001thank you everyone for joining um if you all can join me for the [Music] indice recommended motion to approve the revised March 11 2025 board Education meeting agenda has presented I'll make the motion I'll second any discussion all in favor anyos [Music] motion good evening everybody uh on next on the agenda is our Spotlight and for this evening we are going to recognize our our award-winning music programs and Mr loer um please lead us off thank you for inviting us here today to honor these music students during music in our schools this is the first time that I've spoken at a board meeting this year and I would be remiss if I did not say thank you for selecting me to be the board's recipient for the Thomas King service award last spring I'm very
002honored it's my 19th year working here at Rond Valley and I'm very proud and happy to be part of this community when I started here the quote that I was told most often was that the music department was the brightest jewel in the Ronda Crown at the time I thought it was a little bit of a silly metaphor but the concept has resonated with me since then and with the community and your support we have continued to have an outstanding music program revive the high school music Global and put on 12 shows we have got the microphone I was talking maybe the band will play you off [Music] sorry I think I'm back on okay great uh so sorry uh revive the High School Musical and put on toal shows we have been named one
003of the best communities for music education in the United States for six years in a row and presented many concerts and most importantly given our kids experiences that they would not have had otherwise students gravitate towards the music classrooms because they feel seen heard and valued the relationships the student build with each other and with their teachers has a Long and Lasting effect and contributes to their development and successes the prel music you heard tonight was possible the Prelude music you heard tonight was possible not only with what the students did this year but with the music education they have received since kindergarten the Arts change lives without any further Ado we'd like to honor all of these students and I believe we're going to start with our students involved with the High School Musical
004this [Applause] year good evening my name is Juliana McCarthy and I teach High School fire and also had a hand in producing this year's musical of byby Birdie along with a lot of other uh pivotal and important uh adults I just want to acknowledge those adults now if you're here uh come on up get a certificate uh Robin Baker Kim BS Mia D young Mr loader [Music] andul and Christine Jarvis so thank you to okay come on up Ryan Helm our sound engineeri I don't know thatat's here Nick Bodner set [Music] [Applause] builder all right uh backstage we have Alex aquachella Rock aella just come on up if I read your name Evan Decker Isaac d Elia Eisenberg Ariana Eisenberg Morgan Herman fla Parker [Applause] Myers Morgan Herman floraa Parker Myers Stein zinia Z here
005[Music] VAR Williams and [Applause] Ellie all right and for our cast members people you saw on stage Ramona Anderson L Becca Carlo buti Franchesca buti Keith Carlson car Jackson Davenport Violet Elder relli Kenny parar poet frell is here woo Ruby ferino story Delio G hars Hannah hay ran long [Applause] L lion Conor Murray Aiden Nolan gr palero Sophia pegon Mar Maggie shackle Ava seum Owen Simmons [Applause] JY Mia tror not here and Gracie B [Applause] I just wanted to make a comment I had the privilege of attending uh byebye birdie and I was super impressed I thought I was I was thought I was out of Broadway play uh so just my first musical but more to come but you guys did a phenomenal job and just super proud of all of your accomplishments so
006great job alici did you get one [Applause] [Music] in the pit Maven flamous he was just here playing in the SE uh z alaa irmer i Herman Harris [Applause] Kay Ken shade and all of those students were part of the sepet that was the prud music today uh next Tristan cantello Rowan boy Sienna [Applause] Greenberg Jack [Applause] [Music] Headley the next two students were selected for all Eastern ensemble this year once again Ken shade and Hannah [Applause] H our all St students this year Freya irmer Maven flamous Hannah h Harris Kay and Ken [Applause] Shay all right area all state Ramona Anderson Carlo buetti CR hermer [Applause] clam Grace P Harris Sam leader aen Nolan py Hudson py and Ken [Applause] shade High School all Cy man or it's me I'm problem uh Lauren Lauren
007Lauren Lauren Ivan this is high school Cy band in case I could have uh Freya irmer Harris Kaya Ken shade maven [Applause] hson py Viv Juliana [Applause] luner Sam lever and Aiden Nolan [Music] [Applause] [Music] next up Junior High All County band Margaret shotel Sten hermer Emma good miles mures Jameson [Music] Wilhelm Sophia Mula and Conrad sah hamaguchi [Applause] all right so this is the elementary All County band and I just want to say congratulations to them on continuing the 16e long streak of Rond out getting the most kids in the elementary all count band of all the schools in Ola County so up first is the thank you up first Valeria Castro next Sophia frell sopia first chair aelia gatherer for two years in a row Anna good [Applause] Anna Ignat Luke s Mia
008[Applause] kirck Charlotte Martino first chair Sierra Miller euphonium Eliana Murray Walter Mula ayen [Applause] o'i aah pusack first chair saxophone [Applause] Jackson Post Harley Ryder hiy [Applause] Robbie first chair frch Owen spora Ley Stuffle Hudson [Applause] [Laughter] py all Academy jazz bands this year Hudson py High School Academy jazz band Conor Murray Junior High Jasmine Jackson davor junior high Jazz [Applause] man Conrad Saka hamaguchi Junior High jazz band [Music] good evening my name is Ethan Moore and I am the coral and general music teacher at the Intermediate School um thank you so much for having us this is such a pleasure um one of the greatest parts of my job as a music teacher are the moments when we bring the community together and tonight is just another celebration of that and the power of
009music to do that the first group that I get to announc is a very exciting group these are our fourth graders we call it Elementary All County but it actually has a much cooler name it is the Young Elementary music [Music] Symposium the acronym is yems um so these kids get together and basically like I said it functions to get them started out as kind of like the top of their class representing rondal in the county so let me read some names off some of these students I know are here tonight um our first participant in yems was Hugh Cummings angelise Gerard winter Nicholls Jackson Peterson Lauren Shay Natalie Smith [Applause] Savannah [Applause] Stokes Gracie [Applause] Tate McKenzie troger Mara van Luen [Applause] Grayson weisenberg Alexis Van Norman Emory Ruiz Penny Conlin and E [Applause]
010purcel all right and also an energetic group this next one this is our elementary school All County Chorus members Morgan bresnahan Lillian Fitzgerald Willa ferino adalita gallon Liliana gray Willa marusik [Applause] and Sierra [Applause] Miller I'd also as a as a younger teacher here in Rond out I would also like to thank Randy loer and Juliana McCarthy for their leadership in building the program and showing us the way as we kind of Usher our kids up vertically to the next level and uh Randy I don't know the mic didn't doct or me now it's working fine I switch Ms thank you uh acknowledging now uh our Junior High All County students um these are ninth graders who attended that all County Coral Festival in January in which Ronda hosted so another shining start uh poet
011Ferell Margaret shle Rowan sichler Avery and Gracie Walsh [Applause] compen and our high school all County cor students River Bower llo Becca Carlo buti story gipo Mira [Applause] hagy Hannah H Aiden Nolan Madison p [Applause] Graham Palo Maria Reed Owen [Applause] [Music] Simon hello my name is Rebecca Spencer I teach Junior High choir here at rondal I a pretty new teacher I want to thank you all for welcoming me um this is the junior high 7eventh and eighth grade all County students firstly it is Nora [Music] iamson Evan Conlin Peter palman Daniel rice and I would also like to give a shout out to a student that worked very hard to prepare all of the pieces for this Festival but was not able to go please put your hands together for Gabriella Castro thank you
012that concludes our portion thank you for honoring all of our music students we really appreciate it B Round of Applause for all of them and our music GR just Cally invite everyone to join us for a reception while they continue the board meeting board members you can come at the end if you'd like over in the choir room please join us afterwards thank you Mr Lo to the music department uh if you want to stay for a business meeting you're more than welcome to but if you want to enjoy the reception you're free to leave at this time [Music] camera no are [Music] stand over there I think we're ready to proceed with the business part of our meeting and next on the agenda is miss miss haris our director of curriculum with some updates
013hi everybody I'm waiting for my girls to get up here all right so we're kind of doing a gander Spotlight on the instructional coaches um they've played a key role this year and in previous years in rolling out District initiatives so we have two big initiatives in the district right now one is Universal Design for Learning um and the principles around that and the other is the writing Revolution and really integrating that framework into all the content areas so they've been key in giving professional development they've worked with grade level teams they've been in the buildings um K12 for the most part and really engaging in one-on-one coaching sessions with with teachers so they're doing a great job of building the capacity of the teachers and really giving them a lot of support around these
014initiatives so we're going to start with Katie Chase she is our K12 udl Queen um and she's going to kind of give us an update on what she's been doing in the classroom and then I'm going to turn it over to Colleen viy and fiso and they're going to talk about the writing Evolution I gotta do this hello everybody uh I'm Katie Chase I've been in our district for almost 20 years I was a special education uh self-contained teacher for 17 of them and um Universal Design kind of stemmed from the work we were doing our special education department with our ICT classes and what it is is really just a way for us to Target a larger group of students with um by decreasing some barriers we have to the content so um this
015is just a graphic just you know in education we love our acronyms so I just wanted to make sure it was defined before we move forward but basically the goal for udl is improving and instructional strategies for that tier one that larger group of students that we have so it's 80 to 90% of our student population and really the big goal is just to reduce barriers and to increase the access for all students so what are some barriers that we have in education and it just might be um reading level or even like space in the classroom it could be as simple as just having varied seating or providing more visual so those are just some examples of the ways in which we look at our instructional practices and how we've been doing oh so
016if you've heard we have Universal Design and I'm sure you've heard this word here differentiation and some people get it kind of confused so I just wanted to Define what what is different between the two so differentiation is kind of more in our special ed land and udl is something that we hit a larger population of students so I just kind of broke it down to a when a who a how and a goal just to give you an idea of what the difference between the two is so udl when it's the in anticipation of student needs so it happens before and we're doing it with all students and we do it we build it into the lesson prior to instruction and the goal is that the learning process becomes intrinsic for our students so
017in the beginning right students might not be super motivated it might be hard or scary and our goal is how we build that lifelong learner and we might have to bring those barriers down in order to build that learner when we're talking about differentiation it's usually a response to a learner need during or after instruction it's usually for specific Learners and how we do it can be a variety of ways we might decrease load or maintain prompts and support and sometimes those goals are not to fade it it might be in their IEP that they might have for the duration of their career here and the goal is that students are demon able to demonstrate interdependence but they might have to have those supports in place for the rest of their career so I just
018wanted to define the difference between those because those words can be used interchangeably sometimes so how have we been making the shift like Natalie mentioned we've been doing professional development and instructional coaching so we started in the 23 24 school year with our special education department and our ICT class classes we came together and did a lot of training and working together where our general education teachers and our special education teachers were working together to attack lesson plans and units and really trying to make it more accessible for all students then in May 2024 Meg um brought Leanne young in who's a big um speaker for the udl world and we did a whole District conference day where teachers started to learn about udl and then we continued with some Harvard trainings that both fce
019and I took place in and um then we've done some specific udl PB this school year then we've kind of moved over to this instructional coaching where we've been doing observations conferencing trying to identify a problem of practice and really tackle it and get after it and I've been working in the elementary the middle high and high schools to do that with the teachers and spending a lot of time in their classrooms so a lot of collaboration and planning and reflecting so these are just some graphics as to what it looks like in our classroom um we use a lot of visual supports we do an I do you do or we do youo model where we kind of gradually release responsibility to the students to demonstrate their understandings we use cross-curricular information to help
020generalize skills so even in our new math curriculum we even have parts of the writing revolution in there so students are really starting to generalize those skills um choice is a huge part of Universal Design providing students with the opportunity to choose how they're going to demonstrate their learning or how they're going to practice those skills um here are some other examples of student centered activities this is from our high school our alge an algebra one class where we have some do now bins where problems are just set up in different ways for students to engage in problems in a variety of ways maybe they're standing up maybe they have cards laid out maybe they're working in a whole group so it's really student centered on creating that engagement um and that is one of
021the goals for the high school is really focused around student engagement and having a reflection in that um teachers can assess student engagement and then students start doing some self assessment and reflection on their engagement as they start to become with more mature Learners here are some examples of flexible seating varied presentation of materials and giving Choice from group work to individual work um and here's just some more examples of what those groups could look like practicing fluency and skills through games and a variety of games um oh and that's it for me so those are just some examples of the work that we've been doing in UD writing Revel hi everyone I'm Colleen viddy my official title I guess is the fourth grade through 12th grade the writing Revolution instructional coach that sounds so
022fancy I used to just be an English teacher and I am a her Okay so the writing Revolution I'm sure you've heard this before but I just want to remind everyone that it is a research-based K12 District initiative designed to improve our writing instruction it encompasses everything that this light bulb sort of illuminates here it's it involves writing really good sentences really good paragraphs multi-paragraph essays persuasive essays research paper it involves not taking revising and summarizing which we sometimes think of as an easier skill but it actually takes a lot of uh synthesizing and and higher level thinking to be able to summarize appropriately so at the K oh hi please um I'm the K3 instructional coach I've had the honor of teaching many of your children in this room um so at the K3
023level we are kind of living in this area of the lightl um they are starting with many different sentence level activities and then leading into what we call the single paragraph outline okay so these are the six principles of writing um Revolution and again it's a frame work um not so much a curriculum it's a framework that we can embed into our curriculum in different content areas so explicit instruction making sure that we are really teaching all of the different mechanics um that sentences are really the building blocks of good writing instruction that it is content driven so we're looking at all of our different content areas and thinking about how we can incorporate we're not having writing as a separate part of the day it is embedded throughout the day um the content is
024going to drive the rigor so while we have that light bulb what the sentence level activity looks like at the first grade level is going to be very different than what it looks like at the sixth grade level however they are the same activities as far as format and that really helps with continuity as as our students go up in grade we're using the similar language we're using the similar format uh grammar that we're using our instruction and we're embedding our grammar instruction into the writing Revolution so we're not teaching Gramm separate um and then of course coming back to a very important part is the planning and revising phase which happens across the board even at the kind level it looks different though of course okay so when we're starting out with our youngest
025Learners it is very teacher driven the teacher is really leading it modeling it our kindergarten students are just learning their letters and sounds they're not quite ready for the writing process of words however they are ready for the exposure of it so we are really focusing on oral language how do they talk in full sentences how do they answer in full sentences and what we did at the kindergarten level is we took all of formatting and we made it into um big anchor charts so a lot of our work this year was about creating those anchor charts and starting with those question words so our kindergarteners were starting with the teacher modeling it and then once they are at a point in the year where they are able to start their own writing then they
026have had enough exposure that they can start doing it themselves so this is just some examples of where our kindergarteners are at this point in time in the year so we started with them modeling and this is an example of right here is they're answering a one question so they were given a kernel sentence so the kernel sentence would be waves crash then they were asked a question when and they were asked where so then the students take that kernel sentence waves crash and they expand it now as we go up in grades we are working towards what you call the SPO this is an example of third grade writing so for our single paragraph outline students we start again how do we scaffold it we're giving them the topic sentence we're giving them some
027cues to help with that cognitive load of how do I brainstorm it they start with just writing some notes on the dots to hold on to it and then we have them generate their concluding sentence from our not taking then they use those question words to ask themselves questions and generate a paragraph so that's a little snapshot of the progression of some of the things that we've been doing um really really proud of the teachers and how much they have taken this on through the year um on to for so um I just want to stress that the writing Revolution it is um it's consistent across the grade level so obviously like Fel said the um the rigor changes as we move through the grades but the sentence level activities are appropriate for all levels
028and it's across all content areas so this is not just something we want to be seeing in our Ela classes we want to be seeing in Math Science Social Studies Etc so we do have a seamless transition from K3 in the elementary schools to grades 4 through eight in the intermediate and Junior High School so we also do sentence level activities this is a sentence level activity that was done in the fourth grade social studies class you can see that the sentences are getting longer our goal is to get students to write longer sentences the research shows that the longer a student senten the more in depth their thought we have fifth graders here doing summaries um again we're using the the consistent approach of um note taking on dotted lines to lessen that cognitive
029load and there's on the solid lines in the world of the writing Revolution the students are writing complete sentences and then we move to the SPO and that's another fancy acronym it's it's nespo is a graphic organizer I've had to wrap my mind around that term because I've been using graphic organizers for 25 years but to stay consistent I think we need to use common language so they are planning using an SEO or graphic organizer and this is an eighth grade sample and then they're moving it um they're turning that planning part into a written paragraph or essay so it is seamless it's a lot of the same skills but the content and the Reg builds this is something I'm really excited about um but in the fall and the winter and then again in
030the spring we are giving students in grades four through eight writing benchmarks and we are using those writing benchmarks to inform our instruction which is awesome we want to be using data to actually create real change so I have had the pleasure it's of meeting individually the students and looking at their particular students benchmarks and figuring out what is needed in their classes so across for instance fifth grade not every fifth grade class needs the same instruction so we've been able to tailor it some classes might need help writing a topic sentence some students might need help enhancing their language use and and using more sophisticated vocabulary we are practicing with our note taking so we have some common abbreviations and symbols so it's been really really great and um to work oneon-one with students
031to actually use this data because I think we will see real change and I think that's our last slide Dare I ask if there's questions so yeah I have a question uh so you said you uh you want to see being used you can hear me I I can hear you yes but oh but we need watching at home so you U mentioned that we want to see it being used in ela science math social studies but are we seeing it being used well I can say that all grades four through eight teachers have been trained they had initial training on using the sentence level activities so people are using it in various levels I would say in many other content areas um that are not as heavily driven by writing so Math and Science
032they're staying in the realm of the sentence level activities and they're using their content to um to teach writing and they're teaching writing through using their content so both are happening simultaneously English and social studies where there's more writing are using um things like spos and that format to write our paragraphs and essays thank you yes um at the K3 level we've also been using um our current curriculum the amplify domains and there's been a lot of work so those um very much connect with science and social studies so they're all of those Project based learning we've been incorporating it and when it comes to math that's you know it's a little bit tricky but what I have to say is those question words really come back in so even if we're not doing the
033actual writing piece we're using that same language and format um and a place in maap where we have seen it come up is just using conjunctions I know this answer but because and then how how do we put that together so yes we're I think it's year one and I think as we go forward we're going to be able to figure out how we can continue to read so um I just talk we be using the microphones just so that people on the T can hear us so so thank you for this this was really informative but I have no idea what an anchor slide is oh an anchor chart so an anchor chart is basically um it's a visual tool so it's something that you'll have up on the wall and it'll it's a
034great place for students to reference so I might have a anchor chart of just what my question words are but we make assumptions about students at a very young age knowing what how what when where actually means so you're kind of giving them a little like where is it telling you a time or where is telling you a place when is telling you a time so it kind of brings them to it but for each sentence level activity that we do we need an anchor chart so if we're talking about sentence types I want to make sure I have all my punctuation there and how and why I use it thank [Music] you other questions thank youate thank you [Music] it's there no no [Music] okay next on the agenda is our fast winter data
035presentation by Alex sandon our director of data hi everybody thank you for having me um I'm Alex Danon I'm the director of data here at roundout um it's very fitting that I get to speak after the instructional coaches because everything you're going to see on this slide they then take and analyze and implement M the things like the writing Revolution um to help our students improve on the skills and the standards uh that are covered in some of these assessments so um this presentation is going to cover our winter fast bridge data so in the fall you saw our spring presentation you saw our fall presentation data and now we'll cover our winter and then in the spring we'll show you the full year so our first look here is at early math so this
036is for our kindergarten and first grade students um it's broken down by building the number here is the percent of students who were proficient at the in the early reading in math there's three levels high risk uh some risk and low risk um so we did see a small drop off in our proficiency rates um in early math at K Hansen and a small increase at [Music] marbletown but when you look here these numbers on these slides are scaled scores so we are seeing growth which is really what we're looking for so this first column is the fall scores and then here's our winner scores um and then to save all of us from trying to do quick math in our head because that's not good at night um I added the proficiency rate so
037we again we did see a little bit of a drop off um in some in kindergarten first grade with K Hansen and then on the far right we have our percentile ranks so these are how what what percentage we scored from against the rest of our district and then get the national for marble toown uh similar Trend here kindergarten you did see a drop uh the first grade we saw a pretty significant increase from 58 to 73% proficiency and then our national percentage score for first grade is 69% so they're scoring really well for 8 math so now this is second grade on through um well it's really through the rest of the district so second GR through 12th grade um again these are our uh proficiency rates so now when we're in aath there's
038four levels so it's high risk some risk low risk and college pathway um so we did see an increase in proficiency a pretty big drum for Hanson uh small increase of marbletown who was already scoring really well our Intermediate School saw a drop off in of the junior high wait that was the bottom one was the junior high yeah yeah Intermediate School junior sorry I'm sorry I the the numbers that we're looking at the 54 for example for the um Intermediate School that's the number of students who took it who got proficient that's the percent the percentage of students who are deficient percentage Yeah so the ones who scored low risk in college p when you combine those [Music] numbers and we'll break it down by grade level you can see a more in depth
039look so kongen for second grade again these are the scaled scores and then these are the percents um of low risk in college pathway so we saw a really good increase from 35% to 55% in second grade we did see an increase in both Marvel Tansen in second grade and that's really important um because both buildings had identified second grade an area of concern for them at the beginning of the school year so we are seeing really good growth and the other thing to note here which I noted down here if you look in the fall that's our highrisk category right so we had 43% of the students were highrisk in the fall and we're down to 14% already so maybe didn't get them all the way to the low risk category but we we
040really saw a lot of growth there in second grade Alex I can't read any of that so are the schools it just that's just for can you make the font any bigger now that's fine but so this the same for you said the next SL will show Marvel okay I was just saying we did see it in both films this is J Hanson the next slide and then third grade we did see an increase from 49 to 60% and the number that's on there now is not the percentage these are the scale scores number scale scores [Music] SC it's just the score that that the program uses based on how to score there's there's a range for all the different assessments and grade levels so if you think of like a reading level like an
041A through Z reading level and certain letters correspond to grade levels the scaled scores correspond with grade levels also so for us it wouldn't we would have to have the actual scale to see what it means so is that like proficient these are the proficiency rates here fall winter so 35% were proficient in the fall and now the winter is 55% work proficient in second grade in math correct thank you so so in the I'm sorry I have another question in the last slide or the slide before you added like the proficient and college numbers together to get that percentage y but but you're not putting the numbers in the same like little blue spot so are we adding other numbers I don't control these that that's how the SL that's how the program presents
042so but it's still the blue and the gray yeah that's what these numbers are so this is a combination of the 20 and 15 and they don't align again I I can't control that that's just how the program works okay and then the 55 is the 39 and 16 I thank you so then for marbletown here a really great growth in second grade 54% proficient these two to 81% and again we went from 25% being high risk down to 6% high risk uh in second grade and then third grade we did see a little bit of drop off from 81% to 68 uh still scoring you know around 50% for the national [Music] average the Intermediate School our fourth grade saw a little bit of a drop off 60% proficient down to 58 still scoring
043fairly well nationally uh fifth grade did see a drop off from 50% to 42% and sixth grade from 52% to 44% at the junior high uh similar Trend we dropped from 38% to 27% and 44% to 40% 7 then switching into reading so early reading again that's kindergarten in first grade these are the uh proficiency rates combined uh for kindergarten in first grade for each building so in the fall we were 46% in the winter we were 44 at K Hanson and Marvel toown was 53 and was at 52 Kon here for early reading uh the proficiency rate went from 56 to 54 again still scoring fairly well on the national average uh and then first grade went from 38 to 33 so our students are scoring better than SE see more growth in math
044and reading right now um that's something we've identified and the instruction coaches and Natalie are working to W marble toown uh kindergarten went from 65% to 57% and first grade on increase from 44 to 49% and then a reading again second grade all the way on um for hwen so went from 42% to Marv toown saw similar increase 60 to 62 and then we do see small dips at the intermediate junior high so for Kon pretty good growth in the second grade 28 to 35% um and in third grade went up 1% 56 to [Music] 57% Marble toown 54% to 63 in second grade and third grade 64 to 69 again you know second grade was above the national average uh third grade is Right BL I'm sorry Al what is a reading and how's
045a different than that so early reading this is just early reading well no early reading is kindergarten first grade a reading is second grade through grade so at the Intermediate School fourth grade went from 60% to 52% fifth grade went from 49 to 47 and sixth grade went from 61 to 58 so we are seeing a decline there I have another question um the fifth grade seems to be consistently lower is were they the kids that started kindergarten in during Co five years they were definitely in that in that real they were in first grade [Music] was um their full first grade I fifth grade their full first grade year was like a mix of and they were in school yeah my fourth grader was in we we did see that Trend last year if
046you recall kind of Co Cort right the scores were much lower than another GR so at the junior high again we do see a decrease 52% to 44 in seventh grade but an increase in eighth grade from 55 to 57% and then thatal will talk about some of the goals that they had there so we went over this in the fall so these were like our results for the fall uh the highrisk the sum risk and remember this is a screener like a universal screener for tier one we give it to everyone it doesn't align directly with the state standards but if we take the state standards and we break them down into skills this does align so what we're really trying to work work on is within mtss and our AIS right our academic
047intervention services which that is really the goal of this screener is to identify how many kids need AIS services so obviously a big goal for us is to decrease high risk and some risk so have with less students getting AIS Services which I'll show you on the next slide is we're doing okay it'll be interesting to see what happens with the last dipstick when we give the next assessment end scho year now sorry just clarification I should have asked this earlier going through the data is this true a true free post right where it's the same assessment or there new skills that are being assessed in the winter that weren't being assessed in the fall it's like a computer adapted test so it changes so it's not exactly the same questions okay but but it's
048still assessing the same skills it's assessing the same skills yes so over time we want to see the goal is to see growth right so that is what this program gives us it also gives us the interventions which is that's like the big piece of this so as soon as the students take the test we get interventions and then whoever's teaching AIS whether it be the a reading teacher Asis math teacher they are that they can then give the instruction yeah so I know this is hard to see but so basically we met some of our goals like our largest decrease in a high risk was at the aath right which is phenomenal in h k Hanson and then our percentage of higher second graders dropped from 43 to 14 that's a 29% decrease so
049that's a celebrations so it could be I mean it could be the new enisence program it could be that um that school is really looking at their data and making significant changes and that's a big piece uh you know they're very data driven both the schools are yeah we're also rolling out a new mtss process right this a first year for we have a new process for IST we're working on it right so we're tightening that up as well so that's making a difference um and then here you see the most significant overall growth obviously was at K Hansen um the largest decrease of students for AIS Services we're at the elementary level overall in AIS with second grade showing the most Improvement so spring goals so kind of it would be nice if um
050we could reduce this high risk and some Risk by at least 10% Welly cool see if we can do it um and then we just want we want to show growth it's all about the growth so we'll come back and we'll show you again how the kids did from fall to winter um we did notice at the junior high and Intermediate School that the trend lines are similar to last year so it should be interesting to see when we give the last dipstick what the difference is and if it aligns uh to what we saw last year as well but remember this helps us with those small group interventions whether it's at classroom level of tier one the classroom teachers are able to do that or even in their small groups and then anytime there's
051a pull out or a push in with an AIS provider any questions any questions from the board we got I got one more slide um but I did want to say so like Natalie said this fast Bri focus is on skills so what we're really trying to do is create a way to triangulate the data right so fast Bridge works on skills the state assessment looks at standards and now we're looking to push out benchmarks that are focused more on what we're actually teaching in the classroom and assessing the kids and to see if they're learning what we're teaching um so using those three things will give us a much better idea of where the students are whether they're picking up what what we're teaching or how we're going to score the assessments and what
052skills we we're showing growth on so it's something that we're really working on um and the next slide um is about the ELA regions um we just wanted to to Showcase this a little bit this this was the first year that we offered the ELA region for all 11th grade students in January um our proficiency rate went up to 78% which was a 7% increase from the students who took it in June of last year so that's something that the high school is very proud of um you know the other piece of this and and I think colen is still here so uh Colleen and Mr reer our AIS teacher for ELA at the high school are now looking at the students who didn't pass in J in January and I just sent them the
053reports today so they can analyze those kids individual tests to see what the standards they were were deficient on and working on individual plans to work with those students to help get them to pass the assessment so we are trying to be really intentional using the data to drive the instruction um and trying to make those changes so we're really hoping to see an increase you know we already increased 7% when those students retest in in June that'll go up even more um and the other kind of trickle down effect of that is that now these students don't have to worry about this big exam in June and they can focus all a lot more of their energy on their other assessments so we're hoping that'll increase St as well great job to high school
054I have a few questions unless there's other questions from the board so um first of all thank you I I think we as a district are finally using data right much more than we were three years ago four years ago five years ago so thank you Dr stero and um all of you as well for bringing data forward making visible I think it's the only way we can hold ourselves accountable to show change right Andor to focus in on areas we need to improve so really grateful that we're doing that um a few questions comments so I appreciate you shared the the ELA regions data I think it would be helpful for the board to see the other region scores as well um so if those can be shared um at some point Point um
055as well Andor are there midterm kind of Assessments right that we can just get a sense of our things moving along and our car going to be prepared for the agences by the end of the year too so assuming the board agrees I think we should get a little bit more visibility Andor um Nicole in curriculum maybe you all take that as as a t um I didn't look at these data in advance so I apologize but I think what what I saw on the screen is it it does appear that um we are seeing some growth great right but it looked like intermediate the scores are dropping um and I just want to be a realist right and not kind of stirred against that right it seems like there maybe is a problem right
056and I just am wondering what the actions are well first of all clarify if my assumption is correct right is is are the scores you know appear the drop or intermediate and what's the plan to turn that around I can start so if you look at the intermediate are those fourth graders that are there came in really strong uh so we are anticipating a lot of growth with our with our fourth graders because they were really well prepared going in there this year so their scores are a lot higher than they were at this time last year with with the current uh fourth graders uh and you can see there is a there is more growth in math than there is in reading and I I feel like I think our team feels like it's
057due to the curriculum we we rolled out the indigenous Bap uh curriculum that is L to the state standards uh teachers are are diving in they getting professional development on the envisions math program uh and for next year we're working on Ela we're rolling out a systemic Ela curriculum that is that is rigorous uh and align to the state standards so teachers aren't just going and grabbing things uh from off off the internet they actually have a a a curriculum that they they can go to that's research spas and align to uh State Standards but I think points were taken these still have a little bit of a CO effect um not not not saying it's an excuse but they are lacking they have gaps and teachers are have to teach you know phic awareness
058and phonic and lessons that fourth or fifth grade teachers aren't really accustomed to doing but they got to pull those small groups and and fill in those gaps that the students have right now any other questions comments from the board I you know I appreciate the um presentation and the data one of the of the things that I thought was really nice was the percentage of increase that we saw in K hunen with um their scores I know you didn't give specifics here but I wonder if we can um Identify some specifics to give those teachers um and the administration and everyone credit um and then you know I'm sure in Marble toown they're adapting the same things because I know the two schools work closely but I I just think you know this is
059um this was a huge undertaking and I know everyone's focused on it but I'd really like to celebrate specifically who's you know really just a shining star in the whole thing so that way we can keep that motivation going if that would be possible and we do kind of behind the scenes you know the teachers have access to all the reports they can access all everything you saw they have access to we've identified it we' talk to their principals when we do our our learning walks and we have our principal meetings um so they are aware we're very proud obviously the work they're doing um yeah we try to celebrate all the successes that we have any any chance we get so it is something we've identified and passed on to this teachers and students
060really [Music] [Applause] [Music] you hear me yes great thank you um so I'm Lisa pack and the assistant superintendent schools and operations and the policy committee um put together different surveys GA information from stakeholders perspective about the cell phone news policy and doing that this presentation is a summary of those three surveys we surveyed parents we surveyed parents Guardians students and teachers and this information is the summary of that I want to point out that this also shows um Governor Hop's proposal for smartphone um restrictions in the 25 26 school year and we will also speak about that proposal um we the first one is a student survey that went out to grades 4 through 12 um in that um group of questions there was 17 questions in the survey you can see that we
061received 706 respondents for that grade level our total enrollment is 1,179 which showed us that we got 60% back um rate on students during that survey we're very excited about that you can see the breakdown for the buildings Intermediate School at 37% Junior High at 65% and the high school at 72% the policy committee's goal with doing this student survey was to gather students perspectives on how cell phones affect their lives through school um in their classrooms we wanted to ask them what their thought was on focus in learning school policies procedures parental awareness use of screen time and their behavior and compliance of cell phones as you can see from the data 89% of students own a cell phone with 54% using them occasionally during the school day and they use it mostly for
062communication at 72% and for academic purposes um at 41% students perspectives 48% of them believe that cell phones improve their ability to focus 47% feel that that it enhances their learning and 76% claim that they're not distracted by their cell phones when asked about policies 51% of the student population said that they would oppose a policy that ban cell phones during class time when spoke about um their um parental awareness of cell phones 66% of students feel that their parents are aware of their cell phone use during the school day however screening times vary and 68% comply when asked to put their cell phones away while 22% continue to use them the parenting Guardian survey was administered and asked of parents Guardians for k through 12 um with that survey there was 13 questions we
063received 777 responses and we ask parents to please self-identify their children's grade levels and in the middle of the screen I know it's hard to read so I apologize to that but we um had grade band 333 students were represented k23 301 for grades 4 through6 198 for grades seven and8 and 356 for grades 9 through 12 this is actually um 1,188 students represented by parents and our Guardians responses and our current enrollment for K through2 is 1,696 so we are seeing 70% of our student um represented by parent or Guardians responses for the parenting Guardian survey the policy committee sought together information and wanted to see what parents perspectives were on their children's use of cell phones in schools their communication preferences as well as educational use of cell phones effects of cell phones
064and lastly regulations and policies the survey shows strong opposition to Children using cell phones at school 40% very opposed and 20% somewhat opposed mostly parents are concerned with the distractions that cell phones um have on their children during the day half of the parents prefer to reach out to their children directly to communicate during the day and another half said that they contact the school district directly to communicate with their children this emphasizes the need that we have to have a plan in place to make sure that parents can communicate with their children during the day another aspect of the parent Guardian um use on educational use came down to 32% of parents report that their children do not have cell phones and for those that do have cell phones few of them use it
065for educational purposes it's mostly for communication to one another and or um for speaking and um searching the internet for different purposes 24% of of our parents and Guardians have noticed negative effects like distractions um from cell phones and classes and 75% of parting Guardians support classroom band and overall there is a strong support for stricter regulations um to manage cell phone use in our [Music] schools our teacher survey was administered um and asked 12 questions we received 179 responses for that when creating the survey we were aiming to obtain our perspectives of teachers on several areas the classro policies um impact on teaching and learning as well as academic impact we wanted them to speak about what they observe with students using it cell phones in the classroom teacher monitoring of cell phones and
066lastly School enforcement of cell phones um in this survey 79% of teachers have classroom cell phone policies in place and they feel that they need these policies in place to reduce distractions of students in the classroom 91% of students hardly ever use cell phones for Learning and I just wanted to clarify cell phones for learning we're not talking about the school issue one toone devices of iPads and PR books just clarify um additionally from the survey 72% of teachers feel cell phone news harms academic performance and 75% of our teachers believe it negatively impacts our school culture in the classrooms as well as learning in the [Music] classrooms teachers observations um of the survey they noted that students often use cell phones for social media entertainment 50% of the time and communication 37% of the
067time during class and this is seen as a major raction to their teaching and learning within the classroom as a result of the teacher survey 55% of teachers support strict monitoring and enforcement of bans while 76% of teachers advocate for schools to implement a classroom ban to uphold focus and discipline in each of the classrooms so in the summary excuse me of the teachers the parent guardian and the um student surveys we can see that most students have cellphones on them within the classroom um they use them during school with mixed opinions of their impact on learning however the survey results were very clear for parents Guardians and teachers that they feel that cell phones are harmful to the academic performance the school culture as well as they support the district um having a strict
068regulation on cell phone band use as I had mentioned in the beginning beginning of my presentation Governor hokel has put forth a proposal that's called the distraction free schools proposal in this proposal it is going to be limiting cell phone uses in schools projected to the 25 26 school year in that plan parents Gardens and teachers um will be working together to create um our schoolwide plan for this the schools will need to have flexibility of customizing storage plans for the cell phones um there will be money allocated in Governor hok's budget for storage solutions for districts um Statewide and the district has to ensure that we have parent communication so that parents can contact your children throughout the day um as they do currently but instead of using the child's cell phone to do
069so the district right now is kind of in a folding pattern because we are waiting waiting for the approval of guidance from Governor hok's office which is anticipated to be here in April and May so that is our time frame then we will start developing our plans for the 2526 school year in regards to um making sure that it's aligned um with with not only the approved plans but the statute that Governor H is proposing um our next piece from the policy Committee just to clarify is to put this presentation as well as the all of the um data from all through surveys on the website so all parents Guardians teachers and students can see all of the questions and the answers to those Sur questions Lis I just have a question so I noticed
070in there that um in her proposal is to eliminate unsanctioned use of smartphones and internet enabled devices do you see that affecting our Ono one like between the Chromebooks and the iPads that our students already received those are internet based is there do you anticipate that to be a separation with the press release that was given um it does not go into much detail in regards to that but I have read a few question answer responses in regards to that and the district does have a means that teachers can control devices in their classroom so we would have to enable that um we do have in her proposal um excuse me in Governor H's proposal there are aspects that there will be some exemptions for students IPS and or students that are medically um needed
071their devices for example um diabetic students that communicate with the school nurse um for that for your levels so there will be some aspects of that um but they are speaking about not having it free roam during the school day thank you any other comments from the board so I just I have one um so just in terms of timing right ensuring that we'll have a policy in place at the start of next school year I'm a little worried about not getting this guiding May perhaps right I think there's a lot of work that go into this are there things we can do now knowing that they're going to required right so starting to research what storage we need to put in place right and I I would strongly recommend that we get those pieces
072moving so we're prepared and it's not a last minute scramble um over the summer [Music] and I also think that I think you can't even think about the start of the school year I think we have to think sooner than that has to be over the summertime absolutely you know at least by August mid July well the um Governor hopel is in hopes of having the budget pass early April and therefore they are looking to give bans and then our attys as well ver will be giving us guidance as well for what parameters and as um Dr sco likes to say what are our guard rails going to be in regards to this what's it going to look like at the elementary level versus the high school level and making sure we're in compliance in
073all those aspects so it will be work working in May and June so that we can have things in place for the summer to start off the school year early and communicate that with parents and Guardians thank you Lis and to J point right given that this is going to be a board policy we have readings that will be required brand new policy right so we'll have to have first reading actually um based on this um Governor hoko will be doing a plan and that plan will be then Statewide regulation so we will be adopting that not necessarily our own policy great okay that that's helpful thank you any other questions I do have a question so I think it would be great if um government hopeful gets this through by the start of the
074next school year are we prepared to R pull out a policy if it gets delayed the policy committee has not had that conversation the our last conversation was provide this to Board of Education um knowing what hoko has stated was going to happen I think within the next month we will be able to gauge that and if the policy committee then needs to Pivot to create a policy we would be able to do that if that's not in time okay great do we want to give that directive to the board right to to get a policy in place or at least get the pieces together now in advance of a state issue policy obviously I don't want to duplicate work but clearly the data are clear right everyone wants this so I I I just
075want to make sure we're not soling and I know we're not to sing right but we're not waiting for the state to put something when maybe we need to try to exite a little bit on our own just my thoughts I most certainly will provide that to the policy committee and we will have that conversation thank you thank you this one [Music] I like to [Music] all right last but not least budget all the money that supports all these great things we're doing so this is the the best one to finish I think [Music] okay technical difficulties over there we go okay so I just want to reiterate um what is the district's mission and vision because I think that's important when we're looking at our budget what does the budget support it it supports
076students right it supports our mission it supports our vision and it's what we're what we're here for other things that the budget supports are some of of these achievements that we've spoken to spoken about before things that we're putting in place to help support student achievement and continue our growth upward um fast bridge data screening we went over that this evening um CTE offerings we've talked about those many times uh seal programs go Guardian those things will H happen along with our um our policy with our cell phones things like that so there's a few changes while actually just one two changes you can't see this one on the bottom so I'll I'll give an explanation on that one um there's a slight increase in our expended our projected expenditures um as is the case
077things come up as we get going um and the estimated increase for two contractual obligations um was greater than what I had originally put in there so I've increased the budget by another $79,000 year-over-year that's just to cover those unexpected expenditures that came about in the past couple weeks uh additionally and during our budget Workshop we discussed inputting the uh going to the tax cap so I wanted to show what that looked like so this increased by just that 4.16 instead of saying flat year-over-year so now instead of seeing a 4% decrease in our Revenue we're only seeing a 2% almost three um again that is mostly because we haven't decided to appropriate any fund balance or reserves in this number we saw this last time I did a little bit more populating again this
078is our increase of our new budget amount this has our increase of that 4.16% of the tax levy going to the cap our state aid numbers have not changed yet because the alleged lative budget has not been approved Governor H is working on many things um I will say that there was Lobby day where um lots of senators and representatives go and talk about all the things that they'd like to see happen in the budget um The Association of school business officials released like a press release on what types of things are being talked about what is it going to mean for business officials or assistant superintendent of Business Service um when looking at the budget and the state Aid ultimately um based on the information that I was given we we will not likely
079see much of an increase at this time uh we actually may see a little bit more of a decrease in our state numbers based on changes to um allowable CPI growth and our um arada which we talked about a couple budget um presentations ago that being said our new Gap is a little bit higher that's because our expenditures are a little bit higher higher and the proposal is to reinvest savings from this year into next year or our fund balance and then use some reserves uh this I've also presented before this budget uh increase year-over-year doeses not include replacement at this time for these different positions due to resignation or retirement so the budget did not grow with these to be considered as allowable in the next year's budget um opportunities we've already discussed our
080fund balance and our reserves and um currently we're looking at going to the cap which is the 4.16% I just um if we could go back to that slide um I want to make sure everyone's aware with these resignations and retirements it's not impacting students um classrooms or any any of their um activities so I wanted to make sure the public knew that to Echo what Don is saying and to go a little bit further ultimately um the administrative team Dr Scaro are looking at the enrollment numbers and student needs and basing those decisions on whether or not to replace it's not just a financial situation to get point we look at what what is needed um as we go forward looking at data um looking at different performance levels and stuff of that nature
081and enrollment this a breakdown just a restatement of what our state aid numbers look like as of the governor's budget in January um just like um Miss Pac was talking about the governor's budget should be done hopefully in April um potentially giving us a change but the change from what I'm seeing right now would only be a further decrease you can't see the number behind this screen right here but we're having a negative overall $37,000 in our state a year over year um I'm going to bring your attention to this highlighted numbers because they're highlighted those are just to show that um this change is not what we'll be showing on the state aid runs so when the state aid pulls data from our reporting they pull it as of November in November we did
082report all of our spending from last year and our projected expenditures for the current year 2425 but in those numbers is not considering the final cost reports that have to be submitted to the state after we complete a capital project those Capital those final cost reports were submitted in December therefore they were not captured in the November um numbers this numbers are projections that we received from our fiscal advisers Ron office so they they look at what we actually submitted in December and they give us a projection so that's why we only seeing a decrease of 500,000 we are still seeing a decrease because we did have some loss in um debt and we haven't fully completed the 60 $62 million project so what we've completed to date only yields a negative of a half
083a million overall however because of these other team is such as the foundation Aid at 352 increase uh our net is a decrease of only [Music] 37,000 also remember Universal prek is not actually state aid it is a grant therefore it appears on our state aid run but we remove it um before we look at what our actual increases year-over year because it does not affect our general fund budget and what we talk about and what the community votes on is our general fund budget here's our tax tab worksheet which we went over at the uh budget Workshop basically takes and you can't see because there's a box here our current year tax levy increased it by the tax based growth factor just set by the region then we add in our pilots from last
084year we subtract out our exclusions from last year we get our new allowable tax levy increase thank you we grow that by the allowable Levy growth factor or the CPI this year which can only increase it by the CPI or 2% this gives us our new tax levy allowable limit minus the pilot that we have coming up adding in down here our exclusions our exclusions are going to be our Capital expenditures so our debt um anything that's not covered by the building Aid becomes a part of our tax levy and increases are allowed the levy limit it's what we also call local share so the total increase is 4.16 which will yield about $1.8 million help fill the Gap what does that mean to you the taxpayer it's very important to know that part because
085that's the part that matters what we did was we looked at 2425 tax rate for a $300,000 home without Equalization rates being considered so in the town of Marble Town in 2425 your tax rate per thousand was 19.3 Etc and your taxes were approximately $5,799 which we increase that by the 4.16 it's not a direct increase again remember this is based on a lot of different factors but I plugged it into our our tax rate calculator and we get 20.1 13208 or $6,000 which is an annual increase about $242 or a monthly increase of about 20 and so on again this is for a $300,000 home no equ ization rate to be considered and just this tax rate you see here no exemptions are being applied either here so these are a lot of assumptions
086but this will give you a ballpark of what your change in tax rate would be up or [Music] down what is our expenditure budget made up of there's three parts that we consider there's the administrative portion our Capital um portion and our program portion what I like to point out in this slide and the reason why I created it like this it's a piece of the pie program is the largest piece it's important to notice that because we are supporting students this is instruction this is curriculum all the things that go into educating a student these other things are supports of that but these are direct relation to students this is a little description of what program costs include this is a breakdown by area so instructional went up by 2% Transportation 2% employee benefits
087five because we don't have control over that part other transfers are going to be transfers to support um Food Service program and federal programs total of 3% of programs costs our capital expenditures as you notice changed a little bit um due to the this and the ad actually the administrative budget went up a little bit um the contractual expenditures that went up or the uh estimate that went up has to do with our Insurance liability um so anyway operations and maintenance went up 11% but our actual debt payments which is why we're seeing that decrease in building aid went down kind of a correlation and that here's that administrative portion the Central Services it's going to be um legal fees uh Insurance Dr spedo myself then all the support employees that support all of those
088programs again only 10% of our budget there's also a correction to this sheet when I compared what I had presented before to our financial statements that are on our website they were not exactly in line so these are the actual numbers for our financial statements as of June 30th of 2024 this is an increase last time I presented I put $6 million here um there's still $1 million in there again we remember um in December we had a vote for our Capital project for the $20 million project and we o voted to move $4 million out of the reserve and into um the capital expenditures but we haven't done that yet so if we invested some money or borrowed some money from our reserves to fill our Gap this is where I would recommend it's
089important to pull this out because uh during the budget Workshop there were some questions about these balances and we were concerned about how they were going to be affected by continuing to pull from them I will say we don't want to continue to do that year over year we have to start making plans fiveyear plans on how we're going to decrease the amount of money we're borrowing from our reserves reserves are meant to be used in this way but not every year this our just a clarification on the capital reserve during the budget Workshop I think you were clar so first of I if I recall I think we put it out to the voters that we could put up to 20 million is it 20 millionin call capital reserve but I think what you
090were saying in the budget um Workshop was that we can only ever put 20 million so let's say we we borrow from that it's not like we can simply put more money back in that same thing we've already achieved the 20 million investment correct that's correct so Capital reserves has a lot of restrictions number one the community has to vote for us to create a capital reserve the community has to vote for us to use the capital reserve for specific purposes so this capital reserve was created years ago and did have a limit of $20 million that's total deposits that's not um total balance at any given time so in the in life of this capital reserve we can ever only deposit 20 million total if you take out 10 million then you can only
091put in you can't put any more money if youve always if you deposited the first day you created this Reserve if you deposited $20 million and you with Drew 10 million you're not able to put another 10 million in you have to create another capital reserve so that would be something we would talk about in that fiveyear plan creating another capital reserve for the next Capital project that will likely need to be larger than the $20 million thank you so that's actually exactly what my question is going to to lead us to have we achieved already that 20 million for this reserve and if we have should we be putting another resolution on the vote in May to open up a new capital reserve and just the community understands these are critically important for our
092capital projects in the future right it's it's pretty much saving for new mes 10 years down the road so we're not pushing that expense off to um Community when we have to to reinstate it so do you know how much we've already put into this Reserve unfortunately I don't know the balance because I didn't get back far enough in our um in our history to find out how much was deposited to start but the the fact that there's 11 million in there tells me that it's likely we can maybe put another five million in there is probably my thought but I will give you that on April 8th I'll give you the exact amount we've put in so far and if the recommendation is to explore potential another capital project that's something we also should
093talk about on the e um I'm happy to pull that together um just to speak a little bit more on why it's important to have a capital reserve to Echo what you were saying um the local share I was talking about will be lessened by continuing to create Capital reserves to decrease the impact of taxpayers you remember when we presented on the $20 million Capital project we said there will be no local share um um cost which means there would be no increase to the Lev Levy directly related to borrowing to complete the project different from the $60 million project the other part to rec remember when we talk about that the debt we pay for is not just for the current projects that just completed debt can last up to 30 years so some
094of the debt we have is from years ago before all of you were board members before you know we can remember right so we have to keep in mind when I talk about local share and I pointed it out about the capital expenditure that's an exclusion that is an addition to our Capital ta I mean our tax levy it's important to remember that by using some of this capital reserve we do reduce the cost but not in the immediate year it comes when we start doing the project the project hasn't begun yet but we approved to do it so in 26 27 we should see a decrease in that Capital seed yeah thank you and and my reason for saying putting something as a resolution or up for vote obviously we don't have another capital
095prodject in mind right now right we just got one approv but if we reach the $20 million Max we then don't have a reserve where we can push fund balance to next year perhaps right it sounds like you think you're thinking we may have 5 million left here that might be enough to get us to one more year um but thereafter I think the board need really need to think about opening up another capital reserve um and get approval from the voters basically we use uh the fund balance that he's um referencing is money we save in the year right so we project to you we want to spend $80 million and then we make cost saving measures to make sure we're being fiscally responsible at the end of the year we don't spend $80
096million well that money that's left over we'd like to either invest in the next year or putting reserves for that rainy day down the road savings to go plan this is just to reiterate where we're at in the budgeting process um I've removed all February and January and December because there's a lot of lot of time that's used in this timeline it's important to point out a few things um we are here we have a budget a committee meeting next week April 4th the legal notice will go in the paper April 8th we're going to have a special board meeting to hopefully approve the budget um I'm hoping I'll have some more information on that capital reserve and how much we used um on the 21st is deadline to submit petitions um I will note
097that we are not technically open on the 21st but we will have somebody here to receive those petitions thank for de um on the 22nd we got to adopt the property tax report card and approve the Bose's budget 23rd is a is a um approval and we have to submit it to S so once you approved it then you have to submit it within 24 hours um budget statements will be available these will probably be available a little bit earlier more in line with when we approve the budget those are already ready just matter of whether or not the board feels we need to chose anything else about the budget big day May 20th marking your calendars got not vote any other [Music] questions so uh T from the budget uh committee we want to
098thank you for your hard work you came in um a few months ago and this was um a tremendous effort and we we do appreciate it um Dr spedo we appreciate all the work that you and the administration did um it it looks from all accounts um it's a very streamlined budget that um the budget committee is very proud to recommend appreciate it it's been a [Music] [Applause] pleasure okay thank you um so we can move on a comment um I don't think we have the the slide that kind of goes through the the typical rules but um obviously three minutes um please be respectful don't identify any staff or student names um so with oh and and also please I think there's forms in the table there if you do want to give comments
099please fill that out um it can it can be given to our different even after you speak just so she has some a record and your contact information if we need to get back to you on anything uh with that being said anyone who wants to do public comment thank you can you hear me um my name is Leah seel and I have a um very happy student in marbletown elementary school so I just want to say he is real um I just wanted to make two quick follow-up comments on this cell phone policy discussion one is well first I want to say thank you for listening to many parents concerns on this issue I really appreciate um the policy committee has gotten to know us well and has been really warm and welcoming and
100respectful so I appreciate that um I wanted to emphasize one one thing which is in terms of the timeline of adoption I just went to a National Education conference and I heard a lot of people talking about this that in addition to um the time that it would need to figure out storage and whether you're using yander pouches and all of that kind of thing there's also the question of a digital literacy curriculum that has been the thing that seems to be showing the best results is that you're not just saying hey here's a punishment you know um you may not understand why this is happening but we're taking we're making it so that you can't use your cell phones but it's more of a like hey we want you to be the drivers of
101technology in the world not a victim of technology and so we're going to really teach about how technology Works what's happening in the world how you can create it and use it to affect change and make impact rather than just be distracted by it when you're supposed to be doing something else so I would there's a lot of even free digital liter curriculums out there but I think that this time could be used for that purpose um the second thing is I just wanted to begin a a train of thought which I found really useful there was an expert on AI and education which of course is related to the cell phone conversation she uh said something that I keep thinking about which is that from now on because AI is here to stay we
102um have to assume that all students anything that they do outside of the classroom is powered by a super computer meaning powered by AI powered by AI powered by any number of things and so we might need to not just make rules or bans for certain things but we might really need to rethink our learning ecosystem our digital ecosystem and think about how at home students are going to be using these tools there's really no way to stop it not all students will but a lot of students will so in class it sort of flips the point of what happens in class to collaborative work problem solving deep dialogue debate critical thinking the kinds of things that we really want students to learn to do without a crutch um they're going to use the crutch
103later and also we want to give them skills to use that technology to help them not to do the work for them so there's just a lot ahead of us and I think that this cell phone conversation is really just one small part of a a big bloming question that lies ahead thank you any other comment hi everyone I'm Margo Sanchez parent of an eighth grader and a Marvel toown resident since 2018 uh thank you again for uh having me and listening tonight to what I have to say and for everything you do you do for our students I really appreciated many of the presentations tonight I'm here in a moment of great social and political turmoil to speak publicly about diversity equity and inclusion or Dei as you likely know recent EX executive orders
104from the Trump Administration have sought to end Dei work in schools and elsewhere and even to punish those who engage in it the order ending radical indoctrination in K through2 schooling paints Dei as promoting harmful anti-American ideologies this is quite simply nonsense and I would like to believe that our board already understands this in fact in my own personal experience doing DVI with parents teachers and administrators here at rondout for three years now I've met dozens of people who first and foremost are committed to uplifting and supporting every student in our community no matter who they are many of these people in this room that's what we mean by Dei first recognizing that we have differences and second rather than providing every student with the same thing working to provide each with what they need
105to thrive Dei work is not about promoting any ideology it's about identifying met needs and figuring out how to meet them without stigma I'd like to believe everyone in this room can find common ground in that goal to give an example at last month's meeting for member Jim Malik proposed expanding School tax relief for low-income retirees in order to create a more Equitable tax burden in our district that is Dei back to Trump's executive order in seeking to limit what can be taught this order does a disservice to everyone in our our community by promoting ignorance and it especially threatens our teachers this is neither an empty nor a distant threat I'm already aware of a teacher in a neighboring District facing accusations under this pretense other orders take direct aim at particular young people
106and and their families for example attacks on transgender rights immigration prot protections and Disability Rights across the country parents who fear targeting by Ice no matter their immigration or citizenship status are keeping home from school in activities this has been reported to me from his nearby as the Kingston School District Nationwide calls in to support lines for queer and transgender youth have surged and the parents I know who are raising trans children in the United States are deeply distressed as a district it may be tempting to go quiet in the face of these executive orders to back away from public commitments to Dei to move underground avoid controversy to hope that our community will be spared to much pain believe me I understand that it's scary to stand up in the face of authority you
107hear my voice shaking every time I stand in front of you we may be tempting to believe we are somehow outside of Harm's Way not implicated by what's happening around us maybe you yourself don't feel threatened don't feel concerned for your loved ones but in this moment I know there are people in our school Community who need to hear you say out loud that you have their backs not only that you have their backs in theory but that you have their backs in practice not only that you appreciate our students from immigrant families but also that you will protect them from Ice and exactly how you will do so not only that you accept that our trans community members exist but you will respect their gender identities and their rights no matter what the White
108House says we need to hear that not only you will maintain an inclusive and welcoming educational Community where all students are treated with acceptance and compassion as Dr Sto has written and which I appreciate but also how far you will go in doing so in a moment of very real uncertainty and fear in the face of very real pressure to the contrary for example can you assure us that we will continue to recognize Black History Month and other celebrations of cultural diversity in years to come that new curriculum choices will be made with Dei principles in mind that programs like no place for hate will continue to be supported that administrative and policy decisions will be made with transparency and considered through an equity lens that we will continue to pursue restored Justice practices and
109conflict resolutions that structures of accountability such as the district Equity Council the school climate survey or a proposed SRO Community Committee will be maintained and respected by decision makers to close I want to ask that round out join other school districts locally and Nationwide in stepping up and speaking out modeling the courage to publicly defend our mission to unleash the unlimited potential of each student regardless of gender race immigration status disability status family structure or any other aspect of who they are no student can unleash their potential while they feel marginalized and Afraid and what you say and do as leaders in this moment matters more than you know thank you again for listening thank [Applause] you any other comments [Music] next in the agenda is superintendent consent agenda items 1 through 14 recommend a
110motion that the Board of Education approve the consent agend items 1 through 14 as presented I'll make the motion any discussion all in favor any oppos motion so board time board time Grace do you want to start sure the uh learning Expos for which is really exciting um and the band concert was last week the concert um the choir concert's on the 20th which is exciting um spring sports are starting next week which is awesome and um um we're [Music] almost and I'm ready great thanks [Music] Caro uh so um thank you to everybody with all your presentations today um I feel like we we really hit the gauntlet today we had music we had curriculum we had budget I mean we we hit all marks today so um thank you to everybody for your
111hard work um at our curriculum meeting um this past week we have we very lucky to have um a young man from the senior class uh do I guess it was like his first run through right of his wise presentation for those of you that are um are familiar with the wise program and it was it was incredible and it actually um goes along with one of our public comments and his wife presentation is about about taking um the health curriculum in junior high at the junior high level and adding a unit um in it that really focuses on the addiction of cell phones um it was and he's done a lot of research on it it was very research based his wise presentation and it um talked about how both the scientific effects right
112on our brain as well as our behavioral effects um he talked about how it is not a recognized um thing in the DSM 5 but it's actually is being considered for the dsm6 there is a consideration to add it and he basically attributed to um looking around the table at my my fellow uh board members um for those of us that were in school in the 80s I'm in '90s sorry Jim I know you were what like 40 years into teaching but um so but when they comparing to the Dare program where we were talking about uh when those were those programs were brought in about those effects and he compared it to to that kind of um of change and adding it as a unit and he talked about uh the um the digital
113literacy curriculum and such as well so um I do think it's something uh we can take a look at and and and he is doing his wife presentation officially I think they're are they in May roughly May yeah May June um so I know that as board members we do get that schedule um if you if your schedule allows to see his presentation I implore you to go see his presentation it was absolutely phenomenal um in uh in a response to um Miss Sanchez uh with the Dei um I can tell you that when my son was here my son has publicly said that he felt comfortable coming out as gay because of the support he got here at M so and I think that continues to be a be a thing here thank [Music]
114you um so I'm just going to briefly give us an overview of the curriculum committee meeting that we had on Thursday March 6 there was a special education presentation that was given um specifically on data and how I I asked for the presentation because I wanted to know how our kids were doing how our specialized population was doing so we reviewed the um first we've review the special programs that we have in our schools they are robust programs we're very lucky to have the programs we have we have 100% student placement which means all of our students are in a program whether most of those kids um are located here on our own campus which is what we really want for our kids to be part of their Community to be with um their neighbors
115and the other their friends in their neighborhood when they're coming to school um also carries a better price tag to send the students at a district can be very expensive so we're very grateful to know that we have really robust programs here in our in our district um we also got an update on our mtss process as the special education department has been heavily involved with this um this is our tiered support system and I mentioned it as they were giving a presentation as well like this is our first roll out of this um this year for our new mtss system and the goal is to reduce the number of referrals to special education so we can help support more of our students in the general education setting um we talked about our classification rate
116which is 22.6 and our graduation rate in 2024 for our students with disabilities is 84% it's amazing it's the second highest in aler County something to be really proud of we also reviewed our state test like I mentioned for our students with disabilities a highlight our third grade team is number one in the county for ELA and number two for math so that's really exciting um we looked at areas for improvement we discussed those as well a focus however is on our off out rates for our students with disabilities or opting out of our state testing skewing our data so we are working on making um the state test more accessible for our students and helping them helping to prepare them to take a state assessment so that we can get some more and accurate
117data um and then we also as Caroline mentioned we heard her from the student from our wise program we talked about um a little bit and we got updates on our Dei as well initiatives um so it was a really great meeting um our next meeting is April 3rd April Thursday April 3rd at 4:30 uh we hope you can join us at the district office I'd also like to uh Echo the same Sentiments of Carolyn other than the fact that I really wasn't here for 40 years was 37 I but anyway uh for everything that occurred tonight and that's been occurring through your leadership PO with the spotlights to see uh this room packed every uh every month that we're here you're just seeing all the great things that are occurring throughout the District so
118kudos to you i' also like to have Kudos and congratulations to Randy loer and Juliana McCarthy for the music awards that were given out tonight and their leadership uh through the music program I was glad to hear that Randy said he was he's been here for 19 years that means we have him for 11 more years so I see a lot of great things happening in those next 11 years uh under his leadership in tutelage uh as well as all the other music teachers in the district as well so uh congratulations to all of them but uh special congratulations to Randy he does a great job as was a colleague of his and uh he's the utmost uh professional um a few things so yes the presentations were great tonight um the um I wanted
119to discuss the senior discount and the firemen uh discount I'm calling them discount yes what is it called tax exemption tax exemption so um we are looking at those we needed some more data then we need to have a public hearing we don't have the date for the public hearing yet but we will be discussing that on April 8th um we had to add the April 8th date to make sure that we have all the last minute questions and the budget it's approved um if not the last date to approve it would be the meeting on the 22nd so that's why um Dean's rushing me um so um so that's all to come I know that there are um some community members asking about it and we did respond back to that email but that's
120that's what's happening with that um I want to thank think um I think it's Leah for the cell phones um I was one of those people that was not in favor of the whole day band and all of that I had a lot of questions um I got a lot of literature people sent me emails um someone came and brought a book I did read up on that book um or read different chapters in that book and um I'm in favor of it now I I changed so so um I was worried about taking that away for some folks but I think that can be accommodated um and then Margot for the Dei information a couple of years ago um I was the board president and I felt like um we stood up every at
121every meeting and we supported the staff and the students in their quests to be who they are um and we haven't done that in you know at well not at every meeting but we used you guys remember who on the board it was taking on a you know an extreme um amount of focus um so I do think we need to think about our stance um what we're going to say publicly how we're going to support the kids and how we're going to lead the charge because there are changes happening um at the federal level um as far as I know no changes happening at the state level but um it's something we do to our students in St than that's all right so uh yesterday we had our districtwide safety meeting uh we discussed
122several topics including uh status updates from buildings uh drills that were administered throughout the school year uh the Raptor ID scanning system radio protocols weather radios parent drop off and pickup and updates and needs from each we also had last week we had our facilities uh meeting our next meeting for facilities is uh 319 at 4:00 everybody's welcome um we did discuss a couple of things about the capital project the new one that's coming up and also the previous one we do have some leftover funds from the 2019 Bond um we are going to be doing the high school controls with some leftover funds and and possibly uh the Elementary uh playgrounds which we had money in for in this Capital project so there's some overlap m is our policy meeting next Thursday I believe
123it is but we haven't had a meeting since the last time I spoke but I'm fairly certain that our policy meeting is next Thursday um 5:30 and everybody's more than welcome thank um so from my perspective I I want to Echo what Dr SPO um said earlier about our production of byby birie absolutely amazing I don't know if any other board members were able to do attend um I try to go actually I think I missed one over the last five years but I try to go at all of these no question it is almost like a Broadway production right with the the sets that they put together and um the talent of of all the participants and the staff you know putting this on it's a lot of commitment from our our staff um
124but I every time I go I'm just so impressed by the the Arts and and what our students are able to do um the other thing I want to share tonight too um I was I'm following the Ronda Valley High School PTSA on Facebook um they put out a call uh ENT kind of a call to Arms um yesterday they want to become a um an official of New York State Carter PTSA but to do that they need members um they also need I think 25 people to attend our next meeting which is um April 2nd um in a library here I think it is 5:30 and I just lost my um yeah so I would encourage the community especially parents uh teachers students from the high school to really make your best effort to
125attend this so that they can get the certification um as an official chartered ppsa this allows them to be insured it allows them to and hold specific functions um so to be an established PTSA in in the high school um adds a lot more benefit a lot of benefits to the students so um anything G do you know when the last time we had a PTA pts I cannot recall when we had one it was like a gr okay um that's everything I have anything any other comments from the board I just wanted to add nobody spoke about pop the Pops concert was uh this week phenomenal again every year yeah okay um recommended motion be resolved of the board of edication approve the consent agenda items 3 through five as presented I'll make the
126motion second any discussion all in favor any oppos motions Carri recommended motion to adjourn the March 11th 2025 meeting make a motion any discussion or favor any oppos