Hudson Schools - July 12, 2021 - School Board Regular Meeting

001please rise i'll call the meeting to order and join me in the pledge of allegiance all right i want to thank everyone for coming we have five persons that have asked to speak and so since it's five or fewer we'll give up to three minutes each first up is wendy hansen to talk about school start time good evening my name is wendy hanson i'm the parent of a student in the district and the parent of a student who has graduated from the district and i was also a member of the school start time advisory committee i was not present at the last meeting but i did watch it on youtube and and i did watch the report that was presented to you uh by tracy and i believe david i apologize if i have the

002name incorrect uh they were the folks that were doing the facilitating for us and they did an excellent job at our meetings of keeping us on track um however the report that they presented was neither crafted by the committee nor did we have a chance to see the report before they presented it to you i've been speaking with other members of the committee and we feel that what was in the report is probably not the takeaway that we would like you to have from from all of the work that we did again the facilitators asked at the very last meeting uh to rank um a series of proposals uh you know starting all the kids at one time starting these kids at this time they brought those with them and we did rank them however

003that was just one exercise uh and that was at the very end of all of our work um and it really didn't make up the bulk of our work and i think what we were really tasked with was um looking at the data and evaluating it and deciding um whether this is something that that we think is important for the board to continue looking into um it's true that the committee did dwindle a little bit after kovid but we had a lot of really smart folks on the committee including public health professionals medical professionals mental health professionals and educators at all levels of school all the way up to university professors and what we found was the data regarding school start times was overwhelmingly in support of a start time of 8 30 a.m or

004later for middle and high school students at the very last meeting it was it was my feeling and the feeling of my colleagues that i've been speaking with that it was pretty much unanimous that everyone there felt that this is something that that we should look into that really should be implemented in the hudson schools and again we we aren't experts in busing or after school activities but i think that's really what we were asked to look at so uh i i feel that all the work we did we really haven't had a chance to talk with the board and present our findings and i would ask that we will be able to do that during the july working session i also believe that we should take advantage of the fact that the very top

005researchers in the nation on school start time are only 30 miles away at the university of minnesota um and i think that we uh in order to educate ourselves and members of the community it would be a really great idea if we were to invite someone from the university of minnesota to come and talk to us all about school start time thank you all right thank you very much all right next up is monica alexander and her she is from 142 bridgewater trail i forgot to ask our first speaker to announce her address but she had listed as 809 third straight hudson so um ms alexander come forward i guess our topics are 1619 project the critical race theory and masks okay my name is monica alexander and i live in this community i have

006a child that attends hudson high school and i would like to address this board tonight i would like to be heard and i would like the board to take under consideration the things that i have to say and that you would in the future in the very near future that you would have an honest and open discussion among yourselves about the concerns that i have i do not want critical race theory taught in the hudson school district neither do i want anything pertaining to the 1619 project taught in the hudson school district i am against government-sanctioned racism and indoctrination of our children i do not want one uh race told that they are the oppressor and one race is a victim in perpetuity the children should be taught how to think not what to think

007let's get back to teaching the children the history of this country and the greatness of our nation along with the good the bad and the ugly without singling out one race to make them feel bad just for being born i you're gonna have to allow me time to say this i'm gonna say it anyway another thing is i want to know where you as the board this school board where do you stand with mandatory vaccinations of the children my student already has health issues and i am not about to add to those health issues with something that is experimental and has not yet been cleared by the fda risking his life there should be a choice and for those students who for whatever reason are not vaccinated will you require that a mask be worn

008enough of the mask already to require the mask is burdensome and unsanitary i don't want the kids who are not vaccinated singled out with having to wear a mask to me to me now it would be just like a slave having to wear a collar and a chain around his neck if you are going to continue to require the mask mandate the kids have been devastated enough already no more masks no critical race theory no 1619 project in this school district thank you very much thank you next up is david austigen at 849 waldrop farm road and i'm sorry if i thanks very much butchered your name all right so i've had three children graduated from this high school uh you guys do a phenomenal job of educating the kids and i want to just

009provide my appreciation for my daughter who just graduated and my son who's coming in as a freshman this year so i have a couple questions with regards to this equity study my first question is my understanding is we spent forty thousand dollars to get this study done my question is what criteria was used to select the vendor to provide ics to provide this recommendation or this audit do you guys have that criteria did you guys provide did you guys have specified criteria that you use to select the vendor yeah this is your time to make comment and it's not a time for a guide okay that comes alright so you guys have that that's great i'll look that i'll find that um how many vendors were audited or selected that went through that criteria and

010then my question is has ics ever provided a recommendation contrary to moving forward with the agenda those are the questions i have and i hope you guys can provide that in the audit i can't emphasize any more than what this woman provided ahead of me my grandfather my grandparents my great-grandparents were genocide my grandfather was a slave for the same exact identif the same exact agenda theories and things that you're providing in this kind of study they were killed murdered because of who they were what they believed in their their ethnicity it's it's ridiculous that's all i have to say all right thank you very much next up is jackie nickim 2663 hilltop lane says river falls mama are you a hudson school district resident no i'm sorry this is time for residents of the

011district to provide comment and we've had recent experience of folks from outside the district attempting to comment on district policy and so forth so if you have somebody from within the district that can make your comments known also you're welcome to always send an email as well all right thank you all right next up is carol irantz or irantz she's for 613 noah drive and her subject is about equity hi thank you for this opportunity this school district has a great reputation already and i don't understand why we need to do these studies and bring in things that are causing division around the nation semantics have been weaponized by the left to introduce all kinds of bad ideas in the past few decades and the majority of americans haven't noticed so that's on us but

012no more we the people and we the parents are now standing for truth and truth is anathema to the left so we are going to stand for truth because that's what our children need to learn we're going to stand for the u.s constitution and that means that we are not listening to the lies or blindly following unconstitutional laws mandates and all that stuff anymore if it's unconstitutional we do not have to follow it that is in the constitution equity is an example of a great sounding word but it's very different from equality equity demands that everyone's needs basically are the same everyone needs the same thing and that's just not true blind people need seeing eye dogs i don't need one and that's the basic idea of equity it makes no sense it's not being

013seen as equal under the law which is what equality is and it's not having equal opportunities under the law either it's a socialist slash marxist buzzword and the end result is communism just like the very divisive crt and all the other really great sounding but very dangerous rhetoric that's been flooding our media our streets and our schools a rose by any other name would smell as sweet and lies by any other name are just as dangerous let's get back to what mlk junior said and judge people by the content of their character not their skin color not anything else not by some equity thing that is what are whatever someone says it is let's not try to push these so-called dangerous diversity equity and inclusion ideas which only sound good let's follow our constitution which

014isn't perfect neither is our history but let's be honest about our history and it has worked so well for over 200 years that thousands probably millions of people around the world have come here and want to come here for the liberty that we still have and that we are going to do our very best to hang on to and can you continue to stand for thank you thank you that concludes our public comment portion of the meeting next up is our equity audit presentation by ics could our guest please come forward and make their presentation hi there i'm going to go ahead and share my slides okay so you should be able to see the slides is that true yes hold on one second i'm not sure they can there we go all right thank

015you so first of all i'm elise fatura i'm one of the co-founders of ics equity and we want to to begin with and thank you for this opportunity one to do the evaluation and two to have this opportunity to share the results with you a little bit about my background i had been a high school teacher a middle school teacher a district office administrator director of student services and special ed for 15 years and then i went into higher ed i'm currently professor emeritus from the university of wisconsin-milwaukee campus where i was a professor in the department of administrative leadership where we trained superintendents building principals directors of student services and teaching and learning i'm going to go ahead and turn this over to the other co-founder of ics colleen kaeper where she can introduce

016herself as well good evening everyone i'm colleen capper i'm professor emeritus from the university of wisconsin-madison like elise i have been a teacher also an administrator in my i've been in wisconsin like over 30 years um and so my work at the university was focused on preparing superintendents and preparing school leaders um for high quality teaching and learning in schools so we're excited to have this time with you and thank you so i'm going to go ahead and capper esther emeritus from the university of wisconsin-madison like at least i have been a teacher also an administrator so there's an echo can i continue to go yes yeah go ahead we just sure so you should be good to go okay very good uh so just a little bit about um iics equity um we've actually

017i'm gonna actually just skip to the the next slide so we've actually been doing this work for over 30 years both as colleen said as professors administrators and working with school districts we are part of a larger team so colleen and i are the co-founders but we work with five or six other facilitators i'm colleen and i both did the equity evaluation for hudson school district so we wanted to let you know that a little bit about the report and what we're going to do tonight we're going to do a very brief overview we'll do an introduction we'll talk a little bit about specific quantitative data the focus group themes and then we're going to spend the majority of our time on essential next steps basically the recommendations of the report we wanted to start

018out with the importance of how positive people were about the district just hands down and i think this is true of people that made comments during open session just a few minutes ago that they were nearly all participants expressed very positive belief the capabilities of teachers and administrators very complementary of the work of the district around covet they found that there was a tremendous amount of support of the district's communicative responses with in the community and families overall just a really positive perception and gratitude for the district and i think that's really important we do a range of different evaluations and that doesn't always happen and so we think it's really important that along with critical recommendations that individuals across the district and the community made during focus groups it was hands down they repeated

019the comments that we have just listed here so a little bit about our work and how we actually approach this work and we understand that you know equity just as far as the conversation of what it is to us it's high quality teaching and learning for all students that's what equity is across race disability language social class religion gender sexual gender identity and all their intersections and so our recommendations which we also really looked at as essential next steps within this report really advance the learning of all students it's not about one group of students over another group of students we look at it as you know equity is not a zero-sum game it actually advances learning of all and so all the districts that we've worked with and continue to work with when gains

020are made of kids who have not typically made gangs the learning of all kids increases or improves and so it's really important that we cast a very broad net of really seeing equity as high quality teaching and learning for all students i'm going to go ahead and turn this over to colleen and she's going to start with the district's pupil non-discrimination policy so i'm going to share my screen uh it says you cannot share while the other person is sharing so if you could stop sharing yours great here so can you see my slides yes we can great thank you so we just want to start with um in the state of wisconsin there's uh law chapter 1 18 13 which is called the wisconsin public non-discrimination law and all districts in the state of

021wisconsin have to adhere by that law and so as all districts in wisconsin have adopted that because they're required to do so as a public school district that all districts in wisconsin have a pupil nondiscrimination policy and so i'm just going to actually read the policy because not everyone attending may be familiar with it because i think it's important to know the work that the district is guided by by the body's state laws and so i'm just going to read it the district is committed and dedicated to the task of providing the best education possible for every student in the district with this goal in mind and consistent with legal requirements the district shall not unlawfully discriminate on the basis of sex including gender identity gender expression and non-conformity to gender role stereotypes sexual orientation

022race color national origin including english proficiency surname or language minority status ancestry religion creed age pregnancy marital or parental status homelessness status any physical mental emotional or learning disability or any other legally protected status or classification in its curricular career and technical education co-curricular student services recreational or other programs or activities or an admission or access to programs or activities offered by the district this includes but is not limited to admission to any school class program or activity standards and rules of behavior including student harassment disciplinary actions including suspensions and expulsions acceptance and administration of gifts requests scholarships and other aids benefits and services of students from private agencies organizations or persons instructional library meeting materials selection and reconsideration methods practices and materials used for testing evaluating and counseling students facilitator facilities and opportunity for

023participation in athletic programs or activities and school sponsored food service programs so you can see the people non-description non-discrimination law actually applies to all aspects of the school district as it does in all school districts in the state of wisconsin and so we use the state policy as a guide to the data we collected and to the report that we put together so first we'll just start out with the quantitative data so one uh our our evaluation had two parts so one was what we call an equity audit which was the more quantitative data and then we also conducted focus groups which we'll talk about we'll talk about those themes and they're going to be ending with the recommendations from the report so this is not all the data in the report we just selected

024some of the key data so importantly again like we look at all students all students in the district so you know by race but by class by disability et cetera in alignment with that public discrimination policy that we just reviewed so for this slime if you look at students with disabilities we can see that 13.9 percent of the students in the district are labeled students with disabilities but for students receiving in-school suspension 100 of the students receiving in-school suspensions are students with disabilities 32 percent of students receiving of school suspensions are students with disabilities and 40 percent of students receiving expulsions are students with disabilities and so it's important that this data and with some of the data that we'll be looking at is that what we call proportional representation so 13.9 percent of the

025students in the district have disabilities that we would expect across these uh expansions and suspensions it should not be more than 13.9 percent because when it is we know that the students with disabilities are over identified over represented in these areas so that's just one example so for students receiving freedom's price lunch in the district of which 16.5 percent of the students receive a free use price lunch but 27.2 percent of students label for special education received for reduced price lunch ten point two percent of students they will gift and receive free fruities price lunch and seven point seven percent of courses at the advanced courses of middle and high school level are students who receive free dues price launch and again you can see the line going across about what representation should be across

026all those areas when we turn to achievement and this will point out uh some of the what elise is talking about is that this this work is not about one group of kids over another group of kids this is about all kids in the district and the district is already uh you know rigorous and has high expectations for all this is about moving the district forward for all students so you can see in the upper left-hand corner when you look at math achievement so in the in the brown bar students receiving free reduced price lunch in the orange bar so we can see that 61.6 of students in the district who receive free reduced price lunch are basic or at the basic or below basic level in math if you look to the right then

027we can see that 38.5 of students receiving freedo's price lunch are advanced or proficient so you can see the flip side so students who are at middle to upper class so that means students who are not receiving fruit price lunch um are 34.6 percent are basic or below basic in math and whereas we see that 64.4 percent of students who are middle to upper class are advanced or proficient in math so what's important about that so you see that there's a a gap there's definitely a difference between kids who are experiencing poverty or free rice fruit is price lunch versus kids from middle to affluent but i think what's important about that data and you're going to see it throughout even so what we see is that actually more than one third of students in

028the district who are middle to upper class are basic or below basic in math so there's a gap but what we know is that and the district is doing well in so many areas but what we see by that data is actually math can be improved across all kids in the district so even kids who are middle to upper class kids their math scores can and should uh you know be raised and continue to do better so this is the work that we're talking about the you know rising tide raises all ships so this is about again literally all kids in the district so if you look at the reading achievement data we'll see similarities so on the students receiving friday's price lunch or in the orange so 63.8 percent of students receiving previous price

029lunch are actually basic or below basic and reading and only 36.2 percent are advanced or proficient in reading and then students who are middle of the upper class 37.1 percent are basic below compared to 61.8 percent who are advanced or proficient again i think when you think about basic or below what that means is these kids are not on track for post-secondary options is one and we know that that's important in the district so that's an example we take a look at discipline data we look at on the left side total percent of students who identify as students of color in the district is 11 but in school suspensions received by students of color is 3.7 but out of school suspensions received by students of color is 19.4 so we can see that our school

030suspensions for students of color are way over represented by students of color when you disaggregate that data by race we can see that 1.3 percent of the students in the district identify as black but then they represent four point nine percent of suspensions three point eight percent of students are multiracial but they represent nine percent of suspensions three point eight percent of students in the district are identified as latinx but represent four point nine percent of um discipline suspensions when we turn to reading achievement when we look at race so we see that on the left side 41 of white students are basic or below the 58.2 are advanced or proficient in reading we see black students 76.3 percent of black students are basic or below in reading and 23.7 percent advanced proficient you can

031you see to the right multiracial 54.4 percent basic or below 45.6 are advanced or proficient 51.7 percent of hispanic students are basically in reading and 41.2 of students are advanced or proficient when we take a look at students who are labeled ell in the district so these are the english language learners um when you see these again when we look at reading students who are in the orange students who are eligible for ell services nearly 80 percent are basic or below in in reading achievement in the district and then you look on the right side only 21 advanced or proficient reading when you look at students who are not eligible so students through whose home angling home home language is english we can see that 41.7 percent are basic or below whereas 57.1 advanced or

032proficient we see similar numbers with math so students who are eligible for ell english language services and the orange 60.5 percent are basic or below in math 39.5 advanced or proficient and we see pretty much the flip so students who have english as their home language 38.6 are basic or below and 60.3 percent are advanced again you see a gap but you also can see the additional work that's going to be needed in reading and math across all students in the district we take a look at advanced placement courses in the district so this is again at the high school and we have 10.8 percent of students with disabilities in the district and we see less than one percent or advanced disabilities or advanced placement courses keeping in mind that only one percent of students

033with disabilities in the district and in the state and nationally actually have an intellectual disability so by definition all the other students in the district label with a disability are actually at average or above average intelligence so we can expect students label with a disability who don't have an intellectual disability actually to be achieving along with other students look at students of color in the district at 11 and then but only represent 6.6 percent of students in ap courses 16.5 percent of the students in the district receive a freebie's price launch but they represent only seven percent of students in advanced courses we have students eligible for again for ell services english language services are about two percent and actually we disreported no students who are receiving english language services are in any advanced courses

034of the high school so that's just a snapshot so again reported 70 pages so we just want to share just a snapshot of the data to show some of the differences when we look at between math and reading and some of the other data areas but also then looking at the trend across all students in the district the second piece of data that we we pulled together were focus groups and some of you um even in attendance are part of our focus groups so again we appreciate all the time in the district and pulling our data together and also all the community members who participated in staff who participated in their focus groups so we did 64 focus groups plus 10 individual interviews and across all those we interviewed about 270 people this included general

035education teachers student services educators principals students community members administrators and board members were all part of those focused groups in the report we go through and we detail um you know we we show we share information from our focus group and these are the themes that emerged out we are not going to go into those in detail if the board has questions on those at the end feel free to ask but i'm just going to read down through so we had identity development training desire for opportunities for civil discussion curriculum and instruction student treatment related to the wisconsin field of non-discrimination law student representation of courses understanding of evidence-based practices district use of data planning time high expectations and rigor in students who struggle other professional learning discipline and behavior and district policies again those

036are themes and we had information from the focus groups from which these things emerged so i'm going to turn it over to elise who's going to now just talk about some of the essential next steps that came out of our the equity audit the quantitative data and the focus groups thank you i'm going to go ahead and share my screen and then after i finish so we'll go through the essential next steps or recommendations of the report and then once i complete them we'll certainly open for questions so the essential next steps based on what clean talked about so based on the quantitative data and the qualitative data that came from the focus groups we really looked at so so what are the next steps for high quality teaching and learning for all students to

037interrupt some of those gaps and access gaps to interrupt um some of the things that um folks said as far as that fell into the themes that colleen talked about really looking at what high quality teaching and learning looks like for all students so it started out with just really knowing the history of educational marginalization historically how have schools been set up for over 200 years i mean one thing we know about the history is kids with disabilities actually did not receive instruction in the core of teaching and learning right so we also know that we had different schools for different kids for a long time across race across gender across social economic and so it's really important just to know that history we also have a phenomena with the history that we tend to

038see the child as needing to be fixed versus what can we do within the system so we talk about the history of education just to put it in context relative to what we're doing today we also look at the shift from deficit to asset-based language and thinking this came from the focus groups of a real conversation of how do we actually see whether students are experiencing poverty or students have a disability or by race does our understanding of identities different than ours actually interfere with our perceptions of a child engaging in identity development again this really looks at how do we grow and understanding people that are different than us applying the equity research of really what does the research say about high quality teacher and learning of all students and then we have developing

039equity non-negotiables and i'll talk a little bit about that school districts often call them principles of excellence as well again what clean went over was the equity audit and some just very specific data from that equity audit and we'll talk about just follow-up recommendations around that we'll also talk about just a little bit about the relying staff and students and then constructing ways for teachers to collaborate more which came up in focus groups identity relevant teaching and learning again discipline and behavior really looking at the quantitative data as well as the qualitative data students with significant disabilities aligning human resource systems leveraging funding and cross-checking policies and procedures so all the essential next steps fall under those areas uh so again the first one though the history of educational marginalization which is just the history

040of education and who received education and who did not and so really understanding professional development around this so that we can lift all kids up and then we talk about in order to do this we often ask school districts and schools teams within schools and all educators to really kind of draw out their current way and their current structure of delivering services for students where are kids located so we often define this as where kids sit where they're located defines what they learn and you can see from some of the quantitative data that colleen talked about just the percentage of kids that was disproportional to the percentage of kids in the high school across socioeconomic ell special education by race in ap classes so really being able to take a deep dive into that area

041the other part is shift from deficit to asset-based thinking how we talk about children and families matter right it matters and so staff talked about it community members talked about it really having opportunity to really think about our language and how we refer and so we often talk about it as person first language or bias free language and then participate in activities that help understanding across different stereotypes and missing assumptions where a child is experiencing poverty or a child who's linguistically diverse sometimes we often see children and families who are linguistically diverse as needing support when we also know that being multi-lingual is an asset right and so how do we support students in that way again engaging identity development of really being consistent in professional development staff reported that they did much of their

042own professional development but were hoping for an organized consistent way of really understanding identities of others that were different than theirs and then looking at opportunities to increase those understandings and so but by having choice so many staff talked about the importance of being able to work with other staff and have choice of areas that they wanted to increase their understanding anywhere from poverty to disability across race to giftedness etc and then the uh the equity audit understanding that research um so it was absolutely wonderful the um the data and the amount of work the district did and getting us that data for the equity audit it's very comprehensive and it's very detailed and what's important about it is what you have right now is you know baseline data right you have data that says

043here's where we are right now at this point in time and then if the district is interested in continuing to collect equity audit data sorry i actually skipped but i'll go to here equity audit data if the district is interested in continuing to do equity audit data is the next step that will be very beneficial because you can compare the equity audit data over the next year the next five years or ten years relative to the data that was collected for this report and that will help communicate what changes have happened how kids are faring can we close some of those access gaps when we look at reading achievement and math achievement and then i'll go back sorry about this i skipped my order and then really looking at the research so many teachers talked

044about really what the research was on best practice again we see equity as high quality teaching and learning so looking at what is the research on best practice around high quality teaching and learning are we doing everything that we possibly can are we using strategies and practices that have the greatest impact on student achievement all students all students and wanting continued support and understanding in those areas and then i'm really looking at exactly what are those six or seven ways whether you call them equity non-negotiables or principles of excellence but six or seven statements that operationalize high quality teaching learning they districts often use these principles of excellence to it's the how behind their mission and vision of the district right they often use principles of excellence to organize their strategic plan but they are

045they're not belief statements they're operationalizing so you can see them in action and what it looks like and then again as i talked about the equity audit and then we did spend some time of really looking at the realignment of staff and students because many staff talked about their willingness and desire to collaborate to build that collective capacity we know that when teachers have the opportunity to share their expertise it has the greatest impact on student achievement all students and so it's really important to look at how are they how are they situated in a way that they can actually co-create lessons and collaborate around teaching all kids so we put some very detailed about four i'm different statements around realigning staff and students and really thinking about what we call we create we call

046them coplandico surgical learn teams but being able to create those at all levels in order to support all students proportionally represented in the core of teach and learning because we know some of your quantitative data is showing access gaps when kids are not able to have access to the core of teaching and learning they learn less when they learn less year after year after year we see those achievement gaps across kids kids of poverty across race across stability so across linguistically diverse so it's really important to look at the structures within the system in order to proactively meet the needs of all learners and so we talked also about some recommendation of really looking at the center-based programs within the schools where kids are clustered together by like disabilities and the importance of proportional representation

047and that students with disabilities can attend the schools they would attend if not disabled which is part of our federal and state wrecks and then also this goes with some kids that are with disabilities that are tuitioned out of the district and then really looking at some of the demographics of the students who attend the school within the school and is it proportion represented so we looked at this and um wanted to make uh the next step of really gaining more data around this area and and who is actually served within the school within the school in more detail understanding that and then within those coplandicos cervical learning teams which are really collect collaborative and this collective way of teachers to come together to share expertise across general ed teachers across teachers in the area

048of special education ell advanced learning to build each other's capacity so understanding the role and function of individual teachers within those teams in order to collaborate to build the capacity of each other to therefore have a greater impact on students so we know that you know together we're stronger we can't all have all the expertise to teach all kids kids are different right we know they're different and so it's really important that the staff can actually be aligned structurally so that they can actually share their information and share their expertise and the example i want to give on that so if the ell teacher is down the hallway in a resource room and the general ed teacher is in the classroom and a student who's linguistically diverse is going down the hallway for support that

049student who's linguistically diverse has to bring that information back to the core of teaching and learning even though we know the fluency in the english language is limited right and those teachers often just the way they're structured aren't able to meet they share information in the hallway they do the best that they can do but the structure isn't set up in a way to help them in order to collaborate more and that's historical that's why we want to talk about the history of education as well that's been happening for a long time because the way we set up schools was to set them up by separate disciplines and then when we do that teachers across disciplines are not as able to collaborate as they should we then go into identity relevant teaching and learning and

050the importance of professional development to support all those instructional practices and strategies that have the greatest impact on student achievement we use john hattie's work he's done a significant job of doing meta-analysis which is really taking the data across thousands of studies and what has the greatest impact some teachers have delved into that greatly and others have not but there was an interest within the focus groups and then really looking at the curriculum relative to the non-discrimination law that colleen talked about so really evaluating current curriculum relative across identities based on the non-discrimination law and you could see that went across all identities as well as all areas within the school and then looking at discipline you saw some of the data for that but really professional development specific to how to develop proactive student

051behavior plans that are equitable and identity relevant um what does it look like what does communicative intent around behavior we know the district has worked very hard on this and has done a tremendous job but being able to be consistent across all schools and all students would be important and then around significant disabilities complete professional development support across categorical caseloads this is specific to special education so that teachers are both mixed around cross some teachers are cross categorical others are categorical in the district we know that students have greater students with disabilities have greater access to the core of teaching and learning when our special ed teachers can be cross-categorical within the district and then i'm going a little bit more into district office just as far as aligning the resource system just thinking about

052high quality teaching learning fall becomes responsible of all leadership and it would be necessary to take a really systematic approach where all staff are responsible for learning to advance learning for all versus hiring a district equity coordinator so we're not supporting the hiring of a district equity coordinator we know that that might feel in opposition of an equity report but based on our 30 over 30 years of experience that we know that when all individuals in the district all administrators all educators own high quality teaching and learning for all students and take a really strong look at the essential next steps delineated in this report that that shares the ownership and actually has a greater impact of all kids learning more so we also looked at just really creating physician descriptions and interview questions that

053align to the district's principles of excellence and those are example principles of excellence are delineated in the report and then creating those strategic partnerships with local universities to increase the high number or to increase on the number of high quality diverse educational staff and that came up multiple times within our focus groups and then funding should be aligned to the district principles of excellence again we're saying really conduct an equity audit in student demographics across extracurricular as well so the equity audit we did did not include as much of the extracurricular and we would recommend that it would um the equity audit that we use is what we developed that you can actually add questions to it but we'd suggest to continue looking across extracurricular activities as well and then based on data results the

054district and schools will increase options and access and some of the things came up with who has access to these extra curricular opportunities and if you did not have a way home or able to stay after and you had to catch a bus you actually weren't um able to or you weren't able to be involved in specific options after school and so it might be important to look at really think about the opportunity of the late bus so more kids can access after school activities again across checking policy and procedures this is really important around the principles of excellence again we see those as operationalizing high quality teacher learning for all kids and so looking over obviously the board looks at the policies and procedures all the time doing a cross-check so that they align

055with the principles of excellence once developed would be important and then the schools board can receive additional training on what does high quality teaching and learning look like so those are our recommendations across all our areas and so we really want to thank you for this opportunity and then open it up for questions okay is there questions from board members yes bruce uh first of all i'd just like to say thank you for the comprehensive report all the data that you pulled forward here and uh the information that's been provided so thank you for that um can you maybe just remind me or talk a little bit about the the data set and the time uh in which the baseline or benchmark data is based upon is it a one year look back is it

056a five year look back etc yeah i mean for that so the focus groups were obviously current the equity audit data which i think maybe that's what you're asking about um the district pulled together the most recent data they had so um i think the achievement was 2018-19 of state assessment scores but they used the most recent it was a data point in time the most recent data point in time so that's when we say the equity audit like this is like your point in time data um and then that you should conduct it annually so this can be your baseline that you can be measuring your progress going forward can you um going back to one of the earliest slides that you shared in the quantitative section um the slide about students with disabilities

057and in-school out-of-school suspensions i think the reaction of a lot of folks myself included is well is it really reasonable to think that it would be um the same representation wouldn't you think that um like you know ebd students would be more likely to engage in behaviors that would trigger in school or out of school suspension so i guess the question is is in this case 13.9 really the expectation or is it that well you wouldn't expect it to be a hundred percent and there are some things that we could do to decrease that hundred percent that's my question thank you colleen's on mute yeah did you hear natalies i actually um couldn't hear all of it so it said my internet was unstable but i can i the beginning of it and i can

058respond a little bit to this and then clean if you want to pick up um so you know so i think we've done i don't know well over 70 evaluations and this is the first time i saw 100 um i have to say that and so it it was striking right um 13.9 would be the goal right it would be the goal um because we know that the more students are engaged in work the better that they do around behavior too so we really want to tie that all in and really look at kind of a proactive system so we do want to see it go down is it going to go down to 13.9 immediately no probably not but can it go down significantly absolutely absolutely which is why we set up the essential

059next steps the way we did of really looking at and we took a strong focus of disability as well right really looking at how special ed is set up and inconsistencies across the district uh yes we have other board members some well you had your hand up higher than kate so i'll let calling you first thank you um i just had a question about um i know sometimes when i'm reading stuff you know done by a professional and it's not my profession i kind of read through it and i think what the heck does that mean so i'm wondering if you could kind of talk a little bit more about what does it mean to have deaf deficit-based language versus asset-based language like what does that look like one versus the other in terms of

060education thanks so i can um i'm happy to answer that and clean if you want to jump in first of all one part of it that we often talk about is deficit-based language may not be person first language so person first language is a student with a disability a student with autism a student who is linguistically diverse not the ell student right not the tier 2 student not the disabled child right but really using person first language is asset based language and it shifts us it keeps us focused on the child before their meet and that's what we want to do we want to shift our language and we shift our language we actually shift how we think a little bit right um the other part is language just deficit-based language uh you know where

061those kids are from where you know where that family is from or they live in that neighborhood that's often deficit-based language that elicits a response that is not asset-based it's not looking at the funds of knowledge but the assets that are coming from a range of families but actually um it's very deficit or are negative so asset-based language and and we all have i mean we all have deficit based language and so asset-based language actually helps us really shift our thinking process too of looking at the assets kids and families have versus the deficits that they have kate i actually have a few questions if you don't mind my first question is uh on page 38 in the notes some of the staff noted that they were hoping to have some integrative diversity in the

062curriculum and i wondered if you could provide an example of what that might look like so since i'm sharing my screen i actually can't turn to the report clean are you able to report yeah i have it in front of me so is the question so i'm looking at page 38 um so basically it's identity value teaching and learning so staff wanted to know have more ideas about how to be able to develop and design curriculum with their colleagues that was more attuned with like elise of the funds of knowledge and the strengths and the assets of the students and families with whom they're working so is there an example of what that might look like that you can think of sure that can happen in a range of different ways so um just thinking

063of examples that we often offer so we might give and and how students are engaged so if we give options of um [Music] an activity that's really looking at in geometry that's looking at a basketball court right and saying what are the angles when you throw a basketball what are the angles right but not everyone is interested in basketball right they're just not and so really making sure that we're thinking about the range of learners that we have in our room and what actually helps them increase their engagement will also be connecting to who they are so what their interests are what their culture is how they see themselves so being able to lift them up at the same time and acknowledge those identities at the same time increase their engagement in learning and so

064it can be cultural it can be a conversation of kids who grow up in a city and know very little about farming right but but giving only farming examples right it can be the opposite of that so really thinking about where kids are from what they know and then how we use examples and increase engagement around identity relevant teaching and learning okay and then another question i had is in regards to information about the ap classes it's kind of a two-part question or observation and also the english english as a second language um for the ap program it's my understanding that kids can join the ap classes regardless of their grades so any child can choose to be in in [Music] in an ap class am i correct nick um there are some prerequisites to

065certain ap classes you know so there'll be times when teachers will say to a student like for example if you were at the class that's right before you take that ap class and you haven't been overly successful in that class that hey this may not be the best option for you um because it may be a challenge but there's also times when you know uh there aren't any prerequisites to certain ap courses uh and that that any any kid that would like to take and can take i just noted that i have two girls and that have gone through the high school are in the high school and i've noted that there's not any prerequisites to the ap classes that they're in so that's why i wondered why there was an underrepresentation particularly when they

066can anybody can join it and then my next kind of comment or question is about the english as a single second language it kind of mimics a little bit what heather was saying but i would think that it would be somewhat normal if you were if english was your second language should be a little bit in a lower category than in math and reading similar to if i moved to a different country and was trying to learn with their language i it would be difficult do you find that that's common that you're seeing those lower scores it is common it's not always common in math and so the scores were pretty reflective across reading and math but it's also the part of how kids are taught so the example i gave of the ell teacher

067down the hallway versus being able to meet with the general ed teacher which is why we're recommending c3 teams are the collaborative opportunity for teachers is that when the ell teacher can co-develop lessons with the general ed teacher they can actually embed some of those strategies and practices that that ell teacher is using with children 30 minutes a week you know 30 minutes three times a week or twice a week they can actually implement that five times a week right seven hours a day when they can collaborate and so it can increase the gain in learning english right so we're really looking at structures and practices within the system that can increase learning by teachers collaborating more often so it's not uncommon to see reading scores lower but it's also common to see in a

068really proactive system where teachers have a chance to share expertise so that those strategies that are so effective that are being offered three times a week and it's not the ell teacher's fault right they can't actually do any more than they can do without having collaborative structures put into place right but when that el teacher can meet with the general ed teacher and the special ed teacher and the reading specialist and other general ed teachers they can co-create instruction where that information is embedded in the lesson plans and that child gets the opportunity for repetitive trials which increases the amount of learning and it expedites learning over time um and the other question was i think around ap classes and access right and so what we do know is the more children are removed from

069the core of teaching on learning at the elementary middle school the further behind they are so they actually don't take those prerequisite classes so they actually don't have access so you may not have an entrance criteria into the ap class and so it's open for all kids but this is why we we looked at structures and practices what do what are the the strategies and and practices that teachers use that have the greatest impact on student achievement right how are teachers collaborating so they can share their expertise so that students don't have to be removed from the core of teaching and learning to get a specialist to attend to their learning needs that they can actually the teachers across disciplines can co-construct or co-create lesson plans that embed that information within the lesson plan so

070all kids learn more the more access kids have at the elementary level the more access they have at the middle school level the more access they're going to have to ap classes and if they see themselves as capable learners they're going to enroll in ap classes so we want we want to increase the number of sections of ap classes so more kids can attend right but it also starts with structures and practices within elementary middle school as well and one more but this was a big study so i feel like it it's where they have a lot of questions um and maybe this is a little bit personal but i see that the hispanic and latinx are used interchangeably in the study and i wondered i have hispanic children um and an in-law family that's

071hispanic latinx is kind of a term that isn't something that they would use and so i wondered where that might come from and what what the definition of latinx is and if in fact that was on some forms that families are identifying as that colleen do you want to answer that go ahead so um so identity is is up to the individual so there are families out there that identify as latinx often from latin american countries so different countries um in south america so um and hispanic often is um referred to as if someone is from mexico or has an identity of that they actually chose to use the identifier as hispanic so it's really up to the family so it makes sense that your in-laws and your family have chosen their identity and their

072language and that's actually who should choose it and the reason we interchanged it is because it really does depend on the family that next just seems like a new term so i wondered what that definition is it does it's more it's considered to be more inclusive but it might not be it doesn't mean that your family would use it right they don't have to but other families may any other question yes molly i actually in reading through um the report the extended report i was surprised a little bit on how where things led um and that it organically kind of went i guess towards um students with disabilities um the one thing i was surprised about not seeing is was gender ever brought up as an equity issue or even lgbtq i mean it was

073kind of in the beginning in terms of um bullying harassment teasing but i don't think gender was ever really discussed i wonder if you had any information on that so gender wasn't brought up as much but there were a couple examples and they were delineated in the report and we see that falling under identity development so also across lb gtqia so it all falls under identity development and increasing awareness and so that second goal around identity development also is about teachers really wanting to pick their specific areas to learn more in whether it was around gender race or sexuality or language or religion so all of those identities came up within the focus groups okay any other questions i guess my upstairs i want to echo what bruce stated thank you for your work in

074this area and for your report i think your presentation uh fairly represents you know what was in the 78-page report and i guess i was positively surprised i guess as to the outcome from the sense that you know we don't have uh major areas obviously there are some ways you recommend that we do things differently for instance how we treat special education and tuitioning out those students and so forth were recommendations regarding those disabilities developing c3 teams and professional development seems to be the top three i don't see in your report uh where we need to do major changes to our curriculum review process or that we have to do major curriculum you know changes overnight or anything like that or even hire an equity coordinator um did i is my take away from the

075report um consistent with what you presented then yes it is i i wouldn't um so the just as far as i'm thinking about um identity development is really important and so on what the other board member just brought up is just as far as surprised about special education we you know there are structures within the system that limit access to the core of teaching and learning and so it's really important that we look at those structures and create a system where all kids have the access to the core of teaching and learning are proportionally represented in that way at the same time the more teachers are able to really continue to grow and understand across identities the better they are able to teach a broader range of kids which then yes it leads into the

076c3 teams which then leads into really looking at the collaboration and then also the structures within school that keep kids separate whether it's special ed or ell or gifted or ap classes that don't represent all learners right so we're looking at access right access teachers able to teach a broader range of kids but also the ability to collectively with each other to share expertise so yes i think so and that's that's what a proactive system looks like in high quality teaching and learning where where all kids learn more so that's the intent of this all right any anyone else have questions otherwise i'm sure we'll be getting back to you and we'll be addressing this at our work session then with administration on how we might be able to incorporate some of these recommendations yeah

077we'll be uh kind of putting together kind of the next steps i mean there are things in the uh essential next steps that we are currently doing that we are already underway and things we've talked about over the last you know couple years and there are other things that um you know are new for us and there are things that we may say that we totally agree with and other things that maybe we don't agree with you know i had a conversation with colleen and elise a couple weeks ago when we first came out with the the discrepancy between kids with special needs and reading and math achievement because although one percent of kids are identified with cognitive intellectual disabilities you know the state average is 14 of kids are diagnosed with some type of

078learning disability or physical disability or you know speech disability and things like that and so in order for them to be identified as having a disability they have to be discriminated from their peers otherwise they wouldn't qualify for the services and so we've kind of gone back and forth on that and what that looks like not that we can't make gains and and want to make gains because we absolutely do but um but it does it does create some challenges we know that of all the different subgroups when we're talking about achievement um you know that's that's one of the main measures obviously that we're using when we're identifying for special education but um you know we'll continue to kind of work through this you know we're going to as a team as we've kind

079of got our you know uh just gotten this report we'll talk with principals we'll talk with our leadership team as to you know what are kind of some of the next steps and what are some of the things that we think are absolutely you know where we'd be recommending the board and take a look and and other things that um you know we think that hey maybe those uh although they are important maybe not a direction we want to go at this time and things along those lines so i would imagine over the next few months that's what the team and i will be putting together and and working obviously you know getting more clarifications and follow-ups with elise and colleen on this on this process so yes heather so just um one more question

080i mean it's um reading reading everything on paper is um good i'm seeing reference to the studies are there um outside of you know lab schools let's say are there districts that if leaders from this district wanted to get a sense for so what does that look like when you have a district where you don't have centers you don't have kids pulled out districts that are really using this i mean is this still kind of a an academic ideal or are there in fact districts that we could um that that leaders from the district could visit and see what that looks like when it's when it's fully implemented absolutely and we'd be happy to connect um you know the leaders within the district with other leaders across the state that have been doing this for

081years some 10 years some 20 years some three years right so happy to do so great thank you all right anything else otherwise i want to thank you for your presentation and we look forward to working with you um in those next steps wonderful thank you for your time we really appreciate the opportunity um and we completely enjoy meeting from the community members staff administrators teachers and students within hudson school district so thank you for the opportunity yeah thank you thank you very much thank you have a good evening you too all right now we have we move on to department reports i was just wondering is there a need for us to continue the zoom uh the the zoom will be kept on for those streaming but there's no reason to keep the stream

082the zoom on your monitors in front of you because there's not a report that you you need to see via this via the zoom very good all right next first up is school aged care i presume that folks will be coming up to the microphone or yep zooming in michelle's heading up right now all right very good how's that good thank you for this opportunity to speak about school aged care as you can see by the slide provided our numbers were lower last year due to covid however we are beginning to see those numbers start to increase the slide is pretty self-explanatory so i want to take this time to share a little bit about school aged care many times people ask me what is school aged care what do you do it's just watching

083the children before school for working parents right here's where i pause and say let me explain what school aged care is pretend that one day you decide that you want to fly a plane what is the first thing that you do you sign up for lessons learn how to work the controls sign the forms get a license etc but when is the real joy starts it starts when you begin to practice what you have learned and develop your passion for flying when you are flying solo for the first time and you feel that sense of accomplishment that is what school age care is many times children come in after school excited to try what the teacher did in class they want to try it differently and they want to try it all by themselves maybe

084it's that science experiment they think okay it's it worked with little rocks but will it do the same thing if the rocks were heavier lighter maybe it's the book the teacher started reading and they want to read ahead because they can't wait to see what happens can you get us this book they exclaim today the gym teacher showed us how to bat differently will this work for me this is the time when children start to develop their passions and practice what they have learned in school a good school aged care program provides all of these opportunities hudson happens to have one of these excellent programs where does this excellent program come from it comes from our dedicated staff the staff that are here at six am and again until six pm the staff that was

085here during covid that changed their schedules for late starts early releases snow days two-hour covert release days then three hour coveted release days summer hours non-school day hours and the list goes on can you change locations can you do all of this outside they are beyond flexible they are the first school district personnel parents encounter and the last ones they see at the end of the day they will represent our schools in an incredibly professional manner and make our school shine these staff provide breakfast homework help and stimulating and educational activities they are the ones who get the children who are ready to play ball at 6am into the gym and the soft place for the ones who just want to snuggle before the school day they provide stability and love they provide the support

086that children need in order to be successful during the school day these are our heroes we have some staff that have been here over 17 years they provide consistency despite heavy staff turnover in this field they sometimes work short staffed and are always willing to stay longer to get the job done without their dedication this program would not be the success it is today they are responsible for this excellent program and i'm incredibly honored to be a part of their team in addition since tracy is gone tonight i feel i can share a little bit about her tracy is the backbone of our quality program i've been honored to learn how to become a better leader and a better provider of quality child care because she is always striving for excellence every single decision we

087make starts out with what is in the best interest of our students in addition she is always willing to help out she makes slime subs gets us t-shirts and takes the time to really listen when i'm sure she has a lot of other things to get done many times on a sunday night she is at home working and sending me numerous emails about what our program needs next this is my 29th year in school aged care and i have learned more from her in the past four years than i did in the first she's a tireless tireless advocate and supportive leader regarding what is best for our children and that is my update on the status of school here thank you michelle any questions on the report all right thank you very much next report

088up is transportation good evening that's a tough act to follow all right my name is steve shawnickford those of you that haven't met i'm the assistant director of transportation and then this year i'll be an associate principal with shannon sexy at north hudson and holden so when i sat back and thought about the accomplishments or highlights for transportation this year the director andrea always gives me the advice try to tell a story well it brought me back to three years ago when i started in this position when we just purchased traversa routing software and had to restructure every single route because we redid the boundaries sitting there lost as to what the pins on the screen meant thought to myself okay i can do this let's go put together a team that came with everybody

089at the buildings the success of this department truly came from hundreds of different people in that three years we implemented that software we place and maintain tablets on our buses that provide our drivers with real-time route changes and leads to increase efficiency daily we integrated state-of-the-art technology in our student ridership scan platform allowing us to know where our students are at all times during the day finally we provided our families with a form of communication they never had before with our ride 360 parent app which currently we have almost 1500 users it was truly a combination of these resources a super positive relationship with safeway bus company and the support of our staff that made this year's success last summer we sat back in our leadership team and said talked a lot about the school

090year but then came down to well how are we going to get them there what's that going to look like they're recommending six feet we put 60 kids on a bus what does that look like with the support of the board we move forward with will social distance when possible we collaborated with safeway came up with plan they restructured their check-in procedures they implemented temp checks every day they have colvin 19 questionnaires i can proudly say we had zero missed routes due to covid buses were sanitized after every run the driver sanitized in between the elementary high school middle school routes and then they were fogged by the fleet manager every morning and night we provided 10 000 mass which were available for all students and staffs that were in need and we collaborated with

091buildings and grounds to make that happen we implemented mass procedures and we followed the same lines of correction that schools did and we worked very closely with building administrators to follow up and follow through we had 68 recorded mass violations with nobody getting kicked off the bus for the school year we implemented communication of seating charts for every single bus 4k12 i would say that was one of the biggest undertakings every kid in this district had an assigned seat on every bus close contact identification was used through the use of the bus scan cards this was probably the most i would say prominent best use of the resource that we had when a kid scans on a bus it records that time stamp if i could see that kid was only on that bus for

09210 minutes we knew we were under the cdc guidelines of 15 minutes we could go check the seating chart and then we would go check the cameras if needed we adjusted route times for all pm bus routes in the district twice this year once for our two hour early release and a second time for our three hour early release within a week we strongly believed in that because our staff needed that planning time we had quick communication through our ride 360 app uh if there was a late bus we could push out which bus was late we had snow emergency stops that we could push out through the app as well how that would work is if you were identified as living on a road that we couldn't get up we would call you at

093the beginning of the year we would email you your details on a stop you needed if it snowed and we would push it out through the app we collaborated with the school start time committee to provide insight on the implications of the possible bell time changes and the proposed situations that we had we created a completely separate world that mimicked our blessing and we had to change the bus times for those to meet each scenario we had the goal to increase our positive transportation experience for our families based on the school perceptions respondent data last year we reported 72 percent of our families who utilize transportation and responded in the survey had a positive experience this year we're proud to say that we had 85 percent of our families say they had a positive experience

094the bottom of the report kind of highlights our day just the day in transportation in the hudson school district we run 35 and a half big bus routes four times a day we met every requirement of being in less than two hours and we even shaved off our last drop time this year by four minutes we run 10 specialized transportation routes four times a day 16 midday 4k routes 3 out of district routes and numerous shuttles the accomplishments i presented would not have been possible without the collaboration and collaboration of a lot of people the number one was the bus drivers we're talking about an age group that was probably almost at the high risk level at the beginning of the year they showed up they showed up for the kids tracy hobacholin set up

095one of the most active posts they've ever had on facebook was bus driver appreciation week this year the parents came in they had all good things to say about the drivers and they're the reason it got done i wanted to say thank you guys for all your support the resources you put into this believing in that we can get it done in the great school year and a special thank you to andrea the director of transportation and our new transportation assistant kelly shakeling all right any questions thank you for your reports steve appreciate it mr president just one quick comment um you know i thank you for your work steve i think it's easy to think of this as just being a challenge of getting kids to and from school not recognizing what happens on

096those buses and i was reminded of that this weekend i was um with a with a dad and two kids outside of county market um selling rotary car raffle tickets but that's another story and a guy walked by and the dad said isn't that bus driver tim and the kids faces lit up and they turned around and said bus driver and here it was their bus driver from like three years earlier and that instant connection and just joy and reminded me that there's a lot happening on those buses and it's not just about getting kids to and from school so thanks for all of your work on what is also a pretty important part of our students they appreciate it thank you all right thanks for that comment heather next up would be dave i

097assume with teaching and learning yes thank you and glad to see they were so succinct nick told us we had 30 minutes so i'll just take up what they left on the table if that's okay so you're welcome bruce all right so this past year we restructured teaching and learning and that restructuring resulted in an increased responsiveness to student need to administrator need to teacher need and specialist need and there was also a cost savings to the district as a result of that restructuring and tonight lisa scoyne and ivy wheeler will be presenting along with me and their positions were both also a result of that restructuring and in their new roles have done amazing work also wanted to mention part of that restructuring was to redouble our efforts to collaborate with student services an

098effort to really strengthen our concept of learning support services to make sure we are meeting the needs of all students and when we make decisions we make them with all kids in mind at the beginning one of the first things we wanted to highlight was our work with the curriculum improvement process and we've done a lot with the curriculum improvement process to make sure that it serves as one of our keystone processes essentially anything we do in the world of teaching and learning revolves around the concept of curriculum improvement instruction is related to curriculum assessment it all falls under that umbrella so when we value something we build it into that program or that structure to make sure that that process guides everything and with that i'm going to turn it over to ivy and

099lisa who are going to share some specifics about that and a few other highlights at the elementary level we weren't able to meet as district committees during the school year so the k-5 teaching and learning team met with five committees ela art music social studies and science in june to continue our work with the curriculum improvement process another highlight of the curriculum improvement process was the implementation of our new ela resource phones and panel classroom we implemented this new resource in the middle of a pandemic at the secondary level we were able to continue the curriculum improvement process as we typically do meeting with teams throughout the year our instructional coaches worked with each department to develop a modified schedule to make sure that we could stay on track with our six phases for secondary

100science our team worked with the science departments at the middle school and high school to identify and prepare to implement a new resource also this year we work to increase stakeholder voice as lss we engaged in rounding at all of our schools at least one year and some of our schools twice to increase the amount of feedback that we were receiving from our stakeholders the teaching and learning advisory council continued to meet where we engaged in two-way communication with parents through that advisory committee at the elementary level this spring we establish department heads department heads will provide input and feedback related to teaching and learning initiatives ensuring teacher voice is heard and considered in our major decisions eighteen department heads were selected the committee now has representation from classroom teachers specialists special ed esl gt

101and counselors we also created and administered a stakeholder survey as part of phase four of our curriculum improvement process the ela survey was distributed to k-5 teachers this spring the feedback was analyzed by the ela committee when they met this summer a lot of the beginning of our school year was spent with instructional planning for covid we held return to learn meetings with school administrators and department heads from each department so that we could ensure thoughtful planning and consideration for unique department needs as we prepared for the school year we provided professional learning for teachers including professional learning for using google classroom for idl instruction and our coaches continue to provide support to teachers throughout the year which also allowed them to develop new relationships that will continue to help us support teachers moving forward

102if you look at the first table on the screen you can see the individual distance learning data please note that 61 percent of our students experienced idl at some point during the school year the second table shows the virtual learning requests for the 21-22 school year currently we have 20 students that have requested virtual learning for this fall another focus that we've had this year is on our continuum of inclusive supports we developed a new framework for inclusive decision making strengthening our core instruction and increasing our inclusive practices we continued professional learning with our rigor teamwork and inclusion team to build teacher leadership and this summer we implemented apex a flexible digital learning platform for intervention enrichment and credit recovery thank you i'm just going to wrap up with some notes on assessment and our

103virtual charter school so as you know assessment is a critical part of what we do it guides our instruction it helps us know what our next steps are both from a curricular perspective and from a teaching perspective but assessment is only as valuable as we have time to respond to the data we collect so with that we conducted an rfp for a universal screener is the foundational assessment it's going to be provided for all students from kindergarten through 11th grade we've selected fastbridge as our universal screener went through quite a process to come up with that determination the nice thing about fastbridge it's going to give more actionable data and it actually takes less time to administer than the assessment it's replacing so it's more time kids will be receiving instruction less time they'll be

104taking assessments in addition to this we streamlined our data systems we're able to provide much more actionable data to administrators and to teachers right at their fingertips so they can spend their time focusing on what they need to be focusing on and to wrap things up the hudson virtual charter school um sarah engs from white has done an amazing job with our virtual school and our virtual charter school as a reminder launching the virtual charter school this year allowed us to accept open enrolled in students to a fully virtual experience that was the first time we were able to do that the the charter process went very well we just had a few students we actually have quite a bit more quite a few more students that are signed up for next year looking forward

105to expand that service but as you can only imagine the work within the virtual world was amplified exponentially because of kovid so sarah stepped up to the plate did an amazing job and i forgot to mention all that assessment stuff that i mentioned big shout out to amanda mccarthy who's on great work supporting our efforts there and that is our report anybody have a question for dave lisa or ivy all right thank you very much for your report and your great job all right next up we have a report from our elementary schools we'll start with willow river okay thanks i thought i was going ahead of you so i was already halfway down um i'm kemastious i'm principal at willow river elementary school next year i'll be at rivercrest and i just wanted to

106start by just saying you know although this year was was different and challenging i was so proud of the staff at will river i mean when we did our welcome back they were pinching themselves because they were so excited to be able to have the kids at school with them so that was something there were challenges you know as we're looking at the mitigation different things that we had to overcome but we chose to do that through a year-long book stay i don't know if you've read the book the boy the mole the the fox and the and the horse and we kind of kept going back to that book throughout the year where we talked about just dipping our toes in and just trying to come together and just celebrate we had the students

107with us and we we didn't have them with us for so many months but we did recognize that because they weren't with us for uh quite a f for an extended period of time we really needed to go back and focus on those students and staff relationships those connections so we began the year by through our pbis team which is the positive behavioral intervention and support team in redefining what our school-wide expectations are and we built in the acronym of from our willow wows so we took the word wow and we built out from it with we are kind are safe our school is safe and we are responsible and each day during our radar report we went back to our willow wows and we did shout outs based from shout outs that we got

108from students and staff so recognizing different areas where students were safe different areas where our students were kind or responsible and that was in addition to our base tier 1 pbis blue tickets and reward system that we already have in place you know across the district so through that those shout outs that we had through our radar report each day we recognized at least two or three students or staff alike and then they came to the office we got their picture taken we made a phone i was able to make a phone call home with each one of those families or staff members if it was their spouse they got to pick and just trying to keep the morale positive and keep those connections really strong as we were going through throughout the year so

109through that i was able to connect with at least 130 willow families and 30 plus staff members spouses so it was just a great way just to to keep it keep us focused on those positivity of having our students with us each day another thing that we really went back to with those students and staff connections is we wanted to make sure that as our students were transitioning back into the school setting that they were feeling safe and they were feeling supported while they were within our care and they had at least two adults within the school building that they were comfortable in talking to in addition to their classroom teacher because they didn't get to end the year with their with their teacher so there was a disconnect as they were coming in so

110through our life skill lessons with our counselor we are able to identify students who didn't feel like they had those two staff members so we discussed this as an entire staff going back to that book study going back to that all means all bringing a philosophy of we're in this together which is overused but we tried not to use it too much so through that we had staff were paired up with students and we also talked about that staff that those connections are are more than just uh a superficial um noticing it's getting to know that child knowing so what did you do over the weekend oh yeah i see you got your hair cut you know and having those those further conversations so we talked about that as an entire staff and by the

111end of the school year we had 98.6 of our willow students could name two staff members so we were really excited about that although right right away your mind goes to and ours did you what about that other one person one plus percent what about them um we did look at that and those are our new students coming in throughout the year but or those were the students that ended up as long-term idl students where we really though that connection um is a little more challenging something that we can overcome but it is just a little more challenging so those are just a couple of highlights that i wanted to share from willow river thank you for your time any questions for kim mr president yes i would thank you for your report uh and

112i'm sure you'll be very missed at willow but best of luck next next year and i'm sure that's a that's a huge transition for you so thank you for being being willing to to undertake that thanks carrie appreciate that all right very good thank you next up is north hudson elementary good evening i'm shannon sexy principal at north hudson this past year going to holton and north hudson next year i can't help but when i'm sitting back there thinking about my report that i gave last year and where we were and the things that we were thinking about and most of them seem to be wrapped around things that we didn't think we would be able to do so i'm really happy tonight to be here to just give some highlights on the things that

113we were able to do at north hudson elementary um first of our first of all our smart goal we weren't really sure what to expect with the smart goal with all the mitigations in place and what that would look like but i'm happy to say that not only did we maintain our students at the 61st percentile but we increased that by 2 but most importantly i think what i want to highlight is our connections with with families that being the most difficult part of being in a pandemic so how did how did we do this um with parents and you don't really know until you get into it that parents were really missing being in school you didn't really know that like you forget that they can't come in for lunch and that they don't

114see what the classrooms look like and they're not coming in doing baggy books so we identify things as we go so what we did is we had um opportunities for parents to do virtual visits they would come in or they could read books we had teachers kind of up up the number of pictures that were sent home or virtual videos in the classroom so that's how we that's how we kind of increase that with parents teachers were really missing being in the teachers lounge with each other they were missing the friday gatherings where they could have snacks together and and catch up with each other so at north hudson our teachers took took turns every month and did a traveling little cart so they came around and they rang their little bell and and everybody

115got a treat as they walked around and they got to say hi to each other once a month our our pto at north hudson was really good about keeping families connected even though it was virtual and they also they had a sign up where families kind of adopted a month and they would bring in flowers or they would bring in treats or donuts or sponsor coffee so that our pto was really connected and we're helping with those connections as well i think probably one of the most important things that i would like to highlight prior to school starting chris chris strap the the school counselor was getting quite a few emails and i was you know dealing with phone calls with parents who didn't know what to do i don't know what if i'm going

116to send my child to school i don't know if i should send them what am i going to do so she sent out a survey and the survey indicated that 41 of our students they were identified by their parents as being anxious and being anxious to start school and had social emotional concerns that's a lot of students that's a lot of students that are going to come to us in september super excited to come because they haven't been for so long but that's a lot of students who were going to be anxious so chris drop implemented worry groups and met with met with groups eight times 20 minutes a session and different groups throughout and her goal was to increase the confidence in managing their worries by 30 in the end of it all with

117all of her groups the results showed that two there was a 233 percent increase in in students confidence in being able to manage their worries so i think that's really extraordinary considering what we were looking at at the beginning of the year one of the other things that i'd like to highlight students and staff are looking at ways to get outdoors how are we going to get outdoors a little bit more and we have a courtyard at north hudson that needed a little love and so we had some teachers we had teachers that wrote grants we had staff that worked together we had students that spruced up if you will the courtyard and ordered chairs and outdoor spaces that were you know that could be utilized by all by all students and we had fifth

118grade students that that used their recess time to to help spruce that up and so that was a nice way of getting the getting the courtyard more more utilized and also by getting the kids outside a little more um if you if you scroll down i just want to highlight my pictures just a little bit because this this can sometimes tell a story a little bit better the the top the top picture is the courtyard outdoor learning space students enjoying that the middle one on top that's something that i can't go without highlighting is the one of the bigger challenges that we had is music class without singing so i want to give a shout out to those teachers too to be able for them to be able to bring in journaling and history of

119music and bucket drums in music class our fifth grade camp st croy that was something that we weren't sure we were going to be able to do at north hudson this was our first time doing camp st croy and the students loved it and enjoyed it it was a it was a good thing that we were able to do that the bottom just shows some of the field trips that we were able to do some we did virtually a couple of them we were able to do in person we weren't able to we weren't able to do our big steam night but we did smaller grade level steam days and then our students from home i just wanted to highlight that we started our year with about 30 students at north hudson permanently doing idl

120and we ended the year with six so so yeah i i just wanted i don't think we could have done this without the support of the board and administration and teachers who had really flexible open minds and willing to to do the work and so thank you thank you for your positive report is there any questions for shannon uh yeah i don't know if it got cut from my report but was was there not a picture were you dressed as a chicken yeah somebody i just met a new family at holton today and they said you know the last time i saw you you were getting slimed as an associate principal at rock and i said i vowed never to do that again because i was still washing my hair for eight days but i

121did end up in a chicken costume yes we did our our pto sponsored a fundraiser this year and we're able to donate thirty thousand dollars towards our playground for next year at north hudson so yeah we're really good work from our pto mr president yes i'd just like to ask questions this is no criticism to you or your staff but you mentioned the courtyard needed a little sprucing up i think i've heard you know i lived in north hudson for how many years i think we've spruced up that courtyard how many times over the years it always seems to be needing sprucing up well the trouble is is that it's it's it's like sand you can't plant anything there and have it stay maintained it's hard to do that but i think it's just an

122underutilized space i think it's with time and you know teachers it's a beautiful space but it's been underutilized so this year when teachers are looking at ways to to learn outside and get the kids outside it's it's it's happening come take a look bob i was expecting a reaction of why don't you stop over and help feel free all right yes mr president just one comment um and i this i think ends up going to more than just your school but a special thanks to the elementary principals who were willing this year to coordinate with parents of graduates and host visit days was such a really neat experience for as a parent of a graduate for those kids to go back and get the high fives from those those k through fifth graders um and

123see some of their teachers so again i know that was just one more thing on the top of a really busy year end but that was super impactful for the students and their parents and i hope it's a tradition that we'll be able to continue right heather that's one of the things that i was thinking about that we might not be able to do because the the seniors would always come around inside the school so the way that we did it and kind of did a march around the school i think that's it's almost even better it's almost like a little parade and it the the kids loved it so much the north hudson um seniors did it twice walked around the school and got their applause and i think it really it showed my

124students too what what's to come so yeah special thank you for your work and your report thank you all right we're going to move on to hudson middle school actually i should have said it's either dolph or jim whoever can get down on the microphone first but jim's got the head start so that was pretty fast i don't know i think i'd lose to him and his new hip um love the bowling shirt by the way yeah it's my tiki shirt okay summertime all right um i'm jim dulune i'm the hudson middle school principal uh this is my first time in a long time being in front of the entire board and dr olet and his team uh i just wanna make sure i take the opportunity to say thank you 2021 was tough but

125i do believe that uh your leadership and all the choices you had to make which were always going to upset a large chunk of our population um as a building principle i felt supported and so thank you and i think with with the district leadership and the herculean efforts of our staff by any measurement we had a very successful year hudson middle school so um some of our highlights going to our smart goal you know we've been focusing on getting those ele numbers up for several years and we don't have our forward exam results back yet but our internal target of 65 percent of our students would be proficient on their grade level radar literacy exam we didn't quite hit 65 but we did improve by about six percent um and we set the goal

126at 65 knowing that if we had an extended time where kids weren't in school we might lower it and we did have a little bit of hybrid in there but i'm i'm really proud of the work we've done with our literacy at hudson middle school um we're also going to kind of start looking a little more at double dipping and focusing on literacy and math and getting those math scores up as well um our management goal was really we've been looking at some of our is a phrase inequitable um results and so we look at the number of students uh in our discipline swiss numbers we we do have an inequity with our students in who are identified with an educational disability in our students who are not in the number of suspension days they

127have and then just overall in our student body we've decided um to really try to tackle lowering our overall suspension rates we really want kids in class um i think it was well said today by ics where if they're not in class they're not learning along with their grade level peers they're not making the advancements we want and they just get further and further behind so uh our goal was to um reduce by 10 we were very successful there we we did reduce by well over 10 percent on both our overall out-of-school suspension numbers and we almost reduced by close to 50 percent of the out-of-school suspension days for students with an educational disability and that will continue to be a focus of ours at hudson middle school when you look at some of the

128highlights a couple of things i just want i'm not going to read the entire list but i'm very proud of the work our team has done in implementing for the first time a a strong social emotional learning character ed curriculum throughout our advisory period seven mindsets the work we did providing support for our idl learners and having a virtual calming space for them that was the work of our our student services and our counselors um through this group support we added a fourth counselor at the middle school and we were able to up our groups support offerings by we doubled it so from five support groups in the past on a regular basis we we had 10 this year and then the next step for us is we have uh a team from the state

129coming in in august to train our entire staff in restorative practices and really what we're our goal is we want our students in class we want them to be in class feeling like they have access to their curriculum um and so we're going to bring that team in during one day of our four days of preschool learning and and really focus in on training every single individual in the building on restorative practices and then finally just to highlight uh number 10 here hms did successfully stage our annual dodgeball tournament this year with covid protocol so um the kids would be upset if i did not mention that because that's that's a big one for them so i would want to redo it but overall i think it was a very successful year at hudson middle

130school any questions for jim on the middle school all right well congratulations and thank you for your report next up will be dolphin for the ep rock report our last of six elementary school reports thanks jamie again i'm dull schmidt principal at ep rock elementary i just want to thank the board for giving us the opportunity all of our departments to to hit on highlights and i think that's especially important this this year i know in the past the board has had some collective commitments that you've agreed upon the last few years with the staff that i've worked with we've done that and normally we start the beginning year and we plan out our collective commitments for the full year and we just felt like with our leadership team there's no way we can do

131that and so we decided just to kind of chunk it the first half of the year and regroup and come back and take a look at at what we want to commit to the second half of the year the the first commitment ended up being a commitment all year long and really i know as a board you probably felt the same way but there was a heaviness to the opening as far as kind of the gravity of what we are stepping into and thinking about the safety of our students staff community and i definitely felt that way too and that's why i felt like and i think our staff felt that that first commitment was so important the the piece was around you know more frequent hand washing teaching coveted expectations to children cleaning surfaces

132and not only cleaning by custodians but cleaning by support staff cleaning by teachers plexiglas up and down daily in our lunchroom but it was all worth it right we kept we kept our schools relatively healthy we kept our community healthy and it's one of the things that as a building principal at the end of the year i'm the most proud of our part in what we did for our community you've heard a lot of our building principles talk about connection after the time away and we we definitely focused on that too with with greetings in the morning goodbyes at the end of the day and utilizing our morning meeting but we also had our distance learners that we were trying to connect to over on our computer screens and so during the first month of

133the year we really focused on that when we looked at the second half of the year we we continued to focus in on how we could connect with with our students learning at home and we're excited about the new fonts and pinella curriculum this year we tried to go a little softer on that as far as just utilizing all the components and staff did a really nice job with that the first half of the year when things got a little bit easier the second half we were able to commit to let's get one good coaching cycle in with fonus pinell on your component of choice and again with the fondue pinell curriculum it really is our whole group instruction so different than what we focused on the last couple years before that with our small

134group instruction and guided reading and so kind of taking a look at our school goals connected to that you know our achievement goal was to have 60 percent of our fifth graders when they leave proficient or advanced on the ford exam now we're we don't have those results in yet but we did have our map results in the spring and we had 58 of our fifth graders at or above that 61st percentile but which is pretty predictive of that so as an elementary grouping of schools our our long-term goal is 70 percent proficiency and this year we're just it felt like if we can hold steady around that 60 percent that'll be a win and we're really close with our fifth graders with that 58 on on the map we also looked at our growth

135goal this year and said hey if we can have just average growth um that will be good with all the things that are going on and so average for students meeting their growth targets according to consultant consultants with map is 50 so we had 53 percent of our first through fifth graders meet their fall to spring goal which we were happy about especially because literacy had the biggest impact with our mitigation strategies so in small group instruction we had the plexiglass and with our younger children our primary kids it's the masking when working on phonics and word work that's really difficult and then we also had to take our 15 to 20 minutes guide reading lessons and condense those down to 10 minutes so there's a lot of changes in in reading small group instruction

136that we did this year just kind of with some of the safety things that we had in place so overall i feel really good about having average both knowing in the years to come we're going to look at accelerating that so that's a little bit about academics but there's other highlights that i would like to hit on we had our 22nd year of mentoring at ep rock and it would only have happened because of the district staff that stepped up and said i'm going to continue to mentor when we can't have outside people coming in so i'd like to thank those district staff for that i also want to thank the ep rock parent group they brought in treats every friday to help with morale which was very needed i know that sue helmers talked

137about traditions in june there's traditions that we had to tweak but we got in we were able to have our fifth grade camp in environmental camp for all kids it looked different two day camps no overnights but we made that happen we also were able to have our veterans day celebration not in our gymnasium but we had students out along the block at ep rock and had the veterans come to us in a car parade and and so there's some things we had to tweak and then when kobet was sunsetting a little bit this spring we were able to have some pretty traditional things also fourth grade and fifth grade track and field days um we had our fifth grade farewell out at our field field and also we had our first annual fifth grade

138um versus staff kickball game out on that same football field to wrap it up but i did want to mention two more things i did want to thank district admin and the school board for your responsiveness you know adding on the the early releases and looking at a couple of our all-day professional development days that staff really needed to kind of get a handle over planning not only for their distance learners but also the new phones and pinell curriculum it made this year doable and then i don't know if anyone's talked about our our health department this year but our school nurses and our health assistants were in the front lines helping us figure out figuring out clothes contacts and normally that happened on a weekend when we got the notification and between multiple buildings

139so our school nurses were meeting with one elementary principal in one building and then meeting with another one kind of working through who are close contacts who do we need to call to get um that communication um handled and so i i just want to make sure that that they got the recognition that they deserve for their hard work this year keeping keeping our schools and communities safe um but i think it was the board meeting right before we started the year and and dr gramble just talked about hey this is gonna be the hardest year that we're going to probably have as educators and i would agree with that but it also ended up being the most rewarding and meaningful of my 25 years and i had used at a lot of my staff

140meetings this quote by kelly corrigan and it's just when in doubt make yourself useful doing something hard with good people and we have a good board good administration hard-working great support staff and teachers and just wonderful families and students to work with and so that's kind of been can kind of been my mantra this year um with all the wonderful people i've been able to work with for our kids all right is there any questions yes maybe just a comment dolph thank you thanks for all the work and the transition i'm sure all has been uh interesting as well for you but uh appreciate all your leadership there and and what you brought to ep um maybe just a general question for getting volunteers back in the school has that been part of the discussion

141for next year i was at a uh grad party this weekend and and uh there was one volunteer from ep rock who said i gotta get back there i miss my kids you know and much as the volunteers miss it i think the kids miss it too and they miss having some of those mentors come in from outside um and i'm sure that the staff miss having those individuals around as well so um not looking for any decisions tonight but you know just making sure that that's on the agenda for the 2021-22 year absolutely all right well and congratulations in your 25 years with the district thank you thanks for your report all right next up we have human resources that's me so as some of you know i'm big into phrases or sayings to

142use as a focus and so in the hr department um in the past we've had things like customer service and data integrity or transparency and con consistency this year was do the next right thing i can't tell you how many times i've used the phrase during this year which by the way comes from the highly acclaimed movie frozen two i could really get going on all the lessons someone can take from frozen too but don't worry i'll focus so throughout this year it was not about massive new initiatives it was about that next right thing when i didn't know what the long-term answer would be or couldn't even answer some staff questions about the future i always focused on what the next right thing could be whether it was returning to work in the fall

143wearing mass extension of the ffcra recruiting substitutes it was all about chunking up the issues and moving forward one step at a time so to highlight a few issues i won't go through the whole summary here cova 19 we continuously engage in problem solving covenanting issues by supporting our staff through quarantines infections fears and stressors associated with the disease when it was announced that we were returning to in-person instruction for the fall we sent all staff a survey asking about their concerns with the plan we had over 300 staff reach out with questions and concerns we called or virtually met with every single one to support the transition back we created an updated faq flowcharts for staff we provided for remote work in certain situations offered subsidized child care for staff as you guys know

144and sought to be a continuous resource ultimately we coordinated 575 ffcra related leaves of those 213 were staffed quarantines staff quarantines typically resulted in at least 10 days gone we had some staff with a single quarantine out depending upon if the person in their home was positive could have been out 21 days so these were significant impacts on our ability to staff our buildings but i am very proud that other than a few high demand days for the most part we were able to staff our buildings and continue with school so there were highs too like when we collaborate collaborated collaborated with hudson physicians to attain early apparently too early according to public health vaccinations for our staff where over 630 employees indicated interest in getting those vaccinations and there were lows like in november

145before thanksgiving when infections were high and stress levels of our staff were off the charts but we always focused on doing that next right thing along those lines we saw and we heard from staff that they needed support physical mental emotional support so the second half of the year we really tried to focus in on how hr can support in those areas for example we had a fantastic 30 day wellness challenge in february and march titled trekking through the national parks over 425 participants 50 332 miles were logged we had contestants throughout the challenge or contest throughout the challenge and my staff put together thousands of gifts for all of the participants and we couldn't have done that without the support of the education foundation so i want to thank them again for that similarly

146our revamped recognition banquet that was held in person at the high school was an amazing event and one we plan to build upon in the future finally i am so proud of my small little staff of four in hr there's only four it was a fire drill of a year from start to finish and they'd handled it all with grace and grit i was doing that next right thing for our amazing staff in this district that's our summary okay questions for andrea special kudos for hitting your three-minute mark [Laughter] no but i and and i think that that yeah it was a tough year and um you know a lot of different departments stressed but yeah hr is you know because our learning is all about our teachers and being able to keep our classroom

147staffed and was a challenge and you guys did a great job i would have to say that the school board would have met the challenge and finished the line but we had um you know we had too many injuries i pulled a hammy halfway through the month so yeah it looks like we have financial services up and ready to go mark we saved the best for last financial services yeah so so mark's going to take the first few items i'll take the second and i think we only have a minute and a half mark so that we don't go over what andrea just did i want to go over that mark yeah i'll do my best no i'm a little disappointed because you know being last finally on these reports i i keep telling tim

148i want to do one of these one a year and just go line by line through the balance sheet with everybody which would be just a great way to end it but we'll we'll skip that and i'll be very brief i promise um you've heard a lot of people talking about their staff and and what great support they are and it's no different in our finance office either we have an incredible group in our finance office they've been there quite a long time and all there's a lot of seasoned experienced employees in our department so it really allows excuse me tim and myself um when some of these things like the pandemic pop up and we have to respond to different things it really frees us up which really makes things run a lot smoother

149just a couple of things related to the pandemic in 2021 was kind of a ripple effect of the pandemic in our office we saw things like the federal funding um like the astra funding working through those collaborating with different offices um teaching and learning i lisa stepped out um but was who's a great person to work with as we work through claiming some of those sr dollars um we're through one and part of two and then we'll probably part of two and part of three will be coming next year we worked a lot with the ffcra leaves with hr so there was just a lot of coordination between different departments one of the big things in our office was gas media 84 which was a new implementation that actually got delayed because of the pandemic

150you would have noticed that a little bit if you look at those monthly reports where i would talk about how 72 fund is now moving to 21 fund and things along those lines so a lot of changes for us internally that you know people don't always see where we i think have 150 different accounts now that are tracked in our 21 fund compared to 60 and 72 so it's been quite a bit of a shake up into change kind of you know amongst everything else that was going on so those are just a few of the highlights there's more on that bullet list but like i said i'll be brief and let tim cover a few more but yeah i just want to thank you for the time thank you nice job so you know

151as as everybody's talked about this pandemic has really caused us in a good way to work together we've had a lot of different teams over the past year to uh to really accomplish the things that we need to do to make sure that students and parents feel good about attending school during a during a pandemic and that's that's pretty tough to do we've we've also looked at some of our processes so we we met with all the departments all the principles regarding budgets this year in in-depth and knew looking ahead looking at a probably a pretty tough year we wanted to make sure that we were doing everything we could to look at things a little more critically with a little bit different eye capital projects we came up with some less costly alternatives and

152what were being requested and i think working together to to accomplish those things uh is going to help us in the long run uh we've got a lot of different things down here um we've we've done a lot of work together with different departments as mark has mentioned and uh you know for example nutrition services we've talked about that several times and the participation levels going up and down and how we've we've addressed that with a lot of staffing adjustments and at this point in time i think our projected deficit is going to be probably somewhere about half of what we were projecting so i've kind of turned that corner and and that's definitely good news we i'm not going to talk about preparation for return to school last year because everybody's heard it a

153million times but uh it was it was pretty interesting uh health insurance was a good another another highlight this year we were able to push deductibles up uh it put in a copay when we had we we needed one uh for emergency room visits and then looking at our stop-loss deductibles raising those up and and uh having a modest increase of three percent compared to our six percent medical inflation in the in the region uh we worked with community service and school-aged care um helping to create a plan there to decrease the deficit uh cyber security has been a big deal this year of course everybody's heard it there's been a real big uptick in that and then we're looking we're working we have a team of us together to look at how to best

154accomplish the student face-to-face reporting that we need to do this year we're one of those lucky 173 districts that needs to report some extra information to the state so um and that's that's working out well we just talked to with dpi the last week and uh they have kind of given us a thumbs up on what we're doing we want to make sure we're tracking the right way so just a lot of collaboration a lot of working together and reaching across all different departments so it's been been very good and i want to thank mark as well in in my office too because they as mark mentioned they have been very good so thank you any questions for tim it's all about competition so that's all right thank you for your reports and uh it's

155always good to hear the successes and highlights and it was a very difficult year but uh we made it through and uh this leads us to the superintendent's report um one that i wish we could see not on the agenda but uh it's still lingering out there and that's covered 19 operational update oh i thought you were talking about the superintendent's report in general thank you for clarifying at the end there uh do i start the three-minute timer go ahead uh this will be very brief uh we have no no new information with the covet operation report um you know right now we're staying the course we had a good showing at summer school um you know we had thousands of kids in our programs between swim and school-aged care and summer school mass were

156optional we had a total of seven cases i think up to this point since we've gone mask optional uh four of which actually are tied back to almost one situation with uh siblings and so um things have been going very well uh we uh will kind of put together kind of an all-inclusive set of recommendations as we move into the 21 22 school year but as of right now i would anticipate that the 21 22 school year looks about as normal as as we can as we can be we don't have any intention of requiring vaccinations we don't have any intention of or making that recommendation of the board or making a recommendation of the board that we require masking or or anything like that at this point you know you never say never but

157as of right now we would say that we would we would expect that uh even going back to the uh volunteers and things along those lines that we're going to get you know get back to normal as we start this this fall um doesn't mean that we're over this yet and you know we'll still encourage people to get vaccinated if they're able um obviously if they're not able that's that's understandable or if they have a um you know disagreement with doing it but uh the more we can get vaccinated the better i think will be against the delta variant that's the big thing that we're watching right now just trying to keep an eye on that uh but overall our numbers are are very promising so without uh anything else i am meeting with public

158health or meeting kind of regularly getting their take on things but we did kind of let them know that we are our plan as of right now is probably to move more towards business as usual as we race start the year and i would say that's the same theme with all the other school districts in the county question okay very good any questions on covet operational update hearing none i'll now move to consent agenda items and entertain a motion for approval pursuant to the language in the expenditures so moved okay mr president yes i move approval of the consent items and that the chief financial and operations officer be authorized to pay bills in the amount of one million four hundred ninety four thousand forty four dollars and forty two cents second okay we have

159a motion a second all those in favor say aye aye aye aye those opposed nay the eyes haven't the consent agenda items are approved uh next up on the agenda is a student policy series second rating um most of these are procedures but yep no no real changes i mean we've we've made some grammatical changes and things like that moved away from the term procedure since we don't use that anymore and we went to rules but other than that there's nothing substantive with changes so we would recommend approval of the second reading which means uh that means these policies become enforced in the district is there a motion okay motion to approve all right uh bruce i'll give kate the second all those in favor say aye aye those opposed say nay you guys have

160it next up is the elementary handbook and i saw that unlike our prior handbooks where we saw you know red lines or blue highlights of changed words and so forth this was it's kind of cool to see the final full whatever it is 38 40 page handbook and you know what a typical elementary school principal sees but um is there any intro that this needs nick you know i don't think so um there's nothing substantive uh substantive changes it's you know some policy numbering updates things like that but uh other than that there's nothing substantive and so those policies we just approved and the new numbers and so forth that's already been incorporated then yeah i mean and we'll continue you know as you approve policies throughout the course of the year we go in

161and update those handbooks because it's it just it applies you know the board policies are going to supersede the handbook so okay i'll entertain a motion to approve is there a motion to approve okay kate moshe i didn't hear you because your mic is turned away so all right is there a second second all right we have a motion by kate second by bob any further discussion hearing none all those in favor of approving the elementary handbook as presented in the agenda say aye aye those opposed say nay guys have it moving on to academic standards for the 2022 year um i guess this is dave yes thank you very much so very quickly as part of wisconsin act 55 it's required that the board take action approving the standards for the academic year it's

162required that takes place in the first board meeting in july so that is what we're here to do and just real quickly if we look at the standard revision schedule every year we share with you what dpi will be doing in terms of the standard revision so july this month they're working on essential elements for ela you can see the others that they'll be working on and then quite a list in january it's a sizable list more than they typically would do they got a little bit behind because of covid and so once these standards are reviewed they go through a process and they're finally approved by the state so the action you're taking tonight if you choose to take such action is that you're approving those that have already gone through the process and

163are approved at the state level and we can again do this each year so the recommendation for the motion is on the next slide i did link there with the wisconsin academic standards so you can see them all if you want to read through each of the standards real quickly the reason that it's important i feel is very important to adopt the wisconsin standards because all of the assessments that were required to take are aligned to these standards if we chose to create a different set of standards which legally we could do our work would be completely misaligned and i think that would be detrimental to our students and that is that that's a report all right any questions of dave otherwise i'll entertain a motion to approve mr president uh make a motion to

164maintain wisconsin academic standards as the academic standards used in the hudson school district for the 20-21-22 school year motion by bruce is there a second second any further discussion hearing none all those in favor say aye aye those opposed say nay the eyes have it and the academic standards are approved next up is consideration ratification of the 21 22 certified staff collective bargaining agreement um this is andrea and i know that andrea's been the captain of our negotiating team board members have been advised of progress in closed session um as we have to pursuant to state law but now this is the time since the teachers have ratified that now it's onto the school bar correct so yeah as both jamie and heather were part of the bargaining team as well um it was two

165bargaining sessions ultimately and we reached the senate of agreement it was ratified by the hudson education association and then the subsequent week was ratified by the we act council so um it's fully ratified on their part uh the specifics really are just that first collective bargaining agreement so the language associated with a two-page document and then the other piece is that it is an agreed upon amount of a zero percent base wage increase our statutory limit was 1.23 our next agenda item will talk about where we go from here but at this point it's certainly the bargaining team's recommendation that um that the board ratified this agreement any questions from board members on the recommendation hearing none of they entertain a motion to approve so moved second right heather uh has the motion bruce is

166the second for the questions of andrea or the bargaining team hearing none all those in favor say aye aye aye those opposed say nay and the eyes have it next up on the agenda is then 2122 certified staff supplemental pay back to andrea yes so this is the complexity of the bargaining law is that under the bargaining law as you guys know as we've discussed in closed session the limit of any board of per percentage or any negotiated increase is 1.23 which is defined at the state um our agreement was to settle for zero percent but certainly we would like it's so important that we keep pace with our comparable districts that we continue to recognize value our staff retain our existing staff and be able to recruit future staff and so um our recommendation

167is um to have a two percent supplemental pay increase which is essentially a two percent increase to their last year's salary as well as um the continued implementation of the teacher salary structure however it will just be called something different now now it'll be called supplemental pay it's not technically a base wage increase because we're statutorily prohibited from going above that 1.23 instead it'll be two percent supplemental pay plus the tss and all of that will be itemized out and detailed to every teacher in the district with a corresponding addendum letter laying it out and we are prohibited because the statute limits us to the cpi as defined for each contract period by the werc wisconsin employment relations commission so the 1.23 is that is the relevant time periods cap okay any further questions of

168andrea or this recommendation i'll entertain a motion to approve motion to approve second motion by mohamed powers second by remember bauman all those in favor say aye aye those opposing a the eyes have it it's approved uh next up on the agenda is 2122 tutoring rates uh we went through this at the board work session the last work session it's just a change to the staff reimbursement rate from 23 an hour to 25 an hour for the individual student it puts it in line with our staff hourly rate uh for work with instruction or instructional rates so that's a recommendation and this does not increase the cost to the family it does not impact the cost of the family all right any questions for nick or any of the team i guess um this kind

169of crosses departments when we talk about reimbursement rates and um but hearing none out to entertain a motion to approve so moved motion by kerry second second by kate correct all right did that without looking all right all those in favor say aye aye aye those are the posse nay the eyes have it and um that gets us through the agenda items but we're last but not least we would now entertain a motion a convenient closed session pursuant to the language in the agenda mr president kerry the board will entertain a motion to convene in closed session a pursuant to wisconsin statute 19.85 apparent one parent d to consider strategies for crime detection or prevention and b pursuant to wisconsin statute 19.85 parent one parent c to consider the employee evaluation data of administrative employees

170for a second all right my carry second by bob and this requires a roll call vote bauman aye garza whitaker johnson aye all right the eyes have it we're now in close session the board will reconvene