001the May 27th Aberdine School Board meeting to order. We will 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. Brad Olsson, present. Mr. Brian Sharp, present. Mr. Dwayne, here. Dr. Gail Borton here. Mr. Kevin Bart. Mr. Mark Bur here. All right. Uh, we have a good news item today. We do. So, I would like to introduce Mrs. Ashley, Miss Ashley C.ander. And, um, she was just recently recognized as South Dakota Counselor of the Year. And I Yes, congratulations. We do have a short little video. Um, but before we play the video, I just want to say thank you because Ashley
002is very involved in not only just local and state but national events and advocates for our students all the time and really works hard with the local agencies to make sure our kids get what they need. So, thank you very much for that. But we want to show you a little video that [Music] Miss Selander is an awesome communicator and she works great with students, staff, and [Music] parents. She keeps our SAT team organized and ready to go. [Music] She's always got breakfast and snacks if you need them. Miss Zlander is so funny. She has a witty comeback to every situation. And if she doesn't say it, her face will show [Music] it. She is there for a sensory break if you need one. [Music] Miss Selander brings a lot of enjoyment to our [Music]
003meetings. Miss Seclanner does a great job with documentation and taking notes. [Music] Miss Seed Planner is an incredible listener and an awesome team player. And she's also always there if someone has a problem or if I'm gone, she's there to hold down the fort. And on top of all that, she's my gluten-free [Music] buddy. She's always there to deliver snack packs. Every morning, Miss Selander is here to greet our students. Rain or [Music] shine, guys. [Applause] anything you'd like to add? Um, no. Other they summed it up perfectly as to um what I do at Lincoln every day and um it came as a tremendous surprise. I was not expecting it at all. Um when I got the email about being nominated, I was not in like a good headsp space to like read, which
004is super important. Um, and I read it and I'm like, why is Sarah emailing me to like review nominations? They should have had this done already because I've been on the board for ever. And I'm like, how far behind are we? And then I reread it and I was like, oh, I've been nominated. Okay. And then throughout the week, people are like, you're coming. You're you're coming on Friday night, right? You're coming. And then I'm like, yep, yep, I'll be there. And so then my mom's like, are you sure you're getting this or are you just going to drive to Sou Falls and meet her friends? And I was like, "No, I'm I'm pretty sure with the amount of people who were like, "What are you wearing? Are you coming? Make sure you look nice."
005Okay. So, it was it was just quite an honor. And I'm just Yeah. Very humbling. That's great. So, how long have you been in this role? And, uh, tell me some of the the things that you love about the role. Um, so I've been a school counselor for 16 years. Um, I spent my first four years out at Sullyes Agar Blentoida, small consolidated district out by Pier and then I went to Groten area for eight years and then I've been at Lincoln Elementary for the last four. Um, I think my favorite part is every day is different. There are no two days that are alike. There are no two days that are even similar. And I like that being on my toes kind of thing. And it's just kind of exciting for me. I love
006to see the kids grow. Um, now that they leave me when they're in fifth grade and they go off to middle school, it's fun to see them when they're middle schoolers. And now I've been here long enough that there's a few up in high school. And so it's it's good to see them grow and watch them flourish. It's a good thing. I have a feeling you do a lot more than what was on that video. Thank you for welcome. Congratulations. Thank you very much. Thank you again. Bye. All right. We do have the agenda in front of us tonight. Uh I'd ask for a motion for approval. I'll second. Second by Dr. Bortnham. All those in favor of the agenda signify by saying I. Same thing. Persons wishing to address the board. Board remarks. We
007have the consent agenda in front of us. Uh, does anyone want anything pulled off for further discussion? Question. Yes. U Marty Morlock, the new assistant principal at Holy, was he on the teaching staff prior to his appointment? No, he was out of district. Okay. He was where? out of district, not in our district. Yes, he was in for 24 years, I think he said. Yeah. And second, yes, the Mike Miller uh PTA donated some money and I noticed there was no designation about the funds, does that automatically go to the lunch program? Um, not necessarily, but I know that's something that they consider to make sure that that kids accounts are not in the negative. questions. Ask for a motion for approval of the tonight's consent agenda. Motion by Olson, second by Sharp. Any further
008discussion or questions? Just a comment. There's a number of approval of donations. We want to thank the general public for helping out and supporting public schools. All those in favor of tonight's consent agenda signify by saying I. I. Thank you. Reports from the assistant superintendent. Yes, this evening, Miss Alyssa Dicki is going to share with us an a tech video project that she helps support. I'm very excited to be talking about this. Um, Mr. Shophouser contacted me this spring to ask if the school district would kind of serve as a client for their students. So, first things first, this is one,000% student done. I was just lucky enough to be asked this because I'm like absolutely, we'd love this. Um and because he wanted them to get the experience of working with the client and
009so we asked for a theme which for us was public school pride and he wanted to know the audience so the students could know and we kind of gave them something a little difficult because we said um we'd love it to appeal to students but also parents possibly which two vastly different audiences but they um hit a home run with it. So what they did is all the students kind of came up with ideas and put videos together, but one student's idea and one top video was created. So tonight you're going to see um the top video that the students selected uh with which was an idea by student Mason Duncan um and the video created by student Brock Anderson. And unfortunately they could not be here tonight. So I just get to be the
010bearer of good news. Um but Josh will play it and it's um public school decades of public school pride. [Music] I graduated from Aberdeen Central in [Music] 2002. I am a proud graduate of 1983. I'll be graduating in 2026. [Music] I was involved in athletics. So I played volleyball, basketball, and ran track. I was on the basketball team and the track team and had great times there. Opportunities I have like showfire and all that stuff. I'm very proud to have gone to Aberdine Central and to have been a Golden Eagle. I'm just proud of what we do here and what the kids do here and what the teachers do here. [Music] So, I think I'm sure you guys will agree that they really knocked it out of the park and they talked about going through
011all that old footage and the thought was that current students would kind of get a kick out of it, seeing how all the old fashioned hair and the everything and that older people like me and like the nostalgia it's like, "Oh my gosh, I swear I went to high school with that guy." Just cuz, you know, like you see someone dressed like that. So, it's just really exciting. And I know that um Dr. Guffin isn't here, but she was there too to have the presentation when they presented it to us, and we might want to use that theme just in other things we do with the decades of public school pride. So, I'd love to know your thoughts as well. That's great. Comments. I'm glad it didn't go farther back. Do you see anybody you
012know in the in the There's a couple of us that there's quite a bit of class of 95 in there. I'm wondering if there's a parent of that had videos from back then or the president of our class I think the basketball game was from 95 I think. Interesting to know. Yeah, that's the one of our current teachers is on there as well. We'll have to go. I'm going to post it tomorrow to social media. I have information from the students and I'll give them credit and everything and so hopefully people can find themselves in the video. Thank you very much. Thank you. Very cool. You cool project. All right. Up next, wellness committee updates. So, um, as you know, just a second. Well, this year we thought it would be the first a good
013time to have a wellness challenge. It's something we've talked about in the past and we've thrown it out again this year and we thought, you know what, let's go ahead and start with just the staff and maybe potentially it would move to the students. And so we did have a race to summer challenge. It was 14 weeks and um really the purpose was just to kind of get everyone motivated to have a a great healthy springtime. You know, we started this in January and just to kind of promote some fun competitive culture and get people involved and um hopefully make some small changes in our eating habits, our exercise, and promote just wellness. So, we did start with that. I I love some of the pictures that we have on here of Mr. Osborne uh
014in his then pose there. Um but we also then what we did is we kind of did it like u March Madness basketball or different brackets that you would win and each week there'd be a different challenge. We had 14 weeks and we just rotated through um seven different topics that we had and then at the end then there was a bracket based off of percentage and who had the highest percentage. So these are the different categories that you would participate in the weeks. So we had a water intake which was very hard the first go round. exercise, making sure we're getting in some steps, sleeping, which was actually my favorite week, healthy eating, gratitude, and kindness, and then mindfulness and self-care. And then we just rotated through those twice. And we did have quite
015a few participate. And I went back today and I looked through because everybody tracked their points. It was on the honor system. You earned points for every time you participated. And I checked in all of the different sites, the locations. We had 10 locations, the nine schools, and then DSC, Technology, Buzzpowder. We were all together. And we had 490 employees participate on a weekly event, which was great. And then, of course, we did have our culminating event. We did offer several prizes which I have to thank our local community members and um some companies that helped us out and then also the foundation provided some funds for us to to buy some extra prizes as well. But then we had just fun traveling trophies. So every week we had like the water bottle you can
016see down there. Um Brenda Heinrich made all these very creative trophies for us to to pass around. Oops. And then finally, we had our culminating event which was on the last day of school on May 20th. We of course had rain and so we walked inside the gym for 20 minutes and then we just had some refreshments and some um get together at the end. It was good to see everybody at Central show up. We had 240 people attend which we thought was really good considering some people had flex day that day. So they weren't required necessarily to be there in the afternoon. And then once again I want to certainly thank our people who helped us out. As you can see, we had Eddie's North Side, The Sweat Zone, Hens, Shoe Science, The Market,
017Jimmy John's, OnTrack, Nutrition, Caribou, The Foundation, The Y, Done Brothers Coffee, and Jersey Mics all helped us out with some of those prizes. And truly, I think we did make a a positive impact. People came away with um maybe some healthier habits and certainly some camaraderie and just good fun. So, it was a good event and we did have our final winner was Cece Lee was the champion and Mike Miller earned the spirit award. So, questions on the wellness challenge. Um, was the um probably worth trying again or how do you see something like this in the future? Yeah, we did have some good feedback from people. I think we will definitely try it again. I don't know if it'll be in every year or every other year because um it was a pretty big
018feat to plan and implement, but um now that we've kind of been through it once, I I think that should be easier. And then maybe something adding the students at some point. Well, a healthy staff is really important. It is. Maybe the sick leave will go down then, too. Who knows? How about that? Okay, that would be good. Yes. Well, for the last day of school, I've never seen so many. Well, you always see cheerful employees of a school system, but they seemed ex very excited and they all had themes and I have to say I did like Mike Miller's theme because they had little white lies and on all their white shirts they had, you know, like a little white lie. And so the principal had on there that Kim Almond was the best
019principal and I thought it was just very creative and everybody was cheerful while they were walking around and they were quite competitive I thought. But it was fun to see um the team work together, you know, to see them all working together and not closed up in their rooms just putting stuff away like you usually do on the last day of school, which they still had time to do. But I just I appreciated all the work that went into that. Just compiling all the data was probably the hardest part, wasn't it? Every week, the team leaders and stuff. So, yeah. Yeah. Kelsey Scarboro did a great job on keeping track of everybody and and setting out communication. So, it was good. Yeah. So, I thought it was a lot of fun. Well, congratulations to CC
020Lee and Mike Miller and all those that participated and and very good job. I know he helps me be ahead of this and welcome addition to the the district. All right, the last thing on our agenda is the 2425 district goal end of the year update. It's crazy to think that we're at the end of the year here, but um we are. So, so in the area of student achievement, every year we look at making sure that we're meeting our state assessments and our preliminary results are in and as of right now, our scores are unchanged from last year. One of the items that we did look at this year was establishing a literacy committee at the elementary level. And we have done that already and we have implemented a a literacy plan and this
021will be a four-year plan. And in addition to that, we did offer some staff development in the science of reading because we know that this is the direction that we're that we want to take. And so all elementary teachers and preschool staff did participate in science of reading training. And it was about a 60-hour course. It took every staff development day. um which was it was very intense work and I think they're they're very happy that it's over but it was great work and some good things came out of that. So that was really good. And then also we did conduct our annual curriculum review in language arts and this was K12 and matched it up with the new state language arts standards and this has been completed and new curriculum has been purchased and
022we've already had our first training for all teachers. We did that the day after school got out. So, we started right away. In the area of health and wellness, um let's see, in January, we reviewed our our policy and there was no changes at that time. We implemented our first wellness challenge and um distributed information or materials. And this is kind of how we did it this year was we did it through the wellness challenge about eating healthy, how to get the appropriate amount of sleep, things like that. And then also Jelane has sent out information about health coverage that is preventative for people and uh to have in the area of school and community relations. want to continue to work on newsletters and social media and um this has been really good information, but
023the monthly news news to know newsletter has been distributed throughout the school year to all staff. It's great to look at back at some of those posts. So nice on that. Social media posts continue to grow and I think as more staff get comfortable posting, we see more and more of those and we just want to keep that to be a regular thing. and then establishing partnerships with business and expanding our internship and our jab job job shadowing opportunities at the high school level. And as you can see over time from quarter 1 with only 59 students and 49 training sites at the end of the year we had 88 students and 76 training sites and hopefully we'll just continue to grow on that. And the last area safety. So um as of right now
024all of our schools have submitted their documentation for all of their required drills. So tornado fire fire and safety drill those are ready to go for accreditation. They've also completed their building audits and that was new this year and Dr. Dr. Guffin had just created a list of just making sure you know all the protocols like where the the water shut offs are and where are the numbers to contact and it was very interesting to do that and it's amazing how much information you need to know that goes on in that building. So they've completed that. We also completed all of our safe schools training. We'll continue to use that platform to um train staff on all our annual requirements. And then we did conduct our Alice trainings this year. We do them twice a
025year, once in the fall and once in the spring. And I have to thank Officer Olsen and Officer Kernan. Officer Olsen is very active in making sure these get scheduled and followed up and he takes great notes and provides feedback. He has people who fill out a survey for us to make sure we're getting good communication on those. So those have been completed. And then we also have trained all of our new EAS in mental health first aid. We think that that is very important for our staff to continue to have that support and we'll continue that next year as well. And then also Mr. Jensen has provided some training to staff on just responding to scams and attempts and it seems like this year there was lots of email scams and attempts and so
026that training is always ongoing but we did complete that as well. questions on the goals for this year. You know, the science of reading, what was the reaction of the staff when they took these and I believe they were online courses. Uh what was the reaction to that type of training and the content? Mhm. Um they thought it was very beneficial because it gave a great history of the science of reading and what it actually was because oftenimes the science of reading people think that it's a curriculum and it's not. It's it's just the research behind uh behind how we teach reading. And I think it gave teachers permission to get back to some of the basics on how we teach reading and give those explicit instructions. So and I often wondered about Northern you
027know and you look at the major of language arts is that have been increased or whatever. So this course was offered through like Vanderbelt University outside of our state. However, moving forward the state is working on their own right now and I know Northern is involved in that and Dakota State is involved in developing these courses. So, it'll be nice to have this available in state. I would see that as a good move. Yeah. Other questions or comments? Well, another job well done and working on the the goals in front of us. So, any other comments or questions? I'll make a motion to approve of the first meeting. Uh I'm not I don't think we need to approve them. We don't need to approve. This is just an update. So, uh, we do have need
028though for executive session. I would ask for a motion to move into executive session. Moved by Sharp. Second by Olen. All those in favor signify by saying I. I. We are in executive session.