Grand Forks Public Schools School Board Meeting (May 12, 2025)

001that you put this in red here. Just turn this on here. It says the yellow button, but when you have the red, it's on. Call to order the regular meeting of the school board for Monday, May 12th, 2025. Our first item is the pledge of allegiance. We'd ask you to stand as you are able. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. 1. A reading of our schoolboard meeting norms. Mr. Cleven, be prepared. Be on time. Value and respect each other. Exercise thoughtful deliberation and conversation. Be professional at the board table and when visiting with the general public. Speak up when the norms are not being followed. And advocate on behalf of

002students and keep the community in mind. Thank you. Item two, the approval of our agenda. I would seek a motion to approve tonight's agenda. It's been moved by Mr. Palmino. Is there a second? Second by Mr. Cleven. We'll take a roll call vote. Manley, yes. Anderson, yes. Hodak, yes. Cleven, yes. Larson, yes. Pomacino, yes. Flynn is absent. Lun, yes. Burger, yes. HS01 absent. Motion passes. Item three, celebrating success. Century Elementary School. Dr. David Saxburg and team. Take it away. Good evening. Uh sincere thank you to the school board for taking a little chunk out of your time um for us to be able to present and share with you about Century Elementary School. I'm David Saxsburg. I'm principal at Century. And with me I have Hi, I'm Chelsea Binky. I'm the associate principal at Century.

003So the four areas we're going to talk about will be our demographics, our ELA and math analytics. We want to share some information on our attendance, our PBIS seal, and then we'll finish with celebrating some of our successes. Our vision is aligned directly with the Grand Forks Public School District's vision. It's very the wording is is act the same where we provide diverse and meaningful experiences for all learners in a safe and supportive environment by fostering curiosity, inquiry and innovation. We grow and learn together by embracing changing and taking risks. Our mission is also the same exactly as it is for Grand Forks Public Schools. Uh the current mission which I know this strategic plan is evolving and so on. Um so right now our mission is growing together to enrich the world and besides

004mission and vision we have beliefs and the beliefs that we have for our school is we believe strong relationships in our school and community will result in developing connected innovative learners grounded by strong character. The first section I want to share with you is who we are. Who is Century? And Century, of course, is our students, our parents, our staff, our community, all all of those people that make who we are. On this slide, it says students. As of this morning, we have 488 students. So, that's an update. For our students, we have 23 general ed education classrooms. We're a four section school except for our fourth grade is three sections. Next year will be four sections K through five. In addition, we happily host support two setting C classrooms serving students with autism ASD.

005We also have one classroom that is unique to our district. It's the only classroom in the district that supports students with multiple needs. These are students who have high medical cares um in addition to academics where we are able to support them in our classroom with a teacher and and multiple paras. And that's the one classroom in the district. And then we have one multilingual classroom. Okay. More about us. About 23% of our students are on IEPs. Close to 60% of our students are low-inccome. It's about 58 point something. I figured I'd round it up. 17% of our students are multilingual, which specifically would be 84 students right now qualify for ML services. I think it's also important for people to know and understand that 11% of our students are um designated as immigrant or

006refugee status and 3% are McKini Vinto. I found this really interesting when we decided to try to figure out how many different languages are spoken that century and countries of origin. This doesn't represent all the languages, but it gives a pretty good idea that we could readily determine that there are 25 different lang 25 different languages, home languages that are spoken at Century Elementary School. And as far as country countries of origin, again I have 16. My I'm I am pretty sure there are more than 16, but it gives us a good idea just how diverse we are when it comes to countries of origin and languages spoken at century. This next slide shows our population by ethnicity. And what I notice right away when I look at this is Century is a minority majority.

007By that I mean if you look at white, we have less students that are ethnically white than from other ethnicities. And you can see by our enrollment how that breaks down. Okay. Next part is our ELA and math analytics. So our goal for ELA for B legendary is we'll increase our English language arts proficiency from 38% from 2022 23 to 46% proficient or advanced by September of 2028 as measured on the NDA plus which is the new North Dakota state assessment. our outcomes. This would be the last few years showing you by grade level how our students have performed on the NDSA. So blue represents 2022 and of course 2024 is gray broken down by grade level for reading when it comes to okay that those are the results. What are the inputs? What are

008you doing as a school to increase student achievement? There's a long list here showing that we do a lot of hard work to try to attain higher achievement. And it all starts with the tier one highquality instruction for all students. Those that may need more than tier one, we have MTSS interventions in place. That'd be for tier two or tier three. As you know, as a district, we have updated standards and proficiency scales so we're able to better define what it is we want our students to know and be able to do. Our schedule is scheduled around literacy blocks and math blocks I'll talk about later. Um, in other words, our schedule is centered around literacy instruction and math instruction and then everything else builds around it because that's our priority. We have coaching and

009instructional rounds. That's essentially time for our teachers to be able to go in, observe other teachers, other classrooms, and and learn from each other. weekly our literacy specialists and our coach, our instructional coach collaborates. We do data digs after each assessment. That's where our literacy interventionist, instructional coach, principles come together, each grade level, and look at the assessment data, how students are doing, and make any adjustments that are needed. That includes a progress monitoring. I was really happy that we were able to have eight of our classrooms pilot Whitten Wisdom. That provided us the opportunity for a representative from each grade level to have at least one teacher teaching Witten Wisdom this year so our other teachers could learn from them. As you know, there has been a lot of professional development on Witten Wisdom,

010the Witten Wisdom curriculum. We do uh Elba reading challenge that's organized by our librarian title one money that we're so thankful that we have. Uh we hire two literacy specialists using some of our title one funds and ML multilingual we have 2 point I don't know the exact percentage we have two full-time multi multilingual teachers the third person comes over and helps throughout the week and we have two pair professionals that help provide services for those students. So those are the inputs. So what are we getting as a result? Those are called the outcomes. And this is another way of showing you the NDSA data broken down by student groups. So the outcomes would be the state assessment and the data we have is from 2022 23 23 and 24. And you can see the

011all in the lavender. This is for ELA. 38% of our students in 22 23 were proficient or advanced. 23 24 was 37. As you go across now, you can see how our student groups perform. It's important for us to not not only know how all are doing, but how are we doing in individual groups. So you can see from Asian all the way over to lowincome IEP and ML students. Green indicates the score is higher than all. Red indicates the score is lower. Now besides the NDSA we have the star test that we use and where it says 24 fall star cat state test proficiency predictor that tells us what's the likelihood that a certain percentage of your students will be proficient or advanced on the state test. So this past fall, 38% the prediction

012was 38% of our students would be proficient and in the winter it jumped up to 41%. And then again across the board by groups, you can see how the fall score was compared to the winter as far as the prediction that they will be advanced or proficient on the state test. Next, we have our math goals. And like ELA for B legendary, our math goals are are our our hope is we'll go from 42% proficient advance from 2223 to 51% proficient by September of 2028 as measured by the North Dakota state assessment which is called NDA plus. This will show you over the last few years how our students have done by grade level on the NDSA NDSA test from third grade, fourth grade, fifth grade from 22 through 24. So just like ELA, we

013have math inputs, things that we're doing, and these are the highlights of what we do besides um of course teachers teaching in the classroom. in the curriculum. Just like with ELA, we have the T tier one instruction where everyday math is our our main curriculum. It's our go-to for teaching our tier one instruction. As needed, we determine interventions for our students. For tier 2 and tier three, similar similar to ELA, we have the updated standards and proficiency scales. You can see there's a lot of repetition from ELA. Just like in literacy, our schedule is developed around a math instructional block. So, explain that a little bit more now that I'm to the math piece. Plus, I talked about ELA is on our master schedule every like first grade, all the first grade teachers teach ELA

014at the same time. All the first graders teach math at the same time. second grade, third grade, fourth grade, fifth grade, kindergarten, and so on. And the reason why we do that is it allows us to know the time that's available for our interventionists to come and provide supports for students. Um, in addition to or outside of that time, like ELA, our instructional coach works with our staff for math. We've done instructional rounds also like I talked about with ELA. Like literacy, we have math specialists and you'll see in the bottom we have two. Again, we use title one money. We've determined based on our needs assessment that we wanted to prioritize hiring math interventionists with our title one money to help with interventions as students need. They are involved in the data digs that

015we do with classroom teachers and our instructional coach and they are at the MTSS meetings to talk about the interventions they're providing and provide progress monitoring. Here's that slide you saw that that looks familiar as far as ELA. Now it's math. Again, the same thing. The the top two rows would be the NDSA, how we did as a school overall, and then how we do by group. And then the next two rows are the star cat. What's encouraging for me on this slide, not just for me, but for staff and and so on, is on the star winter predictor, you can see we have more arrows that are green versus red. So hopefully that trend will continue. All right, section three is attendance, attendance and seal. So, our goal is for us to have an

016average daily attendance of 95%. That's our goal at Century, which you've probably seen at probably all the other schools. So, how are we doing? The last three years, Century's in blue, the district is orange, and the state is gray. So the last three years we've been 94 93 94%. So not quite the 95% but overall we've our attendance rate has been higher than the state and district overall. Another term you hear about is chronic absenteeism. Essentially what that means is these are students who are absent at a high rate. That's just a real simple way of explaining that. Again, centuries in blue, the districts in orange, and the state is in gray. So the the data I I use for these last two slides comes from ND Insights, which is available through NDPI. Anyone who

017has access to the internet can access this information. Okay, the next slide is information on attendance based on demographics. There's a lot going on on that slide. So, I have I wrote some notes here just to help break it down because the red looks like red three different times. The blue looks like blue. The green looks like green a couple times. All right. Essentially, you see you'll see that first line line of red, those are our Asian-Americans and it goes across from 2122 to 2324 last school year. Again, this this data is provided through ND insights through NDPI. It's available for every school. So, you can see what the attendance rates are by, like I said, by demographics. Um, I didn't, you can see gender, male, female, that didn't show up on there, but essentially,

018um, by ethnicity, and then also by low income, and so on. Anyway, I I'll just go down the list here. So the next color, the next highest if you will across that go straight across that those are our students that identify as being white. The blue, that first blue, those are students identify as black. The next one, I'm not sure what color green that is. Um it kind of blends together. That'd be a native native Hawaiian or Pacific Islanders. Then the following blue below it are Native Americans. And the the bottom two reds, the first red, those are our students on IEPs. And the last red, those are our students that are low income. So that gives us a better picture by demographics where our attendance is at instead of just looking at overall. All

019right. So what do we do to help our attendance rates stay up, get up, improve, and so on. So we monitor our attendance essentially if if not daily, weekly. Our social worker, she works um very closely on monitoring attendance and if there are concerns um communication with parents, just reaching out and checking in, how are things doing? We we meet as needed with families if we need to work on assistance or help. We don't assume that it's necessarily something they're doing wrong. Sometimes they just need some help or supports assistance to help with attendance. So that's that's important. We have worked with the district attendance specialist quite a few times to help us with any needs we have and that's been very helpful. When it comes to attendance besides powers school, panorama is very powerful

020in providing us the information not only by student but also overall by the school. And as I show you some more data, that's where I'm getting that from is from Panorama. At Century, our secretaries call daily. So they after school started they'll go on P school they'll download students that are absent and if we haven't heard from that family we make phone calls every single family. Um we don't always hear from them. If we don't we take notes but that's our way of trying to just stay in touch with parents to make sure we know know where students are. Excuse me. As needed, our social worker will do home visits. And as I said kind of earlier without being more specific, our social worker does work um really hard, I will say, as far as

021breaking down trans transportation barriers to help students, families that are having difficulty getting to school. All right. So, how are we doing? This is way back in April and part of it is I was prepared to present in April and you know we're here in May but um so this is Panorama so as a principal I can go on here and I can see the trend as you can see from September through April. Very interesting. Uh we are pretty healthy it looks like and I can't assume attendance all is all based on health but a lot of it has to do with how our students are doing um healthwise from September to December a lot of green then December hit January February March real tough lot of absences now I you can see at the

022end there it's popping back up in green if I were to show show you the one that goes through May. The green is spiked up again. So that is showing me that um students are coming or attending at a higher rate than before. And actually this is so this says 94.3 year to date. We are now 94.4%. So, we're slowly but surely inching up hopefully to get to 95. And our 30-day average is 94.7. So, we're on the upward trend on students being in school. Okay. All right. I mentioned Panorama. I promise Chelsea is going to talk. Um this data I have in front of you I was able to get from Panorama. So it tells me the number of students that are attending at a certain percentage and if you if you think about

023it we we always concerned about students not in school but this also sh shows how many students are in school at a high rate. So 274 of our students, 56% of them have attended 95% or more of our school days. And then you can go across and you can read the percentages um and so on. And 3% 13 students. This would be in that chronic absenteeism that we we talk about, including some of the others that are in the between 80 and 90%. Um, 13 of our students have attended less than 80% of our school days. Those are the families that we would work with individually with our social worker, the district attendance person as needed to help with any barriers there may be in helping them get to school. Okay, Chelsea's turn. All right,

024so I'm going to talk a little bit about our PBIS and SEAL. So, our overarching PBIS and SEAL goal is really about building community. We want our students to feel connected to their teachers, to connect connected to other staff in the building, to be connected to each other, to be connected to their classroom because as that quote up there says, we know when kids are connected to their school, they participate in those positive behaviors and they are much more successfully academic. They're much more successful academically. So, what are some ways that we do that? The first way is that we have schoolwide expectations. So, that's where that behavior matrix comes in. So, our outlines really are be respectful, be responsible, and be safe. And within each of those categories, we've outlined what does it mean

025to look respectful, responsible, and safe in different areas throughout our building. And our teachers spend their time at the beginning of the year and throughout the year teaching and reteing. What does it look like to be responsible in the lunchroom? What does it look like to be safe in the bathrooms? What does it look like to be respectful on the playground? And then that gives us that common language schoolwide. So, we're really all following those same expectations. And then that flowchart helps us determine who and what are the supports that we need for student behaviors when maybe they're not following those positive expectations. Our counselors provide classroom lessons for our students K through five. Our K through2 focus is at emotional regulation. Our three through five is our sources of strength. We collaborate with CVIC.

026Um they are in our classrooms multiple times throughout the year providing classroom lessons. And we also um provide referrals for students and families outside of the school setting. We have student skill focus groups so students who have some lagging skills that they can work on those building those skills with our counselors and our dean of students. Uh we have monthly PB PBIS meetings. So, we have a diverse group um who come together every month to talk about what's going well PBIS- wise in our building and what are some things we need to improve on and then how are we going to go forward and implement that within our building. We have monthly assemblies as part of our PBIS group just to celebrate all the really good things that are going on in our building. Uh

027we have bounceback and anger coping student groups um with our social worker and also our counselor again to practice some of those skills. Our teachers provide secondstep classroom lessons um to help students build those SEAL skills. Every classroom is provided a buddy classroom. Um they meet together at least once a once a month, sometimes more just depending on how busy the month is. Um we have monthly schoolwide um community building challenges. So sometimes it's just within your specific classroom, sometimes it's schoolwide. Uh, I think in the month of February, we challenged um each classroom to see how many Patriot Pride cards they could earn. And then the top three earners got to have a celebration um schoolwide in April, we challenged students um to a kindness challenge where every time they were caught being kind.

028Um they were given a raindrop because we wanted to flood our school with kindness. And then when we filled the bucket, we got to have a schoolwide celebration. Um also building on that, excuse me, we have um some community partnerships we have. So, we also um challenged students um at one of our assemblies to raise or collect food for the food drive um which we donated to the Hope Community Food Pantry. We collected um 2,644 items, which was pretty incredible to see. Um in December, we all participated in a pajama drive and collected 87 pairs of pajamas to donate to the CVIC. Um and this fall and again this spring, our dean of students worked together with Safe Kids um to plan for a walk and roll to school day. Um which was just a

029fun way for our kids to come together walking and rolling into school. Um as a part of our assemblies, we have minute to win it challenges to end each assembly. Um and we've tried to be unique in how we partner um teachers and students together. So it might not just be the classroom teacher and a student within their classroom participating in those challenges, but maybe a fifth grade teacher and a second grade student or a pair professional who works in fourth grade connecting with a kindergarten student. So we've tried to be intentional um with how we build community that way. Um so what are some ways that we can monitor how our students are doing? Um we use power school data that helps us look at our behavior incident referrals. um panorama and HRS surveys,

030therapy referrals that we have. Um mentoring minute data, I'll talk about that in a little bit. That's something our counselor um keeps track of. Our Patriot Pride cards, I mentioned those earlier. That really is just our schoolwide way to reinforce those positive behaviors that we see um students participating in. Our goal this year is every student earns three Patriot Pride cards. Our goal for next year will be five Patriot Pride cards for each student. Um teachers also pass out something called leader slips. Um those are passed out a little bit more frequently and then there's also some kind of positive behavior um system within their classroom for earning those slips. Um and just recaps that we have with our CVIC staff after um classroom lessons are performed. So what is the data showing us? Well,

031the data is showing us really that 93 per students 93% of our students are doing everything that they need to do um every day to make sure that they're ready to learn. We have about 7% of our students who we know need a little bit more support and we have a system for supporting our students. Um we have our MTSSB process which we can talk a little bit about on the next slide. So typically what happens is our teachers come to our team and say, "Hey, I need some ideas for how I can support um this student within a classroom and what are maybe some additional skill building opportunities that they might have." So as you can see outlined um trimester by trimester, we've had about 50 um MTSSB meetings for our students. And typically

032what comes out of those meetings is we have some kind of supports in place for those students. So they could be supports that are occurring within the classroom. Um but they can also be supports that someone outside of the classroom is providing. So if you look on the left side, you can see that um oh I counted this up before and now it's not in my head anymore. Sorry. About 70 students um have received tier 2 or tier three um interventions usually provided by our counselor, social worker, our dean of students. And if you kind of follow the trend, you notice how trimester one increases to trimester 2 um and then declines a little bit in trimester 3. Um the really exciting thing is we know that 90% of our students who have some sort

033of needs that they need supported um by the end of trimester 2 were receiving either tier 2 or tier three supports. And this um is back to that mentoring minute data that I talked about earlier. Um, our counselors really took it upon themselves. They looked at our fall panorama survey and they focused on one question. Do you have a teacher or other adult from school who you can count on to help you no matter what? And 22 um of our students said, "No, I don't have that." And so they determined who those students were and they really focused in on asking volunteer staff throughout our building to focus one adult assigned to each student and follow a 2x10 intervention. So throughout 10 weeks their goal was to meet with that student for just a minute

034two different times and see if that impacted their student responses within their um winter assessment. And so when we look looked again at our panorama data, excuse me, that number decreased from 22 students to 10 students. Um so 12 out of those 22 students changed their response from no to yes that they do have an adult in our school who that they can count on no matter what. Um which is huge gains. Um we know we still have a couple students that we need to continue to reach. Um but that that was fun data for us to see. Um and then our counselors also have um student self-referral slips. So outside each of their classrooms, they have little mailboxes um that say, "Let's talk." And um there has been 51 referrals for for that so

035far for our students to reach out and find another adult that they can talk to. Okay, our last section is celebrating success. just want to highlight some of the fun things we have going on at our school and some of the achievements that we are proud of. One of the one of the activities that we have uh is century reading week. We have a family engagement night. This is a integral integral part of our schoolwide title one plan to involve families and we have a reading night. You can see some of the pictures of parents spending some time with their their children. So that's that's reading. We these have been going on a long time in in Grand Forks. The the red red events and at Century it's phen. It's really phenomenal how many parents

036that we have show up. It's from 2:30 to 250 four times a year. The time is not ideal. We know that for parents that are working and so on. Um, however, the commitment that our parents show, our grandmas and grandpas, aunts and uncles just come by sometime, there's I came the other day after it had started. We had cars lined up on the street past Lion Park. Any any place they could find a place to park, they did. And they showed up. And our building is always full. It's only 20 minutes, but it's really neat to see that our our parents want to spend some time with our kids, even if it's for 20 minutes. Um, have a little fun and we give away some free books. Math is another key area for our school

037by title one. So, we celebrate math. We have a math night and a math math week. Century as as I've shared, we are we are diverse when it comes to ethnicity and so on. Um 84 multilingual learners. Last year we started an international night. This year we wanted to do it again and it was really fun to see how it has grown just in one year. The number of families that came and participated. Um, we enjoyed crafts, bingo, games, music, food. I told my wife, um, that evening, I said, "When I come home, we'll have we'll have supper together. I'm not having anything to eat at the international night." Well, I was wrong. I I I ate way too much and when I got home, I was not hungry. So, just a neat event for

038all of us to get together and celebrate who we are as a school. As I mentioned earlier, um we have monthly assemblies where we celebrate all the good things that are going on at our building. Um but one thing that we really like to highlight during our assemblies is our students of the month. Um so our criteria for students of the month is students who show excellence in ACE academics, character, and effort. Um, and each classroom teacher nominates one to three students who can be student of the month. And families come in, like Dr. Saxberg said, it is wonderful to see all of the support that we get um from moms, dads, grandmas, and grandpas, aunts and uncles, and then the students themselves at how excited they are to celebrate each other um as we

039recognize those students of the month. We have a fantastic PTO, very involved in our school, and their goal is to try to have at least one family event a month. So, in addition to what we do as a school, they fill in the gaps. So, if there's a month where we don't have something planned for families as a school, PTO, they step in and they they plan something. fifth grade student leaders. It's kind of fitting that Mr. Neil is here later today because Mr. Neil actually started the student leader program at Century. Um and it is just um a testament to his hard work. So way to go, Mr. Neil. Um but what I have found is how powerful that program has become to Century students. I hear first and second graders who say, "I

040want to be a student leader when I'm a fifth grader." Um and our student leaders are really kind of holding themselves to a high standard. They um go through an application and interview process in the fall. Um we meet at least twice a month just to do some learning on what does it mean to be a leader, what does that look like, and planning events for our building. Um they also are responsible for doing monthly check-ins to make sure that they are not missing assignments, that they're demonstrating positive behavior. Um and then they just help with a variety of things that are going on around our school. They help to lead our assemblies. They attend PTO events. Um they help with those community building events. They help in the classroom. Um they pass out Friday

041food. They help with recycling. Um a couple weeks ago they helped to give principal tours when we had our um principal interviews last Friday. Um so they just have a really positive impact um on all the students within our building. All right. Now last piece. I'll finish up with our academic data and I'll preface it preface this with I know academic data is important reading math achievement and so on but the other things that we shared with you that we're doing at our school for seal and growing student leaders and those types of things I I I believe are equally important. Okay. So our star reading this would be for fall and winter. So, I'm looking at the green and I'm happy with the fact that on our star early literacy, this would be our

042our real youngsters or kindergarten first graders grew uh 52.4% were green to a little over 58%. We do not have the the spring data. We just finished testing, so we didn't have that graph ready. I guess I have the I have the clicker. Okay, here's our star reading. This would be for our second graders on up primarily. And again, you can see the green is increasing in percentage from fall to winter. Here's our math. fall to winter, we increased from 40 something% to 40.7%. And the last couple slides here, this is for the CBMS. These are cont uh what does CBM stand for? Curriculum based measures. Um we have the fall, winter, and spring data. And what I'm looking for here is a decrease in the red bar. And I see that from fall to

043spring. And I see the green bar going up. So that's showing growth. And here is math. Same thing. I'm hoping to see the red bar go down and the green bar go up. I see it go up and then in the spring it went down a little bit. Thank you. questions, comments, questions or comments from board members. Just acronyms. I'm new to this. PBIS and SEAL. What does that stand for? Okay, PBIS is positive behavior support systems. Um, Chelsea can I'll she's the PBISCAL person, so I'll let her talk real quick. SEAL is social emotional learning. PBIS is our positive behavior intervention and supports and it's really just focused on focusing on the positive, finding kids who are doing the right thing as opposed to focusing on the negative, more punitive. So thinking how we

044can support that positive behavior. Yep. Others Dr. L. When you look at the NDSA outcomes for math and ELA, and I like those graphs where you can follow the third grade cohort to the fourth grade to the fifth and stuff, there's a lot that go down. Um I'm wondering, you've got a a building full of experts there. What are what are your experts, administration, teachers? How do they analyze that? And what do they say about that? And what are we doing about that? I realize you just did that for 45 minutes, but maybe encapsulate it for us because when I look at those, a lot of them have gone down. Yep. Yep. And we're we're not hid hiding the data. It is what it is. So, we know that we have some work to do.

045And I had mentioned that's part of our needs assessment that we do, which shows us in math that we need to improve. And that's why we decided a couple years ago that we want to hire math interventionists to help work with students whose data is showing they they need some help and skills and decreasing the gap and so on. So it it's a schoolwide effort being aware of the data and again focusing on the tier one instruction. This is what we need to be systemic about. we need to um stay tight on the schedule. We have a schedule that's set up. This is your math time. This is our reading time. So, those are some of the things I guess that we have to try to work on, provide and facilitate and guide um the

046support for those scores to start going back up. Other questions from board members? Yeah, Mr. Palmino, my only question is do you have a lot of kids that come and go? You know, at Lake Agassy, I know they change over close to 100 kids during the year is Century with your large amount of low-income kids, do you have a lot of kids that are here and gone and new kids showing up? So, when you're looking at the third graders going to fourth grade, is that fourth grade class maybe 10 new kids, you know, or whatever? So last spring when we were preparing for this coming year, we were prepar we we were prepared for about 430 students based on just projections who we had registered for kindergarten and so on and so forth. We started

047the year with 480. So over the summer we gained at least 50 students. And so we had a lot of students coming. Since they've been at Century, we've stayed fairly consistent as far as that number of 480 creeping to 490. Um, as far as students moving in and moving out, um, I would say, you know, depending on who you ask and their perception, what I see, because I see the number of students coming and going all the time, I don't see it as a significant statistic as far as during the school year students coming in and stu students leaving. I would say it's fairly average or typical. Um, but what's been new for Century is just the students that we serve. As far as like I said, we had 430 and now we plan for

048480 others. Sure, please. Uh, thank you, President Burgerer. This might be the the last time that Dr. Saxsburg is in front of this board as he's going through a transition uh professionally and just want to thank Dr. Saxburg for his work over the years at Century Elementary School. Uh just a couple of specific notes about Dr. Saxsburg. If you drive by his building, any weekn night after 7:00, after 8:00, he is still there. He's there doing the work. He's there doing the hard work. And there was a time over the course of the last seven years that I sat in a real difficult uh student IEP meeting with Dr. Saxburg and his team. And there was there was a student, and I say in the last seven years, so the student can't be identified. um

049where the student was receiving tier 2 uh support services and special ed level C needed more than level D likely needed an out of district placement and Dr. Saxberg did everything he could in his power in that meeting to hang on to that student. Uh the best decision for that student was to be placed uh out of district uh in 247 attendant care. But what Dr. Saxsburg said at the conclusion of that meeting was and we want him to come back. So when we talk about principles serving all kids with a capital A L, that's Dr. Saxsburg. And I want to thank you for your service, Dave. Thank [Music] [Applause] you. Thank you. It's been my pleasure. Um I had uh sorry to take a little bit longer here, but I think it's a pretty

050neat story. So I student taught at Belmont Elementary School. student taught fourth grade with Dave Men um rest his soul. He was my supervising teacher and not every day but almost every day he would kind of hum after we'd bring the students either to lunch or somewhere he would he would always sing this. Would I do it all over again? Maybe. So my my tune would be would I do it all over again? Yes. So I would do it all over again. Being a principal has been has been the best job I've ever had. So thank you. Item four on our agenda, the public comment period. I have not received any comment forms. Are there members of the public who wish to speak at this time a 5A under superintendent recommendations recommendations for discussion uh

051cognia accreditation report I believe Dr. Galatch will get us started we might have a joiner by phone and some colleagues but please take it away. Thank you. And if you don't mind, I'm going to present here from the mic because I sit a lot during the day. So, this will uh help me um stay present with you. So, on the phone, we have Dr. Mark Wulmer. Some of you may recognize his name as being a former superintendent down in May and a great state leader. He has taken on duties now under the Cogna accreditation review team and he travels across our great state and other states as well to to conduct these reports. So, he was our primary um observer or the the facilitator of this report. um who's not here tonight who was planning

052on being here the night that we intended to present which was at the last board meeting is um Amy Rulk Dr. Rulk and Ms. Bart and those two were also instrumental in creating the processes that led to what's in front of you today and doing the great work and doing an awful lot of the writing. So first of all I want to just quickly review what the purpose of accreditation is. So accreditation is required by the department of instruction of all school districts. Really the purpose behind it is to make sure that districts are commu committed to the process of continuous improvement and that can be a really big um tagline that we want to continuously improve. That's why we have be legendary reports is because we're trying to incrementally increase our student outputs and

053um Cognia makes sure that we have the systems in place that can allow that to happen. The Cogna company itself is an external accreditation company which provides us additional value because they don't have a bias. When we're up here looking at all the things, we're close to the work and sometimes we might see some of not see some of the blind spots in our systems and that sort of thing. And so we find really great value in this process. It is a heavy lift. Um, and I'll get into that in a little bit here, but uh, we really appreciate the end result because it allows us to make sure that we are paying attention to evidence-based practices that will move the needle in the end on our student achievement. So, last time we went under

054review, it was 2020, um, right before that great thing that we call COVID and and during that report, we received three um, indicators that we needed to improve upon from the Cognney accreditation review team. They are listed in front of you. They included monitoring and adjusting instruction to meet learner needs. What I want to assure you of is that over the course of time again in the B legendary presentations, you've heard us talk about our multi-tered support systems. You've heard us talk about how professional learning communities have advanced our work. You have talked you you're listening to the data in front of you. All of those things were a direct result of the initiatives that we were asked to put in place from the last Cogna review. Secondly, we're asked to implement processes that continuously

055assess our programs and our conditions for learning. The be legendary work that's in front of you. Although it was a result of our um CSI efforts at Valley Middle School, it also has uh propelled us to make sure that we're really paying explicit attention to our data across the district. The curricular enhancements, you have one coming to vote tonight, that we're investing again in evidence-based programming to allow consistency across our buildings, the MTSS and PLC processes. again our action steps that we took because of the last report in 2020. And finally, we were asked to improve our data literacy and systematize our initiatives and increase that fidelity of implementation, which means regardless of the school that you go to, you're having a similar learning experience. It's not the lottery, right? We want to have similar

056experiences and we've really made investments through the CLSD grant, which is our um critical literacy grant. The instructional coaches again who have been in front of you and our when it says CIA up here, Dr. Brener caught this. We're not talking about the career impact academy that we're touring in a little bit. We're talking about the curriculum, the instruction, the assessment department work. And that's not just work done out here, but that's work that then is led by our building leaders, led by our instructional leaders, our team leaders at the building level. So, in order to prepare for our most recent review, it was really, like I said, quite a large lift. It was that that you can see down in the corner there that self- assessment workbook that's a 180 page workbook that Dr.

057Relk again I have to give her a shout out could probably recite to you in her sleep by now. Um she is probably our most expert leader in this cognia accreditation process because she's been on the other end as far as conducting reviews in other districts. So her expertise has been invaluable. But really what we did is we started this process last year because we knew that we needed to engage our building level leaders. We knew that we were required to gather a large amount of data, evidences across the district that would allow us to then take a look at what's happening systemswide, not just buildingswide. When when Cogna came in in 2020, every building went through a process in which they did their own individual reports to Cogna. One of the big shifts that

058they had now is this is now a systems level, a district level process. But in a district our size and the number of campuses that we have, it took some orchestration to bring all of that data present. And so we leaned on our building leaders and started the work last year through a series of meetings, through a series of collaborations, deconstructing all of the elements in that 180 page document so that our leaders understood what it meant to be a district that was committed to continuous improvement. There are four key characteristics that Cognell looks for. And another shift between the 2020 and this current accreditation review process is that the shift is to what the learner is doing in the classroom. So are we promoting a culture of learning? Are are leaders leading around learning

059initiatives? Is there engagement at the student level at the teacher classroom level around learning and learning improvements? And finally, are we seeing those outputs the the growth in learning? Our exit report again conducted by Dr. Wulmer and his team of one additional person. Um they really synthesized all of the data that we that we provided them and came up with a whole slew of celebrations and you can read that list up there. Um one of the things that I'm most proud of is that there was a genuine desire for continuous improvement that became um evident. They spent time with uh focus groups of students, focus groups of teachers at the secondary level and the elementary level. They read through all of our evidences and our synthesis um of those evidences to come to these conclusions.

060Um they uh they celebrated our calendars, our B legendary efforts, our data use, um the way that we dug into data at the building level, um and a whole slew of additional things. They talked to us about our success and how we have fiscally invested our dollars from grants and other um funding sources towards instructional improvements as we were guided to do in their last report. um they talked about how the panorama data and Dr. Saxsburg and um uh gave a shout out to that system that allows us to track the social emotional investments, the attendance investments as well as the academics. We know that those things tie together and achievement um AVID efforts um which is about equity in the classroom etc etc. So lots of points of celebration. We also were recognized to

061have what's called a note not noteworthy practice and what I understand and again Dr. Rela explains this better than I would tonight is that this is really not necessarily something that every district automatically receives. This is really truly the highest standard in a point of celebration that when it comes to our multi-level systems of supports, that indicator that you can see there, standard 4 um and standard 24 when we're talking about that systemic way in which we respond when kids can't learn. And that is in evidenced by um tier one instruction in the classroom, tier 2 responses and how that might manifest itself differently at elementary level with some of the small group instructions or at the high school level with um like rider time at Red River High School. Um all across the board,

062how we how we use our intervention one-on-one specialists with those schools that have title funding, all of that is rolled into here both for the academic and the behavioral side of things. And so we um earned a gold star noteworthy practice there which is something that we're really really proud of. As far as improvement opportunities go and um I might be misspeaking so Dr. Wulmer um will have to correct me. Uh we are required or Cognney is required to give us three points to consider. Dr. Relk did a little happy dance at the end of it because she said, "These are things that are um action steps that we can implement quickly that actually we have in motion right now. Um we're not very far from making improvements on these actual standards. Um one is

063streamlining the goal setting process. So we took a big swing at that and according to the feedback that they got in those focus groups, we didn't quite hit the home run that we wanted. But we really want to make sure that when our teachers are setting their stretch goals and their PLC collaborative goals at the beginning of the year that they align directly with your board directed goals on student achievement. It seems like there were pockets in which that occurred and pockets in which it does didn't fully execute. So that's something that we're going to dig into more comprehensively next year. As far as increasing student engagement, it's all about student voice and active participation. And um Adriana can probably speak to this that we want to make sure that kids are empowered to have

064choice that the learning that they have is relevant that there's transfer to real life ideally that they're not just sitting in lesson to lectures like you're sitting and listening to me right now right they're talking about things they're working with things and all of that uh which is something that a lot of our buildings actually have in their priority initiatives in their uh instructional models uh presently. And lastly looking at how we are using um digital resources. So we are a oneonone district. We're blessed to have the board support in that that we have devices in the hands of every child. But are we using those devices in a manner that hits those higher levels of Bloom taxonomy that kids are creating with them that they're collaborating? It's not just a supplement to what used

065to be the, you know, the the projector and I'm now projecting the information and now I'm just projecting it to you through a PowerPoint, right? That we're actually looking for kids to create and um expand on their knowledge with those devices. And so we're going to be able to redig back into that. Again, that's happening largely and but not consistently across our district. And we haven't really dug into professional development around digital resources um for some time now. So it might be time that we dust that off. Some of the additional things that we're um proud of is that when you compare our overall um scores with the average score of the Cogna review network, we have exceeded in all four of those indicators. So for the culture of learning, you can see that we

066hit the 4.0 mark versus a 3.2 Cogna network average. Leadership for learning 3.8 compared to 3.1. Engagement of learning again 3.8 compared to 3.1. in growth in learning 3.8 versus 3.1. Those are really outstanding scores and again that that goes back to the hard work that's taking place in every single classroom and the leadership of our um building level leaders. Our overall institution IEQ which is the educational quality index is 310 and the network average is 296. And you can see there that this is the highest um ranking that we could get, the highest categorical ranking that we could have received from the Cogna report. And this is given to districts that have not just evidence of improvements of practice in place and systems that would allow for high achievement scores to to come to

067fruition, but also um for districts that earn one of those gold stars or more. That there's really a um what is it called? A noteworthy practice that is recognized by the review team. what's next for us. So, what's happening as soon as uh well, it's actually in motion right now is that our building um leaders are looking at their what we call their operational plans, their academic operational plans at the district level. So, every year, Cogna requires every building to create a map of how they're going to move the needle on achievement, how they're going to move their needle on engagement. In this in this instance, we're going to align their next year goals directly with the feedback that says that we have to um dig into according to the Cogna report. So, we will

068we were wrapping up this year's goals um in the Cogna system and we're going to launch next year's initiatives here before um principles leave. We are going to make sure that we are lining that um those works with the newly drafted strategic plan and within that we have our um the legendary indicators as well represented in that plan as well as these. So you talk about the proverbial arrow alignment we are doing our darnest to make sure that we're not adding extra um you know sideways cars on this road here. We want to make sure everybody's moving together down the highway. And with that, uh, both Dr. Wulmer on the phone and myself will field any questions that you want to throw at us before we open it up to board members. Dr. Vulmer, is

069there anything you would like to add? We'll give you the first go. Otherwise, we'll we'll make a pause in here a bit later for questions, you know. Yes. Thank you very much for the opportunity uh first of all to serve on the committee uh and the visitation team. It was a wonderful experience. Um I have a long history uh with North Dakota schools. I actually did my student teaching at Shrader Middle School uh back nearly 40 years ago and uh always taking great pride in the Grand Forks Public School System and want to commend you on the job. Very well done. you're doing what you need to do to meet the needs of kids. Uh and uh it's evident in your performance on state assessments uh and on every measure that our team looked at.

070So very very well done and I will stand for any questions that you may have. Questions for either Dr. Galat or Dr. Wulmer from board members? I'm just curious, Dr. Wulmer, if you remember a 12-year-old David Burgerer at Shrader. I'm We We might have passed in the hallway because I'm that old. That's very possible. No, I do not remember that name, but you know, after all the years I've been in education, to be perfectly honest, when I don't remember a name, sometimes that's a good thing. I would agree. Uh, any final thoughts from board members? Reminder this is uh under discussion so no board action tonight but appreciate your presence here and all of the work. Thank you very much. 5B pres Oh, sorry about that. 5B presentation of RFP for district athletic apparel. Uh

071Mr. Brandon Bombach and possibly Mr. Mike Beer. Yes, quite possibly Mr. Mike Beer will be our main presenter. I'm just want to bring this forward as the another example of really some creative thinking here coming out of our activities department working with other school districts just to find uh ways to improve both service and keep um the budget down. So without any further ado, our activities director, Mike Bermar. Hey there. So how's everyone doing tonight? It's uh just in case everyone's wondering, it's still windy out there, but um uh so no, we'll get going on this. So, just to to let you know, um what we're going to do is we're going to we're going to seek out some interest uh for an athletic apparel contract. This is something that um we as a as

072a department have been watching for about 18 months. It's relatively new for high schools, but I'll say it's not new for higher education. So, what is an athletic apparel? What we're doing is we're we're looking to leverage what we currently do, what we currently already spend to try and we'll say just get more for our dollars. I mean, we're all trying to figure out how to how to stretch our dollar a little bit more. So, we've been watching some of our peer districts and they've gone through this process. they're into year number two or year number three of a contract with a company and also a contract or a relationship with a specific brand meaning Nike, Under Arour, Adidas, things like that. So, so there's a couple there's a lot of different wise to do

073this. Um, so one of the one of the first and main things though to try and explain the why is um, you know, like I said is, um, we want to try and get the biggest bang for our buck. Right now, if we contract out with a company, we're probably going to stand to gain anywhere near to a 10 to 20% decrease in the uniforms that we do just by the sheer volume that we do purchase with both of our high schools. That's not even counting our middle schools right now. A couple of the other things that we're seeing is when we leverage our dollars with companies like this and then that we we know we're going to buy from them, there's incentives as we continue to purchase more. They have incentives coming back that

074we can now purchase for things that we don't currently have a budget for. As an example, one of the big ones I'm looking at is middle school uniforms. Just so you know, we don't have a budget for that. So when we do purchase things like that, it has to come out of our middle school equipment. So sometimes they're deciding if they're going to buy basketballs or football shoulder pads, um, softballs. Some years those go to the wayside and we have to buy uniforms. So that's one of the big things is to help us figure out how we can better use the current dollars we're spending for high school, but help them with at the middle school level where we can use those dollars for them. Another reason that I'm looking at is when we surveyed

075I surveyed all of our coaches. We had 31 responses. Our head coaches 31 responses. So if you figure 31 coaches, they must all be buying from relatively the same place. And that's what I would have thought too. However, there are two major players that kind of do that might do this athletic apparel contract. So we'll just call them company A and company B. Right now we have nine coaches that buy from them out of 31. We don't have another company out there that gets more than one head coach purchasing. That means the rest of the 31 after that. They're all buying from some other company. Now, when we're buying from another company for not only uniforms, but athletic apparel and equipment, the process of the PO request, the shipping, the receiving, all of that gets

076jammed up and it it's like we constantly are retaching on how to do this. It's a revolving door. So, one of the other benefits of this is we can streamline that purchasing process, which will help a lot of people in this building and even our coaches. Um, this this even though there is uh we'll call it an exclusive contract with we're going to find out who can give us the best deal and it's the big hitters. It's the Nike, the Under Armour, Adidas. We'll find out who can do that. But what this doesn't do is there are some sports specific items that these big guys are not going to be able to to supply us with. And one of those big ones right now flat out is hockey. We are still going to be able

077to purchase from our local vendors on some of those situations whether it's a hockey across country is another one. So some of those little sport specific ones, swimming's another one that there's not a lot of companies out there that supply swimming uniforms and things like that. So even when I say there's an exclusive part there, we're really talking about our major sports of basketball, football, track uniforms, things like that. So when we look at the percentage of who we're buying from in town and who we're buying from out of town, I can honestly say I'm not so sure that the percentage of us purchasing in town is going to drastically change. We're still purchasing from some in town facilities. And like I said, of those 31, we drop out nine. We still have 22 that

078are using one single company out there. So, I I wanted to make that known that we're and I and I've talked to our local vendors about this and obviously there's there's possibly going to be some dollars that are going to be, you know, put out to outside this city property. Um, but a lot of those dollars are already going out there because again, we we have to find the best deals out there. So, I guess in the end, um, you know, before I take any questions, um, I think this is we we'll see what happens. I'm excited for it. I like to be on the front edge of things. It's kind of like when you buy that new car, I'll buy like the second year that it comes out, not the first year. I just

079want to see what what else happens there with some other districts out there. And we're finding that throughout the state of North Dakota and some of the districts that I know in Minnesota, they're they're really finding that this is working out well for their kids, not only financially for the district, but more options that they'll have. And one thing I also want to say is when we work with one of one of these companies, we're going to have um better options for our kids with some of those non-uniform things. We'll have school stores that'll be open up 24/7 where they can buy some apparel. They can customize it, give them more options for what they're doing. But again, we'll still be able to go to those local stores for those kinds of things. So, we're

080looking at putting that RFP out um I think tomorrow, we'll go through the process of that and then uh end of the month, we'll open up the bids and see what we get and then I'll come back to you and that'll be the uh formal process of finalizing the bid. questions questions from board members for Mr. Beer, Dr. L. Either Mike or Brandon. Uh will there be a group or a committee that'll look at these bids and come to the conclusion of this is the best one this or is it a committee of one or two? So, right now the committee is going to be Brandon, myself, and then my two high school athletic directors, Tony Bean and Tyler Nelson. One of the things that we did find when we're open opening up the bids

081from the other schools, what I learned was you really want to take a look at the quality of the bid. So really specific. One problem was one school had a bid from company A that was fantastic. When they looked into the bid of the uniforms, all the uniforms were were stock versus custom, which isn't a problem, but they weren't game ready. They didn't have a number on. They didn't have the logo on. They were just this piece. Well, now you have to add all those other expenses into it. So, we're learning that being able to really understand what are we looking at and we've asked for those catalog numbers per se when they do it. So, we can look at each product and understand what are you bidding on and what are we getting. So,

082kind of bring in our experts um per se. Other questions? Oh, Dr. Hodc. So, when you're talking about you've put together these RFPs, the proposals, and I've heard you mention um other schools, are you talking about K12 or have you also visited with higher education and gotten their input um as to what they would advise? Reached yes to some extent. So, University of North Dakota, so I understand how their bid process worked and talking to the coaches what to look for. And I'll say on a higher ed level, there's not as much input at the coach's level. It's this is the best bid. So, one thing I learned from them was really understand what the bid is. Don't get don't get fooled by maybe some better dollars, but there's underlying costs. um reaching out to

083the K12 schools, it's secondary, but hearing what Morehead State went through, what Concordia went through, what Botnau, North Dakota went through. So, I didn't talk to them specifically, but I heard from other districts by saying this is the problem that that happened in this university or college, but here's what went well over at this one. So, just trying to put it all together, what works best for us. So, help me understand the the process just a little bit more, Mike. Will it come back to us? So the RFPs will go out. You will have get those companies to have a I think the deadline was the 14th or something. Yes. So we'll we'll put that out there. They'll have 10 days. We will sift through those uh those bids and we will look at who

084we believe is fits the best scope of this by the point system. Um, which just just so you know, couple of things that we're looking on the point system is not only the pricing of it, um, but like I said, the quality, the personal service also, we want somebody in town that can be in our buildings being able to service our our coaches. So, back to the process is we'll look at those bids and we'll bring, correct me if I'm wrong, but we're going to bring the the winner back to you and explain why they are the winner. And I'll let Brandon help me out on this. Yeah. No, happy to just support exactly what you said is that it's it's in your discretion, your authority, the bid process, need to get it out there

085for at least 10 days and we kind of sift through those responses and bring you an administrative recommendation, but that'll come back to you. So those singletons like you know within our own town gerels and so forth will they be allowed to make some of those bids as well? They certainly will and I had to have a conversation with Jerrells. Okay. And if it fits in their scope then they will. Okay. And will it be addressed then with anybody that we decide to go with a contract that if they are unable to produce what we want that we will not have to purchase from them. Yes. That is an important piece that needs to be in that contract. Yeah. Because otherwise them coming to us with their response of what they'll do, they will forget

086that one. And um I just urge us to make sure that we have it worded that if something is not conducive to what we want or expect from a coaches or from a student, parents, whatever we hear that we do not have to purchase from them. That's all as they you know it's the lines in between there. There's a line in here um that says if they if they can't produce the product that we want and again let's be specific. If I want a specific bench and they don't make it, we can go on to another vendor and buy that bench. So I hope I had another example there but I hope that answers the question. Okay, others. Mr. Cleven, I may ask you to consider longer than 10 days. It's a lot of work

087to put these things together. And unless we have an absolute and impending deadline to meet, I I would offer 3 weeks. Consider extending the period longer than 10 days. It'll make your jobs easier in the end of it, too. We'll definitely consider that. I'll talk with Brandon about this. Sure. Just as far as a direct response goes, you know, at this point too with the lead times to getting things published in the Herald. You'll notice that we have this published for Wednesday's deadline. That means we sent off some of the initial paperwork already. So, in this case, we might have traveled a little far down that track unless we wanted to unwind that. We can always pull it back and start over. Um, but it's certainly a a good suggestion that's taken in mind here.

088I I will say that a couple of the vendors that have been used for North Dakota, Minnesota in our area that we would recognize, um, I have reached out to them understanding what they do with the other districts. And I asked them, is this a timeline? And they said, we we have it basically in a a punched out system, and that would be okay. Others, Dr. on. I was I was just going to suggest when we get the bids back, if we don't like the bids and we thought it was too short a time, you can reject the bids and open it back up. If if you find that there there's quality or you find people that said, "Hey, I didn't get time to there's there's always that opportunity until the board approves the contract.

089It's nothing's done." Correct. And we certainly would certainly do that if that were the case. Others I just have one more of curiosity. I think maybe members of the public might be thinking this also. Uh an exclusive contract, pick brand A, company C, whatever it ends up to be. Um does that apply to footwear, cleats, skates? What do you do for an athlete who Yes, I understand that our district is under a uh under contract for exclusively XYZ brand company. Um, are we talking about socks on up? But, but we still allow athletes to, you know, use the footwear that that fits. Does this fit kind of between the lines? Am I getting too much into the weeds? But if I had a high school or college athlete and and we were, you know, we

090were Adidas, but my basketball playing daughter um, that they don't work for her. Just how that how that plays out. Very good question. And it for some reason that I it didn't come across to me as we should exclude footwear. It's literally put in there excluding footwear and skates and and all those effort peripheral things, gloves for a baseball player, you know, things like that. I went I even circled that and talked to a few schools. I'm like, we really are going to like not not that we would or wouldn't, but it specifically excludes footwear. I'm like, well, makes sense. Let's put it in there. So, you're absolutely correct. Thank you. Anything else? Again, this is under discussion. So, we thank you for your time and we look forward to you coming back at a

091future board meeting. We'll do. Thank you very much. 6A is our consent agenda. I would entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda in tonight's board packet. So moved. It's been moved by Mr. Cleven. Is there a second? Second. Second by Mr. Manley. We'll take a roll call vote. L. Yes. Pomicino. Yes. Flynn is absent. Anderson. Yes. Cleven. Yes. Manley, yes. Larson, yes. Hodak, yes. Burger, yes. HS0, no. One absent. Motion passes. 6B. Consideration of application from Dakota Aircraft Corporation doing business as Sirrus Aircraft for a property tax incentive in the format of a payment in lie of taxes, the pilot program. So, I believe we're going to start with Brandon Bombach. And we have some members here to come up to the podium. So, you can make your way up unless you know that

092Brandon's going to take a while. Now, thank you, President Burger, members of the board. My part in this is just to introduce our guests here this evening. I'm Keith Lun, president and CEO of the EDC, joined here tonight by Steve Thomas, the executive director of operations for Sirrus Aircraft. Um, they have an exciting project. They're coming forward. We had two um members seated at the um local government advisory committee. They're bringing this request forward and ultimately this ends up back at the city for a public hearing on June 2nd at city hall. Uh Keith, I'll let you do more of an introduction to the project. Very good. Uh thank you uh President Burgerer, Superintendent Brener, members of the school board. Um Mr. Bombach took just about all that I wanted to say in terms of

093introductory comments, but we are here to consider a payment of taxes application for aircraft. An exciting uh two-phase expansions. This is the first of two. Um thinking back a little bit in terms of the story of Cirrus, uh we they've been a partner in the community uh for over 30 years. uh their first lease was 1996. As a matter of fact, their opening was impacted by the flood of 1997. So we were absolutely speaking with them 30 years ago and and I actually remember some of those conversations. So that tells you a little bit about me. Um they've got number of expansions. So these tools that we're talking about today were used for both their uh initial facility at 67,000 ft in 1996 1997. In addition, it was a risky proposition back then. and the

094city of Grand Forks issued a sales tax revenue bond and built the facility for Sir Cirrus and leased it through them for the duration of that lease. And so a number of tools were used during that time. Um it was just a short 10 years later or actually a little bit less than that that uh the demand for their aircraft had had really um expanded. uh their waiting list was approaching about four years and there was just a limit in terms of how how long someone was willing to wait for a really high craft aircraft like Sirrus produced and they undertook a 93,000t facility more than doubling their footprint in Grand Forks. Again, the same tools are used including a payment in le of taxes or property tax exemption. Uh the city of Grand Forks

095used a number of uh public financing tools to help support that expansion. Uh a few years ago, Sirrus purchased a facility from the city of Grand Forks. So, it's all locally owned by the company. They're now undertaking, as I mentioned, a two-phase expansion. Steve Thomas, who's executive director for Sears for operations in Grand Forks, is here. I'd like him to tell you just a little bit about what they're doing and why, and then I'll I'll come back and just talk a little bit about what the request is and sort of the process moving forward. Thank you, Keith. Good evening. Uh, thanks to the board for for having me uh come up and and be able to talk about this project. It's something we're very uh very excited about. And so, um, here in Grand Forks,

096we we are about max capacity for production, uh, at our facility. We're we're busting at the seams. If, uh, anyone is is taking a tour of our facility recently, um, you could maybe see what we're what we're talking about. And so, when we we look at our 5 to 10 year, uh, sales demand, we need u, we just need more space for additional tooling and and equipment and and things like that. So, like Keith said, we we looked at it from a a two-phase. this first 30,000 square ft. It allows us to to get the tooling we need for the uh for the rate for the rates that we're seeing and um it'll allow us to move some of departments into that space so that whenever we do the second phase expansion, we're not having

097to put a stop to production. We can continue to produce while we're doing uh phase two. So um yeah, we uh we uh we're excited about the opportunity to expand to Grand Forks and uh we see this as a way of ensuring that uh composite manufacturing remains in uh in North Dakota. Can I is there any uh questions that I can answer? Questions from board members for either Mr. Thomas uh or Mr. Lond or I see Mr. Felen has also joined the chat. So questions for any of these three and Mr. Cleven and this a this came up in the in the local government affairs committee meeting. This expansion is not intended to add significant number of employee employment, but phase two would. And what's those general numbers of employees? That's exactly right. Yeah. So

098our our capacity problem uh right now it's more it's more tooling than than labor. Uh so this this first expansion uh will give us additional capacity. And so we're looking somewhere in the neighborhood of five to 10 jobs, but uh we're looking in the neighborhood of 20 to 30 additional heads uh after the phase 2 expansion because that really unleashes our ability uh to produce at the rates we need to u long we look out 7 to 10 years uh we're going to need those people to to produce at at those levels. Yep. Other questions? Dr. Lime? Mr. Feland, is there any appetite at the city to go back to the state legislature and get this law changed so that you don't have to go to all the taxing entities like it used to be

099in the past? Uh, uh, President Burgerer and and, uh, board um, member L. I figured you'd ask that question. U, uh, there never seems to be the right time to ask the question. So, you know, the as we said, I think the legislature put it in place in 17 or 19, and I think it was a bad example from the city of Bismar and Berley County. And so, as most things with the legislature, if there's a bad example, we all um get locked into that. So, we're we're uh number one, I should say, I'm sorry, I don't know what was said, but we're thankful for Sir Cirrus Aircraft. Um there are number two manufacturing from an employment perspective, 500 people. It's quite incredible. Um one of the highest taxpayers in Grand Forks. Um, right now

100they pay uh I don't about 215 to $225,000 in taxes. And so you're not going to find many taxpayers in Grand Forks that pay that much annually. And this keeps this here and it keeps it expanding. And so um you probably know this, but to find a manufacturer with 500 employees to fill this space would be awfully difficult u with the kind of name that Cirrus Aircraft has. So we want to keep them here. We want to keep them growing. Uh they're a great community partner and I should say this too. Um Grand Forks, we're honored to help lead this economic development process. I I think we we try to do four things of which two of which you're part of. Okay. Number one, um we work on tax incentives like you're in front of

101you tonight. We work on infrastructure development. We work on Bank of North Dakota financing. We partner with our growth fund. And so two of those things we're going to do. This is a infill site so we don't have a lot of infrastructure development. So we're not we're thankful we don't have 20 to $50 million in infrastructure development to do it. The final thing is really what you play a large portion. And the reason why they have five employees from probably around 250 you've had before is our community. And so um we hope to be here with a Gristo coming up with a project that'll be gamechanging. But um we're going to offer all three of those to agree to. But the fourth reason is the qualitative reason why they're here. They like Grand Forks. We

102have a great culture and part of that great culture is our schools, our public schools. And so you play a large role in that, Altru plays a large role. other community members and if someone doesn't like the community uh one of the Agristo representatives say and I'll clean it up tonight but he says nobody from Belgium because from Belgium wants to go to a plant and they have to tell their people at headquarters you've got to go to XYZ plant to review it and if they say I don't want to go there because I don't like that community that's in part why we've got picked among all the other things and I want really thank the Grand Forks Public Schools. You're a large part of that last quotient, which is that community culture. Without the

103schools that we have, um we wouldn't have the community we have. So, I want to say thank you to all that all that you do. And I want to thank Sirus Aircraft, too. Other questions? Dr. L. I'm fully supportive of this and I just want to mention that Mr. Felen has officially become a politician because he danced around the question and never answered it. But that's okay because there there isn't a real answer for it. Well, thank you, Todd. Other quer at the city council meeting, so it's it's a friendly group here. Mr. President Burger, just offer a couple comments here to the mechanics of these because we don't get to hear about these things a lot. But a payment in lie of tax is exactly that, a negotiated amount of money that's paid in

104lie of the tax. In this case, it's meant to help, you know, um support the expansion of serious aircraft. What you will not find in this agreement is going backwards in any way. In the state of North Dakota, you will always pay tax on the land and the current property that's seated upon that land, you'll pay full freight. So, what this is is freezing any increase with the increased investment on site and it'll come on in in 10 years. Now, that last slide kind of goes through those figures just so you're aware of it or the last page attached in the packet. But ultimately here by by supporting the investment and leaning in here uh there'll be $130,000 value ad by the end of this and and more the line share of that will come

105to the school district at that time. So just wanted to remind you of the mechanics of the actual um incentive at place and thank you for bringing that up because I did and again I'm fully supportive of this. This is great economic development primary sector activity. Uh but just to clarify, in the 10-year exemption that's requested, what's the dollar figure amount that the school district would forsake in the short term? Uh well, the to forsake it here. I don't know all that went into these projections here, but as as Mr. Feland mentioned, the current value is about 214 or the current tax um that comes in off of that property is 214,000. where at the completion of the project would be $344,000. It may not be that simplistic to do the math on $130,000 added,

106but over that 10-year period, multiplying it by each year would give you the dollar amount. So, whatever proportional share of the increased value is what the school district would not receive in an annual allocation, right? 33 grand a year. Thank you. Other questions? Yes, Mr. Manley. I guess on line 20, well, it's page six, line 20, you go from a net income of 6 million, near 7 million in year 1 to 13.8 million. So 6 million net increase. I don't see how it would be difficult to pay another what did you say uh Brandon? Um $30,000 to the schools. Well, and just and just to clarify here, uh so 30,000 to the schools is a little bit more for all taxing entities. And I think it's important to note that company can do well and

107maybe even afford some of those expenses. Um, but they would have some choices and I think that's a part of what the city's trying to do and economic development is trying to do is to make sure that Grand Forks remains the top choice just in defense of uh, you know, before I even get a chance to speak to the application. Other questions? As you can see on the cover memo, the administrative recommendation is to approve the pilot request of property tax exemption of 100% for 10 years. I would seek a motion to There's been a motion to approve by Dr. Lun. Is there a second? Second by Mr. Anderson. Is there any discussion? We'll take a roll call vote. Hodak, yes. Cleven, yes. Manley, no. Larson, yes. Flynn is absent. Lun, yes. Anderson, yes. Pomicino,

108yes. Burger, yes. Seven, yes. One, no. One absent. Motion passes. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. 6C, South Middle School Title One Schoolwide Plan. Believe this is Mr. Neil and Miss Oscarten. And actually, I'll do a quick little introduction for uh Mr. Neil and uh Mrs. Oscarten. Um, so as part of the title process that we go through every year, um, as some of you are aware, South Middle School went off of title last year and now coming back onto title. Um, they are a schoolwide um, school and typically that's a process that they have to go through, but because of the shortterm um, absence of title status, um, they are able to expedite that and go through it right away um, from the very beginning. Um, and so I know I may

109be stealing some thunder from uh Mr. Mr. Neil and Mr. Neilgarden, but uh since he was already recognized earlier today for all of the great work he does, I just had to mention that as well too um from the title aspect. And so with that, I'll hand it over to these two um to speak more on the process. So thank you for being here. All right. Thank you, Mr. Baky. Uh good evening everybody. Again, my name is Travis Neil, principal at South Middle School. Um, I also want to introduce Theresa Osgard, the Title One coordinator itself. Um, Teresa is going to be going over our presentation shortly. Um, but I do just want to give a huge shout out to Teresa, uh, for all the work that she does revolving around Title One. Uh, if

110you remember a bit ago, she won the, uh, certified employee of the quarter. That was her. Um, and this is just one of the many things I talked about, a jack of all trades. So this is just one of the many things that Teresa does that makes South an amazing place to be uh students, staff and families. So as Mr. Baky was talking about, South Middle School is a schoolwide title one school. With that, it is designed to elevate the educational experience for all students. The comprehensive approach addresses both the academic and not non-academic factors that contribute to student success. So for example, academic success success, datadriven instruction, PD, family and community engagement at Self, we have two main pieces to our title one, which is a student behavior interventionist that Miss Osgard will talk

111about, and then the title one coordinator, which is what she does. So with that being said, here is Miss Oxgarden. Thanks. So yeah, Matt kind of told you a little bit about our history. So, um, this is kind of where we've been for the last six years with South Title One. The first year was back in 2019. Um, we were considered a targeted support school because not every student technically qualifies for title. So, the first year usually is targeted and support the kids that qualify for title and then the next year goes schoolwide. So, most of the schools in North Dakota are considered schoolwide uh, title schools. So, you can kind of see, you know, throughout the years we've been schoolwide. Um, when we started in 2022, we were actually considered a TSI school, which

112was a new program within the state as well. Um, and then the next year we were not title one, but we were still TSI, and I'll talk about that here in a little bit, too. And then now we're not TSI, but we're still now title one. So, we've been kind of going back and forth, but the nice thing is over the last three years with Mr. Neil and I working at South is we kind of keep it a tight ship of what we need to get done and what we need to do and really look at data for that. So um this is called accountability pie chart. Um it is done every year at the end of the school year and then goes into the fall. So this was the data for 2324. Um what

113I did was our school looks at um all middle schools and elementaryaries look at student engagement um student achievement in ELA, student growth in ELA, your math achievement and also math growth in ELA and also English learner proficiency growth with AITA scores. So middle schools and elementaryaries look at this kind of criteria for the accountability part. Um high schools have more because they do um you know their GPA and graduation rates and they they have more things part of their accountability pie. So um what I did for you guys is looking at because we were a TSI school for two years. So I looked at what our scores were last year and then you'll notice where in the blue where it says the plus for student engagement plus 3.53. we actually gained those points back

114from 2022 2023 school year to 2324. So you can see we had growth in almost every single area. Um we knew that math was a huge area that we needed to improve on. We do have a math interventionist part-time that kind of helps and support. So you can see our student growth in math was huge last year and so we are continuing to move forward within all this data just so we can keep moving and making progress. We are not at TSI school this year. we got off of it, but we do know that we still need to improve and grow. And so, how do we make sure we don't go back to TSI? So, that's where we're trying to work on. So, last year we created something called a TSI fishbone. And so, we

115know that we can't fix every single area in our building, but we can focus on some different parts throughout the year. Um, so these were the eight different areas that we looked at. We're like, hey, we need to we need to kind of hone in on some different areas. And it kind of es and flows every year. If we have a huge staff turnover, then we have to look at our, you know, mentoring of our new staff and making sure that they're prepared and ready to go to be a South Spartan, you know. So, it really depends on what's going on. If we have all of a sudden four new math teachers, then we have to, you know, show them how to use Envisions within our math curriculum. So, it's just that kind of process

116of staying up to date of what we need to do within our area. So, this is kind of a focus area for us and then we always kind of revise it and look at it every year. So, I am a child coordinator. That's one of the hats I wear. Um, my big part of my job is looking at data. So, looking at how do our kids um, you know, if we're working with a math interventionist, what math supports do we need for those kids? What are the kids we need to pull? Do we pull the bubble kids are almost proficient and kind of push them over the edge a little bit? It's like, yeah, we can get them proficient. Or let's say our youthly interventions. We looking at kids um who need some more help

117and support with their fluency and their reading and their decoding. How can we help support that? So, I use a lot of um UFI with my instructional coach and helping support our sixth graders right now with that. I look at all the star I do the data assessments for um say assessment tests, all those things. And you know, just looking at this year alone when we finish our state testing, we know we had the new NDA plus we don't have our scores yet. We won't get them until September, October of next school year, but our kids worked really hard on the writing test. They worked really hard in the math and reading. So, I'm hoping that the scores show their efforts because they did really, really good on that. Um, we do the panorama checks.

118We have a team called our SAT team, which is student focus or sorry, student assessment team. Um, and so we really look at some different areas. So, every week it alternates between academics, behaviors, SEAL, and also attendance. And so we look at those four different areas every month and we rotate through them. So I do all the academic checks for my teams. Um and then also kind of helping supporting within my I focus on eighth grade, Mr. Neil does sixth grade, Mr. Lot does seventh grade. Go to those teams during team times and look at what do kids need the academic week, what do the kids need on the week, what do kids need for the attendance part and what they need for um behavior. So we really work on their MTS process that way.

119Okay. We also make sure all of our registrations and our scheduling of our kids, make sure they're in the right places. Um, that's really important, especially if if you have a class of really high flyers and really low flyers, like how do you bridge that gap? And so we make sure that we schedule our kids and support them where they need it. So, um, I also do a lot with our ML families, family engagements. Um, and I also make sure all the title one compliancy and paperwork's all done on time. And then we do have Sally Akerlin. She's our behavioral interventionist. She does a lot with restorative justice with our students. Um, any kind of conflicts they have. She works with behavior groups, check-in, checkouts with kids daily. Um, she really helps a lot with

120our behavior plans with kids that are not on IEPs, too, because some of our kids need a little help and support in those areas. So, she works with teams on that. She's great with communication with our families. Um, she also does as part of our SAT meetings, she does the behavior aspect of it. And then she does provide some tutorials for kids for active support, but also some support as well. So within our title one, we use our budget for two positions which is title one coordinator and behavioral interventionist. Um I always question at first is like you know why not buy supplies and things you need but if you don't have the people driving and backing you know what you want you really don't get anywhere. So um I really appreciate Mr. Neil's support

121in that aspect. And so I just wanted to show you too we do family engagement nights as well. Um, this year we try to do a family STEM night. And so we know that our goals are math and ELA. And so Miss Havin is our instructional coach. She also incorporates some STEM within those different areas of math and um, ELA. So it was really fun to have the kids walking through the different sessions and groups. And our PTO provided the meal. We did taco bag for them. So it's always nice to feed kids and feed families as well. And then right now I'm currently working on some different like take-home bags for multilingual students just because we know there's a lot of resources that they need as families within our community like you know how

122does the busing system work with the city, how about library, how about any kind of health and um you know where to go for different resources and those sort of things and so we're trying to make some little to go home bags for the summer to kind of give them some supports um with that. And the last thing I just wanted to show you is we do have also our be legendary goals. I just wanted to share that with you. Um, like I said, we don't have our new NDA Plus scores yet, but hopefully after this school year, we'll always get them live in May, so we'll always be on top of it of where we're at. We just finished our STAR testing last week. And so, I was just going through the data with

123Mr. Neil, actually, early this afternoon of how we were doing. So, we have some growth and we have some weaknesses in areas, which is normal. And so, we're going to continue working on that. Okay. Any final words? Yeah. No, final words. Uh, Miss Oscar hit it on the head. Uh, you know, you can have programs all you want, but I couldn't find two better people, Anderesa and Sally, to do what they do that directly impact kids and our staff and our families. So, really, it's about how these two work. Sally as well, they are truly amazing at what they do and they drive the bus with this. Questions for Mr. Neil, Miss Ogarden, Mr. What's the attendance like at what's the attendance like right now at South? Yeah, the last I checked with Jalisa, our

124social worker, it was right at that 95%. Don't quote me on that 100%. But it's close to that. It's at least 95. And our social worker said it was the highest in the for the middle school. So, she was pretty pumped. Other questions? As you can see in the cover memo, the the administrative recommendation is to approve the title one schoolwide planning as presented this evening. I would entertain a motion to approve. It's been moved by Mr. Paulsino. Is there a second? Second by Mr. Larson. Any discussion? We'll take a roll call vote. Flynn is absent. Hodak, yes. Anderson, yes. Manley, yes. Lun, yes. Cleven, yes. Pomacino, yes. Larson, yes. Burger, yes. HS0, no. One absent. Motion passes. Thank you for your time tonight. 6D, the finance committee report. We'll start with Mr. Bombach. Yeah,

125President Ber, members of the board, I'm talking through the last of our set of projects ahead of this summer um in Wilder. I'm joined here by Chad Dustin, I believe. I can't see around the corner, but I thought I saw him sneak in. He'll probably help me just walk through exactly these bid results here. Um the cover memo articulates that the construction bidding came in strong, but throughout these projects, we also have learned we needed a little bit more in the budget for our FFN as well as just owner contingency. And so you you'll see overall this is a higher number and largely it's due to more allowances. If we don't use it, it comes back, but we've learned we need a little bit more room there. Um furthermore, there was a robust conversation at

126the finance committee. There were two alternates discussed. The first was um minimal and really had already largely been decided as far as removal of a front desk, but the second one was substantial. It had to do with adding additional parking spots on site on the south side of the building. So, there was a good conversation there. What you'll find in the board packet is minutes of the meeting itself. And then there's going to be two tables. Just to remind you, uh Mr. Dustin is going to walk through the first of those. It has a little bit of color on it and kind of take us through um briefly in the uh bid results. Um, but you can see them listed there. So, if there's any questions at all um, related to those, you can. The

127second table with a little bit more green than any other color kind of puts in context the all of the safety and security projects because we're working from one budget. So, we like to keep in mind the green ones are the projects that have been to this body and the bid or guaranteed maximum price has been um um agreed upon. And then where you see less detail on the rest of that table is because the projects aren't completely done done. They're in different stages of design and then they won't be bid until later. Uh the one thing I'd just remind on the front end of this conversation too, this is um not the largest but one of the more complex projects within the safety and security bucket because we're talking about adding additional classroom space

128which would remove one of the portables or relocatables on site and that for that reason is difficult to fit into one summer. So just the large time or the overall timeline on this would be to add the shell of the building um before the end of the school year and then it could be enclosed. Um there's some administrative work to be done within the building. That'll have to be the focus of the summer, but then once they get that enclosed, the addition, they'll be able to um complete that throughout the course of the year. So really wouldn't be able to move into that space um but a year from this fall. Yeah. You want to say something at all? Oh, sorry about that. So, I mean, we'll go through a little bit of details. Happy

129to stand for any questions. Um, here's Chad Dustin with Construction Engineers. Yeah, thank you. Um, so kind of we'll touch on this similar how we have been in the past. Uh, start kind of somewhat at the bottom and then work our way up. Uh, so total project cost as you're looking at there um, previously was 2.7, currently at 3.1 and change. Uh, so up roughly 400,000 from what we had priced previously. Um, as you can see there, some of the soft costs. uh we didn't have values kind of allocated for a few of those items previously in our SD estimate or DD estimate that we finished um I think back in August uh sometime um so we we're kind of basing it on some preliminary drawings uh and you know for some reason we we

130should have probably had something figured in that originally but um knowing what uh t working with the district here and carrying uh the 3% FFN budget as well as a 5% owner contingency uh for all these projects under the soft cost uh that's what you're seeing there. Uh one thing to note too is uh the design fee. So that's a fixed fee that the district is working with EAPC directly on. One item that you will see there too is an AE fee on alternates. Uh so basically that's uh the fee that EAPC would get for designing of the phase 2 alternate which we're currently not or not asking for acceptance on tonight. Uh but for them to go through the design process of of completing the design for that for future information. Uh so kind

131of moving up to like I'll call it the yellow line, the total construction cost. Uh that's the total GMP that we would be asking for uh for the project itself there. Uh so as you can see what we had from the last one to this one is up about 87,000. Uh but as you're looking at the alternates at the bottom there, uh you know, there's roughly um $130,000 between the ad for the parking lot and the deduct for the reception desk. Uh that makes up the difference there, too. So, if we pull out the parking lot that we weren't planning on previously, uh, total budget or total construction cost uh, went down slightly. Uh, but adding the the parking lot in there brought that a little bit over what we had figured originally, too. So,

132but I can answer kind of any other questions that you guys have related to this. Um, just feel free to let me know. Any questions for either of these gentlemen from board members? Yep. Dr. one. Could one of you two explain what the the phase two that got rejected, what what that's about and what's that entails for the those that aren't on the finance committee? Yeah. So, phase two, um I guess I'll start with what phase one entails first. Uh so phase one includes an addition off I'll call it the east side of the building there. It kind of sits at a goofy angle. Uh but the east side of the building, kind of the green space on the opposite side of the parking lot at Winship or Wilder currently. Uh that addition would have

133the new admin space and one classroom. And then after we move admin into the new addition area, there's uh we'd be renovating the existing admin space in uh in the building currently and creating two additional classrooms there. So phase one would be an increase of three classrooms uh in total. Phase two would be another addition to the south, adding two additional classrooms uh or not to the south, to the north, adding two additional classrooms uh as well too. Um with phase one, we are removing one of the portables that's out there now currently. Uh phase two would include removal of the second portable. So yeah, I would just add that in early conversations relative to safety and security of children, it's not ideal to have those relocatables in the middle of the day. They're crossing

134what could be an icier path into the the building just to use the restroom maybe even a couple of times a day. And so originally we were we did do some design work to get rid of relocatables that was primarily you know Wilder and then Viking. Um hoping to strike gold on the bids knowing it's not likely but at least now we have a a design for that and maybe for a future project we can do that phase two and that's why it's referred to as such. questions or comments from board members? Yeah, Mr. Palmino. I think one of the points we looked at by rejecting phase two is that that we we have some other projects that are coming forward that we want to get done first and there's at least three more schools

135that are over that 1 million mark and this phase two could be done in the future on that. And I think secondly, adding the parking lot gives them parking. Right now, a lot of the teachers are parking on the street in that and there also be a could be a drop off lane within that parking lot, which would be to the east side of the school. So, it would add more safety to the traffic around the school. Yeah. And just to support that point even further, you know, drop off can be a little hectic on that one way. If you get on the side where students can jump out right on the school side, that's not so bad. But a lot of families are relegated to being on the opposite side of the street and

136having to cross. With that turnoff lane, they can get off of Fourth and come into the parking lot and then keep it flowing through additional 13 staff parking spots, a handicap spot, two visitor spots. So it'll it'll increase even the on staff parking pretty much from a third of the staff to twothirds of the staff. So it doesn't get us all the way there, but it's fewer teachers having to park a block or two away and make their way to the school building. Dr. Brener, just a couple of additions. In 1997, I was the principal at Wilder Elementary School Finance Committee heard me say this, but uh when FEMA came in and and provided us with a budget to recondition and repurpose and rebuild Wilder, uh the parking lot and a drive-through loop on that

137end that uh Chad's talking about was part of the plan, but there wasn't enough funds uh at the end of the day when all, you know, other buildings had needs as well. So, that was cut out of the project. Secondly, uh Brandon, you might want to point this out on that final uh final table page when it when we look at that overall amount. You know, $18 million was uh part of the referendum. We're at about 188, but I think it's worth highlighting some of the other future projects that are probably overestimated at this point. Yeah. And thank you for that, Dr. Brener, members of the board. It's it's just worth rearticulating even from the beginning that these are different stages of design a couple years out. And so when you get to the bottom

138of that table and you have projects like Discovery and Community and Ben Franklin, you know, those are little ways out in some cases not even designed for. So there was money held just to make sure and absolutely make sure we wouldn't get to the end of a project and say we can't do a school because of that. That's not on the table. It's not going to happen. In fact, what Dr. Brener is referring to is every one of these projects has, you know, different contingencies built in. We're going to make sure we can fit them in. But I'd say even a little further in the case of Discovery, we have a relatively new school that already has largely the main pieces of an entry sequence that would, you know, facilitate um what is being installed

139in most of these other schools. So, we're thinking that number is a little bit high. Community high school similarly has safety and um functionally the same kind of entrance sequence. Uh also, it's a building that the school district doesn't own. So there may not be a need to put a lot of capital investment into a building that's owned by the state of North Dakota. So we think that as we near the bottom of the list, we're we're ticking off some of the more complicated projects and getting certainty around the budget early and it'll work its way way out in the second half of this. Any other comments uh from finance committee members uh who were present for that discussion? Uh Mr. Anderson, Mr. Larson? Okay, as you can see, uh the the cover letter of

140the packet really addresses what was brought to the finance committee. Uh but if you look closely at your minutes, the finance committee recommendation uh is to approve the guaranteed maximum price of 2.452 and change for a total project of 2.954 and change plus alternate three parking lot at 150,000 for Wilder Elementary School. That's the finance committee's recommendation to the school board. So, I would seek a motion uh to approve the GMP of 2.452 and change for the total project as as outlined plus alternate 3 parking lot at 150,672. It's been moved by Mr. Palmino. Is there a second? A second by Dr. L. Is there any discussion? Yeah, I'll just point out I'm not personally involved in this project, but my employer is, but I I don't feel a need to recuse myself with your

141consent. Uh, our civil engineering role here is pretty minor. Thank you. Any other discussion? We'll take a roll call vote. Pomacino, yes. L, yes. Larson, yes. Flynn is absent. Anderson, yes. Hodak, yes. Manley, yes. Cleven, yes. Burger, yes. HS0, no. One absent. Motion carries. Thank you both. 6E, appointment of Winship Elementary School principal, Mr. Matt Baky. Thank you. Uh, President Burgerer, members of the board, it's my honor to present to you uh two recommendations for uh principal principalhip appointments. Um but before doing so I kind of want to walk you through the process of what that uh looks like as we go through the process of hiring a principal. And so uh the first process or the first step in that process is really opening the position. And so we had two uh positions that

142were open both windship and sentry. Um after which when we open it we do send a message out to district personnel um staff at the building level and then also families. And that survey is basically that message that goes out as a survey to basically ask for the characteristics, the attributes and uh the skills that a position or a person with a principal position should entail. Um and so really asking them to identify what are we looking for in a principal uh for that school. Um Winship received over 60 responses and Century received over 70 responses. Those survey responses are then used to correlate and put together the interview questions and the direct what I call the five key characteristics that we're looking for for each principal. Um those five characteristics are sometimes similar similar

143between candidates but also sometimes very different. Um and what I will say is there were differences between Winship and what they were looking for than what Sentry was looking for. Um and that will gear the questions that are used in the interview process. And then as we go through that interview uh the uh interview team is asked to basically rank those individuals based on those five key characteristics that they are looking for in a principal. And so parents have a say in that process of really what I would say is identifying what we are looking for. What are we looking for when we are looking for a principal? What are the key characteristics, qualities, attributes that we are looking for? And so parents play a key role in identifying that process. Um then we go

144about and we develop a hiring committee and that hiring committee is put together with uh district personnel as well as uh building level administration to identify who are key stakeholders, our key leaders within our building to put together that process that is made up of both district personnel as well as building leadership and they are really responsible for choosing the right fit for the building. Um and that's an important role and it's an important process. Um when we go through that um so we develop that hiring committee I ask go through the process they commit to that process and being a part of that then after at that point we narrow down the candidates when once the position has closed we narrow down the candidates and I will say that we had a very strong

145pool in both the windship and the sentry position. uh we had total of 18 candidates for windship and we had a total of 12 candidates for uh sentry. Altogether we had 22 candidates for uh between the two positions. We felt very good about our candidate pool as a result of of the candidates we did receive. Um, at the end we ended up interviewing six uh people for the windship position and we ended up interviewing five um because of a late uh a late cancellation on uh the Sentry one. We had a 61 scheduled but ended up canceling due to some personal reasons. And so we felt very good about our candidate pool um as far as both principal positions. Um I do set up a meeting with the interview team to go through just kind

146of they receive a very thick packet uh which includes all of the uh data um and the survey results. So they get the raw data of what the survey said. They get a summary that I provide that includes all of the five key characteristics and other points to look for when they go through the interview process. Um they also receive the packets of each candidate. Um and they receive kind of what to look for um their which includes their letters of recommendation, their cover memo, all of those types of things. Um also through that process, they receive again back to that survey really what should we be looking for in each column. So when we go through the interview questions and we characterize the top five uh characteristics or qualities we're looking for, they're they're

147provided look fors of what they should be looking for in each question. Um, additionally, it has a schedule for the day and and all of those components um that we go through and we really talk through um at that interview team. Now, I want to walk you through the day of what the interview looks like. Um really the process started at 8:00 a.m. Um and and when I talk about the windship interview process, um we had six individuals that we interviewed. Uh the c the interview team did not walk out of Winship, which was held on April 30th, a Wednesday. Didn't walk out of the building until about 600 6:30. Um, so they were there in interviews from 8:00 a.m. all the way till about 6:00 um, doing interviews the entire day. It was it

148was quite a process and quite a a feat. So I want to thank those individuals that were part of that process. Um, as far as Sentry, um, again, we had it set up for six interviews. Um, and we ended up having five interviews. Again, they walked out on a Friday, May 2nd. Um, they started at 8 a.m. and they ended on uh, May um, about 5 5:30. Um, so again, quite a commitment to be part of that process and and I want to thank those individuals. I also want to talk about what it's like for a candidate to walk through that process. Um, when we go through that process, a candidate I I ask the candidate to come in a half hour early. Um, so the first candidate comes in at 8:00. They are given

149a scenario and that scenario is a real life look at what it's like to be a principal. Um, and so they walk in at, you know, 8:00 a.m. in the morning and they need to find coverage. They have an IEP that they need to attend. They maybe have a phone call from a parent. um or they have a staff member that needs a personnel issue item that they need to work through. And so they're given this scenario with multiple different things that are come to their plate right when they walk into the to their job on the day. And they're asked to prioritize what's that going to look like. And so when they walk into the interview, um so they have about a half hour to kind of go through that process and put together

150their thoughts of what they would do in these scenarios. Then when they come into the interview a half hour later at 8:30 was our first interview. That's their first question. Their first question is, "Tell us about yourself and why you're interested in the position." And the second one is, "Tell us about how you prioritize this scenario." And that really walks us through their thought process, how they are going to manage their building and their staff and work with their families and their parents. And so it really gives us a good look at what we are getting from a candidate when we go through that process. And then we just throw about 22 to 24 questions at them in an hour. And they're only given an hour. Um, so they have to be succinct and they

151have to go through this process uh quite uh quite rapidly um well being able to sell themselves. I actually this year I had three candidates after uh their interviews go whoa that was intense. Um and so when you when I have candidates tell me that that where I feel like we have very highly qualified candidates tell me that I feel like we're doing something right when we go through that process. And so I'm telling you all of this because it's important for you to understand the process that we go through is is quite intense, but also I feel like it brings the top candidates to the surface. Um at the very end is what I would consider the best part of their day. Um is they get to um for the last half hour. So

152their interview process is a 2-hour process. Um at the last half hour, they get the opportunity to go through the building tour um with the students. Um, and so we have two or three or four students who are just beaming when they walk out of that interview who are ready to sell their school and sell what great things they have going on in the building. And that's what the the students get to do. They get to sell and be the cheerleaders and wave the flag for whatever school they're at, whether Winship or uh, Sentry. Um, they really take that seriously and they introduce themselves. They give a firm handshake. They look you directly in the eye and they and then they take you through the building and and it's really cool to see not only

153the students rise to that occasion but also to see the the interactions between our candidates and our students and you can truly see uh the candidates that love being around students and really is why we do what we do. And so I just want you to understand that process. Then after that we go through and we narrow down our candidates. I do the reference checks. They meet with Dr. Brener. Um, and tonight I'm I'm providing you two very highly qualified candidates that I'm excited to introduce to you. And so with that being said and and I can go through all of that or if you have various questions on that, I can go through that again. Um, but today I'm going to recommend to you Mrs. Lorie Scatteram as the new principal of Winship Elementary

154School. And I'll ask Mrs. Scatteram to come forward here for us. Um, she brings 13 years of experience in education all within Grand Forks Public Schools. Her current role is a special education coordinator. Um Lori has led multiple programs and portfolios across our district. Uh but but managing really the early childhood special education teachers, speech language pathologists, and then other specialists within our special education realm. Um when looking at her background, it proves that she is pro providing direct support to students with diverse needs and abilities, really providing opportunities for all students. Um the interview team identified several key strengths that she will bring to Winship, which includes a deep knowledge of early childhood, um her experience managing complex systems, um on multiple sites, and her strong organizational skills as a special education coordinator. Um

155really working with multiple students, families, and teachers. Um, and I I highlighted this in um what one of her references and and what I will say about this is this was an unsolicited reference who said this about Lori. Um, and this is one of her current teachers that she supervises. She is a gifted leader who exhibits the traits needed to foster an effective team with the convictions to guide a team. Um, it just speaks highly to what she does not only in Grand Forks public schools, but what she's going to do over at Winship. Um in in the memo you also see that I've articulated who made up that team. Um we have seven windship staff members representing both teachers, para educators, literacy specialists, librarians, administrative administrative assistant staff. So you'll see both classified and

156certified that participate in this process. And then you'll see various district representatives which include a building principal that they will work with um the special education assistant director, the chief academic officer, the multilingual coordinator primarily because we know that Winship has a huge ML population and having that voice at the table is crucially important and then the human resource director. Um and with all of that being said, uh the administrative recommendation is to appoint Mrs. Lorie Scatteram as the next principal of Winship Elementary School. Um and I'm very excited to do so. Um, I I will stand for any questions you may have. Um, and Mrs. Scatam is here today. Questions for Mr. Baky, Mr. Cleven? Is the recommendation the same as the recommendation the committee made? Correct. Thank you. Other questions for Mr. Baky,

157Dr. L? Maybe not not for now, but but I would be interested in hearing about the onboarding process for a new principal, assistant principal, associate principal. I don't think I've heard much about that for quite a few years. So, not not now, but but down the road sometime. It'd be it'd be interesting because we've heard a lot about teacher on boarding, but I don't know if I've heard a lot about administrative on boarding. So, can I just highlight some some things just very quickly for you? um just because I think it is and I think you heard a little bit about it earlier in the year when we had our Ben Franklin uh celebrating success as well um where they did talk about just that process uh Mrs. Scarproot um touched on it a little

158bit. Um it may look a little bit different than what we've done in years past um uh since myself coming to the to the Grand Forks Public Schools. And so it may look a little bit different than maybe what has been done previously, but we do set up our new administrators with both a state mentor and then an indist. Um and so we provide them that opportunity to to grow um with uh counterparts across the state uh utilizing our NDCL uh uh organization to do that. um they go through that process and actually they'll go through that process uh for two years. Um Mrs. Scarper will go through the second year this year or I should say next school year. Um and so uh Mrs. Scadam and Dr. Larson would go through that process as

159well. Um additionally on top of that I do meet with them I meet with all of our elementary principles on a monthly basis. Uh but with new principles I go through and actually meet with them twice a month um and provide that additional support. So that means basically they're meeting with me uh every other week um to discuss items that are coming up throughout the throughout the year. Um additionally on top of that on the off weeks where I am not meeting with them I I set up what I call leadership labs. Um and these are leadership opportunities for our new administrators to really talk to the experts in the field. Um and so what I do is I set up maybe it's a uh they're struggling with IEPs and their role on the IEP

160process. So I'll set up either Brandon Vanderborg or uh do Dr. Alyssa Dietrich to come in and talk about the IEP process and what that looks like and what their role is. Or maybe they're uh concerned about safety and security within their building. So, I'll bring in Daley Wilkinson to talk through that process or communications or whatever it may be that they've identified, hey, this is an area of growth for me or an area I want to learn more about. Um I think Mr. Bombach has come in and done some of those um on the budget aspect of things or Dr. Norwood on the title one process. And so really every other week they're meeting with not only myself but then also what I would call an expert in the field to help provide those

161opportunities for continued growth um through that first year because as we know just like teachers go through the growth process as a first year teacher also administrators go through that process. Absolutely. Yep. Other questions for Mr. Baky? Seeing none I would seek a motion to approve Mrs. is Lorie Scatteram as the Windship Elementary School's principal for the 2025 2026 school year at a salary of 110,396 and education factor of $3600 and a school factor of $2,000. It's been moved by Mr. Cleven. Is there a second? Second. Second by Dr. Lun. Any further discussion? We'll take a roll call vote. Anderson, yes. Flynn is absent. Cleven? Yes. Hodak? Yes. Pomacino? Yes. Larson. Yes. Lun. Yes. Manley. Yes. Burger. Yes. H. Yes. Zero. No. One. Absent. Motion passes. Congratulations. Thank you. 6F. Appointment of Century Elementary School

162principal, Mr. Baky. All right. I'm going to go through that whole process again. No, I'm just kidding. Um, I am I'm excited and uh for the opportunity to also introduce um Dr. Holly Larson. um and she is not here today. Um and one of the reasons she's not here today is one of her other roles that she serves or that she uh participates in is she actually serves on the school board over in East Grand Forks. Um and so that's where she's at tonight is serving in your role um as a school board member. Um and so she does apologize for her absence tonight, but she had to fulfill that role as well, too. Um so my opportunity to to introduce Dr. Larson. Uh currently Dr. Larson serves as the associate principal over at Valley

163Middle School. Her prior leadership roles include behavior interventions coordinator and building resource coordinator at South Middle School. Um she also served as a building behavior strategist at South Point Elementary School in East Grand Forks and a school counselor at both the elementary and middle school level. Um Dr. Larson brings a deep understanding of the MTSS process and has led the development of the schoolwide procedures and protocols to support student success and I would say all students. uh she has a significant uh experience with the wit and wisdom curriculum and has served on the ea administrative design uh supporting both instructional planning and implementation. And reminder, wit and wisdom is the new uh ELA uh platform or or uh curriculum that we're going to be uh going into next school year. Um Dr. Larson demonstrated a

164clear passion for supporting students with diverse needs and abilities. Her strong communication skills and thoughtful approach to building relationships have continuously led to positive outcomes for both students and staff. Um the interview team identified some key uh several strengths for uh Dr. Larson, including her identity as a lifelong learner, her ability to approach challenges using data and system thinking, and her strong foundation in putting students at the center of decision-making. Um the interview team, which was led by myself, included uh 10 century staff members. I did say 10 uh teachers, pair educators, literacy specialists, multi- or ML education, special education and administrative office staff. It also included five district representatives in elementary building principal, uh the special education director, the elementary MTSS coordinator, the encore director, and the human resource director. Um again, a pretty

165large team as we go through that process. And so we've had many stakeholders involved in that. With all of that being said, um it's my distinct honor to recommend the administrative recommendation is to appoint Dr. Holly Larson as the Centry Elementary School principal for the 2526 school year. Questions for Mr. Baky. I would seek a motion to appoint Dr. Holly Larson as the Centry Elementary School's principal for the 202526 school year. A salary is 117,523, an education factor of $5,000, and a school factor of $2,500. It's been moved by Mr. Anderson. Is there a second? Second by Dr. Hodc. Any discussion? The Mr. Is there precedent for Minnesota residents to have this kind of administrative role? Can Can you expand on Well, I I assume she's a school board member in East Cran Fork. She's

166a member. She lives in East Cran. Correct. Correct. And is this Have we done that before? Yeah. To to answer, yes, we have we have quite a few of our administrators and and staff that are residents in Minnesota. Yep. Other questions? Take a roll call vote. Cleven, yes. Larson, yes. Pomacino, yes. L, yes. Manley, yes. Flynn is absent. Hodak, yes. Anderson, yes. Burger, yes. H, yes. Zero, no. One absent. Motion passes. Dr. Larson, if you're watching this later, congratulations. [Applause] 7A announcements. I just just have one. When we go to the Career Impact Academy, uh after after this me actually this meeting continues uh over there, please park in the the new the brand new south parking lot. Uh and if you park right in the middle of the south parking lot, um there's the

167the main entrance. It just doesn't have a door number yet, but that's where we're going to enter and Mr. Ripley will be there to greet us. Thank you. Any other announcements? 7B board requests for future consideration. Mr. Palmino, it isn't a future consideration. It's a more of a concern. Ben Franklin construction on South 11th. They're putting a water mane in down south 11th, right south of Ben Franklin School. And I think we somebody needs to just maybe visit with engineering to explain it to a contractor cuz today he tried to block the road off at a/4 to 8 when that's the area where 300 kids get dropped off to go to school. And if they would just understand that if they would do nothing have a coffee break at a quarter to 8 until 8:15

168and one at 2:45 until 3:05 they would have no kids coming. But it seems they're always doing something during those times like they don't they haven't figured out that all these kids are getting out of school. I I know today it got to be very hectic with parents driving around the the barrier. One parent drove up on the grass onto the black top to drop his kids. So I think we just need to express to the and you would hope the city engineering would have already explained this to them but it doesn't seem like that's happened. Dr. Brener, you're nodding. Mr. Baky, you're nodding. You'll get that. So, by future consideration, you mean by tomorrow morning? Yes. Other board requests for future consideration. 7 C. Schoolboard meeting norms. Mr. Cleven, how did we do? Did

169fine, he says. Uh so you can notice under uh agenda item 8 uh we are simply recessing this meeting and we will reconvene uh once we've all made our way inside the career impact academy and then we'll we'll follow along. 9A will receive a tour uh and then we'll adjourn at the conclusion of that tour. So uh this meeting is now in recess.