Grand Forks Public Schools School Board Meeting (March 31, 2025)

001It is 6 p.m. So, we go go ahead and call the meeting of the Grand Fork School Board this Monday, March 31st to order. Our first item on the agenda is uh the Pledge of Allegiance. The flags are over here. Thank you. Uh, one A is the reading of our schoolboard meeting norms. Dr. L. Uh, norms are number one, be prepared. Number two, be on time. Number three, value and respect each other. Number four, exercise thoughtful deliberation and conversation. Number five, be professional at the board table and when visiting the general public. Number six, speak up when the norms are not being followed. And number seven, advocate on behalf of students and keep the community in mind. Thank you. Uh just so everyone's aware, we have Dave Burgerer on the phone tonight. Item number two

002on the agenda is the approval of the agenda. I do have um or we all do have one additional item at our tables um that I would uh add as number 6E if that is acceptable. 6E. There's a motion. Second by Bill. Any further discussion? Okay, we'll go ahead and take a roll call vote. Lynn, yes. Thomasino, yes. Larson, yes. Cleven, yes. Hodak, yes. Anderson, yes. Manley, yes. Burger, yes. I'll switch that next time. All right. Number three on our agenda tonight is celebrating success. We have Grand Fork Central High School uh team members here to uh present to us and provide us um a presentation. Uh I'll call on John Strandell to lead us off. Good evening. Thank you, Vice President Anderson, Dr. Brener, members of the board, executive cabinet. Uh we are excited

003to be here tonight to uh tell our story. Um, we will eventually get to some data and some goals, but I think we would like to begin talking just a little bit about Grand Fork Central High School and u really who we are. We uh start off with a picture of our 139th graduating class. That is the group that will graduate on June 2nd. Um 139th graduating class. I'll say that again. So, a big part of Grand Fork Central High School, of course, is the history of the school. Um, dating back to 1882, our first graduating class in 1886. And this senior portrait on the front steps is is one of those traditions I think that we cherish and students look forward to um every year. Uh, but it isn't history and how long we've

004been around isn't all we are at Grand Fork Central High School. Um we have feeders from Valley obviously is the largest feeder school with all their students coming to Central. We get probably about 30% of our enrollment comes or 30% of an eighth grade class from Shrader Middle School comes to Central. We get all of Twining U middle school at Central High School. Manville eighth graders come to Central High School. We get a handful of kids from South Middle School every year and the same is true from Emiro. So if you add those up, that's six feeder schools into Grand Fork Central. Coming from kind of a wide variety, at least a North Dakota wide variety of backgrounds. Um from the uh agricultural community of Manville to all across the world at Twining, um from

005Shrader and South, typically those are if they're not within our neighborhoods, their their parents, grandparents, um maybe their whole family down the line went to Grand Fork Central High School. So, we really feel like we get, like I said, kind of a North Dakota diverse feel from all of those kids coming together. It's a challenge to have that many feeder schools and get them to come to be in one school. I think that's one of our successes is getting all of them to feel like they belong. And I think that'll be part of what you'll hear as part of our presentation um this evening. So, who are we? Um just a little bit about our demographics. you can see up there. Um, the majority of our students are are typically underassmen. The nth grade class

006is 27% of our enrollment. Um, and then in our the race and ethnicity up there, you see that um most of our students are white, 65% of them, but the next largest group might be a surprise to some people. 14% of our students are Hispanic, 10% are black, 7% Native American, and 3% Asian-Americans. We have 1,045 students at Grand Fork Central High School today. Of those 10,045 students, 303, nearly a third of them are taking an advanced dual credit or enriched course. Um, you'll hear a little bit later this evening about the AVID program at Central High School. One of the goals of that program is to raise enrollments in those advanced courses. You can see the breakdown between AP courses, dual credit courses, and enrollments in other enriched and advanced courses at Central. Uh,

007in 2024, we had more national merit finalists than any other school in North Dakota. At this time, 20% of our students are on an IEP. That is the highest percentage in a class A school in North Dakota. About 11% of our kids are on a 504. 149 of them receive support in some kind of class that's added to their schedule. According to ND Insights, 32% of our students would be um qualified as low income. That is the third highest in the state between one school with 36% and another with 33%. And maybe another fact that you weren't really all that aware of, we have a pretty high mobility rate. 32% of our students are either moving in or out of Grand Fork Central High School during their career. So, I'm going to go back to

008what I identified as a challenge is bringing all those kids in together from different middle schools and areas. This is another one. as new kids come in, um to get them to feel part of the group, to feel welcomed, and maybe the fact that we have so many feeders makes those kids understand what it's like to be the new kid because I think those kids that come in, there's some quotes that we'll share with you throughout the presentation, but I feel like we make those kids that come in feel welcome and part of the group as well at Central. our staff. We've had quite a bit of turnover in staff in the last few years. As you can see from up there, um almost 40% of our staff has been in education or at Central,

009uh 5 years or less. Um that's a big chunk of who we are. I think when I came to Central, um most of the teachers had been there their entire careers or a good chunk of their careers had been there a long time. So, um when that happens, we feel like we have a really good culture at Central High School. We feel like it it has a family feel. We use that word a lot about family, but when you have that kind of turnover, there's always the concern about do you hold on to that? Does that same feeling endure over time? Um, and that's really uh incumbent upon us to make sure that that's how people feel when they come into the building, that they feel accepted and supported and part of a team. And

010really part of a a pretty big and important piece of our culture, which is raising the next generation of learners to to send them out into the world to hopefully succeed. As part of our presentation, we're going to transition, and I brought a team of wonderful folks with me here tonight. Um we we're going to transition between topics and when we do so we're going to show a slide that has a quote from our senior survey. So the end of our senior year in May, Dr. D will talk a little bit about this survey. They're asked a number of questions, some of them open-ended and uh one of the open-ended prompts are what are two things that we could change at Grand Fork Central High School and what are two things that you appreciate about

011Central High School. So I'll be the first transition. One student said this. This is member of the the last graduating class, the class of 2024. Things they appreciate. Tradition, caring for others, kind people, funny people, families of all sorts, grit, and history. As Mr. Strandell mentioned, um, we're going to talk about the senior survey. So, my name is Gabe Dah. I'm an associate principal. Um at the end of the four years, we ask students to reflect on their journey and to give us some insights on their experience, the four years they spent at Central High School. Um the things that we focus on with them are on these topics, the classroom experience, the school climate, future plans, and as Mr. Strandley mentioned, we ask two open-ended questions, and that's where we get the greatest amount

012of feedback. This is anonymous. All of our students answer it and they are extremely honest, somewhat opinionated, but it's great because we know exactly how they feel, but there's way more positives than negative. They could say whatever they want, and they always say, gosh, if there's something I could improve, this is what it be on. But I love you're going to see some of the quotes that we see that some of them are going to be funny, but there are a lot of insights as what they experienced over their four years at Central High School. So, that gives you a little background on what it is, but it's also we're going to look at how the students feel because we have a sense of what it feels like to be at Central High School, but

013now you're going to get to see what the students are and uh how they feel when they're there. He mentioned that we come from multiple backgrounds, multiple feeder schools, multiple countries. We have students from all over the world. Yet, we know that students in order to learn, they have to feel comfortable. They have to feel safe. So, how do they feel at our campus? 91% of students say that teachers care about me and 96 and a half students would say that at least one teacher knew them really, really well. So, again, going back to that in order to be able to learn to do hard things, I got to feel comfortable and they know that there's an adult that cares about them and uh we will will have their back at any moment. So, that's

014when a student knows that they feel comfortable. It also gives us valuable insights about who we are teaching on a daily basis. I think this is a real real telling tale about the kids that are at Central High School and Katie's going to talk about this later, but we were going to have an aid student come and talk to us today or talk to you guys and give us her aid experience, but unfortunately she was not able to find someone to cover her shift. But this gives you an insight. Over the last 3 years, the seniors that have uh graduated from Central High School, 50% of them work at least 16 hours a day. So imagine you put a or sorry, sorry, that'd be amazing if it was 16 hours a day. I don't know

015when they'd go to school or sleep. Sorry, 16 hours a week. So if you if you think about that, you're at school till 4:00, then on average you go to work, then you have to do homework. That's a pretty long day. But again, you go back to hard workers. And then we also know I have a teacher that cares about me. So they can look at them and say, "I know you're tired, but I'm going to challenge you still." And they're going to follow through with them because they know that teacher cares about them. So again, that teaches the climate, but it also tells us who we have in our classroom and who's are sitting in those seats every day. Not only that, this also tells you how they feel from certain aspects. So if

016you take a look at the top one, uh Mr. Wilbur and I don't always get to deliver the nicest things to the students, but students will say that 90% of the time they felt like they were treated respectfully in a disciplinary background. So, I think we look at that and say that's a pretty positive aspect. 86% of students say counselors treat them respectfully. 94 say treat uh teachers rece uh treat them respectfully and the office staff. So, students feel comfortable with us and that's what we hang our hat on. Again, to do hard things, you have to feel welcome in in an environment. So, what I just looked at is what does the end look like? Mike is going to talk about the temperature checks that are taken along the year. So, thanks Gabe. Uh,

017so we've been given the Panorama survey for the last couple of years. Uh, started with it in the spring of 2022 kind of as a pilot and then did it again in the spring of 2023 and then we're starting to actually get a little more aggressive in terms of the amount of surveys that we're giving. So, we went from, you know, one to two and and now actually we do a fall, a winter, and also a spring survey. We've just pulled some data out of this. Um, so you guys can kind of see some of the things that we are successful at and some maybe some growth areas too for us. Uh, so one of the things that we're pretty proud of, as you can see towards the top of the screen there, that supportive

018relationships one, uh, 87% of the students that responded responded favorably and that put us in the 80th to 99th percentile nationally compared to other high schools. So, that's something that we feel really, really good about. Um, and then the one below that is teacher student relationships. And I thought that showed a pretty nice trend, growth trend from the first time that we gave the survey at a 52% responding favorably, uh, moving up to 61%. And there's some things that we're intentionally trying to do to improve some of those things. Uh, another thing that we're pretty proud of is, uh, you look at overall safety and security within the confines of our school. And, and this is an area that we typically score very high with on students. And you can see on the on the

019left side of the screen uh some of the different uh questions and and uh topics that are covered uh under that umbrella. Um but then also on the right side you can kind of see the trend data in terms of how we've been uh how we've been doing. So you can see the the last uh last survey was 88% of the students within those categories responded favorably to the things that we have in place at Central. Uh, and that goes to, you know, a commitment that the district has made, obviously, uh, with things like, uh, we haveund, I think it's 111 HD cameras in our building, which is extremely helpful. Uh, grant writing with, uh, the vape detectors that Gabe worked on, um, in our bathrooms. Uh, the pushto talk buttons, uh, to get into

020our our facility. Uh, having a phenomenal SRO who's behind me over here on the right side, uh, who's been working in the building for a number of years and knows kids with the text to tip. So, all those things factor in on um I think that that that feeling of it being a safe place and a place that kids can if they're having issues, they can come and talk to adults and we'll help them. Uh an area of growth for us within the Panorama uh data is uh how much do you feel like you belong at your school? Uh and the last one that we ran about 49% of our students responded favorably to that. Uh you can see it's down since the uh the fall survey uh of this school year. Uh so that

021was an area of growth that we've uh you know and and how do you go about addressing that? And some of the stuff we talk about, if you look at the bottom right up there, uh it's uh it's one of those Lyker scale things that I'm not always a huge fan of is there's kind of a middle ground that kids can answer. And you can see that 32% of our kids responded with belong somewhat. And um you know, it'd be nice to have them on one side or the other. And if you if you look at the the total numbers that are up there, uh about 19% of our students were on on the the wrong side of that or the not great side of that. And so that's something that we want to obviously

022work on. And one of the things that we're able to do with the Panorama survey is uh students have to put in their school IDs. And so if there's kids that aren't connecting to anybody in our building, our MTSS team, which uh we'll talk about later, um can actually uh figure out who those students are and then try to be intentional to uh have one of their teachers check in on them and try to foster. I mean, it just to in a in an authentic way. You know, this is a kid that's not connecting in our school and we're a little bit worried about that. can you go and maybe just, you know, touch base with them or you have a connection with them. Would you take a little bit extra time with them just

023to see if we can start gaining that that connection and that relationship uh with the students? That's something that we're we're pretty intentional about. Uh this is another quote from the senior survey before we transition to the next person. Uh I appreciate everything the teachers do for me at GFC and I feel like each time I walk through the doors, everyone is very welcoming. This person from class of 2022. One of our goal areas like um other schools across the state of North Dakota is related to the choice ready initiative um that the the state brought to us. Um I think you're fairly um familiar with this structure and and some of the measures that go into being choice ready. really the the the bottom line from the state is they want every student that

024graduates to have opportunities to have choices to be able to make decisions and in order to do that you have to have a certain amount of knowledge and skills that give you choices um for how you're going to move in the future. So for us as a school, one of the strengths was workforce ready, which isn't really a surprise when we're seeing that we have kids that are in the workforce already. Um, one challenge to choice ready in and how it's reported is that we have a dashboard that students and parents can access to see their students progress towards being choice ready. And so, just real quickly, the blue um oval at the top is essential skills. And you must um master that section by having four indicators true of you in order to be

025choice ready. If you don't have the essential skills, it's not possible. If you do meet that standard of essential skills, then you need two of the three gold columns underneath that post-secary, workforce or military ready. Okay. So, for us under workforce ready, part of the challenge is much of the information is pulled from powers school, but not all of it. Some of it is self-reported by students. Um, for example, if you can see, it's pretty pretty small print, I can see, but workplace learning experiences 40 hours. So I tell kids, this is 40 hours of work from the time you entered nth grade till your senior year. It's really almost impossible that you haven't worked 40 hours during this time. But they have to go in, access that, and record where they've worked and they're

026not good about doing that. So we've really worked at getting there, take that out, open it up, write down what you've put down because we know that you've worked. So that is a strength of ours. However, the self-reporting piece becomes a challenge sometimes. um what are our growth areas? One was military ready and really that um that standard for military ready is is relies pretty heavily on your score on the ASVAB test. Really we have to um move beyond I think the uh perception that the ASVAB test means you're going to enter the military and it really doesn't. It serves as a way for students to understand what do my skills interests match up with in terms of a career choice. So, we use it more as a career planning tool. And now that the

027state of North Dakota, the North Dakota scholarship, which aligns really closely with the structure you see up there, but not completely, but having a a passing score on the ASVAB as part of the North Dakota scholarship, that becomes a carrot. Excuse me. In terms of that scholarship, we also had to overcome the idea that it's just for students who are attending a 4-year school. That is not the case. uh it can be an apprenticeship, a trade school, uh a junior college or the University of North Dakota for example. So a strength uh one of our worries there or excuse me, one of our concerns there or challenges was really the perception of the ASVAB and getting students to understand its importance. Um so we bring in folks from the military do proctor that test and

028then once the results come back they will come to school and explain to students what the results look like, what they mean for them. So that's becoming more of a culture at school for us because of those things. Um other challenges for us post-secary ready would be and some of the things we've done in the the past year accessing grants from the state of North Dakota is um we're offering the ACT test at school. So that's no longer our state assessment and that was always the practice to offer the ACT test. But being choice ready is heavily reliant on an ACT score. So having it at school removes a barrier for that test, including the cost, by the way. Um, in addition to that, we've had students sign up for free ACT prep at school.

029Um, we're paying for students to take their first dual credit courses through these grants for the state. So all of those kinds of activities, um, from taking a dual credit class, that means I'm I'm closer to being post-secary ready. So that's a goal area for us as well. in that essential skills box at the top. Um, we have one of them is a capstone project, really a culminating project, excuse me, that um encapsulates your entire high school career for us. Um, we've taken our Grand Fork Central portrait of a graduate and made that part of the the senior composition project. So all students in senior composition will do a reflective piece about where they're at in terms of the skills that are on the Grand Fork Central portrait of a graduate. So that's been helpful.

030Lastly, a goal area for us is extra and co-curricular activities. Um, one of the reasons we we kind of struggle in this area is because we have so many students who are working. So they're not able to um be a part of these activities. Another one is this is another one of those areas that is self-reported. So, we struggle with kids going in there and actually updating their information. So, we're working through through that. All right, another quote. This is a a response to two things that I appreciate about Central High School. The teachers, I'll greatly miss them and the relationships I've developed with them. They've definitely helped me with who I am. Oh, it's me again. you lucky guys. All right. So, I I spoke a little bit about the Grand Fork Central portrait

031of a graduate. Uh I think we're going to say 19 2019 is when we began talking about um you know, a diploma represents somebody's acquisition of the knowledge and the standards that are required by the state. But in the end, uh knowing information, having all of those standards met only means some some piece of who you are. we were really concerned about who are these folks that we're sending out into the world and really what does the world need from them. Um that's where the idea of the the portrait of a graduate came from with a lot of help from Dr. Katherine Galatch actually who kind of gave me the idea to investigate into this. The question we asked oursel as a staff was what does it mean to be a Grand Fork Central graduate,

032right? Um who are the graduates that we have and what are their skills, their habits of mind? um that they possess as they move out into the world. And then additionally, what is it that the city, the state, the region, our country or the world needs from the next generation? And then how can we contribute to those needs? So, how do you decide what all those skills and attributes are? We we decided to ask folks. So we sent out surveys to Grand Forks businesses and industries um to parents to central alumni and then to postsecary institutions and asked them from each of your unique lenses what is it that you need? What do you think that young people should um what kind of people should they be? Right? So in addition to knowing things, what

033kind of people should they be? That was a big piece of it. So we took all of their responses and there were a lot and organized them into themes and those themes then became the the portrait of a graduate. So this graphic one of the big the fun things about this project has been the student involvement in it. This graphic was produced by one of our students in graphic arts class a member of the class of 2022. Um so we had given her the skills and attributes and and the themes that we kind of came up with. So wellness for example has five attributes underneath it and you can see self-directed, active citizen, effective communicator, and ethical and humane citizen. We spend time each year not only educating our freshmen about what each of these

034things mean. And we do that because our dual credit credit speech students and our video production students get together to create videos that are informational and help explain the portrait. Um, and so we just had actually had uh this year's students make the second version of these videos kind of updating them a little bit, but this really becomes the framework of who we want these kids to be. And if you take a look at those skills, I don't think we're missing anything. We'll continually take a look at this and reflect upon it to see is this still um relevant to to what the world needs today. But I I look at some of those things and think, gosh, if adults all had those skills, we'd be in a pretty good spot right now. So, it's

035it's a lofty goal, but I think uh having the students dig into each of them and see what they would mean to them and then of course start to assess their own progress towards the portrait, it's pretty important work for us at at Central High School. Oh, I'm kind of hogging the mic. I could use some water actually. Um, all right. Next for me is talking a little bit more about our goals. But here's another quote. First of all, I'm just kidding, Gabe. You do not need to get me any water. I knew he would do it. I just knew he would do it. So, two things you feel you appreciate about Grand Fork Central High School. Again, the feeling of welcome and safety. Teachers and staff want you to be there. also the effort

036for connection that teachers and other staff make to get to know students and to help them succeed. A member of the class of 2022. Our B legendary goals, right, the academic goals we have at Central High School, as you know by now, are either in the area of English language arts or math. Um we are taking the North Dakota State Assessment, NDA Plus is the platform here in two weeks. Two weeks. So, it's the first time we've interacted with this platform. We've not used um there are potential opportunities to use the same platform for your interim tests. Our district uses the STAR test. So, it will be our first time students have have logged in and use this test. So, we'll have to see what that looks like and get a better idea of the

037test itself um when and look forward to the results after we've done that. We're really focused on monitoring our progress based upon the STAR test that I just talked to you about uh as far as our progress monitoring. So, you can see the the benchmarks are not they're not huge leaps in terms of a goal. We're looking to go from 48% at or above the benchmark to 49% this year in the STAR test in the spring. Um so in doing that it really makes it um the goal of our team to take a look at jumping up a percentile point. What does that mean in what areas? What are our deficits and what are our strengths? So we examine um ACT data as well as past state assessment data and STAR data to come up

038with our our goals and really our action plan. So, this is the action plan for literacy at Grand Fork Central High School. Um, the first one says that students will access non-fiction text and media to increase their background knowledge. Uh, we we talk a lot about how generationally the students experience is just different, right, than than what we've had. I sat down with the family at supper. We watched the news every night, right? That was just part of what we did. So when I came to school, terms uh were familiar to me, right? The teacher would talk about things. I had some ability to reflect upon my own experience and and that isn't happening as much anymore, particularly when kids aren't home and they're working like we see so many of them at Central. So

039we feel like that's a big piece of this. We have to their knowledge needs to be increased. Um and how do we do that? We mostly think it's through informational text, but it's not limited to text. It could be a podcast. It could be a video, but really just to increase that background knowledge. As part of our AVID work, one of the strategies we use is called focus notes. You might hear a little bit more about that in the future um tonight, but that really requires students to be taking in information, recording it, organizing it, processing it, working with a partner to collaborate to make sure they're understanding squares with what it should be. So, it's pretty active in terms of taking in that information. So that's goal number one. The second one was that

040students read these articles and text to determine the main idea. Oddly enough, I can give students text or even a graph and have them pull out information and they can recall it. Um I can ask them a specific question about let's say I always use this example, what does wheat production look like in Russia in this year? And they'll find the information. They'll be able to understand what it means. But if I say let's take the entire text, this entire article about economics in Europe, can you tell me what the main idea is? And and that is where their struggle comes in. So as part of our focus notes that are referred to, we have them mark the text to be able to develop evidence so that they can support. They start to figure out

041by looking at the evidence to go, what is this article saying to me? And then they can also start to look at who's the author. And because each of us come in with our own perspective, what is the perspective of that author and what do they bring in terms of bias? And not that bias is a bad thing, that that's just a natural part of of life. The third goal is a focus on guaranteed vocabulary. Again, we're going back to not having background knowledge and how vocabulary really is the key to understanding not only what is being said, but also what is expected of you. This is big on assessments. when students are asked let's say to um hypothesize something and then they wonder I'm not sure what hypothesiz means right the last one is

042we we decided we probably need to uh apply a number to uh the requirement for non-fiction in classes and so many classes let's say social study are going to say all we do is read text or take in information and it's all background information so we're just doing it there are other courses where that's not the case and we're asking them to start to bring in opportunities to look at the Grand Forks Herald, um, Avid Weekly articles. We get free versions of the New York Times, take in information and and practice all these skills we have as part of our, um, literacy action plan. Shoot. Am I really done? I think so. Everyone's so much taller than me. Okay. Hi, I'm Katie Arthur. Um, you're going to learn about the many hats that I wear

043today. Um, one of those is the data steward for Grand Fork Central. So, I get to share some of the data with you when it and when it comes to monitoring our um, be legendary goals. So, this is the star reading proficiency rate. Our monitoring goal is in the spring of 2025, we will be at 49% proficient or advanced. And as you can see, we are as of our last date in the winter uh, 46.4. So, we're about two and a half percentage points away from meeting our goal. You can kind of see the trend there. Um, we started last fall. Uh, typically star scores in the winter typically dip and that's what we are seeing this year. Last year, we didn't see that. And when we take a look at our math data, we

044will not see that either, but in years prior, our our scores dip in the winter and come back up in the um winter or in the spring. So the STAR assessment is we use that for a monitoring goal. It's an adaptive test. And so what that means is when students are taking the test, they get an answer correct, the test will go one way. Then if you get an answer incorrect, the test will go a different path. So in this this uh data that we have here, there's a standard that aligns with our goal. when students read articles um to or text to determine the main idea. The standard that some students might come across is listed there, but not all students will be assessed on it. It depends on their adaptive way throughout their

045assessment. So you can see that those who were assessed in that standard uh we increased five percentage points uh in the secure area which is the prof proficient uh with our nth graders. The 10th graders uh uh increased with 2% and then we kind of were steady with our 11th graders. Similar data with this other standard again adaptive it's an adaptive test. So those who came across the standard on summarizing and paraphrasing non-fiction texts, you can see we were up 6% in our ninth with our nth graders. We dropped with our sophomores and we're up um three percentage points with our juniors. So this is all good data to share and look at when we are um making informed decisions with our goals and what our um goals should be when monitoring our B legendary

046goals. Uh so this is an interesting report. This is I have to paraphrase this. This is or preface this with this is a district benchmark distribution. All of the other data is state benchmark. And what that means is the state kind of sets the benchmark with those reports. This one our district sets the benchmark. So it's not comparable. Uh what really sh tells us about this though is if you look on the right hand side with the number of students. So 273 of our 9th graders took this um assessment and of those 273 92 of them were here in fifth grade and also took the assessment. So you can see the mobility there of about 80 students that were not here now um that that were here in or that are taking the test now.

047Um so this is the five-year longitudinal report. Um, what it really tells us that if our students are here, they do well. Our teachers work hard to help close those gaps when they do come. It's if they are not in mobile, it's it's it's hard to address the gaps and close the gaps. 10th grade is very similar numbers. 200 out of the 245 sophomores, um, 191 of them were in the Grand Forks public schools 5 years ago that also took the assessment. Same with our juniors. 256 juniors, 203 of them were here in seventh grade. Uh the longitudinal 5-year report and you can see the proficiency rates again as our district benchmark sets are positive when students are here. Uh this is one of our favorite pictures of Corporal Kaiser. Um his name is going

048to come up a few times and I know he's in the back there. Um, this is at the Kushman Classic getting the student section all riled up. But, uh, a graduate from 2022 says, "I appreciate how committed the school is to creating a sense of family and inclusion. You can tell that the teachers are only looking out for what's best for you and want to help you achieve your goals." Okay. I have the opportunity to work with our math department and as Mr. Shandell mentioned, we're looking at a 1%age increase in English, but we're also looking at 1% increase in math. So, as you can see in math, we're looking at 33 to 34% as measured by the NDA plus. And then from the STAR assessment, we're looking to go at 56 to 50% uh

04956 to 57% as measured by STAR data. So, you can see that. So what really happened next is probably the important thing going to the math department and really digging into how do we get from 56 to 57 or 30 33 to 34 math people will look to see okay how can we make this be crosscurricular and what I mean by that is when we look at a goal like this how do we ensure that it's the entire school that is working on this and not just the math department so when they look at their data they look to see how can each department buy into this and look to see how they can help that so that's what the math people really really focused on when looking at their data as how can other

050departments use this to make Grand Fork Central a better place ultimately came to this students will analyze scenarios graphs data sets and diagrams to come to reasonable conclusions so we think about it if I'm doing a math problem and I'm going to speak to math at this point if I come to an answer is my answer reasonable does it make sense so when I said it we work 16 hours a day was that a reasonable answer no that wasn't a reasonable statement that I made. So I was forced to come back to it. But if you think about that when you come to something, is something reasonable? That's what we want students to be able to do in all aspects of school. Look back on something. Does my answer make sense? Then making sense out

051of a graph, a data set, a diagram, a scenario and chart that can grow across curricular and you can find that in every content area and all people are then working towards that common goal. So that's why this was a key and this is the main and this was important to us. It also going back to the literacy, what is the main idea? Who's providing the information? What is the bias? But asking the question, does this information make sense? We always want people to go back, does this information make sense? And what I'm [Music] reading, more data to support that goal. As you can see, our monitoring goals in the spring of 2025, GFC will be at 50 57% proficient or advanced. And you can see our winter star scores already proving that. So, we're

052hoping to maintain that number and continue to grow, although um you can see the trend from last year where we were up in the winter and came back down in the spring. So, we're continuing to hope that we stay above that 57% proficient. So, again, the adaptive test, not all students will come across this standard. In fact, our sophomore class is uh assessed on geometry standards and only our ninth grade and 11th grade are assessed on algebra. So this standard came across in those two grade levels and if that came across their test. Uh you can see in ninth grade we were down a percentage point in secure but we did mo move more students from beginning to developing and then also our our juniors were up 3% um growth. Go ahead. So, I know

053we haven't administered the NDA plus yet. Um, and so I'm wondering if part of the percentage of like the 33 to 34 is just a shot in the dark of like what will come out of. How do you explain to the lay public like when when we come to schoolboard meetings or we report data and they say, "Well, how come this test has a x proficiency but this test has a x proficiency and they're, you know, 20 percentage points different potentially?" Um, how how do we help fix it? And I know things are new and stuff, but um I think that would be helpful for the board too, just academic wise, you know, and I think that's part of a larger discussion in terms of like what's the assessment model or vehicle that we're going

054to be using moving forward. There's been a ton of changes in the last 5 years in terms of what we've been doing at the high school level, right? STAR wasn't something that was anything that we used 3 years ago. And so we got STAR going knowing that NDA Plus, which is the state assessment, is also kind of lurking in the background. And you know, both NDA Plus and STAR count at the state level as an interim assessment. All right, NDA Plus is the only one that counts as a summit of assessment. And just know that we're continually working with the district office and people out here on what's the what's the best path forward for us. The hard part is we we went down the path of STAR knowing that NDA plus was probably going

055to become a reality and there were some benefits to doing that specifically the longitudinal data that was provided because STAR testing has been going on forever for kids in the elementary and middle schools right so now we have at the high school too so you can track a kid all the way through their their schooling experience so that's a positive okay but the other side of it is and I'm the one that does all the assessments right so I'm the one that has to send the emails out to all the teachers every time we're doing it and it's hard because we're taking classroom time away from them right and um And so we we're trying to be strategic in terms of how many times we're uh disrupting the classroom experience for for those testing opportunities.

056But I'm I'm with you. I I would like something that, you know, is a little bit clearer for us in terms of, you know, are we going to go with STAR? Are we going to go to NDA plus? Looks like the trajectory is probably heading towards NDA plus, but we've committed to STAR and we've been there for the last couple years. So I don't know if we're just going to throw that away either. So I'm sorry I don't have like a real great answer for you yet. And we know it is a little bit messy, but I think that's just part of the process that we go through as we're adding these things in. Go ahead, Katherine, if you wanted to add something. No, it was very well articulated, Mike. Um, on top of that,

057there have been some correlative studies that um the STAR is a a decent predictor of performance on the NDA or and the former North Dakota assessment. We don't know what those um correlations are with the new assessment that's coming up. So, we're kind of in the in Yeah, we're in the transition mode right now. So valid question. Um there were it was a predictor at one point and now we're not sure yet. So we'll find out if we switch course or not again. Sure. I I appreciate that answer. I mean I think my biggest fear is when we talk about this in public that people might see well you guys were at 55 and now you went to 33 and they just maybe won't delineate. So we know what interim in summitive probably means but

058I think when we talk about that using language and words that are probably a little more watered down would help you know what does that mean? What is a a summitative? Is it the whole year? Is it you know um because I think then we can start to really help the public understand like these aren't two of the same tests. So we didn't administer one in the winter and one in the spring and our numbers went down and um you know especially as we are seeing some really great progression and the schools are really involved in the collection of data but really what do we do with helping you know students achieve uh better progression um I just want to make sure that we're trying to be as clear as muddy as possible So, I

059appreciate that. I mean, it helps us understand and and more to come, I guess. Any other questions? No. Did all you have some questions from board members? Okay. Katie alluded this earlier when she was talking from the English portion of this that this is the benchmark that is set forth by the district. So, as we look at this, there's two major themes that pop out to us when we look at this information. The first theme tells us that when we have students that are with us from fifth grade all the way to 9th grade that have the consistent of the same curriculum moving through that that they do a really really good job. As you can see is the vast majority of them are in the green. So it tells two two out of every

060three or 66% of them are at or above the 50th percentile. So but then it also gives us a little insight that we go back to what is our mobility rate. Okay, if our mobility rate is hovering around 33%, that brings us to where are the rest of them? Okay, so we know that that's something that the second theme is our mobility. How do we improve on that? And what I mean by that is if a student comes into us from our district, how do we identify what are their gaps? How do we catch them up and how do we bring them so we can meet at that point? You're going to hear more from us later about things that we are talking about to help students like this. U Mr. Shandel's talked a little

061bit or and Katie have already talked about the MTSS process. Um that's going to be a major part of coming up at the end of this, but that is how we help students to identify what are their gaps and how do we bring them up to a place where they can be successful because as you know we have students that have gaps and we need to bring them to the level. So that's going to be the major theme of each one of these. Um as you can see it's the mobility rate but this one is at 68% and this one's at 71%. So again, we're going back to that consistency. When we have students that are with us for those 5-year trends, we do really well with them. But it's again, how do we catch

062up the other students? And that's something that we're really digging into and systematizing. How do we help our students that are maybe struggling learners through our MTSS process? So, a quote from the class of 2021, how Central looks to push their students to be the best versions of themselves. I'm not sure what hat this fits under for me, but um the third B legendary goal is our Native American graduation rate graduation rate and our goal to increase Native American on-time graduation rates from 65% in the spring of 2023 to 74% in the spring of 2028 as measured by North Dakota DPI. So, some of the things that we have been doing is our administrators and counselors sit down and uh generated a list of all of our Native American students within our building. Um, we

063are doing periodic checks and to check their progress to see where they're at when it comes to um finding success and graduating on time. Some of the things that we've been doing is we've had a great partnership with Derek Sporbert and through TRIO. um he's been just incredible with providing um mentors from the TRIO program to come in and be Native American mentors. Uh our goal with that is to promote a connect connectedness to school, um help increase our attendance, provide mentorship, celebrate culture, and ultimately increase our graduation rates. So, some of the things we do at these lunches is all Native American students are invited. Um TRIO provides lunch for us. Uh and students are welcome to come down during their lunch. Uh they do some culture activities such as uh the last one

064is uh people who created this virtual reality pow-wow game came in and shared with us how that works. It was very interesting. Um we've done smudging practice. We have um did some artwork with our beads like beading activity. Uh we've had a great turnout uh 25 to 40 students I would say come to our lunches and they would be once every other month. Uh one of the cool things is the connection that these mentors provide for our students. They really truly I feel see themselves within students who are achieving their doctorate degree at UND through TRIO or um be being in an athletic sport or just being a contributing member of society. I mean, uh, the connectedness to these have been a something that students look forward to. Students stop all the time in the

065hallway and say, "When is the next lunch? When are we going to get together again? When are they coming back?" Um, as far as our data goes or our stats, the rate in 2024 of last year was 70%. Uh, currently this year's seniors, we are on track with 15 out of 16 of our Native American students are currently on track to graduate. And then, um, our junior class, nine out of 13 are currently on track. Here are some pictures of that. One of the cool things too, it just shows uh the great many one of the many great things about Corporal Kaiser is he developed such great relationships with students in our building. I wish we could keep him forever. I hope he hears me. Um he uh the students had invited him to come

066and share in their their culture experience and their c their celebrating success at the end of last year. So that's a picture there. You can see the lunches happening. You can see Mr. Strandel serving lunch and then some of our students who are working on their art and craft um project. Um a graduate from 2021. This is maybe one of our favorite quotes. You guys didn't kick me out. You probably should have. But hey, look at me graduating. I learned how to have pride in my school community and what I do. So Amber, you were kind of jumping maybe a little bit ahead of us in terms of like the data that we look at. You know, here's something. I'll just ask this group and just show me raise of hands. How many of you

067guys remember taking the ACT? Just raise your hand. Okay. Now, without saying what the score was, how many of you guys remember what your score was? Okay. So, this is this is something that's been around for a long time. And uh and so when I started at at Central in 2020, uh had the privilege of bas basically trying to run that for the school and and getting that all set up logistically. Uh, and a couple years ago, um, this is something that the public generally can understand, right? If I throw out an ACT score, they can look at it. And, and one of the neat things at the time when I when I came into Central in 2020, um, is that it was a state assessment. So, you could actually compare large high schools across

068the state and how are we doing? And so, um, you know, I don't know if I need to hit it with the laser point or not, but if you go top left to the top right, you can see where Grand Fork Central is. and something you guys should be proud of and our community should be proud of. As you can see, Red River High School and Central High School are in the top 10 consistently and and actually in 2021 and 2022 in in the top five. Um, and so that was something that we were pretty proud of when you do a state comparison. The the issue with it is in 2022 it was no longer the state assessment and so we started seeing some of the larger class A schools going away from it. So,

069if you look at the bottom uh of that far right um uh uh uh data set, you'll see that May not and Jamestown didn't participate in uh in 2022. Uh and so what I thought is I I would grab um some national averages just to see how we um compare with uh our peers across the nation. Um so last year um it was actually they had the lowest ACT score that they've had in 30 years. Um and uh there was 1.4 million kids that took the test. It was about 34% of the graduating class took it. Um, but you can actually see, and I apologize it doesn't lay out real nicely, but that bottom right graph will have Grand Fork Central's scores for 2022 at the bottom at 20.9 and then 2023 24 at 19.6.

070And if you looked over on the left side, then that will give you the year's national average. And you can see um, both years we are actually above the the national average in terms of trend data for the ACT. So, uh, just something that, like I said, or Amber, that you were kind of getting at, something that people can look at and see how the the schools are performing, uh, in comparison to other individuals that are out there. So, uh, another quote for you guys, uh, class of 2022, everyone of the staff that I have conversations with are always wanting to have those conversations with me and are engaged. Central's core values are encouraging and help every single student become a better person. So, another one of my hats is I am the AVID district

071coordinator. So, I'm proud to say that Central is one of the five AVID schools that we have in our district. Um, there's so that's 50% of my job is the AVID district coordinator. The other 50% you'll hear at the end of our presentation. Um, but we there's two components of AVID. There's AVID st well first of all, AVID stands for advancement via individual determination. And you'll hear a couple more acronyms that we'll define for you. Um, but there's two components of AVID. There's AVID schoolwide and then there's AVID elective class, which um, Becca Lord will talk more about the AVID elective class. Everything that AVID has to do with the college and career readiness framework you can see is very closely aligned to their mission. And that mission is to close the opportunity gap to

072prepare all students to be college and career readiness in our society. Um when we first started AVID, this is year three, maybe year four, year three or four-ish. Um we started we the reason why we started so strong in my opinion is that we had a really strong vision mission which is our portrait of a graduate. If we didn't have that vision we and that belief in all students, AVID would not be where it is at today in our building. It is thriving in our building. Those four domains are what drives some of our decision- making, our instruction. We really worked hard this year is to define rigor. What does rigor mean? And then how can we raise the level of rigor through wicker professional development? And wicker stands for writing, inquiry, collaboration, organization, and

073reading. And those are the foundational strategies that help raise the level of rigor within our classrooms. Um, and then we had a strong emphasis on organization. Uh, Becca Lord is coming up next. She's our instructional coach and she is the AVID elective 10th grade classroom teacher and she's going to share about our systems and our culture. So, as Katie had mentioned, there are kind of two components to AVID Secondary with the schoolwide components and then the AVID elective. Talking now a little bit about our AVID elective. So, for the past two years, I've had the pleasure of serving as one of the AVID elective teachers at Grand Fork Central. Um, if you look in the bottom left portion of the text over there, you can see our AVID elective class progression and how we have

074built our structure to incorporate the AVID elective class. So, last year in 2023 2024, we had two sections of the 9th grade elective. I taught one of those and then the other one was taught by uh Mr. Casey Beck. This year, 24-25, we have two sections at 9th grade, still taught by Casey. And then I have the two sections at 10th grade. Next year we'll have two at 11th, two at 10th, two at 9th. And then in the 2026 2027 school year, we'll full reach implementation with all four grade levels having two sections each. And that'll compose roughly 120 students at that time. So we got some pictures from our classes up there. Um the students who are part of the AVID elective are very intentionally recruited. Um, they're kids who show academic potential whether

075or not they fully achieve that or able to achieve it in this moment or if they'll get there eventually. That's kind of what they're all about. Um, they're kids who have big dreams, um, but they have some pretty substantial barriers getting in the way of sometimes achieving all of those dreams. And this class is really about teaching them how to push through those obstacles when things get hard. Giving them the skills, giving them um all the things they will need to be able to be choice ready. We've talked about that a lot here today and that's a large component of this class. So within the class itself, uh we follow the curriculum as written out by AVID, which incorporates a large number of wicker strategies. Um, we also have some time to go to visit

076campuses of local colleges and universities. Um, we bring in guest speakers so that our students can hear from a variety of people with different career paths what it took for them to get there. Um, what they do in those roles now so that they can plan ahead, dream big, and start figuring out what they need to do to follow those dreams. Um, also those two pictures kind of in the middle, you've seen a lot of these actually kind of sprinkled throughout whether you noticed it or not with the whiteboards there. Uh, two days every week we have something called tutorials. And with that tutorial process, it's actually a very complicated, hard to master process. Um, but the way it works, our students come with a point of confusion from any of their other academic classes.

077They bring it in. They get into small groups of about four to five students. And through some very intentional guided questioning within their group of students, they help work through their points of confusion. So I get to kind of sit back, they get to ask one another, they get to teach one another without just being directive and telling them what to do. They learn through inquiry and collaboration as those are some pretty big components of Avid. Um, also in addition to that, um, we get to do some really good team building things to again build our collaboration, communication skills throughout our time together throughout the week. Um, it's not an easy class by any means. It is a difficult class. Um, but it is all about teaching these kids the skills they'll need to succeed

078moving forward. So, kind of along the same lines as Katie, I have a number of different roles at Central. I'm the instructional coach. I do teach two sections of the AVID elective and then I'm also our AVID site coordinator. So with that I can kind of go back to the schoolwide stuff. Um so Katie had already mentioned that within the instruction portion of the AVID framework organization has been a pretty big emphasis for us at Central. Um largely because of how well that aligns with everything we're doing with the portrait of a graduate. Uh so last year we brought back planners for every student and this year to promote their usage we were able to get uh little rewards donated by various businesses in our community like Shields, Freyels, Deaks, Albatross, Splashers. I'm going to

079forget a few. I shouldn't have named that many. Um, and then so once a month, Gabe, Katie, and myself, we uh select a random class, go in, just do a little audit of how people are using their planners, and those who are consistently using their planners receive whatever uh the prize is for that particular round. Um, it's a great way to celebrate responsibility, planner usage, and then just also it it's a good data point for us as we're looking at things that um we're doing towards our building goals. This all relates to another section within the AVID framework thinking about culture. So this year we began implementing college and career wear Wednesdays. Um and additionally I didn't put them up here. I should have but we also have little door signs outside of all the

080classrooms now that um show the colleges and universities that each of our teachers have attended, the degrees that they have earned. And though those might seem like small things, just like wearing a UND sweatshirt and having those little signs, it really is intended to promote the conversation and keep kids wondering and dreaming big for the colleges and careers that they have in their future. So Katie and um I believe John maybe everybody has alluded to the fact that AVID is really kind of a foundational part portion of how we do professional learning at Grand Fork Central. Um so on our February PD day, you can see some of our AVID elective kids who came in. Um the theme of that day was really just leveling up. And so those kids brought in their binders, bought

081in brought in all of their focus notes. They were able to share how they have learned to take focus notes, how they've learned to apply that learning uh to their other classes um to make their learning deeper and just all the other strategies that they have learned through the AVID elective um and how those have kind of supported them across the board. Um, I do think it is super worth noting that this was the first thing that we did on that day off from school. So, not only did these kids come in on a day off from school, they came in at 8:15 in the morning. So, that is something that I feel like we can totally celebrate. And they did a great job. They were so well spoken. I think I might be a

082little bit biased. I I am biased, but they did a great job. I think it was the highlight of the day. Um, they represented themselves so well. They represented the program so well. It was just a proud mama moment for sure. Um, and again, it was mentioned earlier, we wanted to have one of those students come in, but she's working tonight, so she was not able to do so. So, really just all of this wrapping up with the AVID portion of our little conversation tonight. Um, AVID is really all about opportunity and preparation. It empowers students with skills uh and the mindsets that they need to navigate their futures no matter their challenges. And it's so exciting to see um even more students coming into the program and getting access to AVID stuff throughout the

083district uh as they gain confidence and readiness um for all that's ahead. Oh, I get a quote. Another thing that our students are loving, the genuine love from the teachers and the students when they first moved here, class of 2021. I'll just uh make this one quick because I know Dr. uh or excuse me, Mr. Strandell and Dr. Chris Harrison already prepped you guys on the attendance uh portion of what we're doing at the high school level. Um this came out of the vital network survey that the state was initiating with districts around uh around North Dakota. Um you know, this is uh this is something we put a lot of effort into. Um and we have our our students classified as tier one, tier two, tier three, or tier four. Um, basically at tier

084one, uh, you've missed six class periods. Uh, and this is the quarter 3 data. We we look at this every nine weeks to see how we're doing. Um, and so individuals that are in the tier one would have missed six class periods of at least one class. Um, and then tier 2, uh, they would have missed uh, 10 class periods of at least one class. Uh, tier one, they get a text when that happens. Uh, tier two, social worker actually calls home, see how they're doing, what's going on, how can we help. Uh tier three, it would be an individual who's missed at least uh 12 class periods of at least one class. Uh that's when Gabe and I get initiated and we do attendance contracts, call home, check on the family, see what's going

085on. Uh and then uh tier four uh is when they've missed 18 uh class periods of uh at least one class. And at that point, uh they're they're they're dropped from the class. And um and then if uh there's an online uh curriculum that we use called Ingenuity, and we're we're not trying to put too much on a kid's plate, but we'll we'll go up to two classes to replace the class that they've that they've missed. Uh and again, that came from a vital network uh survey that was done and and looking at, you know, and you can see it with our our data, and we have phenomenal teachers at Grand Fork Central High School, and that was one of the things that was really burning them out was trying to uh you know, deal

086with the attendance issues that we were having at school and catching kids up that have been gone for three or four days. and then they're they're back for a day or two and then they're gone again for 5 days. So, this is a real intentional effort that our entire school has taken on and hopefully Joe can speak to it a little bit at some point in time, but also I think other teachers that I've spoken to uh they've been very appreciative of the work that uh that the people that are involved in the attendance policy have put in. Okay. Okay. The other 50% of my job is uh director of interventions at Grand Fork Central, which just basically means I help with a collaborative approach to help students find the best path in our building.

087So, over the last few years, we've have developed and created so many different pathways. I think two years ago when we were here, we shared about our school with a new school program. Um, and that along with our egeneuity, along with sale, along with our modified classes, um, you can see all of the different tiers of support that we have. So, we knew we knew we needed to formalize a system and a collaborative approach to make sure that we were consistent with which pathways students are are fitting into and then where we can meet them where they're at and then continue to help them be successful, put them in the best path toward success to graduate from Grand Fork Central High School. You've heard so many different data pieces that we use to collect and

088data does drive our decision-making. Um, so that's a part of our MTSS uh meetings. We meet every week. who's on that team that meets is our our counselors, our administrators, our social workers, our school psychologists, our uh corporal Kaiser, and myself. And so we dedicate time every week to meet and address any of the MTSS referrals that come in um from our staff to see what barriers are in the way and how we can collaboratively come up with a a way to remove those barriers so students find success. Did I miss anything, guys? Okay, I think that's it. You have any questions for us? Questions or comments from board members or other? Maybe I'll go to um Dave on the phone first if he has any questions or comments. Uh no questions. Appreciate the reports.

089Thank you. Others questions, comments. Jay, there is a reference to rigor and how you defined it. There is a question about rigor and how you defined it. How did you define it? Just in simple terms, I would say uh rigor means we're leading students to increasingly more complex levels of understanding. So, it's deeper learning is really what it's all about. You're we're not just learning terms, but um comparing and contrasting, describing, right? Thanks. Yep. You bet. Good question. Others, Sherry, in the beginning, I might have missed it. Um, but first of all, thank you. Great presentation, great data. Um, you talked about the surveys for the students that they were asking those questions. Are those state surveys generated or they're generated by all of you? Y. And so, do those surveys ever change? Um, we

090do look at them periodically and adjust the questions. It's also nice to have that longitudinal piece of, you know, some of those questions are pretty timeless, giving us the same information that that we would like to know. Um, I think it's just more of a reflective piece that there's no process involved in that if that's what you're asking. It's not a real standardized process to update it. Okay. The senior So, you're talking about the senior survey, correct? Yes. Yeah. Senior survey is what you're talking about where all these quotes came from. Exactly. Y it does ask how they learn best. Um and then it asks where they spend most their time learning in classes. So that also gives us a reference. Okay. How are students learning? Is that how they're really being taught in classes

091and try to mix those and make sure that we're doing the right. Yeah. And so every student takes every senior. It's like the second to last week of school. Senior. Yeah. All right. Thank you. You bet. Other questions, board members or others? Amber, Adriana, do you have something? I was just going to say that I really appreciate you guys acknowledging that like so many students at Central have a jobs like outside of school and like they work on the weekends, they work on weekdays like and it's so many people like I barely know anybody that doesn't have a job to be honest and it's just I really appreciate that because you know as a student who has a job it's it's nice to be seen like that and so you know that it just like

092it piles up you know. Thank you. You bet. Thank you. Amber, did you have something? I was asked this question, so I'm not biased because Central, you know, has a a dear place in my heart, but um if we could give you a wish or you uh had your own wish list, an unlimited pot of money, um what would you want the board to know that would be beneficial for day-to-day at Central that you could utilize some additional resources for? Wow. Um, when we met with local legislators last fall to talk about the attendance issues, I think we outlined to them um, a lot of the responsibility for a child that were at one time taken care of by juvenile probation, social services, a lot of those things have gone away in the last few

093years. And I think their answer to the question of who's going to take care of this, they will say we'll let the schools do that. um that that's a lot of pressure and work for probably roles we haven't had in the past and still trying to fulfill our educational mission with meeting those other needs that families have with the same staff, right? It hasn't really changed. Um that would be one. Some more parking would be nice. Maybe some athletic fields. Those would be nice, too. If you have a big checkbook, I don't know how many checks you have or how much money's in there, but those would all be great. Thank you. Other board member, other questions, comments? Just Dr. Brener, ju just a comment. First of all, thank you. thanks for your presentation this

094evening and uh I have the opportunity to periodically stop at Central High School and you know we we've talked about some of our new building projects and what that is going to be able to do for learning environments but what you and your team uh on all four levels have been able to do with a building that's well over 100 years old is just fascinating. um the the benefit of your building being stacked the way it is and how all of you are present in the corridors all the time and your teachers are is you know who your kids are and I feel that and I see it and I hear it every time I'm having a hallway conversation with the two of you or the three of you the admin and we're just we're

095visiting and students are walking by and you know all of your kids and so while your staff has flipped you know to more of the novice level group your culture has not u and it's a great place to be and I just commend you for continuing with uh onward at central in your culture. Thank you. Thank you Dr. Brer. Appreciate it. Thank you. One last chance. Anything Anything further from board members other questions or comments? Okay, hearing none. Thank you for the time tonight. Thank you for the presentation. We certainly appreciate it and highlighting uh um all there is to celebrate at Central High School. Thank you all. Sorry we went a little longer than we were. We've tried to be efficient. Thank [Music] you. Item four on our agenda is our public comment period.

096Ladies and gentlemen, we are about to convene into the public comment period of our meeting. Although state law does not require us to hold the public comment period. We have choose chosen to do so because we believe it is crucial for us to hear from our community members about their concerns and issues. Having said that, please note the bo board is here to listen. The public comment period is not designated or designed to be a discussion. accordingly. Please do not expect the board to respond to your concerns and questions now. This is because we take your concerns and questions seriously and want to have sufficient time to process and research issues if need be. We will however respond to your questions and concerns at a future meeting or have proper staff get back to you

097at the appropriate time. I also want to point out that at under state law, state and federal privacy laws, we are unable to entertain any comments or questions about school personnel. Please know, however, that we take personnel concerns very seriously on these matters. We would ask that you go through the appropriate administrative channels. Finally, we recognize that our nation and our community are polarized on a number of issues. That said, we want our schoolboard meetings to serve as an example to our students. those members of our school board and members of our community that members of our school board and members of our community can deal with controversial issues in a civil manner and demonstrate mutual respect for one another. In that spirit, we will insist that all speakers and members of the audience maintain

098civility and respect for any divergent views that others possess. We ask that speakers address their comments to the board directly. Finally, I also want to remind everyone that you may submit written comments to the board in lie of speaking during the public comment period if you so choose. The board will now entertain public comments. I have one comment card uh for an individual. Each individual speaker is allotted up to three minutes. At this time, I have a comment card for Ashlin. Sorry if I'm going to mispronounce an Ashlin Dearius. Could you please uh approach the microphone? Okay, thank you. Um I was just wondering if you guys were aware that um there's bullying going on in your guys's um in the school systems um Gmail system in public power school or not power school but

099classroom Google classroom. And it's not just happening like at one school. It's happening at a lot of like all the schools because my daughter is one of them and she's been receiving um emails from students at her school and also from South Middle School. Um this has been an issue since last year. I brought it to the attention of the principal and um they said they were going to um deactivate her Gmail account so she couldn't see those. But it's happening still and it's not deactivated cuz I saw it this weekend also. And I just I'm just worried for other students out there, not just mine, but other students also. And then I also have um another question. Um what is your proper procedure for um filing a compulsory attendance uh complaint? As I stated,

100this this isn't meant to be a question and answer, but I would direct you to your um the proper building administrator for your student um to to get that question answered. I can't get it answered at at the school. Um is there somebody else that I could speak with? You Okay. Okay. Um I'll follow up with you on both of those items. Okay. I also have other questions. Maybe I can talk with you about those, too. Absolutely. Okay. All right. Thank you guys for your time. Thank you. Thanks. Item five on our agenda, superintendent recommendation for recommendations for discussion. There are no items for discussion. And moving on to item six, superintendent recommendations for action. 6A is the consent agenda. Move approval. Dr. Lun moves approval. Sherry seconds. Are there any questions? We'll hold a

101roll call agenda or a roll call vote. I'm sorry. Hodak, yes. Larson, yes. Manley, yes. Cleven, yes. Burger, yes. Flynn, yes. Pomsino, yes. L. Yes. Anderson, yes. Nine, yes. Zero, no. Zero absent. Motion passes. 6B is the general fund financial statement. I will turn this over to Brandon. Chair Anderson, members of the board, I have for your um consideration here general fund financial statement for the first eight months of fiscal year 25. At the highest level, it's showing that our revenues are uh 84 a.5 million while our expenditures are about 72 million resulting in our revenues over expenditures of about 12.4 million. The first report here is how it's performed so far through through uh February. Um the actuals against the actual budget here. So at the top sheet of that first report, you can

102see a summary and really it's it's much that same story of those state dollars have come in on the revenue side. Um local and federal sources are also coming in. The local sources are lagging just a little bit which I'll explain to you on the second report provided. And then also in that same summary is is just right around that middle of 50% is in the salaries, fringe benefits and utilities put us right where we'd expect us to be at this point in the year. Um the other expenses actually have been down quite a little bit down. They're about 52% um coming along in the year. So we're watching that and that's a that's a favorable report. Uh the second one um which is the comparison report is helpful to compare at this point in

103time with the year prior. You can see what has really changed and you'll see those local sources on the revenue are showing down 6% or about $800,000. Um really what I point out in this is actually relevant to the primary residents tax credit. And the positive story there is the way that tax credit works is that was something that the state was giving back to our taxpayers. Uh $500 per primary residents. Uh this has come out, but we're expecting the county will be made whole by the state actually I believe last Friday and it will show up in our next April um financial report. So it's just a mechanism thing related to that tax credit. Just wanted to point that out. I made a few other notes here. Um uh but again you can see

104that when you look at the expenditures on the summary sheet they're down quite a bit from the year prior. This is showing almost 37% down. You'll have to remember that there was still still some ESR dollars in the system when you compare year when you compare year-over-year but it's still very positive too and hopeful for the um budget. Um just lastly, you see that graphical depiction, revenues, expenditures in the last three slides. The last one, the general fund balance. Um you can see some of those colors converging to a similar point. I wanted to point that out. I've talked about that throughout this year. A lot of times we'll have federal expenditures and we'll seek the reimbursement. So with those lagging dollars and the impact of esser coming off the green bar really shot up

105and it made us look um even in a a more beneficial position but it actually is coming out that they'll converge near this February and March which is the point where at this point last year the federal reimbursements would have come in. So, I just wanted to offer all those comments to you. On the first page of the cover memo, the administrative recommendations to approve the general fund financial statement for the period of July 1,24 through February 28, 2025. Happy to stand for any questions on anything I've said or anything that's in the report. Any questions from board members for Brandon? Dave, do you have any on the phone? No. Thank you. Thank you. Any others? If no questions, the administrative recommendation is for approval. Bill makes a motion. Second by Jeff. Any further questions

106or discussion? Hearing none, we'll take a roll call vote. Yes. Burger. Yes. Yes. Flynn, yes. Larson, yes. Manley, yes. Yes. Kodak, yes. Anderson, yes. Nine, yes. Zero, no. Zero absent. Motion passes. Item 6E or sorry, 6 C on the agenda is policy review. I will turn that over to Dr. Lun. If we were in a classroom, they'd probably have to separate Paul Mossino and I, but we're not in a classroom, but we might get separated anyway. So, uh um uh it's in your in your packet. These are the second readings for for these seven uh um policies. Uh and nothing has changed from the first reading. And I would make a motion that we approve uh those seven uh for their second reading and adoption. There's a motion for approval of uh uh the seven

107policies in the memorandum. Is there a second from Jay? Any questions or discussion? Hearing none, we'll go ahead and take a roll call vote. Barson, yes. Thomasino, yes. Cleven, yes. Lun, yes. Manley, yes. Burger, yes. Bodak, yes. Glenn, yes. Anderson, yes. Nine, yes. Zero, no. Zero absent. Motion passes. 6D is the uh finance committee report. Um I chaired the last meeting. So I will just provide that uh the finance committee did as shown in minutes meet on um March 24th and discussed uh the following two items. Item number one uh consideration of the bid results related to safety and security enhancements at Kelly. We have with us um Brandon uh Bombach to walk us through this along with Jonathan Elwine and Chad Dustin from construction engineers should we have any uh questions for them. Um

108I'll turn it over to Brandon. Yes, thank you. Members of the board, as mentioned, two items here just taken the first and and second, there are some action items associated with those. Um so firstly, Chad had come and made a presentation on the the bid results for safety and security enhancements for Kelly. The scope of that project is largely an interior remodel. There's a very small bumpout on the east side of the road right on on Cherry. And the estimate the estimate of the construction GMP prior to the bid was 725,000. It came in at 727,95. So awfully close on that. That's the construction component. There are some soft costs associated with that project. And that's how you get to the total project amount of 862,567. Finance Committee heard a full presentation on that and

109did recommend approval to this body to accept the GMP of 727905 um for those safety and security improvements for Kelly. Um we didn't have any prepared comment from the guys there, but as you know, they're available for any questions you might have. Thank you. Any questions? Dr. L. Just a quick question for Chad, maybe more more than anybody, and this is a unanswerable question, but I'm going to ask it anyway. Uh um from a from a construction standpoint with all the stuff that's going on with our government and our world and the tariffs and all that, it seems like right now we haven't had we haven't seen a big inflationary bump about this. Are we anticipating that that may happen down the road with because we're not done with all of our improvements. And I

110realize it's kind of an unanswerable question, but I want to give you a shot at it anyway. Yeah, thank you. Um, we are seeing some uh mostly related to any steel, which luckily we don't have a whole lot on some of these projects. Uh, we are getting some tariff related increased notifications from some of our subcontractors, specifically uh like specialty subcontractors that supply like bathroom, specialties, grab bars, things like that. A lot of that stuff is imported. Uh but generally we haven't seen any increases on any projects that we have to date minus some minor structural steel increases for things like lentils and and smaller items that we've got. But um a lot of that is why we carry construction contingency as well too in case any of those come up. Uh you know we

111have dollars set aside to account for that. Not a separate line item for tariff related increases but as we get into the projects we're having that conversation with with uh the biders and whatnot too. So, yep. Any other questions from board members in the room? Dave, any questions on the phone? No. Thank you. Thank you. Move to first. Okay. We have a motion to approve. Second. Second. Motion is by Dr. Lun, second by Jay. Any further questions or discussion? Hearing none, we'll take a roll call vote. Cleven, yes. Manley, yes. ODAC, yes. Burger, yes. Flynn, yes. Larson, yes. Lun, yes. Thomasino, yes. Anderson, yes. Nine, yes. Zero, no, zero absent. For item um, sorry, 6D2, consideration of building fund use for Lewis and Clark intercom. I'll turn it back to Brandon. Yes, thank you. The

112main crux of this question coming to the body is that according to North Dakota Century Code, if you use the building fund at all, it must be explic explicitly given permission from the board. And so this has a little less to do with actual permission to do the activity, but it's to use the building fund dollars for this project. But as noted in the cover memo, there was a recent failure of the intercom system at Lewis and Clark. Obviously, that's a key safety and security component to that building. Um and Jonathan had worked with Johnson Controls to put together a scope of work here. Uh we didn't bid that work because it doesn't exceed the thresholds and we're actually um we do a lot of work with Johnson Controls. They have a lot of proprietary

113products within the building. So that's the obvious option we went to. Um the scope of work here was just uh $33,630, but there's a little bit of 10% contingency built in there as well. So you can see that the finance committee discussed this and ultimately recommended approval to use the building fund in the amount of 36,93385 or up to fix that intercom system at Lewis and Clark. Anything more to add? I just wanted to make the comment that um generally I would bring these requests directly to the board. We brought it to the finance committee really just to give our contractor some um the the ability to to start moving the the uh project forward. You know, it was such a it was such a vital thing that we wanted to make sure that they

114felt confident enough to begin this process. So, I I'll stand for any other questions as well. Any other questions from board members? Amber, there's a small typo in the 10% contingency. So, I'll make a motion for approval. Um, with the change of the 10% being $3,336 or perhaps $3,363. Yeah. Thank you for 3,363. Yeah, there's an extra three there. So, you're making a motion to approve the still the total of 36,000. Is it still the same total? Yeah, the total doesn't change. It's just that Yep. There's an extra 10% contingency is not 33 correct thousand. Yep. Okay. Motion. We have a second from Bill. Any further questions or discussion? Dr. Hodc. So, it's started already the work and how soon will it be finished? Because I would say that this is a concern that needs

115to get handled ASP. Yeah. Uh the the equipment is ordered. We don't have an ETA yet. Um but it was ordered two weeks ago. So, as soon as I figure out when it's going to get here, we will have someone um on site to install that. Thank you. Thank you. Any further questions? Hearing none, we do have a motion and a second. Uh, we'll go ahead and take a roll call vote. Manley, yes. Lun, yes. Larson, yes. Thomas, yes. Bodak, yes. Cleven, yes. Flynn, yes. Burger, yes. Anderson, yes. Nine, yes. Zero, no. Zero absent. Motion passes. Next item on the agenda 6E. This is the item at your board table. Uh teacher resignation. I will turn this over to Dr. Brener. Thank you, Chair Anderson, uh for the opportunity. Uh as Mr. Anderson indicated, this

116uh the subject matter is teacher resignation and waving of liquidated damages. Uh I will just go ahead and read the memo so it's straightforward. Uh Mariah Heihi has resigned her position as kindergarten teacher at Nathan F. Twining Elementary and Middle School effective March 28th, 2025. Due to circumstances and reasons remaining undisclosed, the administrative recommendation is to accept Miss Hehi's resignation and to wave the liquidated damages associated with her resignation. And you can see her letter is attached. We would seek board approval. Thank you. Any questions or comments for Dr. Brener? Question questions. Seeing none, the administrative recommendation is for approval of the resignation and waving of a wid liquidated damages. Moved by Jay, second by Joel. Any further questions? Hearing none, we'll take a roll call vote. Burger, yes. Hodak, yes. Flynn, yes. Manley, yes.

117Lun, yes. Homicino, yes. Larson, yes. Cleven, yes. Anderson, yes. Nine, yes. Zero no, zero absent. Motion passes. Item number seven on the agenda. Uh 7 A is announcements. Any announcements tonight? Seeing none, we'll move to set of 7B. Board requests for future consideration. Any board requests for future consideration? Okay, seeing none, we'll move on from 7B to 7 C. How did we do on school board meeting norms, Dr. L? I would be a teacher favorite because I would give it a plus tonight. So, thank you. Uh we will we will adjourn uh and take a fivem minute break and then go right into our um facilities committee of the whole meeting. Um so we will we'll take a 5minut break to allow reset. Um and so we'll start that at about 7:38 approximately. So with

118that we are adjourned.