001Okay, citizens a chance to speak and since we have no one in the audience, we will move on to reports with um accomplishments and highlights. We'll start with Rivercrest Elementary. Paula. All right. Hello everybody. I'm Paula Blatner, principal at Rivercrest Elementary, and I'm really excited to be here tonight to share some highlights from our last school year. So, we'll start with our students. Um what I wanted to capture here is just all the different ways that our students were engaged in their education in the last year, as well as some other um little data points. So starting um with in the end of our school year, our school counselor ran minute meetings with our students and um we were she was really proud to report that 98% of our students um could report that they
002felt safe always or almost always safe while at school. Um as well as 99.7% of our students could name two trusted adults in our building that they felt cared for them. So we were proud of those those numbers. Um we had two English learner students who met English proficiency on the access exam to end the year and were dismissed from the program. Um the next few bullets just kind of share some of the numbers um of some of the events that we had in the high participation. So we had 80 students that participated in our storybook theater performance of Hansel and Gretle. Um that was quite a few and they did a great job. Um and we're excited about that. We had 33 students who participated in Battle of the Books. 116 students participated in
003keyboard karate just trying to shore up those keyboarding skills. Um we brought back the science fair this year and had a lot of excitement and great participation around that. We hosted our first annual Rivercrest Got Talent talent show and we had 52 brave kids get up in front of our whole school and many visitors to showcase their talents. We had anywhere from singing to comedy to gymnastics. We had it all. Um and many came to me after and just said, "Can we do that again next year?" So we we certainly will be doing that again next year. Um our reading committee each year has students um go on a little reading journey where reading minutes equate to miles and they travel somewhere in the world and kind of go on this journey. Um and this
004year they the goal was to travel from South Korea to Mount Everest. Um we did this in May and while the weather was nice, we weren't sure exactly how much motivation our kids would have. They crushed the goal. um they were the goal was to cover 7,000 miles and they got 10,000. So, we were proud of that. And then our students in grades 3 through 5 um were in a new English language arts resource this year, CKLA, and they just really rose to the challenge of the rigor of this resource. Um one of my favorite things this year was just hopping into a classroom and listening to them talk about all the new knowledge that they had. Um and our our teachers did a great job of um building on these experiences by bringing in
005guest speakers and just celebrating that learning. So on the next slide you can just see um different pictures that that showcase this. So our um storybook theater performances there, our science fair in the bottom left corner you see students they had a tea party after um a CKLA unit and got to throw their hats in the air. So very fun for our students. And then our team, um, one of our focuses was staff community this year and our PBIS team hosts, um, a monthly me all school meeting where all of our kids come in game show style. They like to have a lot of fun. Um, one of their goals this year was to get a variety of different staff up on that stage and they did a great job of pulling in different people.
006Um, and the goal here is just so our kids can see us all having fun, laughing, being together. Um, we had underground dress up days where the staff planned some dress up days, but the kids didn't know. So, um, it was quite a hoot to watch them guess what we were up to. Um, had fun with that. We had six staff members get pied in the face as part of the Booster Thawn fundraiser. Um, and one of our big highlights this year was welcoming um, Marine and Ember, our therapy dog team from the You're Not Alone organization. They were with us two hours every week and um, they just fit right in. They did the dress up days with us. Um, and kids and um, staff alike really enjoyed having them in the building and
007we're lucky that they'd like to join us again next year. And then professionalism. Our staff continued on with their letters training, building their science of reading knowledge. And then um, we had a lot of partnerships with W River Falls this year. Um, our FIED teachers collaborated to, um, do a fifth grade field trip that focused on teamwork and collaboration. It was a rock climbing field trip. It was a great way for our fifth graders to end the year. Um, and many staff had pre-ervice teachers from W Riverfalls come in just to build up that next generation of educators. So, here you can see in the middle um, that was Socks with Sandals Day. We had a lot of participation on that one. Um, on the right hand side, that's two of our all school meetings,
008Candy Land and the Masked Singer. Um, Marina and Ember are there on the left. And then lastly, our school community. Um on this slide I just wanted to show different ways that we are participating as a big school community as well as with the um our Hudson community. So our PTO sponsored many family activities for us this year. We had Alicia Miller in um doing environmental education. All of our classrooms participated in projects for the Celebration of Nations event. We had a parent author who came in and shared his book with us as well as the bookw writing process. We hosted the hot air in February. um had Oello Sam and his troop from Tanzania perform for us. Um and then our student council just does a great job of getting out into the community.
009They organize the stuff a truck project for our building. Um ranging the bells for Salvation Army and then they're the food runners for Culver's night um for our um fundraiser. And then lastly here, um we held a kickoff to summer literacy night in May and had really great participation in that as well. You can go to the next one. So here you can just see a few of those. That's our student council in the middle. Um our parent author who came to visit. On the left is um our color run fundraiser that the PTO put on. So thank you for the opportunity to share um a little bit about our school year at Rivercrest. So Paula, did uh was it the first year uh hot airfare was out? Yeah, due to construction at EP, we
010had we had hot airfare. Are they considering keeping it out there or back to EP? I have not heard. Uh, one idea for fundraising for your booster thon. I mean, Nick would be a great way of raising some funds for the pie in the face. We'll keep that in mind. Please, please keep us informed. So, anyone uh have anything else to say? But there I just wanted to say thanks for restarting the science fair. Um, that I just remember that being a great event and kids really loving it. I also know it's not a small feat to put on. So, thank you for taking that on and bringing it back. Um, also just curious in the battle of books, how many books do the kids read? Oh, that's a great question. I don't remember it.
011They kind of work together in the team. There's a list and um each team does it a little bit differently for how they split that up, but there's quite a list and and they do a great job. Yeah. Exciting. Great job. Yeah. Thank you. Great job, Paul. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Uh, next up, the middle school. Jim, good evening everyone. Thank you uh for having me. Jim DeLoon, middle school principal. Um, it was it was a really wonderful year at Hudson Middle School despite the the construction which I I want to just give a great big shout out to our kids and our staff because they powered through. They never complained in and in every way, shape, and form you want to measure it. They had a marvelous year. So um some of our
012highlights starting with our students uh we demonstrated significant uh achievement gains in all phases ELA math science and social studies across the board grades six through eight. Thank you. Um we had multiple state level award winners in choir um honors band um 19 medals at the state science olympiad meet. Um, seven students qualified for our future problem solvers and we had one first place winner for the scenario writing event. Um, four state qualifiers for math counts. But really to me, these next four numbers signify why it was a great year. We had 501 students participate in athletics. We had 497 students participate in competitive and non-competitive clubs. um between the time the kids put in and the time that those adults that supervise and coach and watch over them put in, that's a tremendous addition
013to the middle school community. Uh we had 58 eighth graders that come in for two days of training and then they are web leaders and they adopt a sixth grade advisory and then they go in throughout the year and they give monthly academic lessons to our sixth graders. That's been a great leadership development program that our student services department has um really honed and uh and perfected over the last five years. And then our student culture goal um at the end of the year, 99% of students indicated that they felt connected to one or more adults in the building. And again, that was a focus and we we really put a lot of effort into that. So, we're really proud of that. The next is is a collage. I don't know what happened to that
014picture on the bottom left. Maybe I I didn't check the no photo list close enough. Uh but um it's just a lot of great kids having fun at the middle school. Next, our team, our our language arts team, our ELAB team, which is our second 45minut section of language arts in sixth and seventh grade, implemented a new curriculum. Our entire health department, uh partnered with our instructional coaches and revised all their assessments to make sure that they were performance-based. Um, all of our first year teachers completed state training in restorative practices. So last year and again next year, because we'll do it again, every certified staff member at Hudson Middle School is is gone through restorative practices training from state trainers. Um, our student services department for the first time co-taught with our exploratory teachers,
015went in and did their academic and career planning lessons. Um, we had a increase So, every counselor every month got in and did their developmental guidance lessons. Um, our mental health awareness week was a tremendous success and we're going to actually going to have a committee next year of kids and adults figuring out how do we pull those things out of a week and expand them throughout the year. Instead of just saying, well, let's think about it for a week, let's really think about it. Let's try to implement it. Let's try to live it. um our department head team and these last two bullets go hand in hand. Um they were tremendous. They conducted multiple focus groups built around our staff engagement survey and for the first time since COVID we hit our staff engagement
016goal and it was I really do believe it was the work of those teacher leaders on that team and the back and forth communication. um if you're around the middle school the last five years of springtime. It was just was a fun spring. It was a kind of a pep in people's step and um it just I didn't want it to end and I don't want to wish the summer away, but I'm looking forward to getting going again. So, um again, more pictures. Uh um if you look down in the bottom left, you'll see the House of Nobles. They they dressed up as the Breakfast Club. And then Mr. Fritz in the bottom center. He went to one of our bingo nights and uh got slimed and we just had a fun week. Uh on
017the upper right hand side you'll see folks. One of the things um my team Trevor Hagermanerman associate principal Nicole Bright assistant principal and Sheila Warren Deina students. We planned just kind of a teacher fun week, a wicked week. And so we kind of put them through their paces and gave them lots of activities and fed them a lot. And um and that was a a really fun piece that we're looking at maybe doing a couple of times next year just to kind of help bring in some more uh collaboration and just uh enjoying each other's presence in the building. And finally, our school comm community. Um next year we're going to have our own chapter of the National Junior Honor Society at Hudson Middle School. Uh we received a $10,000 grant from Festival Foods for
018our athletics and activities program. Uh our eighth grade kids did a field of flags for Veterans Day. And there's a picture on the next slide you'll see. It was really um poignant. Um we had our two family bingo nights. We had our first ever Hudson Middle School academic parent open house and we're going to expand on that this year. We want to bring parents in and really walk them through if you want to know how your children are doing. not only in language arts, but how you can utilize the the tools and the resources we have to support your kids. We're going to show you because it's a little bit different for six, a little bit different for seven, a little bit different for eight. We were going to individualize that per grade level as
019much as possible. Um, we had our sixth grade winter carnival from our web leaders. We had over 50 parents volunteer for Biztown in the zoo. Uh, first ever Hudson Middle School musical. It was awesome. I don't know how anyone get a chance to go see Shrek Jr. It was a hit. It was a hit. Mark your calendar. We're do we're going to do something again this year. Um and then uh Emily Sornson, our GT teacher, and Jen Hire, our media specialist, uh collaborated to reinstitute Battle of the Books within sixth grade. We're going to expand that to seven and eight uh over the next couple years. And then Hudson Middle School made all three of our building goals. Um, you know, with uh the the support of Central uh and all the construction, I'm I'm
020really proud of the year that our folks had and the professionalism I saw every day with our teachers. So, it was a great year. Megan, Mr. President, thank you. Um, they it so great to hear about kids in middle school having a great year and the academics, the improvements on the test scores. I know kids worked really hard, staff, administrators. Um, the fact that 99% of students feel connected to an adult in the building. Similar with River Crest, I just all of this is so fantastic to see the fun and the academics and the emotional uh support and growth that kids are feeling at school. So, thank you. Yeah. Well, again, um I'm very lucky to work with a tremendous staff. They are uber talented and they care about kids a lot. Great. Uh Aaron,
021excuse me. Thank you. Um I I love what you're doing with the eighth graders with that web work and bringing the older kids to help the younger kids. I think that's it's so valuable. It's awesome. Uh and the mental health extension involving the kids and the adults. Super cool. Everything you guys are doing sounds incredible. It makes people want to go there. I love that. I love hearing that the scores are getting better and um for for River that's it was awesome to hear about the community really coming together in that school and really expanding out and that it's it's awesome. Thank you. Thank you. Great pressure. Thank you. Next Dolph with EP Rock. Hi again. and I'm D Schmidt, principal at EP Rock Elementary. Um, I just want to talk a little bit about
022our presentation tonight. Uh, so the EPROCK staff really helps create what we're going to going to talk about and and we go off of our strategic plan. So we we look at our students, our staff, and the community. And this year we've done it just a little differently after we've kind of made our list. Um, we kind of looked at at themes. And so mine is kind of broken down in themes this year. First, we just started with kind of our academic growth and curriculum. As um Rivercrest talked about, this is our first year of the core knowledge language arts curriculum for our third through fifth. Teaching and learning really helped us come up with a really good plan across our elementary schools. Um we dove in third through fifth. We implemented completely. We adjusted
023what was going to be our leadership day to be our staff development day over the summer to get our our our teachers ready. and and that just led to students being excited. So, one of the things that we heard a lot about was students going home and talking to their parents about what they're learning through uh the CKLA. So, there's a lot of different interdisiplinary subjects that they're learning about and they got excited about and they're sharing it with their families. Uh kindergarten through 2nd, we continued on um with our students for one more year the the phonics program that's also um steeply um embedded with the science of reading which is from phonics to reading. and saw good results with our decoding and spelling with those students. And so again, it was great to
024see how excited they were about the CKLA knowing that we're going to implement it K through five next year. One other big theme that came up um with with our staff was just the leadership and the kind of the involvement things that our students are able to do. So, as far as a leadership lens, um we have peer helpers and book buddies. And both of those activities allow our bigger students to help our younger students in the building. And then just some overall leadership pieces. We have student council that give feedback on things they'd like to see changed in the building. Library aids that help stock and restock our books in the library. Safe patrol, getting kids to and from school safely. And then we're really proud with the level of participation not only with
025projects for celebration of nations but our students and families going and participating the night of uh celebrations of nations. Then I just have a list of some of the highlights as far as events and activities that happen in our building. So you know districtwide we have the track and field days for fourth and fifth but we also have a special track and field day for our K through third graders at EP Rock. um our students uh demonstrated just some really great empathy, talked about olders helping youngers, but also flexibility with the construction. So, there's a lot of transitions that happen during the year and and the students really took that uh with a grain of salt. You know, not only moving, but noises and kind of working through that uh during the year, too. And
026finally, uh minute meetings at our building, too. We got the same type of feedback that that students really feel safe at EP Rock, as well as have at least one one adult that they can turn to. So, some of some of the pictures. So, we have our our boosteron there. Um, and our our theater production upper right um Earth Day event picking up in the community. And then one that I really love is is different times during the year our students go down uh to nursing homes and interact with some of the residents there. So, just some of the activities, both fun and leadership happening at EP Rock and then with our team. So, we had um some really good support, like I said, with professional development with the CKLA for our third through fifth.
027Um our we have a new instructional coach this year, uh Olivia Condan, who was one of our kindergarten teachers and did a great job with her instructional coaching across the building. And then I'm really proud of just some of the voluntary staff development that the my staff takes uh advantage of. So, I have one group of uh or a group of staff members that meet monthly and they're continually looking at how can we make sure our students feel welcomed and included at EP Rock Elementary. And then we have a second time that we've done a book st a book study on uh the book What Happened to You and it's all about trauma informed care that we did a few years ago. Uh we wanted to revisit it, but we also want to bring along
028uh new staff in the building. And so we did that the second half of the year and had monthly uh meetings with that um and kind of read a couple chapters and discussed flexibility and support. Our our staff was just awesome during um this ongoing construction, classroom changes, new curriculum with the CQLA, just a lot of teamwork and and mutual help during that process. And I think the the checkout day was just kind of encompassed that. Um, we had about twothirds of the building to pack up, classrooms, move into the gym, and we had it all done by 100 pm with certified staff and support staff that was helping with that. And and the staff in the building just does a great job of creating an environment that the morale is good by just doing
029different things throughout the year that I'm mentioning there. And finally, my staff really wanted to make sure that we highlighted some of the support roles that just just do an excellent job in our building. Our custodians, our specialists, our admin assistants, our regular ed and special ed pair professionals. Without us, our building just wouldn't run the way it does for our our students and our families. And then just some of the things that were going on. So we had staff that were willing for booster thawn to get painted last day um picture um right before or right after we wave goodbye to the kids. Our parent group doing things for us to bring us together. And then the far right or bottom right is actually um the staff that participated our building staff and also
030some district staff in our our literacy night that was for the kind of our family engagement night that was new this past fall. And I'll talk about it when we get to uh kind of the community. So when looking at our school community, it really kind of fell into three areas. The engagement, mentorship, uh mentor uh ship that happens in our building and also fundraising support. So we have strong participation and we really partner with the parent groups. So some of these are are building things and some of our parent groups or our district things too. Our celebration of nations, really high turnout with our families from EP Rock, Culver's night, glow dance, family picnic, those are all parent group things. Uh but but our family engagement night was wonderful. So we gave parents more
031information about the science of reading supports as far as what they can be doing with social emotionally for their children at home. And then we talked through at each grade level we had breakout sessions so they could learn more about everyday math and our reading curriculum that we were using last year. You know rolling out CKLA at at third through fifth that was new covering some of the phonics um to reading from phonics to reading with our K through 2 grade students too. So, we fed families and then we had breakout sessions after having kind of um some whole group information to start with. We've had our our mentoring program in place for almost 30 years now and we were able to build it the last four from 30 mentors up to 53 mentors coming
032in weekly in the building. That's building staff, that's district staff, that's community um people coming in to support children. So, just something that we continly want to recognize. also going in um to nursing homes, the kind of support there um was a really notable thing that my staff wanted you to know about. And finally, we have great fundraising support from our parent group, but also community donations. So, every winter um we collect gift cards to be able to give to our families that kind of need that to be able to support their children over the holidays. And one cool thing is the Wintergreen residents also yearly give us a check too that we use that way. So, not only are we going down and and connecting with the the the apartments and senior apartments and
033nursing homes, they're giving back to our school, too, which is kind of a wonderful relationship to have. So, those those are some of the things that that my staff wanted to roll out and let you know about. There's a couple pictures of our mentors. Bottom um left is one of the parent group um events. Upper right was our family engagement night. And then um it was our first grade bottom right um books and breakfast to give parents some more information about phonics and literacy at the first grade level. Thank you Bob. I just wanted to say Dolph one thing I noticed that you brought up was flexibility and I know that all that um Mr. DeLoon also mentioned the same thing just that how important that is as modeling role models, modeling flexibility because we
034all get frustrated by interruptions and some of us are more sensitive to noises and things like that and it's hard I think probably for you guys to be operating your buildings in optimal way with everything that's going on. So, thank you for all that you've done and thank you for bringing that up. It's a really important um skill to have. I just want to say too, one group that I didn't talk about, but um um during construction, our site manager that we worked with, Jamie, did a really good job of knowing it's a school, right, and working with us to make it the best environment it can be while going through construction. So, I just want to also acknowledge, you know, kind of the work. They got to get their work done, but they also
035know it's a school and we we are teaching during this time and trying to still make it the best environment we can while construction is happening. Thank you, Dolphin. Next, Shannon with North Hudson, followed by Holton. Yeah, good evening. Shannon Sexy, principal of North Hudson and Holton. Um, I did mine a little different. I just highlighted certain things, not and not go through everything. So, you can ask me questions if if you have any along the way, but I highlighted some that I want to speak to a little bit deeper. So, in our students, um, you can see all of the things there. One of the highlights, uh, we had DARE. We had the DARE program back this year. So, we had all of our fifth graders participate, um, in the responsibility and the important
036decision-making um, sort of curriculum. And officer um, Sharpig, she did it for North Hudson and Holton this year. So, our fifth graders got an experience that I think not in my time that we've had we've had dare. So, that was um, interesting for us and and fun for the kids. And we even had a mascot at at Holton, the DARE mascot. Um, and we had we had over 70 students participate in Battle of the Books, which is really um which is really a lot. And we had every fourth grader participate. So um that was neat, too. We had one of our goals at the building level is um when we when we tried to look at students if they could align the schoolwide expectations of respon respectful responsible and safe they couldn't define that what
037it looked like at home. Only 53% of our students could say oh I know what it looks like to be responsible at home or respectful at home. And we did this in both buildings, but I wanted to highlight that here because we were pretty low, 53% at North of our kids who could do that and 100% could at the end of the day um at the end of the year. So, one of the action steps that we took is we had a family matrix just like we do our classroom matrix, sent that home, had students fill that out with their families, and then they were and we had parents who appreciated that too. So, um so that was that's what I wanted to highlight on our students. Um, one of if you go back there
038was there's one that another one that I looked. So, we in our um forward uh percentages we increased 17% over last year in ELA and 15% in math. So, that that was a highlight for our students as well. And there are some pictures just of field trips the kindergarten with the fire truck. Um the students they do the um what's that they do um the mascot we had Raider the mascot if you can see underneath the picture of our students he was new this year as well and wax museum that's what the kiddos are down in the bottom right tradition wax museum. Yeah. Okay. So for our team, uh really what I wanted to highlight here, uh we did a lot of fun things too, but really what I wanted to highlight is similar to
039the other buildings that had construction is that they taught they did all of these things with students, with their team, with the community in the midst of four different phases where we moved five classrooms out and we redid them and then they moved back and we moved five different classrooms out. We had four different phases of that during school. So, you know, our staff had a really good attitude about it. They know that at the end at the end of it all, they're going to have a really nice building. But again, it's like you said, they modeled what flexibility and what positivity what positivity looks like. And um they all helped each other out. They stayed after work. They moved and helped each other out. And within hours, we we had classrooms set back up
040again. So I think anything that I highlight here would would would goes along with the positivity and the work that goes into construction on a staff. Yeah. And these are just pictures of our staff doing fun things. We too did the the um the underground dress up week or whatever where students had to guess what we were doing and um yeah through it all. There they are learning learning also learning the letters. We we continued the letters training and did the CKLA training and through it all. Still had a lot of fun. All right. Under our school community, I just wanted to highlight the the inclusion week. So, we had a a week that students and staff really kind of honed in on activities and um signing off on inclusion and neurodeiversity. So, that was
041really important for our school. And then I do want to highlight our PTO. We did we did a fun run. It was very successful. But my PTO at North is used to having a lot of things inside the school. we weren't able to do, you know, some of our um movie nights or science nights, the steam nights because of construction. They did a lot of um very creative things, I would say, in having outside things this year. So, we've never had a family day at White Berry Farm and we did that and that was successful. We've never had a family bowling day or night on the weekend and that was very successful. And then they just they had gatherings where we could the kids could come on the playground and um have ice cream truck
042and whatever. So I think that they were they were very creative with construction as well. And then the the the students um if you if you back it up yeah just the students persevering through through construction. They had to go out the front door in order to go to the playground out back all year long just because of the gym and the media center and um during one of the phases a hallway was completely closed off. So they had to go around this way and around this way they couldn't go through. So um students students were just as as positive and flexible and then just wanted to highlight our um custodial staff. They worked they worked double duty this year. Yeah. And these are just pictures of kids having fun. That was our fun run.
043Again, the the one on the bottom left is students signing off on their pledges for inclusion week. Yeah. Oh, and our groundbreaking down at the bottom. You can see kids with helmets with their hard hats. Okay. Um I just want to highlight the garden club. I I remember the woman who ran that came in here one day and went through everything. That was for Holton. Oh, Holton. I'm sorry. No, that's okay. That's coming next. Yeah, I'm gonna say it. I'm gonna just say um the garden club is amazing. And DARE, we all remember DARE. Yeah. And that was pretty that's an awesome program. So, I'm super excited it's in our schools. Yeah, that was it's my first time in seven years that I've seen it. And it was a it was a it was a
044good connection. and a good community connection, too. Next up, Holton. And I did the same thing for this one. I just picked a few to highlight uh in our students. So, a lot of the themes that you'll see throughout throughout here, we did a big focus on reading. Just kind of keeping the interest of reading at school and at home and kind of getting kids, you know, more excited than they already are about reading. So, one thing that was new was reader of the month. Teachers picked students who kind of demonstrated that interest, that love, that kind of over and above with reading, be it at home or be at school. And um one thing that that we're proud of, we we started this last year at Holton this the service the learning service projects
045that benefit the community. So, I just wanted to h to highlight that because we we did that again this year. And some of the examples uh were um Meals on Wheels bags. Like the second graders decorated all the bags and then Meals on Wheels took them and they had like cute little messages and stickers. That was a really fun day and they were really excited about that. That one was new. And then the bridging blanket drive, Valentine's for veterans and feed my starving children. Those were other ones. And holiday cards for senior citizens. Um again along with the reading we did a a uh one book, one school. So, we had uh Kenny the Kenny and the Dragon was the book that every student at Holton got and we had parents that signed up and
046teachers that signed up to read chapters. So, the whole school got to see that same parent reading a chapter or that sta staff member reading a chapter until we got through with the book and we had activities and that was really fun. The author gave us a message at an all school meeting, a fun message just to the kids. So that was another highlight for reading. Um and then you can see that we were we were pleased with our forward exam scores as well getting almost almost 80 and then 83 in math. You can see pictures of our concerts and um the top right was a a HPA sponsored um learning the ropes jump rope assembly and the top left that's the ice cream truck. Yeah. And bottom right that's the the Valentine's for senior
047citizens or that one's for that's Yeah, just more fun. Okay, our team. So, what I kind of wanted to highlight here was our PBIS goals. We had a little bit more of a focus on staff and what what we could do as staff. And we had um one of our goals was that staff they were going to reinforce positive or positive reinforcement um by giving tickets at a 5:1 ratio and that goal was met. And um we also our percentage was kind of low on all staff being able to to name our respectful, responsible, and safe expectations. And so we just made sure that we included everybody that may not be in our staff meetings all the time, our support staff and lunch staff and everybody. And we had um all of our staff that
048could name those expectations at the end of the year. And those were just fun pictures of the underground dress up days that I think that was a Tik Tok thing this year because everybody did that. But it was fun. Okay. And last, our community. Um, so this was new for us. We we too had a therapy dog, Eddie. So he was our staff member. He had his picture up on the wall with the rest of the staff. And so that was a really fun thing that that staff enjoyed, but our students were very excited. Eddie would sit every Thursday at the door and greet the kids. And so that was new and and fun for the kids. Um, let's see. Oh, we had we did a similar kind of read around the world, but we
049did read around the Disney parks. And so our they met our goal here, too. Holton students read over 63,000 minutes in our one month. And then um so they got to travel to the different Disney parks and at the at the end we had a celebration um of Disney Day and we had centers like little Disney centers that they they participated in. And then I just wanted to highlight too at the end these are some of our favorite traditions at Holton that they've been going for years and years. They're what they're what the students tell me that their best memories were. And then I had two staff members that retired this year from Holton. And when I asked them what their favorite memories were, these were the things. And if and what they were going
050to miss, these were the things. The Holton Bazaar, the all school skate, the talent show, kite day, garden club, and the bell ringing. And I think most of those are pretty unique, pretty unique to Holton. So, and then those are pictures there. You can see Disney day, the all school skate, kite day bell ringing, and then our garden club. Brian, thank you, Mr. President. As I think the only Holton alumni at the table. I just have to highlight that the Holton Bazaar is my personal memory and Sandy the Garden Club was was was my babysitter as a child. So, but I I just really appreciate uh hearing about all the traditions at Holton that really build into the the culture, the special culture. Yeah. And I think a lot of Yeah, a lot of the
051buildings have gone to different fundraisers and um North Hudson was like my first year that was like the last year of their carnival, but this is like the one school that's held on to that bizarre carnival type of fundraiser. So, yeah, I was surpris kind of hit me a little bit the disco lunch. I'm like, "Oh, that was like 30 years ago for these kids. How do they how do they look at that?" And then I thought, I did sock hops when I was in school in the 70s, so I get it. And the lunch is very exciting. Excellent. Megan, um, I love the Holton Bazaar. Uh, I was really glad though as a parent whose child has won a cake on the cakewalk to see the move to the cupcakes this year. I was
052like, "Yes, thank goodness." because it was really something when we got that whole cake cupcakes it is. Mr. President, thank you. Um I just wanted to congratulate you on both on the achievement for both North Hudson and Holston and the academic achievements are tremendous. Um the gains you saw at North Hudson. So kudos to you and and through that's what I said through through construction and and all. So yeah, again I have I have very dedicated staff and hardworking students that want to work they want to work hard for their teachers too. So I love it. And then what strikes me listening to all of you all today and thinking about the presentations from our last meeting is um the work that you guys do with your teams to create strong school communities. And just
053thank you for all of that and thank you to the staff. That's not insignificant work. It takes a lot of dedication and time both during your school day and outside of to create those communities and to realize the achievements that you have both in connectedness but also translating that to academic achievement. So you guys should feel very proud of the work that you do. Thank you. Thank you Shannon. Great reports all around guys. Excellent report. Oh from don't forget here. Well, there's I'm sure you had a disco lunch in there somewhere, right? We did not, but we have tomorrow is disco lunch. Surprise for everybody. No, we had a lot of fun stuff. And I started the first slide is just my team that I wanted to celebrate, too. Holly. Um, we have two Hollies.
054Holly T, Holly Q, Lori, and then Sarah. Um, I made them take a picture because I'm like and we I just wanted to pause and celebrate them because they are incredibly hardworking and we couldn't do all these big events and the initiatives. Yes. Um, that we do without uh their teamwork and their willingness to jump in and say, "Sure, we'll try that." Um, and they do quite successfully. So, super appreciative of them. So, going into the next slide then I kind of combine the pictures with um some of the statistics and initiatives that we've been working on. recruitment, 51 certified staff, 28 long-term subs, two administrative vacancies, 18 athletic vacancies, and 101 support staff vacancies. During the 2425 school year alone, um the onboarding committee has been continued push um between uh uh teaching and
055learning and then um HR department where we're really focusing on uh cons developing a consistent pathway for certified staff to get acclimated and become part part of our culture when we hire. So it's the recruitment piece it but it's also the retention. It's like how are we bringing them into into the fold part of that is the veteran ambassador committee. So uh we are in our second year of the veteran ambassador committee. Um a couple new things that we did this year is we had a fun at the beginning of the year uh we had a popup social which was hosted at the FIPS where uh we just had brand new teachers and our veterans connect and it was a great event attended really really well. Um, and then a lot of celebration coming out
056of that. During that event, uh, we had our veteran ambassadors, which is a volunteer committee, um, write little notes for all of our, uh, new teachers that we waited about three weeks and sent them out to the buildings to. So, every new teacher got a candy bar as well as a positive note from a teacher, um, from a veteran. And I think they're just seeing increasingly how much impact they can have as a team. And I love that collaboration. We're hosting another pop-up social coming up in August. Retention. Um we did the wellness walk at the beginning of the year. Hope you all can come to that too. Um it's a really fun uh way to kick off the start of the school year as well as with all the other activities that day. Uh
057we had continuation of our cheers for peers program. We had the fourth annual staff family fun night in February. 350 staff and their families attended that. And then also the recognition banquet um in May where we had the most ever attend at 220 attendees. Something else I wanted to focus on on the next slide is uh the implementation of frontline central. It was huge undertaking for our department um this year and certainly led by Sarah Jameson in my department but also uh Tracy Lewis and financial services. They really worked hard to get all of these initiatives done and really um came down to completely digitizing all of our personnel files. So over a thousand employee personnel files working with Eio Johnson. Um we had to it was a leap of faith once they took all
058those they wrapped them up in like saran wrap and like removed them off site and said you're never going to see them again. That was a little stressful, but we'd had lots of checks along the way. Um and they did an amazing job of scanning and housing them. Um and yeah, they are officially destroyed now, which is all okay. It's going to be okay. Um but uh we also are we still are using paper like payroll forms, new hire forms and we're transitioning all to electronics with the assistance of Frontline Central. So that's been a huge initiative. Lots of back and forth of how trying to get things to work in different ways. Uh we have the certified staff contract, support staff letters of intent all done digitally now for the first time ever, which
059is super amazing. Um streamline delivery tracking of our trainings. Um, we're going to be pushing out more and more of this to staff as we start the school year. And then onboarding of all of our new hires is done through the system. Although it's a lot of investment this year, as my last bullet indicated, we're hopeful that over 250 staff hours annually will be eliminated because of the transition to paperless um files. So, that was an exciting initiative that took a lot of time. Our students is the next slide. Staffing to support our students. Certainly, we do the annual staffing process where we involve um a lot of different parties and we walk through what the staffing at each building is going to look like as due to enrollment, due to different priorities and we
060continue to do that. Student transportation, um Safeway Bus Company and associate principal Trevor Hagermanerman and certainly Ashley as well uh work really hard in getting all those students to and from school. We have 200 public school students and 195 private school students who regularly use our buses and we track that through our Traversa app and the card um card reader. So we uh have a lot of kids going on those buses. We also did 200 background checks. Um that was up about 500 this year in part because of the construction workers which we do background checks on anybody who's going to be on site if there's students on site. So that is an initiative that we are um very firm on. Then our school community uh we again partnered with the chamber of commerce commerce
061for the annual teacher lunchon. We had 51 new certified staff. Uh the United Way campaign that we work with where um we uh allow for payroll deductions if they want to contribute to United Way. We had flu shots. And then a big point of celebration is we had 162 uh student teachers this past year which was the most we've had um with um collaborating with our area universities um and that was a great success many of whom we end up hiring if we have vacancies. Uh it's a great time to get to know each other through that process. And then we had participated in the North Hudson Pepperfest parade and had fun doing that as a leadership team. So that's HR report. Anyone? I just want to thank you, Andrea, for all the hard work
062you and your team um put in. I mean, it it just kind of chugs along and then when you put all this down, it's like, holy moly, it's a lot. So, I thank you very much. It wouldn't, you know, without your support and your the things that you and your team are doing, we wouldn't have excellent teachers like we do. So, thank you. Thank you, Mr. President. Okay. I also just want to say how exciting it is that we've had that many student teachers. I really had no idea and I think it's as an educational system, it's awesome that we can get those future teachers going and um develop them. So, thank you for that, too. Yeah. And way to go with technology upgrades and the paper purge. I know it wasn't easy for for
063you especially, but Lonnie and it was a joint effort and our departments really really worked hard on it and we're glad we're at least knock on wood hopefully through the worst of it. Very good. Okay. Uh next we have crime statistics on school property. Tara Take your mic. I'll start over. Um, Wisconsin Act 12 created this new annual reporting requirement. Um, it's for crimes that have happened on high school property only. This could be during the school day, any school sponsored events, transportation. This not this isn't necessarily just students. It could be a community member issue happening in our buildings. Um, so we've had to work with law enforcement, the county, the DA's office to see anything where citations have been um, issued or charges have been filed. You can see the crimes that have
064to be reported which are listed below. Um, so I created the chart. So then now every year I'll just add to this chart similar to what you see our annual seclusion restraint um, looking like. Um, but we had 18 total crimes where citations were issued or charges filed. three in the um burglary, robbery or theft. All three were theft. We had use of possession of alcohol, controlled substance um 12 and then we had three anything um municipal relating to disorderly conducts. So that was reported um has to be reported to DPI by the end of July. It's already been reported and then shared with you by the end of July. So you'll see this next summer as well. Very good. Thank you. Yeah. Uh, next would be 202526 enrollment update with Andrea. Yes. So, we're
065in a routine where we're just regularly sharing this information so you guys can have information this week at it. So, you can see from this um update compared to June, not a whole lot of movement. I think we're down or up one child um when it comes to the elementary numbers. However, with the board action last month to increase um the board conversation that resulted in increasing the Hudson Prairie sections, you can see we're now at 9 uh3 sections instead of the 91 sections. And at this time, um there's uh there we don't have any classes that are outside of our enrollment guidelines at the top end. Certainly, we have a lot of green on this document, but not at the top end that of our class size ranges. Then the high school middle school
066um we're up uh we're the same at the middle school. So no big change there. The high school we did add um 14 uh 12th graders primarily because of how numbers fall in some of the uh transition program rollover that occurred um a couple weeks ago. That's what triggered the additional. They're not really new kids. It's just a reinrollment as a result of our processes. So, it's at 166 1694 at the high school and then the 1070 at the middle school. That's all. Thank you, Andrea. That closes out reports. Moving to topics of discussion and possible action and uh moving to consent items. If I could have a motion using language on the board. Mr. President, I move approval of the consent items and that the chief financial and operations officer be authorized to pay
067bills in the amount of 9,300,169.92. [Music] Do I have a second? Second. Second by Kate. And uh all those in favor say I. Oh, is there any comments or any Okay. All those in favor say I. I. All those opposed say nay. Hearing none. The mot consent items pass. Mr. President, yes, we do have a retirement. We do. Yes, we do. So, Annette Kelly, who is administrative assistant to teaching and learning, is retiring effective at the end of September after 16 years of service. Certainly, we'll invite her to attend the spring banquet as well. But I wanted to recognize Annette at this time. Thank you, Andrea. And we also uh with the approval of the consent agenda, we also have some changes with our our administrative team. Uh two interim appointments through that process. Uh
068one of them's here tonight, Shannon Sexy, who will be moving into the interim chief academic officer role. So excited to have her. Uh and uh and then Sarah Wide will who will be moving from uh the Hudson Virtual Charter School to uh take over for Shannon at Holton and North Hudson. So excited to have both of them. Shannon starts tomorrow in her new role and uh Sarah starts on Monday in her new role. So just excited to have them both. So okay, thank you. Nick, do we move to approval or do we do that? That's already included. Okay. Okay. Uh next up is annual approval of academic standards. Nick. Yep. So uh typically this would come out of teaching and learning office. Uh but since it's kind of a vacancy right now, I'll handle this.
069This is the same academic standards that you saw at the work session in June. Uh we since 2015 act 55 requires the board to publicly adopt academic standards every year. We adopt the Wisconsin academic standards every year. Um you can see through that presentation. Um, nothing uh nothing's changed since we went through this at the work session, but I guess the recommendation is that we would uh the board would approve the Wisconsin academic standards for a 2526 school year. Do I have a motion? Mr. President, I'd like to make a motion to maintain the Wisconsin academic standards as the academic standards used in the Hudson School District for the 2526 school year. Do I have a second? Second. Thank you, Molly. All those in favor say I. I. All those opposed say nay. Hearing none.
070That is approved. Next, we have some policy updates. We'll start with Bonnie at the first reading of school wellness. Sure. So, this was the same policy was presented at the work session. Um, we had our five-year review with DPI, our administrative review. They recommended some changes that we needed to make to our wellness policy. We had our wellness committee meet, make recommendations. Um, the areas that had the changes were regarding nutrition promotion outside of the school meal program, food provided but not sold, and food and beverage marketing, as well as the updated USDA non-discrimination statement. And then the updated policy is attached for your review. But there's no changes since the work session. Okay. Thank you. We'll hear that the next meeting, I guess. Right. Next. So, we need a we need a motion to
071approve the first reading of this policy. Okay, Mr. President. Yes, Megan. I make a motion to approve the first reading of the wellness policy, policy number 458 as updated. Do I have a second? I second. Second from Maria. All those in favor say I. I. All those oppose say nay. Hearing none, first reading passes. Next, moving on to um parent and fa family engagement with Nick. Yep. So, again, this is a teaching and learning policy. Uh this is from act 20 uh which was the literacy program or reading program approved by the leure legislature actually two years ago. Um and the way it works is uh it adds to our current parent and family engagement um title one program policy which is policy 352.51. If you go to the end, uh the language at the
072end is uh essentially um taken verbatim out of the uh of the law so that we have it uh correct in there. Uh and it's the the the policy recommendations that's coming from WASB and also DPI. So the recommendation of administration is to approve the modification to this policy as presented. Do I have a motion to approve? Mr. President Smalling. I move approval of the first reading of the update to policy 342.51 parent and family engagement as present. Second. A second. Second from Maria. Thank you. All those in favor say I. I. I. All those opposed say nay. Hearing none. That passes. Next moving on to continue discussion of girls wrestling with Tara. And Aaron is not here tonight. So, nope. He's not here. So, same information that you heard last meeting, the request coming
073in um for the head coach for girls wrestling and assistant coach. So, the recommendation from the administration is to move forward with girls wrestling. We're kind of put in a tough spot with the WIA. We don't have much of a not much of a choice. As we talked about during the work session, you know, the cost associated with this program um is not not real big. And we did talk about the difference with the assistant coach or not have the assistant coach. The you know we have a double benefit with the assistant coach position one. Uh it allows us to always have two adults in the in that's kind of our best practice when we're working with kids. The other thing is allows us to then take two vans to away meets and things like
074that instead of needing to rent buses uh for those things. So it kind of pays for itself that way. Uh so same recommendation for the administration is to approve the girls wrestling uh as a separate standalone sport because well uh we don't have much choice. That's kind of what the WA is making us do. So Mr. President, I just wanted to share a little of the discussion at the work uh session about how girls wrestling is kind of really starting to take off in Wisconsin. Um maybe others knew this, but I I didn't before then. And I just think it's super exciting to see. Uh, and I think it's important that we support our girl wrestlers the same that we do for our boy students who wrestle. Would you like to make a motion for
075that, too? Erin, I have a question. Yes. We we talked some numbers the last time, but is there actually a confirmed number of girls that are going to be participating this year in that program? So, they don't um the numbers come in, they'll register for those. It's after October 1st is when they actually register for wrestling. So, like July 1st just opened for fall sports and then as we get done with fall sports, then we register for uh winter sports. And and please confirm the amount of kids that ride in each of those vans. Uh, so the vans I believe are 10 passenger vans, so with a driver, so it's about 18. We could we could handle up to 18 kids with two coaches. So eight kids, two adults per van. Um, well, I mean,
076if we have one adult per van, you know, and a coach in one a head coach in one van and assistant coach in the other, then you'd be able to get nine kids in one adult in each of the vans. for for some maybe not the right time to mention it, but for some reason, I mean, can we stipulate an assistant coach position based on how many kids are in the program? Like, say if there's eight kids or under, do we really need to have an assistant coach and pay that extra fee? I mean, is there a way that we could when we vote on this kind of I mean, I I don't um I mean, yeah. Yeah. I mean, one of the challenges needed there's not, you know, eight kids, one coach. That's that's
077a good number. Um Yeah. One of the challenges we run into will be that um you really won't know the actual number of kids in the program till the first day of practice, right? Um, and you if you don't have somebody hired, the likelihood of being able to hire then and be ready to go is not real great. Usually it takes us advertising a couple of months to find assistant coaches for programming and things like that. So, um, you know, we can we can make it if it's budget related item, we can uh pull it, you know, we'll pull it from another budget line item. So, we keep it within the confines of the budget. So, it's not an ad, it's a within we'll just supplant something else um in another program if that's a
078concern for the board. It's a concern for me. I'd like to I mean I think it's wise to not over you know and save it for where we actually really need it. Just my two cents. Besides the challenge of potential finding coaching in in a short time frame, wasn't there something also with having one coach with say nine kids and traveling um less supervision issue or a haten supervision issue? Yeah, we we try to make sure we have two coaches um when kids travel, two adults at least. Sometimes it's a volunteer coach and a paid coach. Um you know, but again, not a parent, right? Unless it's a volunteer coach. And you know, we do have some parent volunteer coaches, but we try not to have it be a a practice because then you start
079to run into some of the problems that some of the youth sports run into uh with parent coaches. And so, uh but yeah, I mean, there's there's more pros to just driving vans. I mean, it's just having two sets of eyes and everything. Uh whether it be practices, whether it be meets um and everything else. Um, so it's the it's kind of an ancillary benefit for them to be able to drive a second vehicle. It's not like a driving b, you know, a driving decision maker. Um, we just all of our other sports have at least a head and assistant according to Aaron, you know, whether it be tennis or golf or whatever. I I also remember Aaron saying that for wrestling they have to have an adult in their corner and that it was
080already happening this past year that um parents were having to stand in as the the coach in the corner for some uh girl wrestlers, but that was not happening for boy wrestler. You know, if you have two students wrestling at the same time. Yep. it. So, yeah, that's that's an issue. If you have more than one mat going at a time, you have to have a coach on each mat for those wrestlers. You can't not have a coach on the mat. Uh, Brian, my feeling is I I'd like to advocate for making sure we stand up this program right with with the coach and an assistant coach and and also, you know, trust the administration to report back. If if if uh participation in the program isn't at the levels we're expecting right now, I
081I I don't I don't know that we need to go down the ro road of saying, you know, we should or should not have an assistant coach right now. I' I'd like to if we're doing the program, let's do the program. U I would kind of agree to trust trust administration if we see it's uh under underutilized or whatever make adjustments you know in the future but u any other questions or comments um I would um accept what's Oh make a motion oh go ahead Mr. President, I make a motion to pass girls wrestling uh the proposed budget for the girls wrestling program. Second, Megan. Second. Uh all those in favor say I. I. All those opposed say nay. Um the eyes have it. So moving forward. Um Steve, where are we now? Oh, update
082on the school planning information. Yes. Uh so coming up at the work session, we're going to actually be going through detailed uh planning information, but wanted to give kind of an update. So back in the I believe it was starting in the May meeting or or even Yeah, it was the May meeting. The board had kind of gone through and done some brainstorming about different pieces of information that you'd like us to kind of gather and pull together so that you guys could make some decisions long term about long-term planning related to our facilities and um and schools and things along those lines. And so we did have request uh by a board member just to say, "Hey, can you give us an update on where you're at with that?" And so it's kind of
083um it's a stay tuned kind of thing because coming up in the work session, we're actually going to be sharing that data. It's not all of the data you've requested, but it's it's we're we're probably about 70% of what everybody's asked for at this point. We have a few more points that we want to work through, but coming up at the work session, we also want to make sure we'll go through what the the different data points are and also make sure if there's other things or other clarifying pieces of information people still want uh that we can work through, we can we can try to get those get those different components. Uh but uh it is on the forefront of the conversation. Um, one of the things that you will see as a document
084that'll be coming up in the work session, Tracy put together all the different ways we've communicated about uh the potential need for some um reduction in the number of school facilities we have uh facility needs and budget related needs over the last five years. We broke it down by board member or by board information, by community information, by staff information, and by family or parent information. And so, um, that's a great document because not only does it talk about all of the different things we've communicated, uh, it has links to a lot of the different documents over the last 5 years as we've had a lot of these discussions. And so, if at any point you get to one of those links and it for some reason won't open or you need to request permission,
085just let us know and we'll we'll get that up and running. But that is available for the community to look at as well um, at the starting at the work session. Right. Any questions? That brings us to the end of our meeting agenda. So I uh accept a motion to adjurnn. Aaron with the motion. Second. Second. Second from Megan. Uh all those in favor say I. I. All those opposed say nay. Hearing none. Uh we are injured. You want to take a five minute rec? We can take it five. All right. 10 is fine.