001America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. Could you please make sure that your phones are either turned off or on silent? We don't have anybody speaking at public forum today, but we're going to kind of skip ahead to um Mr. Gaffne, I believe. Yeah. I'd like to introduce Mr. Gaffne. First thing we'll do is uh I'd like to present to the board uh officially and to our community our top five graduating seniors this year. So I'll call up Mr. Gaffne and and he'll bring up the the top five with him. So sure. Great. Thank you uh board of education and Mr. Van Orman. So I met with the students prior. They all guaranteed they're going to be here and they
002did. They right up to the right up to the last minute but they're here. So thank you for coming tonight. Um, I'll be brief, but I do want to recognize our top five. And I would like to say just to begin with, a very, very short blurb. The work that you've done throughout the course of your career is very deserving. And I'm so happy that you're here tonight to celebrate with us so we can celebrate. You won't be about me, it's about you. So, I'd like when I call your name, just please stand up. Um, say say a small piece to the board, a little bit about yourself. Um, and we'll kind of we'll leave it at that. Okay. So, moving forward, Liam, Mr. Smith, come on up. One of our top five. We congratulate
003me. So, I won't put kids on the spot. I am very thankful and very appreciative and I'm honored and humbled to be up here to introduce our top five. So, Liam, congratulations. [Applause] Julie is another one of our top five. Her hard work and dedication brought her here tonight. So Julie, thank you so much. [Applause] Kayyn Kay is another one of our top five. We celebrate her success tonight. So thank you so much for being here and thank you so much for your hard work and dedication in your high school career. So Kayyn, thank you so much. It's 6:33. Thank you. Thank you. Awesome. Is another one of our top five and we appreciate her her work ethic, too, and her dedication to school education. So, thank you so much. I spoke to Adam's like,
004"I'm not sure. I got to check my job schedule. I'll get back to you." um he got back to me tonight when he walked in. Thank for reminding me. So that's teamwork and collaboration. So Adam, thank you so much. Anything you might want to add or my favorite subject was history, I think. Okay. And excited to go. Awesome. We'll take history. Great. So thank you so much. [Applause] On behalf of the district, I would ask all of the top five to come back up. I have special coins. Uh anybody that's followed along this year, we have handed out coins for those that have presented to us at our board meetings. Uh for the top five, we have uh extra special uh coins for you. So on one side it has the Red Creek logo and
005on the other side uh the logo of aim higher with with our uh uh crest on there. So if if each of the top five would come up, I would be honored to give each of you one of your these challenge points. Any of you can go first. Congratulations. We're going to practice. This is what you're going to do. Congratulations. picture of you. Uh, we'll get a group picture of you on the side. Congratulations. Uh, there we go. I should cover up. There you go. Great stuff, guys. Thank you. Thank you, guys. We'll give the high school just a a momentary break. Uh last meeting, Mr. Taylor was here and presented uh a building update at the elementary school. Uh next tonight, I have Mr. Smiley here who will be presenting on the middle school.
006Thank you. Um I have provided you guys with a copy of tonight's presentation for some late reading. through this. You're welcome. Thank you guys. Thank you. All right. So tonight I'm here to present uh where we sit with the state of the middle school for the 2425. Um staying true to our instructional vision, you know, creating that environment that supports learning, but also, you know, the mission of the middle school is really to produce a student that's going to be academically, socially, um able to perform in the high school and then eventually send them out to uh be responsible in our society. Um in addition to that, our vision, you know, really dedicating ourselves to making data driven decisions. Um, last year we implemented a lot of stuff with our data and this year it
007really came to fruition. As I go through, you'll see what I'm talking about. Um, strategic plan focal points. You know, as far as our our board updates, we've really stayed true to the culture and climate, academic excellence, and school experience. And that's what I'll go through today as well. All right. We'll start with culture and climate. You know, we we're setting the bar high. We have high expectations for not only the students, but the teachers as well. One thing that I did we did this year was increase and um have clear communication with not only the parents but also the teachers as well. One thing that we did was I have weekly updates for all the staff. Um every Friday I send out a Friday focus. This allows me to go through the week, review
008what we did, but it also allows me to move on to the following week um with some of the stuff that we may have going on. This allows the teachers to reach back to me, you know, within a day or two. So, this allows us to make adjustments for that following week. It really helped a lot this year in the middle school um as far as opening up the communication with myself and our staff. Um we've also utilized parent square quite a bit. Not only using um using Zach, our uh PR guy to using social media to getting messaging out. Parent Square for us as a middle school. This allows the teachers to really talk back and forth individually with the parents with any questions or concerns, but it also allows them to get feedback
009for the parents at a much faster speed than you know they're using their cell phones now. It's helped much more than than using um as far as uh you know uh emails, code of conduct, you know, this goes hand in hand with our tier 2 intervention is also you know we had a decrease in our referrals this year which has been a really positive thing on our end. Um with the tier 2 interventions we we we meet weekly. Um we go through our data, we go through the referrals that the teachers may be referring. Now with the tier 2, we look at academics, we look at attendance, but we also look at discipline. So those are the three areas that we really focus on in those tier two. And it also helps that I have
010the behavior intervention specialist that runs my tier 2. So we're able to really hone in on um creating plans for some of those pieces. Um, as far as the student ownership, this year we have student council on National Junior Honor Society. Um, we had a great induction last last night if you guys were able to attend. Um, our numbers are really strong this year. I think we have 19 this year or 19 as far as the middle school. Um, and I'm very proud of that. Those students work very hard. Um, and it's really nice to see that academic success and seeing the parents as well. You know, it's it's important to have both of them in the audience to see what we're doing. So it's that was a really nice touch last night. Um n
011when it next year what I wanted to open up would be a principal's cabinet. I think that that would also increase the communication with um the student voice and myself improvements that they can have within the building what they want to see and and making adjustments. Educational excellence you know where where we sit student um with student achievement. We have the new ELA and math curriculums and we have weekly data reviews. I'm fortunate to have in the middle school we have um team time. So every day um my grade level teams meet and they're able to discuss once a week they discuss um the data and with that new curriculum it's important that they see where they're at. Um whether it's their pacing, whether it's they need to make some adjustments. Um that data review
012allows them also to see where students stand academically. interventions. Um this year we have created um a couple different programs. When we have those data reviews and when we have those um meetings with the teachers, they create that after school program. So that's that 2:30 to 3:30 time period, that 10th period. The beginning of this year, I really sent the message home on how important it is um to the parents. That's the end of our academic day is is 3:20, not 2:20. And um I think that that helped a lot with sending that message as far as what we wanted to create as a middle school. Um you know and in addition to that during those team times the teachers strategically placed at risk students on almost a roundroin with them. One day they'll stay
013with math one day they'll stay with ELA where they're having those problems academically. They can set up that after school program. Um the AC academic recovery program that's new this year. Um what that's going to look like is we have some atrisisk students. We're going to recommend the atrisisk students attend this program. This is going to go from 2:30 to 4:45. Um all of the grade level um instructors are creating a curriculum for that program as well. This is going to give them that extra push to move them forward to go on to the next grade level. Structures and systems admin team meets with the coaching our our our uh our coaching team monthly. What's nice about this is they allow us to have that open line of communication. If they see something out there,
014our instructional coaches meet with our teachers daily. If they have any questions or concerns, those monthly meetings allows us to make that adjustment. In addition to that, it allows us to have that conversation with them of what we want to bring home to the teachers. So, if we have concerns, they can work with the teachers to improve some of that stuff as well. Um, and obviously setting goals is a big piece of this data. you know, where where will we sit down and where do we monitor? You know, the teachers are very good at um us using this data, but also um adjusting their curriculum to reach those goals, whether it's spending more time with a student individually or whether it's, you know, working with with the grade level to make sure that they're on
015target. Student achievement, this is last year's principal, high honor roll, and honor role. Um, if you take a quick look at the totals of where we sat in the 24 or 23 24 season, um, the totals kind of say that where we were back then. This year, we do have an increase in that as well. Um, I'm really happy to see that. I think when we get to the f, you know, further down in the section, it's going to explain what we did um, as a disc or as a building to add a little more emphasis to this discipline data. discipline's also gone down. We're at 7% now. You know, most of the decreases are in disruption to the educational pro um process and also um inappropriate language and action. Um I I'm a firm
016believer that that tier one um push that we had this year with the teachers creating those relationships with the students um really helped in the classroom and allow them to, you know, handle situations within the class and not sending them out. Um and this This is proof in the pudding. Some of the panorama platforms. So this is the platform that we use in tier 2, tier one and also our our meetings that we have instructionally with the um the team time. Um this is the 23 24 if you look at that top line where we sat um with the academics attendance and behavior. And now if you look at where we stand right now, there is signs of improvement as well um which I'm proud of. Okay, school experience. So last year, if you remember,
017we implemented um goal setting for the students at grade level. So one thing that I I I emphasize is if we're going to use data to make um decisions academically, I want that data as clean as possible. So one thing that we did was when we have those benchmark screeners every quarter, we meet grade level, split them up into groups. They have a binder that follows them throughout the middle school and into the high school and they have their academic progress in there. So, what's nice about that is when they have their binder, they see where they stand with that goal setting or or with that um that benchmark screener. They set a goal of where they want where they want to be for the following quarter. We have seen a dramatic improvement in this
018because they have some skin in the game now. Before when they were just taking it, they didn't see the results. they just took it, got done with it, and moved forward. When you put it in front of them, you know, this is social emotional, too. You know, everybody here probably has had a middle schooler, and they're, you know, growing, developing, figuring out who they are, and that's another piece that they set as well when they're meeting. So, they meet in their groups, but they meet one-on-one with the teachers. They pull up the platform, they open up their binder, and they set up expectations and goals. The student does for themselves for the next quarter. um the interventions that we have, you know, as far as the the social emotional growth and the academic um targets,
019that's what they're working on when they meet as a group. Uh structures and systems, you know, academic recognitions. Um, I told you this was one of the pieces that may or may not have had an impact on um, our honor roll numbers, but um, we have uh, ice cream socials after everyone and I have seen I I think that that had an impact because a lot of the friends we had 80 kids show up at the in the cafeteria or shoveling out ice cream. I think their friends saw that and that might have had a little bit of an impact on that as well. Um and then as far as the uh some of the other we had student of the month this year. Um so every month this also showed improvement with um the
020structure of how the culture has changed and shifted in the middle school. And what that means is we had um you know two students per grade level were allowed to bring a friend every month and they had a pizza party with with me and I don't know if that was the highest point of it but it allow it it allowed them to you know me to go talk one-on-one with them to see what they want to do you know as far as improving it but it also when they brought that friend I noticed that every month I would have at least one of those friends come back with another friend so it just created the culture that um you know we're we're really trying to strive for with that academic piece um structures and systems.
021So and also the student empowerment giving them a voice listening to the students seeing what they want to you know listen to them and you know a couple of things you know fishing club would be a good example I had a couple kids come to me this year it's been in my mind for about three years as far as developing this but they came to me with a plan and we were able to get that fishing club started this year so I'm extremely proud of that but you know that student empowerment and that principal's cabinet next year I think is going to really improve um student focus next year as far as what they want. These are just some of the experiences. Um couple of them are Mr. Wanik's class as far as the you
022know, if you look in the middle, you guys all saw um those being displayed out in the four year. They seem to improve every year. I mean, I know last year when I showed up, there was a few that were decent. This year, I think the whole entire four year was covered with just top-notch um volcanoes. on the lefth hand side some students dissecting pumpkin they do height weight and count the uh seeds inside there as well uh moving forward um I think that we did we put a lot of structures in place last year we saw a lot of the results this year we're going to continue working forward to streamlining some of the systems that we have in place we're going to continue to use data to make um decision making whether it's
023the academic piece or the social emotion emotional piece and um you you know, I'm looking forward to all the implementations this year for next year. Any questions? Questions? Um, so first I want to say that was a great presentation. The handouts were great, but also I love that you elaborated on each point. It was wonderful. Um, but also the So, right now, are we doing the program till 44? Starts next week. Starts next week. Um, I think that's great and I want to kind of shout out the teachers because I'm sure that's an extra thing that they don't necessarily have to take on. So I love to see that they're doing that and investing in it. So shout out to the teachers. Thanks. New this year. I think we brought it back. Mr. B may
024speak on this but it was I think it may have existed before CO. Okay. But um it it wasn't there for until this year. Um, yeah, it was a it was that was a shout out to tier one. I mean, those are the guys that really pushed for that. Um, and creating those ideas to get that, you know, that culture back into the middle school. I'm really proud of our tier one and tier two teams. I can't say enough about how much work they put into it and dedication to create this stuff. Questions? A couple of questions before you walk away. I know you're ready. I know. Okay. So my first question is and I'm I'm gonna be a little foggy on this and I'm hoping that maybe Jen this might be a question for
025you too, but I believe Yes, it is. Um I believe either earlier this year or last year you gave us a presentation about how you were tracking this data that it was new um in the middle school where you were pulling pieces of um possible uh disciplinary situations and how they were is that what you were referring to with the binder and the so you're still using that same format of okay well because I think it was new last year last year we implemented this year we really tuned it up. Um still base type program for that. Okay. And it seems to be working. It is working. Okay. Well, that's great. Yes. Okay. My next question is and this would be on your slide about discipline data. And I just just curious at this. So
026it says 9% decrease in incidence of disruption of education process. 15% decrease in incidence of inappropriate language or action. I think that's fantastic. I'm missing the difference. isn't inappropriate language like wouldn't it all fall under like how are you separating these I guess is is my question is how do you determine what kind of so when when the teacher myself creates the uh the referral there's a drop down at school so you have to fix something okay well I'm just it I think it decreases great I just was wondering you know when there substantial differences is there because our kids are using better language all the time or they're just staying quieter and interrupting anyone. And so I just was wondering kind of how how that was determined. Yeah. Okay. Anybody else? Thank you very
027much. Thank you. Thank you. All right. We're going to do a a quick transition. Next up will be Mr. Gaffne. Excuse me for the state of the high school at this point. So, Obviously, we the elementary school, we saw the middle school. So, now we'll kind of turn it over to the high school for for uh Mr. Gaffne's presentation. Thank you. Um I provided packets as well. When I put this together, I I put a lot of stuff in here, so please ask questions. Um if I don't know something, I'll I'll find out for you and I'll report it back to Mr. Van Orman. So when I looked at this presentation, I kind of looked at it as coming in on January 21st as an outsider looking in like, hey, this is what I see
028with the state of our high school. So you're going to see some similarities, but you're going to see some differences, too. Um, and I'm happy to talk about those. I tried to keep it um brief within the confines of a presentation for the board. I'm going to try and meet that expectation. That may not happen, but we'll see how that goes. So, I'm going to work from my notes, too. So, I looked at the state of the high school again from somebody coming in on the outside, January 21st, moving forward. I can't really speak to the past um historically. I just didn't look at that date. I wanted a fresh set of eyes. I wanted a fresh perspective. Um so, I'm coming at you from a January 21 standpoint. So, I want to go to
029our instructional vision. I don't want to spend a lot of time on it, but what I do want to point out is to create a safe and supportive learning environment for all of our students. I want to go back to that again. To create a safe and supportive learning environment for all of our students, hold on to that because we're going to come back to it. Um, very technically savvy here. So, I looked at three things that stand out to me at the state of a high school and state of the district. I look at the culture and climate of the building. I look at academic excellence and opportunity that we provide for our students. And I look at fiscal responsibility that's student driven. It has a direct student impact. Those are the first three
030things that I look at. So when it comes to culture and climate, two things come to to my mind. High expectations and relationships matter. So under culture and climate, and there may be more, but this is what I feel falls under culture and climate. The board of education approves a code of conduct of the reorg meeting every year. It's a living document. It's a breathing document. We're always looking at that based on data to improve what our code of conduct looks like. We have clear and consistent communication. We talk about that modeling expectations that exhibit character, integrity, compassion, and kindness for all of our students. critical strategic duty assignments, visibility, support, supervision, and another opportunity to build relationships with your students. Accountability, draw the line, hold the line, right? We have high expectations. We don't
031move the line, we move the students. That's what we do. Um, and the devil's in the details. The little things matter. Pay attention to them. And I'll go into a little bit more of that later on, too. So, let's go to academic excellence and opportunity. The awesome thing about Red Creek is we provide a lot of opportunities for for students with a school district our size. Hold on to what you can and build off them. We have advanced placement courses. We have dual credit courses. We have driver education coming in next year, which is new. New visions, which is a very competitive program. Two of our kids got accepted into it. That's great. Build off that. We have distance learning. We have a career center which will reimagine. We have academic recovery. That's going to
032be new. Please ask me about that. We're implementing algebra ELA lab for freshmen. New. Please ask me about that. We have our Apex online learning. We have a learning center. We have Boseie programs. We have test prep and review. We provide a lot of resources for our kids here. That's awesome in my mind, my perspective. Fiscal responsibility. In my mind, it needs to be directly focused on our students and all of them with equity. And we talk about a student as the whole child, not just the academic child. So, we have things like academic recovery. That'll be new. Ask me about it. Regions and AP review, career center, exam fees, boot camp, that's new. In-house summer school, science Olympiad, Monolastics, All State, Pizza, the board. Anytime we can provide these opportunities for our kids to
033get out and showcase their skills, I'm in. Perfect. Hold on to them. Culture and climate moving forward considerations. We need to continue to align what is stated in our code of conduct with our everyday practices at school. They need to be intentional. They need to be consistent. And they need to be high expectations. Moving forward, we need to look at what our defined roles are for visitors to school, our student responsibilities, our parents. We need to keep this is a living document, remember? So, it's always changing. We're always assessing. We're always moving forward. So, we need to look at these continuously. They're never a one and done. We assess, monitor, move ahead. We can do all of this. We can accomplish all of this in opening day professional development. We can do it during faculty
034meetings where faculty meetings are not just dissemination of information but we actually use them as professional development. So another opportunity to keep looking at this readable living document ongoing high excuse me ongoing high expectations follow through and support our administration. That's my job to support our students to support our families to support our parents. Okay. And I would I would encourage to say that's all of the administrator's jobs. That's the teacher's job. That's your job. That's our job. That's what we do. So moving forward, academic excellence and opportunity. We reimagine. We refocus. It's intentional. Moving forward. Here are some considerations. Next year, we're putting in algebra and ELA labs and additional support for our students as eighth graders coming up as freshmen. They're not on the JV team anymore. They're coming up to the varsity.
035Their clock starts ticking. It's credit based. So, anytime we can give our freshman more support, data driven on algebra ELA labs, we're in academic recovery. That's an afterchool program that will start next year. It aligns with a late bus room. It's not a punishment. It's not a penalty. It's not a consequence. We encourage our kids to come. We embrace that our kids are coming. We want our kids to come. It's not about just academics. It's about giving our kids two more hours a day. We know where they are. We know who they're with. And we know what they're getting. So, anytime I can get our kids to be here on school, the hub of our community, I want them here because I know where they are and I know what they're doing. Um, career center,
036we have that. Um, that's a piece where we intentionally put kids into small study environments so we can focus on them and what they need. We're going to take a look at that and reimagine that learning center or no, sorry, that's learning center. Career center is with Mr. D. Roer again. Outstanding. How many schools have that? Keep it. I think we just need to reimagine and hit all the caveats of career exploration. And that's an easy one. That's just communication and collaboration to me. Um, we have our Apex online learning, another digital platform for kids to access education that maybe they can't fit into their schedule or maybe they struggled a little bit in the course and then we can supplement it with Apex. Apex won't be the end all be all. It's not designed
037just to give it kids, but it's designed to assist kids or supplement learning for kids. So, we'll take a look at that, too. Fiscal responsibility, student driven impact, general fund verse grants. Overall goal is to continue to provide multiple learning opportunities that develop the whole child and every child with equity and purpose. It's got to be purposeful. It's got to have a direct impact. These are the things that we're fiscally responsible that we're putting in. Academic recovery grant funded. Career center grant funded. Exam fees, they come from the general fund. We're talking about AP exams. I'm okay with that. Anytime we can raise the bar, let's do it. In-house summer school, grant funded. New? Ask me about it. Boot camp, two weeks timeline, no cost. Test prep and review sessions, grant funded. So when we
038talk about fiscal responsibility, I try and stay away from the general fund and access grant money that I know can provide direct student impact. Okay. Areas of focus moving forward. We continue to look at our cultural climate and our academic excellence and opportunities. My opinion, you can't both need to coexist. You can't have one without the other. They both have to coexist. Um, clear and consistent communication and modeling. We need to practice what we preach. We need to model that for our kids every time. High expectations. I said this before. We hold the line. We draw the line. We don't move the line. We move kids to the line. That's a refocus. Accountability. The little become the big things and the big things become insurmountable things. So what I would say is we pay attention
039to the devil in the details. We do the work up front and the work in the back end becomes less. And I would be remiss without saying as an educator we love and care for our students like they were our own. Um students know the difference. They're not dumb. They know the difference. They know if it's personal. They know it's business and we exhibit kindness, compassion, and understanding even on those days. So, we don't have quite enough in the gas tank. That's not relevant. We always always show kindness, compassion, and understanding. Humor can go a long way. We keep things in perspective. We keep things objective. Being fair is not always being equal. We need to look at each case individually on what we're talking about. So equal is not always fair. We need to
040listen and we need to know know our audience. Seek to understand before being understood. Seven cubby if anybody knows that. Um and lastly to me my philosophy has always been if you can dream it you can do it. Walt Disney. And I don't know who made this up. I think it was me but it couldn't have been. Somebody maybe maybe said this better. But I always thought you know we're only limited by our own imagination. So, we take the brakes off and we go. All right. Questions? Wait. Thank you for your time. That's it. So, um, thank you for the opportunity. That's kind of the way I looked at it. Um, questions. Mr. I don't know if you were comfortable about talking. Not really. I figured about the uh the inhouse. You might have mentioned
041it, but I I am interested to hear a little bit more about that. So, is this our typical summer school process? No, we're going to look at each case differently. So, the goal here is anytime we can, my thinking is any time we can keep our kids in house and not farm them out somewhere, which sometimes we have to, but anytime we can keep them in house, we now have control. We the we know who the kids are, the kids know who the teachers are. We can set up the parameters following the rags to get our kids not just through but more opportunity to bring kids into our school into our building with our people and I feel totally so the inschool summer school will begin will be again effective like a regular summer school.
042We're just keeping the kids here. And how is that determined when we're working with other school districts for summer school? It won't matter. They don't care. We can keep who we want. Um, no. Literally. I mean, we could send kids out. We'd still have the opportunity if we needed to to send a student summer and we will. And here's why. Because within school summer school, we may not have the uh we may not have the staffing to support it. Some kid some kids may need to take a regent exam. We can't do that here. We have to farm them out to Williamson because we won't have the staff to do it. Some kids may be a lab requirement that we can't do and so we may have to farm them out to schools. But on
043the all in all, if I can keep them here, that's better for us. No, I think that's great. My question was simply that if we weren't in a position to have the staff, would we still have an opportunity to access those other schools that we we work with? We can do that. Thank you. Yep. Other questions? I do. You um actually you encouraged it. You ask about it. I did. Um, so was that the academic recovery? I believe No, that was Oh, the academic recovery is something different. That's going to start in September. And and the basis for that is it's we did this before and it was hugely successful. Um, and I'm hoping we can we can mirror that. So, the academic recovery is for everybody. It's a safe spot after school for the
044athletes, for the for the the club people, for the kids that have nowhere to go. It is not, and I want to be very clear, it's not a punishment. It's not vindictive. It's not pointing fingers. We really want you to be here. We would love for you to be here. And it's kind of, if you think about a college library atmosphere, that's kind of where I'm going. Rules are simple. Leave it better than you found it. You're welcome to come in in groups and study in groups. I don't care if you listen to music. I don't care if you're chatting, but the focus is going to be on your work. I want to empower our kids to have an understanding of take control of your learning and here's an opportunity to do that. And I
045think the marketing tool, which I thought was successful, is it's not a punishment. We'd love to have you here. Come on in. You know, I think I think the I think the mind shift is how you present it. So, that's kind of the academic recovery program. It's not just about academics. It's about relationships. It's about keeping our kids here in school, which is the hub of our community. Thank you. Will you have um or are there other opportunities other than the credit recovery? Um because Apex is an online learning. It's for credit recovery though. Or it doesn't have to be. It's part of that. Apex fees were part of that, but it could be more than that too. So could it be for you know instead of taking a certain class you could do that
046online here you can um I but again I think each case is an individual case I would look at that student are they capable of doing that can they take the self initiative to do that it's always about it's always about looking at that student and putting them in the best scenario for the best support so the answer is yes maybe or the answer could be no they're not quite ready for that human interaction, human relationship is better. I can follow that. And then with the dual credit courses, are we going to be paying for the college courses via Boseies next year? I don't know the answer to that. I think if you stopped before via Boseies. Yeah. Yes. So, you're not going to run it through. You're just going to pay for it via
047the grant. To be determined, but we are going to be paying for them. Okay. Just stop there. Thank you. Question. Yes. Um, can you talk more about the career center and um, what you mean by reimagining? So, right right now we have a career center which again I think is awesome and I love Mr. Dros's passion with it, but I think you need somebody to bounce ideas off of and and with the career center I want to make sure that we're hitting multiple careers at multiple times. Um, so that's what I think some I think Rick needs somebody to kind of bounce ideas off and kind of structure what this could look like because I think it could explode. And for example, we had that career night that was really put together quickly and I
048thought done very well. Can you imagine if we sit down over the summer and kind of bank this out and well attended? Yes. So I don't I don't question Mr. Dro's passion, his commitment at all. I think it's awesome and I think the career center is awesome. I think we could dive a little bit deeper and just grow from it. So, I want to say I was going to mention the career center mostly just for feedback. I've heard so many people in the community that appreciated that career night and the the career center as a whole with the different ideas and different perspectives. I appreciate Mr. D. Rocher because I know he pours his heart into that. He did. Um I think Mr. Carter has helped with it too. So, huge props to that because
049it's I you could already see the effect that it's having on the um community. So, thank you. Um academic recovery, do we have adults that are there that are helping or is it just more of like a comfortable place for the kids to go? They'll have supervision and there'll be expectations. So basically what would happen is the first week of school I would meet with all the academic recovery supervisors and put the expectations into place so everybody's on the same message. Um so but I mean like if if I'm struggling with English would if and I wanted to would there be a night that I could go in and have help from an English teacher or is it just supervised in general? It's not just supervision but it it'll be challenging. I can't make uh
050particular staff members come into academic recovery. So the bigger thing for me if I could the answer is yes because I'll because the schedule will be done for the year and housed with the person. So that's going to be out there ahead of time. Everybody will know. But for example, if I can't get an English teacher that is interested, I'm more interested in putting a body in there that can encourage and support and really help kids apply themselves. You know, that's kind of the mindset there. If I can't get what I want, then at least I want a body in there that's going to be encouraging and supportive and fostering for these kids that probably need it. Thank you. I think your presentation was encouraging and supportive. So, thank you for for your January 21st.
051Here it is. Um, I wanted to say that I was really pleased that you you focused on in the culture and climate that you focused on aligning what is stated in our code of conduct with our everyday practices. So, I think that was really important to highlight. Thank you. Thank you. Also, just a comment um about your holding a line. I really appreciated hearing that. I think since co there's been a general across the country really about um academics standards going down and I think that message is really really important for the community to hear that as a district we are holding the line for our kids. So thank you other questions. I have one you did encourage questions. So um can you can you describe the boot camp? Yeah. So sometimes we have kids
052that are coming to the end of their line, whether it's a senior, a junior, and they're just short of meeting the mark. They owe a term paper, uh they didn't finish their apex, um they just needed extra time. So the boot camp really is for those kids and we So I had the teachers provide me a list saying, "Hey, who do you think maybe would be eligible for boot camp if they don't make it through by June 16th?" June 17th to June 27th is the regions week. That's your boot camp. Okay. So, I would say it's Mrs. Smith. You have you gave me three kids. So, I'm going to empower the teacher to bring those three kids in. They're going to they're going to meet during regions week. The rest of the kids are done
053June 16th, but these other kids that might need a little bit more support and a little bit more time. They're coming to boot camp, for lack of better word. So they'll come in during that time to get caught up on their work to an acceptable level that we hold high. And then when they complete that, their boot camp is over. They walk the stage on the 27th. They pass that class. They move from junior to senior. And we try to catch those kids at no cost by extending the school day, which we can. Okay. And these kids will know like how long ahead of time. Well, and they're going to know. So, okay. So, yeah. So, I'm meeting Friday. We're meeting down to kind of differentiate boot camp in school. William said repeater. We'll kind
054of take a look at that Friday. Once we do, I'll meet with the teachers with their boot camp uh personnel. We'll go over the expectations and we'll contact parents and students. I don't think it's a bad name, but is anyone else getting Mr. Gaff like on the golf cart with children running behind him? So, I think it's great. Any other questions? Thank you so much. Thank you, Mr. Gaffy. Anything else you might want to uh just our monthly update on our MVPs. We had uh 21 MVPs this month. Again, I'd like to just read a few of them. Uh Arlene Middleton in our elementary school. Uh Arlene is is always hardworking. She does many things a day that go unrecognized by most, but is very much needed and helpful. She has concern for fellow co-workers
055as well as the needs of our students. She has shown herself to be honest, loyal, loyal employee that is trustworthy and dedicated to her job. Second one is for Jeff Wright. Jeff is a bus driver and transports our juniors and seniors to our Williamson Boseis campus. He is dedicated to the students getting the students to and from school safely and takes our Bosei students to on off-site job uh job opportunities. Jeff has been doing this run for a long time. I believe he is a good employee and very well deserving for the recognition of his services. Lastly uh this month Kathy Armstrong, middle school counselor. Kathy has gone above and beyond this year while juggling many responsibilities i.e. counseling, crisis management, student interviews, scheduling classes. Kathy has proven to be a strong support not just
056for our students and families, but for our co-workers. So, um, kind of shout out to those folks. Great. Mrs. Madigan, may I make a motion to accept C and D of the agenda? You may. Thank you. Can I have a second, please? Thank you, Mrs. Decker. So, it's going to be C and D. Okay. Any questions on this group? Do a call vote for all that when you're ready. Mrs. Kaiser? Yes. Mrs. Folds? Yes. Mrs. Dingman? Yes. Mrs. Decker? Yes. Mr. Joyce? Yes. Mrs. Allen. And Mrs. Nadigan? Yes. Thank you. Uh, moving on to the consent agenda. Could I have a motion for the entire if Mrs. Folds and Mrs. Kaiser? So, this is going to be all of E, please. Any questions on this group? Okay, when you're ready. Mrs. Becker, yes. Mr. Joyce,
057yes. Mrs. Dman, yes. Mrs. Kaiser, yes. Mrs. Allen, yes. Mrs. Fo, yes. And Mrs. Madigan, yes. Thank you. Okay, moving on to new business. If anybody would like to entertain me with a motion here, F1 through six. Perfect. Can I get a second for that? Mrs. Dingman, feel like I don't need a policy update, committee update every time I see a big list on here. So, great job, guys. There's more coming. Gold star. Gold star. Any questions on this group? So, that'll be the first reading for quite a few of them. Okay. Miss Mr. Gaffne took up all the questions tonight. So, when you're ready. Mrs. F. Yes. Mrs. Allen. Yes. Mrs. Kaiser. Yes. Mrs. Dean. Yes. Mr. Doy. Yes. Mrs. Stacker. Yes. And Mrs. that again. Yes. Thank you. Okay. Administrative reports. Any questions
058on the group this time? Okay. Uh Mr. Venorman. Perfect. Uh first document for us is our updated enrollment information. Um yeah, I'm correct. Uh so we currently stand at 767 which is uh down 27 from the start of the school year J uh September and uh 49 by my math from from this time last year. Again kind of going grade level by grade level. You know uh two grade levels stand out. the the the current senior class is down eight from last year and the current seventh grade class is down seven. Uh in in pulling some of those uh individual cohort numbers out, one of the things that we noticed a handful of students of course are transferring to other districts and then some of them are uh have enrolled in homeschool programs. So then
059we kind of dove into our homeschool numbers and uh as we stand right now we have 73 homeschool students enrolled in homeschool programs for this year which is last year at this time we had 72. So we're basically the exact same amount uh plus one from what we were homeschooled students at this time last year. Uh we expect that number to drop just a hair. We have some students that'll graduate out um through their homeschooling programs by this June. So that number may you know may drop down a hair uh as well. So attendance is still hold attendance rate is still holding strong. Just trying to again get a handle on, you know, when I look grade by grade, some grades are up. Kindergarten is always up because we don't always get all of our
060kinder uh prek students don't always enroll. So, our kindergarten numbers on that are up eight from what they were as UPK because not all students come in for UPK. Makes it very challenging for us to program our UPK and kindergarten class sizes. uh you know some students are just not ready to come in full day in UPK or for a variety of reasons and then trying to catch them in kindergarten you know so so some of our grades fourth grade third third third grade is up five so we have we kind of have this smattering some are down seven or eight some are up three to five very challenging for us to kind of forecast where everything's going you know but I think the the issue that we're looking at is if we're graduating 50
061to 60 students and enrolling 30 to 40 students. That's a net loss of 10 to 15, you know, somewhere in that ballpark on a year-to-year basis holistically. Um, trying to look at our live birth data and seeing is this a is this a is this a concerning trend. Our live birth data is telling us that we may start to see a tick up a little bit in those UPK numbers which will go through over the years. Um which is a good thing. Uh I had a conversation with a parent yesterday. They're moving into the district at the end of June. The reason they're coming here is so that they can enroll their kid in our UPK program. So there's another plus, you know, plus one. Um, so it's not all terrible news. It's just where
062some of those grade level numbers happen to fall. Um, thank you. A couple quick questions. Do we have do we have a way to know like the example of the family that's moving a district from UPK? Do we have the statistics of the number of families that only come for UPK and then leave? It has to be a low number, I would say, but I don't I don't Yeah, I don't have that information. this family is buying a house, so I would imagine they're not buying a house for a year and then and then moving. Um, but we could certainly see if we can procure some of that information. Also, do we know ahead of time when families are going to opt to homeschool or is that tend to be more of a you find
063out when it actually is going to happen? Okay. Yeah. Uh and and generally speaking, it does go both ways. Um you know, some families we you know, there's a strong trend for them to enroll in public education as freshmen uh in their ninth grade year because that gets them the opportunity to graduate. They can um get in that freshman cohort. they can participate in school sports activities, those kind of things like that, which kind of hits that age where they're maybe a little more socially active as a student. So, um that's gener if if we see them coming back into school, that's generally the age that we would see them uh coming back in. If it's much later than that, the district has the uh ability to accept or deny the homeschool coursework as um
064to counting towards the graduation requirements. So, they're not behind when they come in as a freshman. If they wait till their junior year, their quote unquote junior age year, they would be behind their cohorts when they when they enroll. Okay. Uh so that's the enrollment information. Uh wanted to just provide an update. This does not need board approval. Uh but just uh notice obviously yesterday was our um 2526 budget vote and board member election. Shout out to our community for the overwhelming turnout. Uh last year, kind of my first year through a full budget process, we had 437 voters. This year, 548, so an increase of about 110 voters. Great support from our community. Anytime we can get them in our school to come in and vote and be active in what we're doing um
065on the financial and academic stage, uh outstanding. Uh we had a voter approval rating this year of on our budget of 81%. Normally the threshold is 80. Anything above 80 is a pretty really sound um indication that that we the community was in pretty good support of the budget that that the the board and the district put together. So uh last year we're at 85%. So a a slight decrease in that. Uh, of course, our bus proposition passed as well at the rate of 85%. So, kind of seeing that same same number there. And, um, again, we had five candidates for board of education seats and we had, uh, the top two vote getters earned threeyear terms and they were uh, both of our incumbents, Stephanie Kaiser and Nancy Henry Dickman. So, congratulations to them.
066those those seats will take place uh on July 1st. So, thank you to the community for their continued support and outpouring of uh coming in yesterday and and voting with us. So, it was a it was a long night counting the ballots, but uh uh well worth it for everybody. So uh I provided for the board of education uh a second draft reading of our board of education meetings proposed board of education meeting schedule for next year and made a couple tweaks to it based on some feedback that the board had provided from last meeting. Uh this needs to be approved by July 1st but it can be approved prior to July 1. Can I jump in here just for a second? So, um, with the current board here now, we could approve this if
067we wanted to make a motion if everybody has had an opportunity to look at the dates. I know that there was a question about, um, two uh, meeting dates in July. And that was uh, put into place simply if we need it for a hiring situation um, for the start of the school year. Doesn't mean that we have to, but, we want to get it on the calendar just in case we needed that additional date. But um I don't think I didn't hear any other feedback. So I don't know if any everybody's had an opportunity to look at or just happy with it. So if you haven't yet, we can wait and and put this on in June. But I have not looked at it yet. All right. So we're just going to keep moving
068because that's 107. Um do we do we want to maybe think about a second meeting in August? Same purpose like hiring or like So the uh I purposely put the August one at the end of August as kind of a catchall. Um and of course normally at the reorg meeting the board will authorize me to uh temporate provisionally hire somebody pending board approval. Okay. So knowing that we have September 17th as the next one after that should there need to be a last last minute hire, I can provide provisional um approval for that and they could start on time pending, you know, and then it would become official when the board took action on this. Okay. All right. Why don't we take another look at it? We'll bring it back for um the June meeting.
069But I would just stress again about that uh lovely one around Fourth of July. If anybody has any conflict, we want to kind of get that ironed out as soon as we can for this year because it didn't we already sort of we set July one, right, for this year, right? We did, but the last several years then we end up changing it when we got closer to it just because I think when we approve it, people aren't really looking at the following July. They're just looking at the current July. So So you're talking the July 7, 2026 meeting? No, no, I'm talking about like this coming July. Yeah. Okay. The reoring. So that change would require board action, right, to to switch from July one this year, right? Um, but there's been a an
070issue getting enough people here. So, just to double check that, even though we did already approve it on last year's calendar. Well, I think that at the reorg meeting, we would want everyone here, right? Not just not just who can make it. Well, that's what I'm saying. So, I think that's why it got moved before was trying to capture everybody. I just know that's a kind of a busy time of year for everybody. So, all right. So, we'll put that in your notes to take a look at before we come back in June. Okay, back to you. Thank you. Uh, draft code of conduct. Obviously, you heard um some illusions to the code of conduct uh today in our presentations. Part of our responsibility on a year-to-year basis is a board of education to approve
071a code of conduct. That is not what today's purpose is. One of the other requirements is that we need to uh begin a 30-day public hearing process for our code of conduct. So, this would kind of start that. We will hold a public hearing on our uh prior to our June 18th board meeting. So, we would hold that on that same night, you know, say 6 o'clock, give or take, something like that. Um, we this year, just as as a precursor to that, this year we uh have endeavored to do a full breakdown of our code of conduct. Uh, we sent it to our uh legal team, our legal counsel for a review to make sure that we were in legal compliance with with the law on what things were in our code of conduct.
072We had not done a full deep dive code of conduct review in several years. It was due um from the legal review updates. Amanda Ventura, our director of student services uh has been conducting a a community uh committee. We solicited uh interested parties and those folks have been going page by page through this to look at uh those legal recommendations, what was in there for practical purposes, making some changes. Again, this is one of those documents. It gets it gets reviewed every year, but it's also a good opportunity on a year-to-year basis for us to make some modifications and adjustments to the things that need to go in there. So, it's never a final document. It just it needed to be updated from where it was. It is uh what you're seeing is some of
073that work. We're going to um again hold that public hearing, give an opportunity for people to look through this. Uh the the document that you're seeing in front of you does not have the red lines. I will make sure that we get the red line document out because it's it's such a long document. Um there's two actually. Yeah. So the only one version the the redline version I think is critical for folks to look at it and go what is coming out? What is being changed? What is being recommended for changes instead of just throwing a 40-page document in front of everybody and saying review this and and uh that that way you'll have an opportunity. We're going to use the same editing process that we do for all of our policies, which will have
074red strikeout language, blue ad language, green change language, so every folk everybody can see what some of those updates are. Um, I think it's a drastic improvement from what we've had. We've received a lot of feedback this year at a variety of times, including in our code of conduct, uh, is our athletic regulations and code of conduct as well. are uh so that received the same level of scrutiny and and editing. So um we're in alignment between our athletic code of conduct and our school code of conduct over time as we tweak things. If we don't have the lawyers take a look at those things, we get out of alignment on on some of those pieces. So the legal review this year really brought us back in alignment. And then um again this this committee
075approach we had not done something like that where we brought the community in and had our faculty, our administrators and our community members, parents uh really taking a deep dive on what's in there. Uh so grateful for everybody's report uh and support on that. So you'll see more to it. It's not a voting thing today. Just kind of opens that uh next steps for everything. So next well it'll be open for public the 18th of next month and then when did we vote on it? So the plan would be to have a public hearing on June 18th again with the draft available and then the board would on July 1st approve um as early as July 1st would approve the code of conduct for the 2526 school year. And when does your hearing start then?
076June June 18th. 30 days. Yeah. Have Yeah. From today. You have to have at least 30 days. So, this is starting your clock for your 30-day. Mhm. Okay. It's not from the public hearing date. No. No. And when we get the red line version, uh, I will be working on getting that out ASAP. Okay. Thank you. Where will the public be able to see the red line version? It's in the public. I mean, it is, but are we just going to adjust this um current agenda and add it into this current agenda or we will make sure that that the red line version is available um readily available for people to review? We don't need to hide it. We don't need to Will it be online though or something? Our current one is online. I
077want to make sure that there's no confusion for folks if they went onto our website. So, I'd have to just take a quick look at, you know, what for ease of of viewing purposes, which one they're looking at um before we would and then we would provide access and information about what that would look like. Same thing with our draft safety plan, which is the next uh piece in there. Kind of the same format. We need to have a public hearing on that. Um this has re this document has been reviewed by our school safety officer sir from Cuganadagabosis uh Jack McKe. Uh we have a a a more detailed backend version of something like this. This is kind of the public facing one that hits the highlights. The backend one provides a lot of
078the the intimate details around our safety plan. Mr. Smiley is our safety officer. We have uh held multiple meetings. We have one more coming up where we'll uh review some of those safety plans, put those in place. But the process for this safety plan would be the same as I just described with our code of conduct public hearing opportunity for for public to to see see this, ask questions about it. Um and then it would receive uh board of ed approval as early as July 1. Okay, thank you. Um, does anyone have any committee updates? The policy committee has been working diligently to get policies updated. Like we should print that somewhere. Anybody else? Okay. So, the start item on there that was added is because we have we have an opportunity to recognize um
079a few board members here. So, anybody that is unaware um NISBA recognizes board members on a four-step program um by point accumulation um if you engage in training or if you attend events and um and you can see it all online, but it's um it's not like 100, 200, 300 like that. It's a little uneven, but um as you accumulate points, NISB keeps track of it and then um wants to recognize you for your service. It doesn't come with a check in case anybody's wondering. But um so I'd just like to uh recognize three of the board members tonight that have reached the 75 point um I guess level. Level. Yeah, thank you because I couldn't come up with a word. So um the first one is Mrs. Decker. Would you present this to like
080this please? Yeah. Perfect. Uh the second one is Mrs. Allen. Congratulations. And the third one is Mrs. Folultz. Um I believe the top one is 500 points and then you're like a board member for life. they I don't know maybe send you a plaque or something. So, keep earning those points. Um, okay. Does anyone have anyone anything else before we move into executive? Okay, great. I would take a motion move in for a particular personnel matter. Mrs. Dingman, Mrs. Kaiser. Thank you very much.