gives another reason to keep it as is recognize and honor the work that everybody did on that topic. >> Other questions or comments from board members? Mr. Palmino. Yeah, I just I'm stuck on 2030. Uh but if the 2030 is that mean we start over for those kids in that area in the ninth grade they go to this are to all the kids in that area that the line drops from be prior to that it's 40th correct. So if it drops from 40th to for or 40th to 47th, does that mean all those kids because some will be at the other school, some will be at Red River. Does it mean that the new ninth graders then would start going is

125that we might want to clarify that because >> that would be confusing that mean I got to switch schools. >> Yep. Dr. >> People who switch schools back in the 60s. >> Yep. We Yep. I The question is understood, Dr. Brener. >> Yep. The answer to Mr. Palmino is yes. It would be another four-year stepped in plan. >> Yep. Thank you, Dr. Hodc. >> Yes. Um I'm very pleased with what we've worked on and and with the task force and and such. I do have just a point that's kind of nagging at me. And when we talk about the um I just had it here and I wanted to go back to it. um where we talked about the open ongoing communication and feedback where we're talking about timely updates about transportation plans, the transportation

126piece and everything else. The piece that I love there is that someone's going to be available to answer specific concerns and get feedback from if a parent wants to call or contact. I would like to see that someplace embedded for all of these ideas that we're doing so that a parent would have an idea. Do they contact the building level principal? um where do they go to just give their feedback and their input because we're no longer having if I understand in any public forums or you know things like that just that because we're talking so much about that transparency I I would believe that we'd want to say here's what you do and so that principles would understand it as well um employees throughout the system would understand it so that if at a

127parent conference reference. Um, a teacher's listening to a parent expound on something that it's just, oh, here's where you can go to direct that information. And if we have a depository where some of that information can be collected, viewed by the administrative team, worked with um through that administrative team um because I think that we there there will be value to getting that feedback as we jump into the the plan. Not that I'm saying that we would change anything, but if there's a really great idea that arises for some, you know, for us that I would not want us to lose sight and not have consideration. So I don't know where just an overall statement so that people would know not only the parents but community members as well. >> Other comments or questions from

128board members? Other discussion? I certainly appreciate the opportunity to have this discussion and and conversation. Uh you know, there have been times over the years where um because of the rhythm of work, the the timeline uh we've we've had discussion and action all together. Um this is really helpful uh as a board member. Uh I hope it's also helpful for the public. um that that we we're all understanding uh where we're headed and where where the process is going. So, just one final reminder, this was discussion for tonight uh final action uh on Monday, September 22nd. We'll now move on to 7A. This is our consent agenda. I would seek a motion to approve the consent agenda. It's been moved by Mr. Cleven. Is there a second? >> Second by Mr. Manley. We'll take a

129roll call vote. Hodak, >> yes. >> Larson, >> yes. >> Manley, >> yes. >> Cleven, >> yes. >> Anderson, >> yes. >> Flynn is absent. Palmino, >> Lun, >> yes. >> Burger, >> yes. >> H, yes. Zero, no. One, absent. >> Motion passes. 7B, our strategic plan 2025 2030. Dr. Brener. >> Thank you again, President Berger. uh you have a memo from me and I'll jump right to the uh uh second paragraph but also uh acknowledging that uh board members did receive this information uh through two-way conversation at a retreat on August 14th and just so the community is very well aware of that uh because this this one is for action tonight. I want to express my thanks and gratitude to the district strategic planning uh plan steering committee and also writing committee uh

130for their incredible work um with the guidance of uh facilitator Dr. Jeff Shots and you have the culminating document uh in front of you that will be the roadmap for our our work. Uh what we might do, just full disclosure, is take all of this uh information, not change it, uh but put it into a different format. Uh so when we upload it to the website, uh it will have some style to it instead of lots of words. Uh so the the four buckets that we landed on, I'll just talk about these from a high level, get into a little bit of what the priorities are, um and then uh move it to some questions. Academic excellence uh will continue to be a priority in this strategic plan and um the academic excellent piece is

131tied to the board level literacy and math goals. Um but it but it's also broader than that. We want to make sure there's enrichment to remediation to everything else that's in between. So that's the first bucket. The second bucket is our behavioral health and wellness bucket. Um and uh again I'll talk about our uh some other pieces here in a minute. Uh the third one is a shared understanding. So there seem to be a real desire to make sure that there's a reciprocal communication between district uh staff district and community staff and community etc. And then the fourth one is operational effectiveness. So I'm going to take you uh just a little bit deeper into each one of those uh buckets. And we talked about the schoolboard goals already. And I think it's important to

132note uh for the community that the superintendent uh is attached to um our academic progress as well um under the guard rails that we've talked about here at the table before. But I I'm just going to I'm going to call those out for full transparency. Uh so the superintendent guardrail number one won't allow any curricular resources other than those that are aligned with North Dakota state standards and adopted by the school board to be used as the foundation for delivering instruction. The second guard rail is the superintendent will not allow established district-wide standards uh for classroom evaluations to go unmet. Uh in other words, all of our principles and associate principles will be uh supervising coaching for growth um and evaluating uh people at the classroom level. And the third guard rail is the superintendent

133will not allow professional learning communities to function without the continuous analysis of student achievement data as well as ongoing analysis of the curricular resources and their alignment with North Dakota standards. And I think you heard from Miss Farber tonight uh that critical alignment from summer school um and how they're you know how they've actually made adjustments from uh being an extension of the school year to some really deep interventions um so that we can do some preventative things for in like for example an intro to kindergarten before our students even uh step in our school doors in August. So under academic excellence uh one of the priorities is effective instruction and I can share with you my long history in the school district where the Marzano teacher evaluation uh model came from. Uh I was

134a part of that committee that uh that instituted that and it continues to work through different iterations. Um, but that's that's a really important piece. And if you think about our uh high reliability schools process, uh, level two is high quality instruction in every classroom uh, across the school district. So that is something that not only are we talking about it, but Dr. Galach, Mr. Baky, myself, and uh, Miss Amy Bartch do our learning walks and we spend time in classrooms observing what's actually happening in classrooms. Uh, eliminating opportunity gaps. talked about that a little bit um with uh some of the vocabulary like Abbott um and uh so I I'll just kind of leave that one there and choice ready I think you're all aware of that military college and workforce ready and certainly

135Grand Forks has done extremely well over the last five to seven years uh as as the state standard was fairly low uh when that was introduced uh but we're doing really well as a school district and the measures of success uccess. You already have those in the board goals and how we're going to move things from 48% to 56% etc in those literacy and math areas. The next one, behavioral health and wellness. Uh the priority areas are our positive attendance practices. And you've heard a report from Dr. Eric and Mr. Strandell from both of our high schools. and um and let let me just give them some additional kudos because they're actually going to be presenting on the institution of that practice at the North Dakota Council of Educational Leaders fall conference in Bismar in

136October. Um so we're really proud of the work uh that they've done and that information is also being shared with Mr. uh Mr. Baky and Dr. Glatch are having conversations at the middle and elementary level about attendance practices as well. And I believe we're about a about eight nine days away from uh more of a communitywide conversation um around attendance with some uh other agencies that we're going to be collaborating with. Uh the safe one, the next one is safe and supportive environments. I don't know that I have to say much more about all the projects that we have going on, but not only are we firming up in all of our campuses starting with eight this summer u and concluding that work next summer, the following subsequent two summers, but it's still about the

137people. It's still about the human connection that we have at all of our buildings and making sure that every student is attached is significantly attached to one adult uh in all of our schools. And then wellness, not only wellness for our students, but wellness for our staff as well. Wellness for our teachers, our support staff, wellness for our principles, wellness for uh people who uh surround district leadership work out here. Uh it's really important in this day and age that we are focusing on that. And I need I say any more about Dr. Amy Gayert's uh arrival here. She's just going to do fantastic work uh with her experience and background. Number three is shared understanding. Uh I highlighted a bit already about reciprocal communication. Uh making sure that that is shared. And we've added

138a couple of pieces already this year. Uh our district leadership team already meets with GFA leadership U. Brady and Joe uh on a regular basis. I believe we have six meetings set up this year. Um but we also have meetings set up with our Grand Forks principles association throughout the year modeled after what we've done with GFA. um how we've expanded our administrative cabinet opportunities. Uh Wendy Mankey now is in the building with child nutrition. So she's part of those conversations. Actually, my office is full of 14 people when we get all of our administrative cabinet there. So there are opportunities uh for voices and um and even with our executive cabinet, our smaller team of five, uh periodically we have principal representation who come and sit uh sit in and listen to those conversations

139as well. And then just making sure we're clear clear on all of our roles and our deliverables and who's doing what, who's on first. Um and then finally, operational effectiveness. Um, you know, certainly there's been a a a lot of resources put into our human resources recruitment efforts and retention, and I have to thank the board for how deep you've gone the last couple of negotiation cycles um to not only demonstrate in appreciation for all of our colleagues across the district, but competing uh with not only those around us, but with our what I would call our major competitors uh in the large four to five school districts across the state. Um, we have a we have a a benefit specialist now uh who is on call to handle any of those conversations about health

140insurance and who do I go for this and um how do I pay for that? You know, we've got some resources in place to really, you know, strengthen and bolster and support our staff and then facilities and operations. and Jonathan Elwine, our B&G director, is just moments away from sharing with all of you uh the five-year outlook. The five-year outlook for our facilities, even though we're right in the middle of it, and we all feel like we know what the five-year outlook is, um he's going to have things amortized out. Um so, you'll have a really uh good understanding and the community will have a good understanding of what kind of expenses and capital outlay we're going to have over the course of the next five years. And I was just sharing with one of

141our community members who was here earlier uh today because he had mentioned deferred maintenance, but he wasn't talking about the school district. And I said, if you've been paying attention, you haven't heard that coming out of the school district uh for a couple of years. Um so I think we're in a we're in a good spot. Um but we always have to sharpen that saw and refine where we're at in our budgetary process. And so when we're compensating our people at a fair market wage or even a little bit better than that, we've got to balance the other side of the ledger. And those are the harder conversations. Uh but we want to make sure that we engage people throughout that process and uh business manager Brandon Bombach has a good plan in place that

142um we're going to be working through through the course of uh this year. And then finally just modernizing our technical infrastructure and Darren King is back with us. He's got a year under his belt and he had left for 12 years uh going into higher ed. came back and saw some of the newness and saw some of the things that hadn't changed yet. Um, so he's got a good team in place. Um, as we not only build new infrastructure for the future, but we build cross teaming operations between all of our people who work in the technology department in case we're down one or we're down two, uh, it's the next person up who can handle those deliverables. So, I will stop there. Uh it's it's a lot of information, but we did spend time

143on it on August 14th. Thank you. Questions for Dr. Brener from board members. Again, we have had time to digest this, talk about it. Uh tonight is uh recommended action. Uh so I would seek a motion to approve the 2025 2030 Grand Forks Public School District strategic plan. >> It's been moved by Mr. Cleven. Is there a second? Second by Mr. Anderson. Is there any further discussion? >> We'll take a roll call vote. >> Manley, >> yes. >> Lun, >> yes. >> Larson, >> yes. >> Pomacino, >> yes. >> Bodak, >> yes. >> Cleven. >> Flynn is absent. Anderson, >> yes. >> Burger, >> yes. >> HS0, no. One, absent. >> Motion passes. Before we move on to eight, I I did hear Dr. Brener say something perhaps a little more paired down for the

144website or public consumption. One of the ideas that a couple of board members have mentioned is perhaps at least initially something tableside for our board meetings as a reminder of the key components of the strategic plan. I don't know where that request goes. Uh but that would be helpful. Um you know, of course, we'll see notes in our agenda. This applies to strategic plan, you know, area one, two, or three. Uh, but some kind of half sheet uh might be helpful just to anchor ourselves in in this uh this vision. We're on to 8A. These are announcements. Any announcements, Dr. Lun? >> Well, not to be a Debbie Downer, except one person will be happy. The Vikings are down 70. I'm not sure if anyone in this room understands that we don't spoil scores. >>

145It's early in the game. >> I will say I am happy. Dr. Lu, >> any pertinent announcements? Dr. Brener. >> On Friday morning at 8:30 a.m., you are all invited to Lake Agassy Elementary School where Emily Daws, our teacher of the year from Kelly Elementary School, who is now working at Lake Agassy, will be celebrated as one of four teacher uh teacher of the year finalists in North Dakota by Superintendent Kirsten Basler from the DPI. 8:30 Friday morning, Lake Agassy Elementary School. Thank you. >> Thank you very much. Other announcements 8B board requests for future consideration. Mr. Larson. >> Yeah, I have a a 10th grader in dual credit and an AP course. And just in kind of asking about that process and my wife's new job, um there's discrepancy between Grand Forks and Fargo

146and Bismar and other schools as to how many courses are offered, how many kids can um how many credits kids can get. And so I just want that to be kind of discussed so I understand it and probably other parents that have kids that are going to be there soon um including you know my kids' friends and all that. So, I'd like to just understand what our district philosophy is if we're looking at more because I I we hear about kids starting college with 60 or 70 credits, which seems weird to me, but just curious as to what our district does and why and appetite. I know it's being talked about it on the UN University side is trying to offer more and more expansive. Um, so it's just sort of I thought we could

147have the conversation. Thank you. Other requests for future consideration 8C schoolboard meeting norms. Aside from one person speaking out of turn, Mr. Palmino, aside from that, how did we do? >> We did fine. We're adjourned. You know, Jay will never do that again.