001Call the May 11th Aberine School Board meeting to order. We'll begin with the pledge of allegiance. 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. Roll call, please. >> Mr. Schultz here. >> Mr. Olson >> present. >> Mr. Brian Chart >> present. >> Mr. Douglas >> presum >> here. >> All right. Next is good news items. >> Yes. Mrs. Come on in. >> Hello. Good evening. Come on in everybody. the whole family. That's great. How are you doing? >> Okay, Dr. Borham's going to introduce our good news item for tonight. >> Well, Kalista Oddlin won at the state level for um it's an ARP contest that's put on for why my grandparent should
002be the best grandparent of the world. Right. Kind of. And so we we've been doing this for quite a few years and this is the first time we've ever had a state winner. We always pick first, second, and third, fifth graders that will um their teacher submit the best essay from each school. And so this year, I just assumed that we'd have first, second, third place at our local level. And then I got a call from the state office and um Kalista was picked as the first place winner of South Dakota. So do you want to tell them a little bit about what you had to do? >> Um we went to appear at a convention and I just read my essay out for them. >> Yeah, that's awesome. >> Do you have your essay
003with you right now? >> Yeah. Oh. Would >> you like to share it with us? Sure. Yeah, you have a few grandparents up here. >> My great grandma Gail should win grandparent of the year award. She's a great person. All my aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins, and me love her so much. She lives in Vlin, South Dakota, and is loyal to her community. There was a parade in Velin celebrating 125 years. My great-grandpa her grand marshals. She'll be turning 89 soon, and she really deserves the award. First of all, she makes the best donuts. Everyone loves them. She is so nice and always prepares a great big feast whenever we go to her house. She'll make pork sandwiches, corn, bread, potatoes, and gravy. She also makes the best desserts like caramel cream cakes, and she always
004keeps black jelly beans on hand for us cool ones in the family. You really should be a chef. All good grandmas make the best things to eat. My great grandma Gail includes everyone and everything. In her kitchen, she has a picture of everyone in our family. cousins, cousins, kids, second cousins, first cousins, once removed, literally everyone. Then when Christmas rolls around, I bet you can guess everyone has their own stocking. There are 75 stockings in total. They were all in one huge line. She loves and cares about everybody. Just another reason she should win that award. Here comes the bride. Every time someone got married, including my great grandale, they put a penny in their shoe. It was the same penny every time. That penny is probably 65 years old by now. The day of
005the bride's wedding, she would get the penny and put it in her shoe. Then after the ceremony, the bride would have to give the penny right back so she doesn't lose that thing. Someday, my cousins and I will put it in our shoes, too. She's probably the most supportive person you would ever meet. She's getting older now, but when my dad was a kid, she would show up to all his sports and events. Even if two people's things were out at the same time, she would split half and half. When one day she was sick or didn't feel well, parents would record it and would still be able to watch it. I think it's really cool how she keeps track of everyone's birthday. She made a wooden calendar with a little slide and numbers. Then
006instead of putting the number in, she puts the birthday tile in. The title The tile will stay the person's name and the birthday. So if it was my birthday, it would say Cla's birthday on it. The calendar is in her kitchen because that is where she always is. I admire that. There is no way I would be able to pull that off at age of 89. My great grandma Gail saved some of my parents clothes and cousin's parents' clothes. Then when she found out they were having a baby, they made me the photos for the babies. Mine is a pure governor's love. It looks like you got it from the store. I have a bunch of stuff like that from her. She's good at that type of stuff. These are just a few of the
007many reasons why my great grandma gives you the grandparent of the year award. She makes sure we never go hungry and has the best decorations. That lucky penny is the most important part of any family marriage. And when it comes to sports and events, she's your biggest fan. Those pillows put you to sleep in a heartbeat. My great grandale really deserves this award. >> Thank you. >> Sounds like your great grandma is young at heart. >> Great grandma's son is here. OH, THAT'S GREAT. >> How many stockings are there? >> 75. Wow. >> It's a bad one. >> Do you want to tell the board what you won as as the winner of the essay contest? >> Yeah. Um, so for winning at state you got $250 and like a little plaque that had your
008name on it. >> Very cool. >> And then for winning first at city you got $20 in the middle. >> Yep. >> And you haven't got the medal yet cuz we're saving it for another special time. >> Keep the fun coming. Right. >> Find it funny when you got the check. We were saying let's put in her 529 education fund. Oh, and Gail says, "No, let her spend it on something." >> Well, what else are you involved with? Um, besides hanging out with great grandma. >> What are you doing tonight? >> Yeah. What do you have tonight? >> Dance recital tonight. Okay. >> 35 minutes left. What other activities are you involved in? >> I was in piano, um, volleyball, softball. >> I was a number ninjas. >> Council, >> that's great. >> Well, that
009is quite an essay and you um, she certainly deserves the award and I think you certainly deserve the award as well. So, congratulations and we'll get you to your next event. >> It's going to be tough to beat. >> All right, we do have the agenda in front of us. I'd ask for a motion for approval. Second by Sharp, second by Dr. B. >> Tonight's agenda, signify by saying I. I >> oppose same sign. Two persons wishing to address the board. Amen. >> Board remarks. >> Uh just this is the last time this uh group will be together before uh graduation, the end of the academic year. I want to thank everyone for their hard work uh their commitment and dedication to the public school district. Um it has been a a good year. There's
010been challenges and there's been a lot of successes this year as well. So, uh, I want to commend everybody that is a part of the Aberdine School District and, uh, wish you all a wonderful summer as well. With that, we have the, uh, minutes from April 13th and 27th. That ask for a motion for approval. >> So moved. Moved >> by Murphy. Second. >> Second by Beckus. All those in favor of the minutes as presented, signify by saying I. I. >> Same sign. Thank you. >> We have a consent agenda and we have a number of items on the consent agenda. Would any board members like anything pulled off for further consideration? If not, I'd ask for a motion for approval. >> So move. Move >> by Burkard. >> I'll second. >> Second by Dr.
011Bortn. Any further discussion related to the consent agenda? >> See none. All those in favor signify by saying I. >> I. Same sign. Thank you. Report to the superintendent. Dr. Guffin. >> Thank you. The first item on our agenda tonight is our school resource officer report. Officer John Kernan is here as well as Sergeant Pian Kaiser. We'll we'll kick things off. >> Thank you, Dr. Guffin. Thank you, school board, for having us. Uh, doing it a little bit different this year. Normally, all the individuals, SRO's come up and tell you about their year in the interest of time and efficiency. Uh, John told me I got to do it. A lot of people here and a tough crowd to follow talking to you. To keep you on track, to keep myself on track, I took
012some notes. Uh, in my role as the administrative sergeant at the police department, I supervise the SRO's. So, if I don't go by the notes and their accomplishments this year, I'm going to end up bragging about them for 45 minutes about a great job they do. So, forgive me when I read off of this a little bit. Uh, the 20 this school year marked our 26th year that the Aberdine Public School District and the Aberdine Police Department have partnered uh with the SRO program. It's been very successful. We're very excited about that. Specifically, Officer John Kernan is currently completing his seventh year down at the high school. He continues to enjoy interacting with all the students and staff. He focuses continues to be on safety of all students, staff, and visitors, everybody who walks the
013hallways, which in turn builds strong and positive relationships with all the people involved. Officer Kernan will be attending the advanced school resource officer training hosted by the National Association of School Resource Officers and the South Dakota Association of School Resource Officers summer conference. They're both in June. Officer Kernan still maintains the role of vice president of the South Dakota Association of School Resource Officers and is highly involved in bringing quality training for all South Dakota SRO's. and I know he would like to thank all of you for allowing him to continue doing what he loves and enjoys so much. Moving on to Officer Matt Olsen, who is our Simmons uh SRO. Right now, he's been really busy working with the Special Olympics torch run, which is tomorrow at uh 1300. That's 1:00 for all you
014non. Officer Olsen has really done his best to make Aberdine stop for the Special Olympics. A really big deal and he does do a fantastic job there getting not only the school district but as well as other partners within the community all involved. And then it makes a real big spectacle for all those youth and children who partake in it. You know, I need to thank uh Jimmy John's for providing food. Hub City Radio is going to be there. Mr. Panero, the band teacher at Simmons, who will have the pep band out there as well. If you've never seen it, really encourage you to go to a really heartwarming. It's a great event. Officer Olsson does a fantastic job putting it together. He also has put together Alice training videos at the start of the
015school year for all school staff uh to assist in their understanding of what we call Alice and how to properly respond to threats. Camille Call made this video a mandatory part of the district's training. Officer Olsen does two drills every year at each school and then Officer Kernan handles the Alice drills at Central. School safety is a peak of Officer Olsen's concerns and he takes it very seriously. He wanted to personally thank Brian Lloyd, Josh Jensen, Ben Schnel, Mark Glanszer, Luke Reynolds for helping make those drills happen. It's no small feat and there's a lot of moving parts to it. This summer, Officer Olsen will be attending adolescent mental health training. It's a class designed to help school resource officers and school personnel to better identify and respond to students who are suspected of having
016a mental health or having mental health needs. We're excited for Officer Olsen for the upcoming upcoming trainings and it illustrates how seriously we at the department take the training and development of all of our employees. Officer Connie Morningstar is in her first year as the SRO at Holgate. She had to learn how the school and law enforcement kind of work together. She's dabbled a little bit because she's been a DARE instructor for elementary and middle schools. She enjoys being able to have her door open for students so they can come and get to know her and see a friendly face and make sure there's positive interactions with law enforcement. something she didn't put on her notes, and I'm already going off script, is she is bilingual. Uh, huge asset not only to the school district,
017but also to the police department and the community in general. Can't say enough good things about her. Always got a smile on her face. Um, and then our other SRO is Officer Erica Klene. She's in her second year as the rotating SRO. So just with the public schools, she also goes to the private schools in town as well, but just for the public schools, she goes to she tries to get to every school uh every day and does a full walkthrough of the schools to make sure all the doors are secure, there aren't any safety concerns. When she's at the school, she likes to talk with students and staff, find out what's going on, what's a talk of the town. Sometimes we can get uh in front of some rumors that might be going on.
018And she really enjoys that coordinating with different folks and meeting people and having that uh open door policy as well, being able to talk with everybody. She's responded to a variety of different calls at the schools. Besides just keeping the school safe, her goal is to build rapport with the kids so they feel comfortable, so they can approach her and let her know if they have anything going on. And then of course she assists the other SRO's this year. She's filled in a couple times when Connie has been out on medical leave. So Erica has taken the role of SRO up at Holgate. And that's about it for my prepared notes. And with that, I would yield back to the board cuz like I said before, if you just let me talk about these four,
019I'm going to talk about them for an hour. Supervising them is uh one of the highlights of my job because they are councilman professionals. But I'll stand by for any questions and Officer Kernan will hopefully tell me the answers. >> I would note that officer Klein is very adept at opening milk cartons. >> I've observed it many times. >> Very good skill. >> It is questions. >> All right. Yes. >> That means I All right. I appreciate you bringing up the training that officer Kernan is a part of. He's pro uh part of the professional organization of school resource officers, but they do collaborate with school administrators and he shares that with all school administrators because it's really a team effort. So, he's been instrumental in doing that across the state of South Dakota and
020getting the word out for school administrators and Rose to attend this conference that um Sergeant Kaiser mentioned. So, thank you for that. >> Thank you. >> All right. Thank you. >> Yeah, sure. >> Okay. The next item on the agenda is the approval of the 2627 preliminary budget. Michaela has that prepared for you as well. >> Hello. >> Good evening. >> Just one second. There you go. >> Okay. So, South Dakota codified law requires us to approve the preliminary budget in May. So, we've got six funds for next year. Starting with general fund, we are projecting funding formula revenue of about 29.6 million. We won't know the actual amount until the last Friday of September. However, this estimate is pretty conservative based on historical enrollment trends. There was a 1.4% increase to the formula. However,
021we're expecting a decrease in students of 150. So, we're actually expecting a decrease in about 700,000 from this year's actual. For other revenue, I used a 2% increase. And then we are relying on a $1 million transfer from the capital outlay fund. That used to be 600,000. We increased it to 800,000 last year and increased to 1 million starting this year. State law allows us to transfer up to 45% of capital outlay tax revenue. So, this 1 million equates to about 10.2%. 2%. Moving on to expenditures, we start with this year's base and then there are various increases. The largest being health insurance. We increased premiums by 10% for health, 5% for dental. There was salary and benefit increases of about 264,000. That was a 1% wage increase to all staff. And then for inflationary
022increases, I just used a flat 2% increase from this year. Longevity bonus increased by about 34,000 compared to this year's and property and liability insurance premium increased by 32,000 or about 7%. Then for decreases, there's about $870,000 in savings there. And we are reducing nine teaching positions, one net EA, and we're also restructuring the tech department staffing, which will provide some savings. And then there are also estimated savings from new teaching staff. So that's just due to turnover. That's estimated at about 100,000. And this gets us to an estimated deficit of 705,000. and that does include a $200,000 contingency. Our 63025 fund balance was 6.9 million. Of course, we won't know what this year's deficit is until all adjustments are posted. But I projected for a deficit of 771,000 this year. So with these two
023estimated deficits, the projected 63027 fund balance would be 5.4 million. you know off hand what what percent excuse me about what percent that is >> I can calculate it >> I can't do I guess >> 14% maybe >> yeah 14 to 16 something like that >> yeah it looks like about 15 maybe a little under >> next is the capital outlay fund and we did approve this budget already at the November 24th board meeting I'm predicting property property taxes and other revenue to be about 9,967,000 and then expenditures 9.9 million. So we should have an estimated surplus of about 54,000. Our fund balance as of June 3025 was 6,257,000. Next is the special ed fund. We are projecting funding formula revenue of 12.8 million and we know that amount with reasonable certainty since that is
024based on actual fiscal year 26 enrollment. So this year's enrollment the amounts and rates are provided by the state. Um next year is a rebasing year. So the allocation rates for some disability levels increased whereas other levels decreased and those rates are based on statewide average expenditures from previous two school years. So, we had a 7% increase in student numbers, but we'll see an increase in revenue of about 4.2% just due to those rebasing allocation rates. Then for expenditures, the most significant increase in this fund is also the health insurance. That's 171,000. We made a few staffing increases. just one teacher. A part-time behavior interventionist is becoming full-time and we're reducing one EA position. So those net to savings of about 99 or an increase of about 99,000. Salary and benefit increases, sped staff received
025the same 1% increase as general fund. And for inflationary increases, we used a 22% increase amounting to about 60,000. For decreases, I'm estimating savings from new teaching staff to be about 100,000. And this should put us at a surplus of about 53,000. Of course, that can easily fluctuate with out of district placements. Our fund balance as of the end of last year was 2.7 million, which was 20.6% of expenditures. Based on this year's and these budget figures, the 63027 fund balance is currently estimated to be 2.6 million, which is 18.2% of expenditures. There is a max of 25%. >> Do we still receive um I don't know if it's called severe supplements, extraordinary beds. The state used to do that if we have severe needs. certain students. Do does this state still do that? And
026do we still receive that? >> The state still does it. We have not had it the last few years. We would have to increase the levy in order to request that funding. So, at this time, it's it hasn't been necessary the last few years. >> Next is the arena fund. Um, this fund we just transferred 10% of our ticket sales to to be used for renovations and repairs at the arena and theater at Central. That equates to about 8,000 and I'm estimating the same in expenditures. The fund balance at 63025 is about $21,000. Next is food service fund. Um, there's total estimated revenue of about 2.8 8 million and that's with no increase to lunch prices or breakfast prices. We don't know what the federal reimbursement rates will be yet, but I used a 3.3%
027increase in my projections, which is about CPI. And for expenses, there weren't any estimated increases, but there are a few decreases. The food service management company fees, we'll see about $52,000 less there. We went out for RFP this year and the rates LSI will be charging us are slightly less than what we're currently paying. That will save us about 13,000. The remainder of that decrease is just due to the number of meals served being less um as well as a decrease in estimated allocart revenue and that can be attributed to declining enrollment. And we are we also have a staffing decrease of about 32,000. As district employees resign, LSI replaces those and we are estimating for a deficit of about 13,000. June 3025, our net position was 531,000. So with fiscal year 26 and 27
028deficits projected, our net position would be 420,000 as of 63027. And lastly is the other enterprise or driver's ed fund. I'm projecting an equal amount of revenue and expenses. So 62,000 for both. And we price driver's ed so that we at least break even. There wasn't an increase necessary this year to that driver's ed price. And the net position in this fund as of June 3025 was 63,000. So that's all I have. Proposed budget will be presented in July and final will be adopted in September. >> Questions regarding the preliminary budget? >> Question. Uh the movement of money from capital outlay to general schools our size. Is that being done quite often around the state? >> Yes. Y >> is our percentage pretty reasonable for what it's other schools are doing? >> Yes. I would
029say it's on the low end for local schools close to us. The smaller schools usually have to transfer a little more. Um it's pretty in line with the larger schools. >> Other questions? >> Just a couple comments. I mean, um, I think what you painted is a picture that kind of says if we're going down this road for the next 5 to seven years, district, I mean, if the funding doesn't change the way it is at the state, I don't have a $700,000 deficit every year with 5 million in reserves and say that we're going to continue business as normal. So, just not doom and gloom, but it's just something that this board's going to have to deal with and struggle with because it's to me not getting any better. Um, so I remember when
030he was on the board first years ago, we were faced in kind of a similar situation and those are not fun times I would say when you have to deal with those situations. As far as health care and the increase, I heard most of it was in maybe medications. Is our insurance carrier doing anything in that area to help try to control those costs or are these all specialty drugs that are really hitting us more than others? >> I think the increase is more specialty drugs. um they have offered to provide more education for employees so that employees know to ask possibly the medical professional whether there's a cheaper option. So we'll try to do that. >> Other questions or comments? >> I would move first reading or not first reading. I would move uh
031approval of the preliminary budget for 2627. >> We have a motion on the floor. Is there a second? >> Second by. >> Any further discussion related to the 2627 preliminary budget? >> Seeing none, all those in favor signify by saying I. >> I. Same sign. Thank you. >> Next item on the agenda is the approval of the 2627 transportation contract. Michaela has that as well. >> Yes. So this rate schedule is provided by Foreman and includes a 2% average rate increase. Foreman's in Foreman cited rising costs for insurance and parts along with a 3% driver wage increase as the reasons for this increase. >> This falls in line with your 2% inflationary increase in >> Yes, that should cover it. >> Okay. They haven't shown a concern about rising fuel prices or anything. They've not
032mention >> concerned about that as well. Um >> hoping that it goes down. We actually met with them this morning just to have an annual check-in type thing, but review a few items they did mention if the fuel costs continue at the rate that they are that we'll have to have a conversation in the phone. Okay. >> Escalator built in um >> with our coach buses, but there isn't for inone rates routes and we put a lot of miles on in town. >> Other questions regarding the contract? Would they do something like a sir charge for a short period of time in case fuel prices roll back >> which we're hearing all the time eventually >> we're seeing it with a lot of things orders. >> Yeah, I'm sure. >> Absolutely. >> Yeah. >> Well,
033with no further discussion to ask for a motion for approval. >> Motion by second. Second by Beckus. All those in favor of the 2627 transportation contract signify by saying I. >> I. Same sign. >> Thank you. >> Okay. The next item on the agenda is there is only one vacancy on the um Southakota High School Activity Association that uh this year that is for division 4 and there person that is running is running unopposed. So it is my recommendation that we support uh Jeff Coers for this vacant position. So move Second by Bortnham. All those in favor of the representative for South Dakota High School Activities Association signify by saying I. >> I. >> Both. Same sign. Thank you. >> Uh the next three items on the agenda are approvals of amendments to the constitution
034for the Southakota High School Activity Association. All three of these amendments are coming uh at the recommendation of the staff of the South Dakota High School Activity Association. Uh so the first one is amendment number one and this one is simply I um identifying when um eligibility starts and how many semesters that would be. So this has not been an issue in our school district. I want to be clear about that. But uh apparently across the country there's maybe some um repeating of the eighth grade to get another year of eligibility which is not something that's going to be allowed. So that's again not an issue that we've experienced but this is I'm quite frankly not sure it's been experienced in the state of South Dakota but just making that really clear as what the
035eligibility looks like. >> I would recommend a yes vote on that one. >> So more just to get ahead of it >> 100 Yes. Yes, I would move approval. >> A motion on the floor. >> Second by Beckus. All those in favor of amendment number one signify by saying I. >> I. >> Same sign. >> Next item is the approval of amendment number two. Uh this would allow students to transfer to another school district without penalty if your school or school district would close. However, uh you would not be eligible for that transfer until the school actually closes. There was a district that was in uh discussion about potentially closing. Um parents were asking if they could transfer at that time in the event that there would be a closure and then the school stayed
036open. So, this is to be really clear that you can transfer without penalty. However, your school has to actually close first before the transfer can happen. I think unless you're in a private school and then you can transfer from one private school to the other, >> right? Which has been a bur under my butt for a long time. Yes. Vote on that one as >> I make a motion. Oh, are you going to do it? >> Go ahead. >> Okay. I make a motion that we approve. >> Motion on the floor by Dr. Bortnham. Second by Sharp. >> All those in favor of amendment two signify by saying I. >> Oppose. Same sign. Y and the next the last one is amendment number three and this is again clarifying uh when your eligibility terminates and
037that would be upon uh graduating as you know there are students who do graduate early uh or if you have completed your GED or alternative education setting. So as soon as you complete one of those forms of elig of education your eligibility as a high school student um is ending. Again, not an issue in our school district, but there has been question about I would like to graduate, maybe try spring football at a university, but be on my high school track team. Those two things would be in congruent. So, that's what this is clarifying is once you've stated you have graduated, you've completed the requirements, you are also done with high school activities. >> How are they anticipating tracking the GED and the online school setting? Um that's um difficult right now. It would just
038be on the honor system. I'll get the results back. >> I move approval of amendment three. >> Okay. We have a motion on four for um amendment three. Do I have a second? >> Second by sharp. All those in favor of amendment three, signify by saying I. >> Oppose. Same sign. >> Thank you. >> The next item on the agenda is the approval of the first reading of the grades 6 through 12 secondary math adoption. This is good evening. >> Good evening. >> All right. You're probably wondering why it is so late for me to be here. Usually this is a done deal in April, but um we our course documents have been set sitting in rough draft mode I should say for probably about 3 months and we were just waiting for the South
039Dakota Department of Education to put their final approval on the standards. Um and they did that last Tuesday. So that's where we're a little late at making our proposal. So, we had to do some updating because they did make some um additional changes at the high school level. So, all right. So, as normal, what we always start out with when we do a curriculum review is looking at data and just seeing what are our strengths and our needs for our students. And this is an example of some of the data that we did look at. This is looking at each individual standard and claim that's on the state assessment and identifying if it's a strength or need. And here this is just a snapshot of sixth and seventh grade. But if you um scan the
040QR code, you can also see 8th and 11th grade. But this is just one data point that we look at. Other things that we look at, of course, is just um patterns or themes that we see across all grade spans. And then uh attendance, we do follow attendance to see um if there's a comparison. And just noting that um across all subgroups, we did note that if a student had lower attendance, generally their test scores were lower. So um you have to be here to learn it, right? So that's something that I just want to make sure that we continue to work on is the attendance piece for our students. We did we did meet every other week. We evaluated old and new standards to see what the changes would be. And we're kind of
041moving away from um what they call what you probably heard it as common core standards, but what we're moving towards is called the Archimedia standards, which is is just um a combination of practical use standards or traditional education and also having real life experience with that as well. So that's kind of the shift in the standards really. The language is the same. It's just very simplified. So, an example would be um I'm going to read you what a grade two example would be. So, here's an old grade two standard. So, add and subtract within 100 using concrete models of drawing and strategies based on place value, property of operation, and the relationship between addition and subtraction. Relate the strategies to a written method. So, that's what a grade two would look like. This is what
042this is in the new language. Add three-digit whole numbers to a thousand with regrouping using the standard algorithm. So, it's just um it's the same standard but just rewarded in a very simple fashion. So, if you hear how that standards have changed, that's really what's happening is just a change in the language. So, wanted you to be aware of that. After we looked at standards and evaluated our data, we did look at just different teaching strategies and we all know that we need to have very strong tier one mathematical approach kind of that building that cake right you have to have a good foundation before you can put the frosting on. So continuing to do that talk about um technology and how we use technology and just identifying that you know technology is a support
043but it's not the main resource and truly that is the teacher in the classroom. So after we completed our different data digs and looking at uh technology and foundational skills, we did we do fill out a rubric on all of the curriculum that they look at. And then once we do that, we narrow it down um by score and we have those final companies come into a presentation. And so we had reveal into math and then big ideas or math connections. So, we ended up selecting 612 big ideas, which I'm not going to say that it's uncommon for us to do something 612, but we just had a really good feeling about this program because it's offering some very foundational skills at that tier 1 level. And then they had good information on how to
044support teachers and provide professional development on the skills and the standards of teaching that. And then the things that we noticed was um you could you could edit the the program to make it adjustable for any student um available. So that was something that we really liked about it and it really gave a comprehensive digital program too. So the focus wasn't on all the bells and whistles of the technology but the foundation and how you teach it and then that is just going to be the support and then also some of the things that it did provide was immediate feedback on all the assessments that they had. So you could make adjustments in your um instruction. The other thing that we added and it's not on this slide is the teachers talked a lot about
045we always have the state assessment at the end but we don't have a good measure of how to continuously provide for students and progress monitor kids as we move along. And so one of the things that we've we have available to us is NWA results. And so going into high school we have the results for eighth graders that are coming in. So, we're going to make some adjustments for students right off the bat so we can start with some good foundations and hopefully fill in some gaps for students who are u missing some of those things. We already do that for fifth graders coming into middle school, but we wanted to add the piece for the high school. So, that'll be new this year and eighth graders completed that assessment this week. So, just to
046review, um we will do elementary this coming year. So, if you're wondering about elementary, that will happen um in this coming year. We we just came off of language arts for elementary, and that's a a heavy lift to do elementary and math backtoback for teachers. So, we have to give them a a little bit of break in between, but middle school and high school did select big ideas, which is for through Sungage. And then anyone who wants to look at the course documents with those new standards, it is on our school web page and it's under the educational service curriculum and then you can just click on those folders and find those documents. So questions that you have for me keen interest uh that I observed under the social studies t standards being curriculum. Am
047I fair to assume that the lateness of this is also due to politics coming into involved in the setting of standards? Again, >> um I'm not sure about that. I do know that the curriculum committee was uh very similar to what we've participated in the past as far as representative representatives from all schools, math teachers, and they helped with kind of refining those standards. So >> a little bit later. We're not concerned about getting the getting the things by next year. Are you placing the order tomorrow? >> Is in my inbox right now. Great. No. And they know that um the plan is we're going to train on May 20th and the teachers hopefully will have their digital license. cuz they won't obviously have their physical books by next week, but that part will be
048ready to go. >> Well, it seems like parents complain a lot about math the way it's been taught. Is this going to be easier for parents to understand? Well, I think if you look at the standards like the example that I gave, it is pretty black and white and and that's always our goal is to make it easy to understand for not only parents but for students and teachers too, >> right? >> Yeah. >> Okay. >> Any other questions or comments? >> And this is certainly not a free curriculum by any stretch as well. >> No. Um do you know is it significantly more costly than last year? >> I I would say that it's similar um in cost but we we purchased fewer books than we have in the past because you have the
049company of the digital piece as well. But you'll notice that the shipping cost I did separate that out on there and so you could see that in addition once again just the cost of yeah shipping up to that. >> No kidding. >> All right. Any questions or comments? >> I move approval. >> There is a motion on the floor for the uh first reading of the 12 secondary adoption. Is there a second? Second. Second. Bolton. All those in favor of the first reading of uh 6 through 12 secondary math adoption signify by saying I. I. Same sign. Thank you. Seeing no further business in front of this board, I would ask for a motion for adjournment. Beckus followed by Dr. Bner. All those in favor.