Board of Education Monthly Meeting 11/21/22

001uh to be included and they never received a response so I just would like to know if that's the case and if it is um and may be added through the notification official notifications we can certainly talk about that I'll give a quick reply it to be clear the board nor I always give a response when someone goes to the microphone somewhat depending on content and what the question is or their comment but in this case I would say that um yes we've received that request a couple of different times and I simply have not brought before the board the question it would involve revision to a board policy that we have currently we have a policy in a specifically States the other Regional newspaper as being our school district newspaper and um where I

002would and probably not correct you but I'm going to rephrase your comment to say that null reply has been given to uh Pierce County uh I always want to say Gazette is that right Journal Journal excuse me um I gave them the reply that I just gave to you that it requires policy change I in a friendly and respectful manner said to be honest it hasn't hit my priority screen yet we got a few other things that we're working on right now and it's a simple task to bring before the board and in part I can thank you for bringing this up because I think it's probably the first time the board ever heard about it to be honest with you so I've been sitting on it I I own the delay I own the

003stall job it's all on me uh I've been carefully trying to discern in my own head a little bit and asking for some data regarding the distribution of both newspapers um and frankly it's a little bit of mixed reviews but um I tend to lean towards and I'll I can tell the board that I'm leaning towards recommending the policy change that we would go with the Pierce uh Journal frankly because there's a couple of reasons why and we can cover that later but um one of which is the extent to which they are uh doing a more comprehensive job in my subjective mind of covering River Falls news as supposed in related to the other there is an expense you can pay both but from a taxpayer perspective I'm not I'm not sure that we

004should be paying we have to pay uh either newspaper and we could maybe that'll be a board decision that you want to continue to pay for both and I will provide you with cost estimates when I bring that forward we'll shoot for that in I'll give myself till January under promise overachieve maybe maybe it can happen next month but we'll shoot for January no later but certainly we have we have talked about this the two of us have talked about it and the expense is something that we want to consider so we would maybe be looking at the differences between the papers but one more comment and then we need to move on meeting times and places so I just thought well I'll bring it up and yeah yeah they're looking in one newspaper the

005Pierce County I would agree so the only issue I would yeah oh you've got somebody at our February meeting saying hey wait a minute we used to we used to see your meetings posted in the River the Hudson star whatever they're calling it now you're hiding up well now you're so rich I'm going to make sure that this gets onto an agenda so that we can have a proper conversation about it with the appropriate data will be exciting we'll all be anxiously awaiting that conversation so um do we have any other visitors or delegations yes um since you guys are the board and you are the representatives of the community to the school district um I just wanted to let you know that there are conversations going on in the community about people um being

006concerned that social emotional learning the focus on social emotional learning right now well they understand that it's very important they are concerned about the social emotional learning component almost being more important than the academic component and so that perhaps you guys could address Community um in you know ways that people would feel comfortable because um as you know there's a lot of things going on in the nation in different places and sometimes parents might feel like there's a lack of transparency there so I know you know everybody in this room and you know the community cares about the kids families and so just wanted to make a comment that you might be aware or not aware that you know there is that concern that it might come off as being a lack of transparent well

007we have the perfect agenda then for today because that's what our Spotlight is going to be about and so we'll be able to have some chance to be able to explain some of the things that we do thank you very much so yeah back in previous school board meeting archives I can say within the last two years and if anybody's interested we can narrow it down and find the exact spot where we've brought forth our pupil Services team members by building at very at a number of different school board meetings and talked very transparently about the content in the delivery of social emotional curriculum and learning activities and so on I'm also aware of as long as the topic was brought up I'm also aware that at a probably more of a national level I

008haven't heard about it here that some conspiracy theorists and those that are looking to incite anger and frustration with schools and and and others are somehow magically he said with sarcasm in his voice connecting social emotional learning in schools to critical race Theory which I don't know how you could take that Quantum Leap but there's a lot of um allegations and mixed messages and so certainly the more that we can continue to do as we are this evening in telling the facts our hope is that people pay attention to the facts and sometimes as you know in this day and age that's a challenge for some laughs anybody else all right we have some informational items and the first one is exciting it's a wildcat Pride award s so uh Wildcat Pride certificate is proudly

009presented to Heidi um otterness the Board of Education would like to extend it's a sincere gratitude and extraordinary quick thinking and call to action for helping save a student from choking as you provide District leadership and continuing our foundation build on strong character you displayed compassion responsibility perseverance and courage at a time when a student needed you most we are thankful and proud of you you are a true investor of Wildcat Pride thank you very much [Applause] it's a miraculous thing that you were able to do and you are you're oh well I'm just going to say that you're in good company because we have a principal who did a very similar thing very same thing so why don't you tell us the story um a student came into my office and he was eating

010a peanut butter sandwich like big gobbles not bites and I'm a retired EMT so he coughed hard and it kept getting less and less until there was no air movement and I was already up with a garbage can and I looked at him and I said are you choking and he just looked at me I did four thrusts on him and the sandwich came up so it was I just watched it I'm like oh this isn't going to end well because he was just gobbling and then I called his dad and I'm like um just so you know your son's ribs might be a bit a bit sore but at least he was no longer choking he goes oh he chokes all the time and I'm like well that like I'm glad it's normal for

011you but it wasn't normal for me so yeah I just did what I had to do that's amazing thank you you are serving our students well thank you and now we have the spotlight so Mark and your your team if you could come up and talk about mental health and social emotional learning all right well the team is a little smaller than I initially anticipated the two of you are going to be able to manage just fine I know and Dr kamrath is going to come up as well um we are in the middle of you know a bit of a flu season in a couple of our buildings so there's a couple of people out sick and then there's a swim practice got rearranged um so that's I took out another individual as well

012so we are here to kind of give you a state of the union so to speak around social emotional learning and mental health and hopefully this does speak a little bit to your question as far as kind of what we're doing in the schools um and why we're doing it um I think we've got some really good data here to show kind of the importance of this aspect of education and why our students need the supports um that that we're giving them you might have to turn it off what oh thank you I appreciate that team exactly okay so what we're going to do today is we're going to go through a little bit of data and then we're going to have some conversation about what is happening in each of our buildings um so

013we're going to have a little bit of time to talk about some of the the elementary data and the elementary initiatives that we've been doing um both this year um some things that are maybe a little bit new as well as some of the things that we've done over the last handful of years as well um so here to talk a little bit about the elementary data and some of the things that are going on is Dr cameraf there we go um and yeah I'm representing the the counselors and Sykes Amy and I met went over this today uh we'll do our best to kind of represent all four of the Elementary's but my knowledge obviously lies best with west side but I think it can represent it pretty well so the minute meetings is

014something that we've been doing for uh several years each year I give the counselors a lot of credit and Sykes as well as they kind of update uh the questions and try to adapt with what we need last year ours were obviously wrapped a little more around covid and whereas this year we've able to move a little bit more past that um so the biggest question we ask in the minute meetings is is there a grown-up at school that you can talk to a few of a big problem and then they show the percentages their percent of students who answered no Westside 2.7 percent Rocky 5.5 Greenwood 5.4 and Montessori 3.3 that's a really good percent of kids in our building and there are certainly kids when I look at our list and some that

015I suspect from the other buildings too where um they might not may not understand the question or we do ask this in the fall we try to wait a little bit but you know newer students that type of thing so certainly some of that is explainable but um I know west side we're really proud of that and all the buildings should be those numbers are really really good percent of our kids that have an adult they can go to um all others were able to name at least one adult as somebody who does help do those meetings um some kids go on and on and on and I usually stop at about four names I'm like okay we're good here we we got this so um we're all we're Elementary's are very proud of those

016numbers what's happening already at elementary schools lunch groups are something that our our counselors and many other teachers use to help form connections usually they're able to bring a friend or multiple friends which really helps form connections here at school one-on-ones counseling opportunities whether it be with the counselor a psychologist or a social worker rich and so that is something that again can be targeted to those individuals who maybe need more connections but also are used across the board intentional staff connections with each child so again that's using that minute meeting data of hey these kiddos were identified will either intentionally find connections or even in the past who've done like a draft where all right who would like to kind of help and support this kiddo make sure that we're getting that individual connection

017encouraging out of school connections so Big Brothers Big Sisters something we at West Side have utilized in the past and some connections at the high school finding a maybe a junior who we could connect with a kid for one or two years and that's been a really positive thing continued focus on community building so that Universal classroom lessons that are Council leads and also some psyches are doing that as well Pride groups buddy groups we're at lower level like a K12 or JK will connect with a three four five usually that's twice a month and that's a really positive thing that is one of the the things in the in the minute meetings from s to begin the year what kids are looking forward to it's finding out who their buddy classroom is we do

018that in assembly and I think some others do too where they announce hey this year Mr Smith will be with Mrs Cunningham's and it's fun to see the kids wave across uh the gym at each other it's a really exciting announcement kids look forward to all School character assemblies I believe that is universal acrosse and that's a really positive thing too um where different grade levels pick a a character trait and I'm each month to um or by the month to teach to and that's really fun to see kids teaching our building and then character counsel which several buildings do um which I believe all across the board is fourth and fifth grade um and it's a really neat thing some of the sponsoring of other groups spirit days recognizing different groups around the building

019like our custodians day we had a couple weeks ago that was a really positive thing additional Elementary School supports co-located mental health services so call your clinic and that will be starting relatively soon yeah and we are really excited for that mental health support to be coming back to our schools character strong curriculum we are piloting that at West Side along with the middle and high school and that so far has been a really positive thing it's like anything finding time to do it but it's a really positive resource um we enjoy use some of our October and service day for training and really appreciated it additional Universal classroom lessons again something counselors and psyches at some level are doing as well increased Pride group time increasing at some buildings from 30 to 40 so

020I think we're Universal 40 minutes for Pride groups across the board which is twice a month reviewing Sabers social emotional screener so that is something that we can do through fast Bridge our new Uber placed Ames web is a universal screener at the elementary and that's something we're looking at doing which I think would be a positive kind of a screener just to see where kids are at at certain levels kids do that I believe it's Fourth and up and then um adults complete that as well it would be a really good Pride um yeah there you go like a lion and then integrated universal reviews and behavior data into regular meetings so um we using infinite campus now feeds into edu climber and being able to use that behavioral data like we use it

021this morning in our Behavior committee meetings using it in ssts as well to kind of help behavioral Data Drive some of those meetings has been a really positive way to help kind of be more proactive with it as well I think that's the end of the elementary yeah awesome any questions on Elementary Chris what's Lunch Bunch Lunch Bunch would be where um a counselor another teacher has a couple of kids that come together over lunch and it trying to build some social connections with kids um kids who don't there's a variety of reasons and it all it's a very positive way to build relationships with kids and whether it's just chatting or it's playing game together it can look different ways so I did my best counselor impression tonight Chris could you give us a

022couple examples of the topics for the universal classroom lessons please um yeah they some of them are very set curriculum um that that happened pretty much every year such as fifth grade does um learner resumes so kids get to learn a little bit more about themselves and kind of how they learn are there more kinesthetic learner um and that's a neat way for you know kids to start thinking about who they are as a person instead of just all the same and that's a good thing um I know the other day I was in watching Mrs Everson and she did one at the younger grades about listening um we do one on it's it's not the difference between tattling and Reporting and so it's every year she's kind of and I again Amy is who

023I know the best but every year they're kind of revamping and going through some are more um set criteria at the at the younger grades where they have kind of a curriculum built out they use Kelso so Kelso's choice and go through a wheel of options of how to solve smaller problems and decide what's a larger problem um coping strategies yeah so it's fine yep yeah it's every year the issue that Amy and I talk about is so much content and just not enough lessons and and finding that time but it's really neat to see um and and she's a consistent source to counselors where they have them for six years and that's been a positive and we include them in the JK as well which is kind of a neat way to build that

024universally going forward so more questions awesome thank you guys yeah and just to give the the elementary school even more Kudos you know those minute meetings sound like oh it's a minute well you take that minute you multiply it by each student they have the minute meeting is generally are at least you know five to eight minutes by the time you get them in you ask them the questions um and so it is a big undertaking and analyzing the data as a big undertaking as well um and not only does it allow you to kind of identify you know the kids that might struggle to make those connections part of those meetings too is to identify what the kids are interested in so that also allows you to say hey there's Johnny I know Johnny

025doesn't have a lot of connections and I know Johnny loves baseball so now I can ask Johnny about baseball and develop those connections naturally so again really great kudos to the middle to the elementary schools for for doing those things are you know what is that you're excited about for the year what's something you're worried about for the year um and those are really helpful in really telling there are some that we've gotten like personally at West Side we had four that were worried about fire drills and it allowed us to kind of dig in a little deeper why that and they were very different reasons from a bad experience to the the sound of the siren and so um some of those were really really helpful where many of them it was just the

026thing that's coming up next week what are you most excited about well the adventure Dash because it was a week away so but it was it's really helpful and we do at least in our office meetings try to go through it as best you can going through 410 pieces together yes all right so middle school as well now middle school and high school we have a unique set of data that we collect called the the yrbs which is the youth risk behavior survey um this is a survey that it's an anonymous survey um we get uh parent consent or we can ask parents if they want to opt out or not and it really allows us to get a kind of a a snapshot of our student population as it relates to a large number

027of things um tonight I've really kind of focused in on connectedness and mental health so we're going to talk a little bit about our data there we're going to compare it to some of our neighbors because we have data from all of Pierce County as well as all of Saint Croix County um and then we're going to talk a little bit about kind of what our his history of data looks like and then go into a little bit about what each of our buildings is doing so just to start off with here's the 2021 youth risk behavior survey Pierce County did 1415 students saying Curry County did 1896 and you can see kind of the reporting schools um on there as far as the the data sets and here we get to kind of our

028our overall data what I did is I kind of loosely coded in green um the numbers that were maybe on the the better end compared to you know our Pierce County and Saint Croix County neighbors and then in the red are maybe our numbers that are a little bit on the lower end um so you can see when you look at our numbers and 679 students at our Middle School took this particular survey and you can see the the number of students in Pierce and Saint Croix um so a lot of really good questions as it relates to that connectedness and support question so students who agree or strongly agree that they belong at school 76 or students at Meyer middle said yes to that students who have at least one teacher or adult at

029school to talk to 66 students who always or most of the time get the emotional help when needed 47. and then students who agree or strongly agree that teachers care about them 73. so again you can see that you know you see a little bit of green there which is really good but also when you look at those numbers you know again not maybe as as great as we'd like to see in something that we are continually striving to do better here in River Falls mental health and well-being um again this kind of speaks to you know the focus on some of these issues um in school and you heard from kind of what uh Dr kamrath was talking about this isn't something that we spend seven hours a day on um this is something

030that we kind of weave into our curriculum but again it's you know two three times um per month or you know one time a week or something like that as far as some of these lessons but looking at mental health students at our Middle School during the last 12 months students reported a significant problem with anxiety 43 percent 20 percent felt so sad or hopeless almost every day that they stopped doing some normal activities and that's kind of a definition around kind of depression um you can see some of the numbers around um self-harm and suicide ideation down there as well so again even though we're seeing green a lot of these numbers are really pretty high um and so definitely something that we want to focus on and really work to improve here in

031River Falls um as far as history kind of took a little bit of a snapshot of what things looked like in 2018 um and then what things look like when we just last assessed students in 2021 again we're seeing a little bit of a downward Trend which is good but again I think all of us in this room would agree that those numbers are nothing that we would be excited about especially when you think of those as our community kids I think a lot of times you see numbers about youth mental health and here you get the kind of the national numbers you're like wow that's a problem but when you really sit down and look at these are our kids and that kind of makes it I think a little bit more sobering so

032what are we doing about this we've got uh Sam dusek too to speak to some of that hi I'm Sam dusick I'm one of the counselors at Meyer Middle School um so these are things that have already been happening at Meyer Middle School um in the past years that we're continuing to do to address some of those mental health concerns that we have for our students we do have a school-based mental health therapist that is at our building on Mondays and so um she's able to see I think about seven kids a a week on Mondays that's nice for families that have trouble getting their kids to like a counseling or therapy appointment outside of school hours um it's still built through insurance and everything so it's nice for families to be able to access

033her that once a week we have the backpack program and support for basic needs for kids who don't have basic needs at home we have like a clothing closet and oftentimes we get um you know supplies of things that kids need to bring home like shampoo conditioner things like that um we have a lot of mental health supports through our student service team so we as a counseling team we have three counselors and our school psychologists we do a lot of individual counseling with kids and small group counseling so we run a variety of different groups um more and more in the past few years we've been doing more anxiety groups we see those numbers of you know 40 some percent of our kids struggling with anxiety so sometimes those kids in targeted small groups

034working on some of those skills is helpful we have our therapy dog program so we have Kroy who is a certified therapy dog who comes in with Summer Bowers two times a week and he is scheduled for 10-minute appointments with kids and that's been really fantastic um last year we started a new way that we assess students for suicide ideation and self-harm so that's what that cssrs and nssi assessments are we do that K-12 now so um if kids are talking about suicide or self-harm we now have a process and protocol that we go through where we're all asking the same sort of questions and we have a triage of what we do when we find out that information we continue at the middle school this is our fourth year with our SEL connect course

035so that's a social emotional learning course that all of our kids take in grades six through eight it's as part of it's part of their exploratory wheel so um they get it for part of the year that's about a seven and a half week course it rotates like with their art in Spanish and gate to Tech and things like that so us counselors teach that class this year we're teaching our own grade level and that's been really cool because we're able to get to know our kids in a different way and be with kids in our own grade we also do minute meetings at the middle school where we ask similar questions that the elementary school has asked so like what are you looking forward to this year what are you nervous about um we

036always and our questions with what's one thing you want your school counselor to know about you and that's the one that I find I get a lot of information from kids on um we have a partnership with change to chill through Allina um and we were able to create a Chill Zone and we'd do a chill week which is like a mental health awareness week with kids to teach coping skills we knew for this year we are working um with character strong as well so we are doing once a week ta lessons on um with character strong and that's character education um it does go really well with social emotional learning too um we've always been doing the character lessons in ta but now we have a really strong curriculum for what we're doing um

037we are trying to provide more parent education and resources the counseling department started a monthly newsletter where we have a mental health Spotlight and provide information to parents um this year new we have a wellness club for students that are art teacher is leading and that's been really cool we are exploring um guest speakers related to mental health um for this winter um with the minute meetings we asked that question about if um kids feel like they have a connection with an adult in the building we tracked as well the kids that said they do not and we're doing something called a red dot program where I bring those names to our staff and so then teachers say like oh I think I can make a connection with that kid and then we kind of

038like sign up who is going to try to make connections with those kids who feel like they don't have one of those relationships we did a fall professional development on the importance of relationships and connections with kids and we did just get a grant for some updates in one of our rooms in the counseling office where kids can come down and take a break and we have some sensory fidget items down there so I think that's additional support this year any questions for Middle School the connect classes so do students some students take that the first seven weeks and then sometimes so some students don't have until the very end of the year correct yep yep so it does wrote they rotate like through the wheel so they're not all getting it at once um

039and that would be then where we are putting some of that stuff through ta and like the mental health awareness week where kids are getting it all the time because we know some of the kids don't get it then sure until the end of the year they're getting it like pieces yeah throughout the year but then that course is really you know hyper focused on like the coping skills and things like that so it wasn't connected yeah probably not his favorite class but you know some kids favorite class some kids not it just kind of depends all right so high school so same deal with high school they took the youth risk behavior survey as well um 859 of our high school students participated about 82 percent of all the students up there um you

040can see the numbers for Pierce County and Saint Croix County below so similar questions similar rollouts as far as kind of what we're seeing there so students who agree or strongly agree they belong at school 62 percent s who have one teacher or adult to talk to is 72. students who most of the time are always get the emotional help when needed 23 and again consistent with uh with Pearson Saint Croix and then students who can turn to at least one adult besides parents 85. um so just a little information right there as far as kind of that school connectiveness and support at our high school um at the same uh token mental health um so again anxiety 48 percent um students who felt so sad or hopeless almost every day for two weeks 30

041percent um then you can see some of the ideation questions below so in a similar manner to the middle school again some some numbers that um I think when you think of these being our students our kids our grandkids um it's something that definitely warrants some focused work and I'm really proud of the student services team for what they have been doing um and some of the things that that we are doing going forward as well here's a little bit of uh just some historical information as far as kind of how those numbers tracked over time on what if you see kind of a grayed out box that just means that the data wasn't reported in that particular data set so we continue to get this information we will be doing another yrbs in the

042spring of this year um it's going to kind of turn into like an every other year kind of thing or every year and a half kind of thing and so we'll have this ongoing set of data to kind of inform some of our efforts much like we do with the forward exam and looking at kind of how we're doing academically this is a really good way to kind of take a a dipstick on how we're doing with social emotional learning um in general when you look at kind of both our middle school and high school we did see because there is a way you can kind of go in and look at kind of subgroups um and so when we looked at that we did kind of a deep dive and really we saw much

043higher rates of anxiety and depression for students who really reported that low sense of school belonging students who feel like they belong at school feel connected at school not surprisingly have less amounts of anxiety and depression um students who had experienced bullying depression or bullying or violence or trauma again also showed more more rates of anxiety depression students with low grades students who had things that you know set them apart from their peers um like race or class or sexual orientation or disability status also were reporting higher levels of those things and then finally female students were reporting higher reporting higher level as anxiety depression and self-farm compared to their male peers um real quick as far as things that are happening at the high school very similar to kind of some of the things

044that are happening at the middle school um you know things that were already happening High School had the backpack program they have Wiley's wardrobe which is a great room that has lots of clothing and supplies for students who need them student services team up there does a lot of mental health supports through groups through individual or one-on-one counseling we have character education we've done some additions as far as student services I know last year you added another social worker which really allowed a social worker really to focus on the high school and then have one for the uh the elementary level so that was really helpful as far as the high school Services as well um this year as far as additional supports we expanded our co-located services through a partnership with restorative um thank

045you to the school board and to the Lions Club for a great donation um that allowed you know that to happen uh we did do a fall on PD on restorative practices we did an additional fall professional development on the importance of relationships and connections I actually shared all the numbers I just shared with you with the middle school and high school staff so they could actually see what our current students were reporting as far as their social emotional and mental health because again I think it's really important to have a firm understanding of what our students are walking in the door with each and every day we're starting with character strong the student services team has done a lot of work on the SEL mtss framework because again if you can be successful academically

046that's another perfective protective Factor when it comes to some of the mental health pieces so really well I should off take a second you have any questions about the high school fantastic I was just gonna ask kid anyway so all right so really to to wrap things up um on behalf of the student services team I just want to thank the school board um superintendent Benson Mr Bell um for all of the support for um student services positions and initiatives um over the last several years um you can see that our students definitely need it um and you can see that this that a lot of really really great work is happening so um I just again thank you for your ongoing supports and hopefully this was a helpful snapshot of what's happening in our

047schools thanks Mark you know one of the things that I notice on here is when we talk about personalizing learning and serving the whole child it is it seems to me that it would be pretty difficult to be able to separate out students social and emotional needs from their academic needs am I am I thinking about that in an accurate way yeah correct okay Alan um a couple of things thanks Mark and staff for this um this is interesting stuff and as Jamie mentioned we've been getting updates on this throughout the pandemic in fact the pandemic was a real Catalyst for us to really focus on this one of my things that I've really come to understand much better in my time on the board is that um all kids need to learn and anybody

048who's listened to me on my time on the board here knows that I'm constantly hammering about other schools if you count the e-school today which we do in this we've got a lot of variety so that families can make these decisions and that I one of the things that I've had to remind myself of on the board was when my kids were going through the district I had to always remind myself that their experience wasn't always the experience of everybody else so why are we doing this my kids don't need that okay then to stop and think that as board members we're not here because they're my kids they're we're here because they're our kids we had 3 500 kids in this district and there are kids and we need to be concerned and focused

049on all of them so if things are getting in the way we need to make sure that or knocking those down and addressing that and keeping everybody going now this isn't as if we just decided that boy we're worried about social and emotional learning and so we're going to focus on the self-harm thing and we're not going to teach reading first semester we're just going to focus on Cell Farm okay we don't do things like that there are absurdities out there I know being on the wasb executive committee now and looking at the other 320 school boards School school districts in the state there are absurdities here and there and there are people around going on in some districts thinking that see this is going on in that District it's probably going on in your

050District too this is a good District it's an above average District so I don't like to see us when we're up there as being average even average below average nothing I don't like to see us below average anything because we consider ourselves an above average District on this so we had to do ought to be doing better than most of these others um but we're not doing some of this absurd stuff and we are concerned about families we're concerned about to the extent that they exist for a student or a family unit as I often call it because some too many of our students don't have a traditional family to support them and those kinds of things and we need to watch for them and the fact that many of the issues you raised here

051even though they only affect a small number of students I'm real concerned about that that those thoughts of suicide thing which one out of five of our students in the middle and high school are thinking about have thought about suicide okay now that's one out of five but that one out of five affects the other four out of five there's no way that that thinking and actions that happen in that one out of five don't affect the four out of five so it gets in the way of everybody's learning right so being focused on this in partnership with what we're doing in teaching in our academic Pursuits and those kinds of things is what's going to make our students succeed get good test scores Master content things and that sort of thing so I I

052I apologize for the long speech here but it's a long way of saying appreciate what the staff is doing here to do this appreciate the fact that you've been able to quantify this and put this out there um and open it up for people to ask questions about and those kinds of things because it's absolutely important work and it's critical foundation work to our students learning and mastering the basics and foundations of what we're here for thank you Alan you summarized it well anything else all right we are going to move on to some reports and the first one um really our Focus today is the superintendents report yeah we're doing our presentation tonight jointly so the administrative team is going to provide the school board with a strategic Plan update we call it our

05390-day update as we have made that commitment to the board after you the board approved a new strategic plan It's A Five-Year Plan you approved it in June 2022 through 2027 makes that Five-Year Plan A Five-Year Plan and so we need to kind of break this into some pieces and make sure that our work is deliberate and purposeful and focused and targeted and not find ourselves trying to bite off more than we can chew all at one time again it's a Five-Year Plan not a one-year plan and so what we did with the entire strategic plan is um identified three primary areas that we were going to work on with our staff this year there's some other pieces to the Strategic plan that I'll also outline I had to one-up the administrative team because we

054promised each other that we would not bring a PowerPoint otherwise this presentation Had Each principle brought a PowerPoint tonight the meeting would go until midnight and so we're going to give the board a brief overview but of course I had to one-up them and so I just have a couple of brief slides sharing our mission statement and there's copies of our strategic plan on the table over here where you can read more in depth about that plan the board approved in June so nobody but the superintendent can bring a PowerPoint that's the message that's right that's right yeah one of those deals so here I highlighted the three green pieces are those uh three selected um areas of the Strategic plan that we felt our staff would need to be a little more engaged in

055these three areas and I'm going to talk shortly about some other areas of the Strategic plan that are in motion but it doesn't require the attention and the energy of all of our staff as much as those three green ones that are principles are going to just talk about the one underneath goal one tonight and then next month they're going to talk about 2.2 in the following month they're going to talk about 3.3 we've we found in our rehearsal our dress rehearsal that again if we were to give you a comprehensive report on all three frankly it would have just taken too long and we think we can be more efficient and a little more detailed if we break it into pieces uh sorry yeah apparently you don't get a PowerPoint yeah he got dropped

056by the uh sorry that's okay I clicked twice and I'm the one that caused that little hiccup and so now I will refer to my cheat sheet to remind me of a couple of comments that I wanted to share with the board before I turn it over to the board again strategic copies of the Strategic plan are available here I mentioned we identified the three objectives uh that would be more uh intensely focused on uh some work with our staff and again we we didn't want to create initiative fatigue work overload we also wanted to keep our our focus a little more uh narrow and um really laser-like focused on these key priorities we think that's a way to be more productive and overall more effective again within a five-year plan don't try to do

057it all at once there is however more than meets the eye with our strategic work and so I'm just going to briefly share some of what that entails um we in all of these that I'll just mention briefly are found within the one at a time yeah I'm on the bottom part of this slide now all of these components under more than meets the eye that is to say more than just those three priorities here's an example of more than just those three that are grounded in our strategic plan that are going on I'll say kind of a little more behind the scenes and don't require the time and attention of our staff on a daily or weekly basis we recently completed a formal Safety and Security audit at both the high school and the

058middle school were that helped us to identify areas to improve our safety security measures there's College and Career planning that was presented to the board at our last meeting or was that Ed program perhaps um the addition of mental health supports you heard about that tonight uh in-service plans are very focused on removing barriers to learning for all of our students and some work that we've done to improve improve staff Wellness all of those little miscellaneous pieces are also called for within the Strategic plan and without getting into the Weeds on all the details with that the intent of tonight is now for me just to turn it over to the administrative team so that they can give you some more in-depth details regarding okay so what's going on at each building what of the

059what of that goal 1.1 support collaborative teaching culture focused on student learning what are you doing at each of your buildings and so with that I will turn it over first kit are you first on the list following our board agenda Mr litkeel provide the board with a little update of these activities at the high school a lot of what we've talked about I think we've been in front of you as the board the last two months I'll be brief really again I'm not sure if Jamie's planning on sharing the spreadsheet with you that we have where we're kind of documenting some of the things that we're doing but we talked to Lisa and Terrell talked in September about some of the professional development we're doing with 9th and 10th grade teachers specifically talking about

060some of our students of concern trying to find ways to improve levels of academic or different behaviors in that level we've also talked with you about our academic and career planning we had Melissa Hansen here discussing as well showing you our comprehensive model of what we're trying to roll out with all students our SLO goal is again has been remaining the same for the it's a three-year goal that we again increase the number of our students by 30 percent in terms of College and Career Readiness and we've shared that redefining ready data with you so we are really highlighting and working on that work behind that though we have our PLC meetings so we again are looking at our curriculum and how it is aligning to things like our act how it is aligning to

061levels of our curriculum and how we are preparing for students in terms of College and Career Readiness but I feel like out of all of us back here at UC me the often or most often and you kind of know where we're headed in our objectives and how we're treating our staff again the Fruity Pebbles calendar we meet often we talk a lot with our teams about it if I'm advocating for one thing again tonight would be consistent PLC time more so at the high school if we could ever find a way to get that work moving a little bit forward and faster so thank you so much I'm going to jump in before you Chris because with the hiccup that I had with the PowerPoint presentation I mistakenly forgot to mention another two really

062important pieces one really important piece of the Strategic plan is broadly this long-range facility plan and I think I would be remiss to not continue to trickle some of this information out publicly and as time goes on we're going to have more conversation moving forward but the board approved we hired the board hired a company to do a formal enrollment study that will help us to identify our space needs number of classrooms needed and so on educational adequacy what kind of changes have occurred within education that maybe we need to take a deeper look at our space not just in terms of enrollment but also educational adequacy what are some of the community interests Transportation Needs school forest co-curriculars all of those things will be part of as the Strategic plan calls for us to

063do the development of a long-range facility plan the second asterisk note the second paragraph I'm mentioning the potential for a 2024 referendum based on this facility plan and based on the enrollment study and I would I purposefully wanted to State here that obviously to to move forward with any referendum it's a it's a Community Choice issue referendums mean that the community gets to decide what we're going to do and if you're going to conduct a referendum correctly you have to have the right kind of Engagement and dialogue and communication with the community so that they can make a well-informed decision when they go to vote Yes or no we are very firm in our understanding of that and are very committed to that and just wanted to mention that if we continue on a path

064towards the 2024 referendum we're going to take this facility study we're going to take the enrollment study we're going to engage in making prioritization from all of that work and together we'll then engage with the community and decide whether or not we're going to hold a referendum in 2024 or not now Chris back to you when Jamie told me that I couldn't do a PowerPoint I thought about writing a song for this 1.1 my voice is a little scratchy tonight so I think I'll take a pass on that um so yeah just a couple notes on our priorities as they relate to the Strategic plan we have a lot of open enrolled students in our program this year so one of the things we are attempting to do is find out where they are in

065their reading and Mathematics skills and as they come into our program so that we can Target some interventions for those students who may be struggling we haven't had a good uh I don't think we've had a really good assessment we're going to work with the fast Bridge assessment this year so that's something new for us so we can identify those struggling readers and those who might need a little extra math help as they progress through a program um another thing I've been doing is aligning our core courses with the high school in terms of uh well one would be just course titles so if they take a course at our score of the high school because we have movement between the two schools that they're getting the same content we're looking at the same Benchmark

066standards assessments you know working with the high schools we can ensure some rigor and also some Integrity you know if a student is moving back and forth or moving into our program or out of our program so we're excited about that um we're implementing a mentoring program this year for first generation college students and working with uwrf to kind of charge up our students a little bit about life after Renaissance so that is something that we're excited about the other thing is it relates to collaborating and and uh and keeping our focus on students is looking at our graduation profile this year kind of outlining specific qualities and skills that we would like our graduates to have and then assessing how we're doing in terms of helping those students get to that point specific things

067that we're looking at is career and life skills we've we've always done that but we feel that we can continue to do that since a purpose sense itself leadership empathy collaboration skills creativity and of course content knowledge are all things we're looking at when we're looking at a profile of a Renaissance graduate so that's kind of what we're doing at the Renaissance and next time I I'd prefer you to each sing it Chris I think it would come off even better Market Meyer Middle School all right uh I would start by saying that um 1.1 is I guess looking at from a personal perspective when I look back at my mission as an educator for 15 years my mission was to inspire encourage and challenge others to reach their potential through hard work and character

068nowhere in my mission to say anything about student learning and then I read a book by Anthony Muhammad and Luis Cruz and then we read learning by doing as an admin team and one of the first chapters in learning by doing was what is your mission as a building and we spent six months coming up with our mission that's memorable it came down to three things that were collectively committed to the academic growth character development and well-being of every student every day and then our vision is that we'll operate as a high performing professional learning community in a caring environment where students and Staff feel safe connected and engaged and the Secret Sauce as Jamie likes to say is is a professional Learning Community when it comes to 1.1 um so that was a lot

069of her work last year this year we're meeting we're collaboratively meeting uh once a week on Tuesdays we've been able to take the team prep and prep time so our grade level teams can meet every week and the bulk of our work is right now centered on standards-based grading so when you look at the big four questions within a POC what do you want kids to know how do you know if they know what what do you do if they do know what what do you do if they don't know it we're really focusing right now on the standards-based part of it and we're working really hard on our proficiency scales and our assessments um so we'll continue to do that book read as well with our staff learning by doing we're once a month

070getting into our team meetings for that so that's the bulk of our work right now and I would say that our admin team also did that book read last year and well the last part is and I stole this out of Dr Sherman's Playbook is listen you can have a mission and you can have collected commitments but if you're not reflecting on those periodically so this past quarter at the end of the first quarter we went looked at our Collective commitments and we talked about what are our successes what can we celebrate what do we need to start doing and what do we need to stop doing we'll be doing that same process uh later this year so that's one of the nice Parts is our admin teams doing the book read we're learning from

071each other so that's what's going on at Martin Middle School Mark who's the author of that book who wrote that uh defor uh s group Acres I can't remember Nate is that right yeah to four knickers Mark just just a comment on that um Kit's not here so I'll say this in context let's I'll say it to you in context of the data that Mark just presented on middle school and high school which is really useful data but you've already got a big plateful on the stuff that you're undertaking right now especially that focus on student mastery of material and all that sort of stuff we'll be interested I think going forward on how we incorporate the stuff Mark has talked to us about this where students are in their life and how that gets

072incorporated into that learning stuff and hearing about that because I think that's important to all of us right now it's concerning data how we what we do with that I think is is going to be important for us so Dr Sherman okay so in regarding uh objective 1.1 supporting a collaborative teaching culture focused on student learning it it really is in the Wheelhouse of some pretty important work we've done at Greenwood for quite a few years now our three cornerstones our character culture and collaboration and you can see two of those in this objective so I could carry on for a long time and get pretty fired up and passionate about the work that we're doing but I'll just pull a few things out from what's been going on at Greenwood a couple things that

073have been happening first just a little backdrop a few years ago actually quite a few years ago now we instituted a performance character rubric that we use in our classrooms with our students to try and capitalize on the character work that we do but apply it to the academic work in the classroom focusing on character traits of perseverance responsibility cooperation and courage so it's a way for teachers to sit down with kids and essentially analyze the academic work are you you doing your very best are you sticking with the work when it's hard for you can you work with other people well obviously important skills for the 21st century so that's something I wanted to point out collaboration has been a big part of our work at Greenwood also for many years and we talk

074about having authentic collaboration and a lot of times that gets lost underneath the language of PLC so being a professional learning community means that part of your culture is that your ongoing collaboration is happening what Mr lickey was talking about was trying to find time in his schedule where the teachers can get together regularly that's embedded in the day to talk about student learning first and then figure out how their teaching can address the student learning and then continue that cycle so at Greenwood we talk about collaborating in a way that is both tight and loose so we want to make sure a that we're tight on having a guaranteed and viable curriculum and that doesn't mean that we have this nice scope and sequence that looks really pretty but rather that we can implement

075the curriculum that's in front of us and I think you know probably having been in education as long as many of you have been that there are many many many standards far too many for us to teach and address during the course of a child's K-12 education career so guaranteed and viable another element that's tight is to have common formative assessments or performance tasks making sure that we're checking for student learning along the process of the learning not waiting until the unit is over but rather throughout the process another area that's that is is tight is making sure that we have interventions and extensions for our kids that when we get to those third and fourth questions that Mr Chapin talked about earlier how do we know if they know it what do we do

076if they do what do we do if they don't we have a plan in place to address those needs if they're not getting it how do we help them if they are getting it let's not bore them but let's look at ways to enrich the learning opportunities so those things are are tight things on the loose side of collaboration might be the Norms that the teams make the roles that they play in their collaboration how they write their common formative assessments and how they score those things that's dependent upon their team and they're working together to do that but that's changing throughout the course of their meetings and then this year because we've been at this for a while but it's important that we all know that you've never really arrived as a collaborative unit

077it's something you have to continue to focus on continue to grow in and be reminded of so I've asked the staff this year after each collaboration meeting ask yourself these questions did the work that we did today impact student learning did the work that we did today impact my teaching and did we answer those four questions if that happened during the course of a collaborative meeting then that was authentic and the impact would be powerful at Greenwood this year something that's new is we're working on our our vision statement so Mark talked about his mission and his value statements we've had those for many years but we're putting a vision statement in and I was doing some reading this year and a phrase that I ran across was without action uh vision is only a

078dream an action without Vision just passes the time but Vision with action can change the world so we're working on putting our our vision together which is a realistic and viable uh look at the future what do we want to become when we think down the line what do we want to see for Greenwood Elementary and we've had a lot of success at Greenwood over the last handful of years and I say that with a lot of humility but but we have and we don't want to wait until the until things turn in the opposite direction and visioning is a proactive approach to moving schools forward it should energize and excite people and we've had some great collaboration involving all staff not just teaching staff but support staff as well throughout the course of the

079year um so the vision was the was the big new part for us at Greenwood and then I also wanted to talk outside of Greenwood just at the elementary level and my colleagues can can jump in we emailed back and forth who should do this tonight so I'll just jump in on it something we've been working hard on together is to get our music art fired and our special Educators together on a more authentic collaborative path also so they've been meeting over the course of time probably once a month but the nature of their meetings hasn't been um as focused as what we would like to see it be so we have been meeting with those people over the last couple of months preparing them to engage in authentic collaboration and that will start December

0801st so we'll bring teams together we'll have them spread out at different buildings across the district two of those groups will be at Greenwood a couple will be at West Side a couple will be at Rocky a couple will be at the Montessori and they'll be in the same places that everyone else is collaborating and that way we can best support them as they're engaging in that work so we've been teaching them how do you identify your essential targets how do you build your common formative assessments what are your team Norms going to be what a high expectations look like in your content area so we're really really excited about the work that we're getting going on with our Specialists we haven't forgotten about them but while we've all been getting together on what authentic

081collaboration is with our regular education teachers we had to put something on the back burner until now and and we're ready to move forward with that so those are the the things I wanted to share with you tonight I want to make an object we've heard a lot of in some sense examples of the fruits of the labor in these presentations about what can come out of collaborative teaching but I really appreciated the last comments that you made in terms of the process of helping people to teachers to become collaborators my guess is Teachers just like everybody else aren't just naturally born knowing how to do all of these things so we have to help them to learn so I appreciate that you gave us an insight into how you're doing that and how you

082and the other principles will do that yeah I appreciate that I appreciate that comment you know it's really hard when you take time that teachers are used to having for themselves that they have great value in and they they want to protect and you say well we're going to use that time for something different so once the fruits of the labor start showing up teachers won't want to do without that but initially making that switch in mindset is difficult so there will be some growing pains with our Specialists I'm sure but I know that we can get there but that's where the leaders come in right Nate I'm curious about bringing the different specialist areas together tell me a little bit about the goal of that I'm curious right I can see the value of

083the of the plc's and all of that communication I'm just curious about the different areas coming back together it would be the same thing as what we would have for any grade level or any content at the middle school or high school so our music teachers will be getting together the music teacher from with music that makes sense no we've brought all of them together now in large group to teach them about collaboration but yes I didn't make that clear no yeah I thought you're bringing the music teachers and the PE teachers together we had a dance unit that I really miss miserably failed in elementary school so I was curious if very good but you know pick it up on that then there's there's no end of stuff we could do and I think

084finding the time we've heard this several times from you now tonight finding the time to get our teachers together without pulling them away from the students and all that sort of thing is a challenge and it's something we need to Grapple with and we're going to need your help trying to figure that out because I would add on top of that A variation of what Cindy's saying here I would not only like to see like all the PE teachers in the elementary schools meeting together again I'm real interested in vertical alignment so do we ever involve the Middle School PE teachers and then the High School PE teachers because what is it we're doing with music art and PE and the elementary level that prepares them for middle school that prepares them for high school

085and without the vertical alignment in our curriculum we have challenges another thing to think about but it may be something that we can build in at some point and you'll have to help us as we struggle with is trying to figure out how to carve out that time thanks Jamie's not gonna introduce me but I'm sorry I was writing enough Ashley yeah from Rocky Branch um one note too on what Nate was saying is um the other nice thing about the specialist and special ed collaboration is it also goes with objective 3.1 so Rocky has a new music teacher and a new special education teacher so it's just been nice to have them have a different group of people that they can collaborate with that maybe understand their craft a little bit more too so

086kind of pleased on both areas for that um so I was in a unique position this year being new to Rocky Branch so my first um objective over the summer I worked with our lit coach to kind of create like a big picture plan for every Thursday for the school year so we took a calendar we mapped out every Thursday with the goal of going really slow at the beginning so obviously Rocky has experience with collaboration and some plc's but a new administrator so we took probably the first two months to just talk about guiding documents roles Norms um what what would our like process look like each Thursday what will it feel like what are some examples of student work you might bring and then our lit coach helped me and so they're a

087math coach kind of um pick out suggested data points throughout the year so every Thursday we have a suggestion of what they could bring a type of student work to look at but if they're really on a roll with something else that's fine too and they can bring the work that's relevant so we started with a map um started slow with our laying the ground work and then we're also doing the learning by doing book study for just our BLT so our leadership team does that and we're choosing or I'm choosing chapters or excerpts that specifically tie into what's coming next in our Thursday morning meetings so right now we're kind of shifting into formative assessment um conversations and building common form of Assessments so we are working on chapter six in the book to

088tie in with that and then the BLT members facilitate their PLC collaborative meetings so sometimes we take time to create protocols or specific questions that align with things that they can bring and it helps them guide the conversation with their team so if they're not comfortable with maybe having it really data focused or how to keep the conversation student centered our BLT team builds some of those guides together to make sure that everyone feels like their conversations are intentional and then our lit coach and I kind of bounce between the meetings and check in with everyone and help guide the conversation on Thursdays as well um so that's kind of our PLC work our collaborative meeting work we also are instructional coaches we have Connie and Rachel they're doing an um instructional like walk-throughs which

089has been really great it's the last couple of weeks they've popped into classrooms um and it's a time for them to give like real-time feedback to teachers so they're collaborating they're jumping into some of their lessons and they're giving them um just really quick feedback or pointers on what they saw in their lessons and then the other piece that we're working on that's related to our collaborative teaching culture is encouraging peer observations so the coaches and I are going to provide one week in December one week in January and one week in February where we're going to offer 30 minutes of coverage so the teacher can go observe another teacher either on their team or on the grade level above or below so that's kind of coming they don't know that yet so if you're

090watching um but we'll talk about that later this month so just another opportunity for that for them thank you Ashley this is interesting yeah okay Chris thank you Stacey Cameron Westside Elementary get more guests do it all right um I will continue the trend in that we are working hard at West Side on collaboration we are also our BLT reading portions of the learning by doing book we read chapters one and two and I just kind of stopped there for now because we are working on a new Mission at West Side uh the mission there we believe was last written in 2010 and although a very um uh thick mission statement it is not one that I've met a person yet who could memorize or really utilize in various ways and so we are working

091on rewriting one right or writing and completely new one right now our BLT we kind of went through stage two of that and I worked a lot with Mark on the process they went through last year and so we've kind of narrowed down the components and the values that we want as part of it and now different groups grade level groups and departments around our building are writing drafts that we'll then we'll go through we've kind of coded the top components that came out now and they're working on that and it was helpful to do chapters one and two first that talk about the mission statement and then we'll move into vision and into the collective commitment so that's been a really helpful process and we hope to utilize that in many things we hope

092to utilize um interview questions based on on that in which we bring people into our building hope to share that with parents and staff and our parents students in addition to our staff and really use that as a way to drive what we're doing as a building as the others do as well um also we have the collaborations on Thursday morning what we're doing this year is our we have a schedule of our lit coach and I work around work through those that is kind of a little bit of pause at times as we utilize Thursday mornings to work with Specialists as well which has been a really awesome process so far gotten really good feedback from The Specialist I'm at so when Jeannie and I go into the plc's we're working with them and

093kind of reviewing or working through what what they have but also ways that we can help and support them and that's been really helpful for Genie and I both the aspects and ways we can do and also working through the questions um and kind of what's next for those groups we also our data digs are continuing to work through those something we've added new this year is outside of the data digs which are three times a year we generally try to utilize in-service days we can for those are having meetings with our lit coach myself and our school psych to go through the progress monitoring data of interventions every month and how those students are doing and then work with them they kind of collaborate with our title teacher the classroom teacher and how those

094students are doing if they need adjustments we're also using edu climber and those um and the data behavioral data kind of Drive SST or student support meetings and kind of Drive the collaboration protect teachers from yourselves a little bit if if the kids have gotten so many road maps of like oh let's collaborate around those so kind of using the data to drive smaller forms of collaboration um something we've also done this year is in our staff meetings which are twice a month at West Side is to have um specific schedules out in advance of what is being presented on and so that has helped to bring others into those meetings so like support staff they know the topic a month in advance and if they'd like to come and learn we have a CPI

095being presented on and kind of the non-physical aspect of that next month by Joe Hames or school psychologist they can come and attend that last week we had one with our lit coach who presented on various strategies and so people could come to that and so it's kind of a way to get ahead of that and get more staff involved Beyond just our teachers who will always come to those um and I think that is all of them um and then again just to work with the specialist has been really positive I have met part of our cycle outlet Coach does not come but is meeting with our building specialist so kind of as you were alluding to Cindy we meet um with music art Fayette Library Spanish within our building once a month or

096about what once every five six weeks and that's been really positive but getting them in their own groups outside of the building has been a really good thing working to build somewhat where they do the same unit at the same time and that's something they haven't always done where they can kind of collaborate around that and kind of brainstorm and just talk through it I think I'll take that to a whole new level of collaboration they have so any questions for Wes said awesome thank you May Wells Montessori being last is a curse and a blessing the curses that have to follow up all the great stuff people have said but the blessing is a lest I say the more happy you'll be so a collaborative teaching culture um John Hattie who's being an education

097talks about teacher efficacy which is a teacher's understanding of what they can accomplish themselves and together and so if we're gonna do anything for our students that's one of the best things we can do and that's what the collaborative teaching culture is about um I am I am grateful to have all these people go before me a lot of great things were said I think naming the fact again that a lot of the things that we do are built upon previous practices and things we put in place and so the challenge in tonight is to highlight the new things and weed strives not have too many new things because too many new things can uh Brown out and make being a teacher really rough if you're always doing these new things so one new thing

098that we're doing this year is uh pre-covered part of our collaborative teaching processes uh in regards to curriculum because we have our Montessori curriculum we had to take time to align and make sure align our Montessori stuff to common core standards and so um about seven years ago we did a math Gap analysis looking just looking for alignment right before covid we started looking at Ela and we ended up looking at writing and so we're actually picking up work that we started pre-covered where we're going to be looking at our writing rubrics uh looking at them in terms of Common Core State Standards and what themes are supposed to be doing and then we'll be rolling those into our collaborative meetings on Thursday morning looking at student writing and then kind of process to implement

099a scope and sequence and have a common assessment tool so that's one of the big things that I'll be doing this year any questions thank you Nate well clearly there's a lot of work going on and that was only one of the sections so well done at this point we're going to move on to number six which will be the action items we have minutes from the regular Board of Education meeting that was on October 17th we have bills that have been submitted for payment we also have employment recommendations so at this moment at this point do we have a motion to approve minutes bills and employment as presented so thank you Cindy is there a second thank you Bob any discussion all those in favor aye opposed the motion is carried all right the

100Personnel committee met on November 7th and at that point we actually went through several job descriptions that we had talked about previously so um at this point we have those before us to approve but in the cut in the discussion we also talked about certified staff ratios and we had a presentation from the College and Career Readiness coordinator that talked about the job description but also later on in that day we talked about what they actually do so at this point do we have a motion to approve the Director of Finance and facilities management job description so moved second thank you Bob thank you Ellen any questions or comments all those in favor I opposed the motion is carried and now do we have a motion to approve the superintendent job description Mike where did

101you move okay and Ellen you seconded any any discussion all those in favor I oppose the motion is carried and finally do we have a motion to approve the College and Career Readiness coordinator and secretary job descriptions thank you Ellen is there a second thank you Mike any discussion all those in favor I opposed the motion is carried and I'll turn to you Stacy just yes when we did that pretty quickly but there's a lot of work that went into those three rewrites and I just I want to acknowledge that there was a lot of good work and a lot of good conversation that went on around those so and we had some of that at the last board meeting too so people have been able to see that so Ellen I'll turn to you

102for the education program update and recommendations um it was a really good meeting um they're always really good right this one was a highlight because our primary business item was hearing from Melissa Hansen and her team about our academic and career planning and the redefining what they call the redefining ready data presentation and we've heard from Melissa and her team several times in in recent years as to what they're doing and they're doing even more but this the fact that our high school is one of about I think she said 40 um some out of over the over 420 school districts in the state who have a program that is this involved in this um far along in terms of what we're doing in terms of not just preparing students for four-year colleges preparing them

103with the academic and skills Readiness for all kinds of careers and we we involve them in technical programs academic programs a whole variety of those and how those tie together it's very robust and good conversation and we really appreciate Melissa's work in this her leadership in this because it's not just her she's got a whole team that are involved in this and we appreciate this at the high school so it was one no action was required on that and then we we addressed a policy um one of the things I I I let me digress for just a second here because I had a very extended conversation last Friday with a school board member in another school district because of my position now in wasb um sometimes I'll get some questions from other board members

104and this was a board member and the board was looking at a whole array of policies that they have and they all need to be updated they haven't touched anything in almost eight years and so now it's kind of this overwhelming task and it brought back to me the fact that I really appreciate the fact that we have a regular process now of reviewing policies so if anybody wonders who's going to be watching this or here tonight why sometimes a policy pops up it's not just because we all of a sudden realize in a panic we had to do something as often because we're doing a regular review job descriptions same kind of thing we're not waiting until it's a it's it's an emergency or something we're trying to do do these on a more

105regular planned basis but this particular one was one where we did need a policy and and we talked about it in committee Jamie Nay had talked a little bit about leading into the committee and this was just uh we need a policy and procedure around when police want to interview our students in the high school how do we do that we don't necessarily want to we certainly don't want to impede the police and in some kind of Investigation but to what degree to parents need to be involved and how do they alert us and can they pull a kid out of class in the middle class in the middle of the day a kid who they just want to question but everybody in class realized the police just showed up in the building and pulled

106them out what does that do for a building so we need a policy and how this is going to handle So Jamie did most of the work on this and consulted our local police chief of police and the police department in our sros and all of that ran up by legal counsel all that so we now have a policy in procedures in in place for this and we talked about this length of the committee and that was an actionable item so I will move that we approve as a full board policy 448 on police interview of students and 448 the rules that accompany that is okay okay um we also want to say that that policy outlines how we will be protecting our students too exactly when their parents aren't there okay any other discussion

107all those in favor I opposed the motion is carried and then then um we actually had two new course offerings the kid brought to us um one is a PE course uh mindful movement in aerobic fitness and another was a culinary arts course International culinary arts we had a good discussion about this the way in which they're going to be taught the fact that these will be possibly replacing some other courses in the curriculum not just add-ons who might be taking these and where this might how this might would benefit our students so good discussion appreciate kit and teachers involved in this bringing it forward and responding to our questions so I will move that we as a full board approve the two courses as presented mindful movement and aerobic fitness and international culinary arts

108second thank you Bob any discussion I want to point out that throughout the agenda you've seen an Asterix pop up here and there that Asterix is designating any issue that directly ties to our strategic plan so you'll be able to see that the actions that we are doing are in keeping with um the strategic planning that we've done the only other thing I'll say about our committee meeting is we won't have a committee meeting in December next one will be in January so all those in favor I opposed the motion is carried and was that in favor of not yes and yes that was giving Mike off to samber yeah Dave I'm going to turn to you to talk with us about the substitute teacher daily rate of pay please so I submitted a memo

109to the board and to Jamie requesting that we increase the rate of pay for our short-term substitutes from 160 per day to 200 per day for the remainder of this year this is something that we did last year um and that was a temporary change the recommendation that I would make is that this would become a permanent change and there's two important factors why we're looking at this the first is we have a persistent need so last year we made this adjustment because of a surge in absences related to covid and while the impact of covet has subsided the need for substitute teachers has not over the last two months we continue to see an increase in the rate of our absences for teachers um and this says because we have more teacher absences we

110have more unfilled positions for context that provide some data there um our teacher absences for all are part of the day for the first couple months of the year we're at 729 if you go to 2019 which is a few years ago it was 484. so we're seeing a big increase a couple qualifiers that I want to make sure people understand is that's all or part of a day so that's counting a teacher that's gone for the entire day the same as teacher who's maybe gone for just a portion of the day maybe they have an appointment so they're gone for the last half hour so that's that's an important thing and I don't have the the breakdown of that but I think that's important to note the other piece is even though we've seen

111a big increase the vast majority of our teachers are here every day even with this increase we're seeing our percent absent rate with all our part of the days at about six percent so again while that's an increase it's still the vast majority of teachers are here um so with the increase in absences our fill rate has remained about the same so so we're seeing more unfilled positions we've worked really hard to increase the the depth of our sub pool we have about 85 different people who have subbed at least once in the district this year either as a teacher or a paraprofessional and that's a nice increase but we're still not meeting that need and one thing that's tricky is we're having people who Sub in multiple districts and if our rate of pay

112isn't on par with some of our competitors that's a decision that they're going to make when they decide where to sub for the most part the culture of our buildings is a really positive thing I hear that a lot from ourselves is I really like to sub in River Falls the sub plans are really good from our from the subs we have strong teams in place principals are supportive and so that's really good but we have to stay competitive so I provided some context of the daily rates of pay and and I would like to see that increase to be in line with some of our our closest competitors um so that's the recommendation to increase the teacher sub pay to 200. an important thing that I want to note is we also have a

113support staff fill rate issue and that need is still there but one thing we did at the beginning of this year is we aligned our all of our support staff sub rates with our initial step and so we are sort of topping the area for all of our sub rates for like sped pair professionals General Ed paraprofessionals custodians those positions and any adjustment wouldn't feel right unless we were looking wholesale at our permanent positions too so I feel like we already made that adjustment we used that strategy already are there any questions um uh I would say there's there's three things one we have more positions we have about 10 more teaching positions as opposed to 2019 and so you got more people you're gonna have more absences that's one two this year um yeah

114well one we're just we're just more cautious with our absences um and so people who may be in 2019 pre-covered just kind of pushed through and didn't didn't go see to the didn't go to the doctor didn't take the day off or didn't take their kid to the doctor and to have their kid take the day off um we're seeing them choose to do that now which I I believe is a good choice in the long run um and the third thing is uh it doesn't really relate to 2019 but um it maybe relates to 2020 or 2021 we added back or tried to add back some of our um professional development that might take teachers out of the classroom so CSA offers a lot of good opportunities you take a half day or a

115full day to go to cso or participate at virtual CSA professional development or you could do a curriculum time where you might pull a couple of content area folks together to have a planning day to really set the table for the pl for the next PLC those are things we tried to bring back a little bit this year and we've really recognized that we can't do that not not in not in the face of subtiting so get to that last point I had sent to just today I sent the administrative team an email indicating for the next couple three months we're going to put a little freeze on our out of District conference seminar meetings CSA so whatever it might be because it's contributing to our sub shortage yeah and so out of on one

116hand we all recognize the importance of professional growth and development opportunities that are found at those events but on the other hand if we're looking for some lovers to pull we're running out of lovers to pull to resolve the the absenteeism problem in the district where we have more subs than ever before but Dave pointed out some uh numbers of absenteeism he decided three reasons as to the why for that um we're we've been experiencing high volume with um virus flu RSV covid the you name it tis the season for the flu if you will and as another proactive measure we're going to kind of put a little freeze on those out of District during the day Adventures that cause us to also put a substitute in the classroom and we'll see how that goes

117to be clear it's it's not about saving money it's about having the right people in front of our kids more often and it's about trying to keep our schools open because right now we've had a couple of days where some of our individual schools have had high absenteeism of not just students due to illnesses but when we have such a shortage of staff that could cause us to have to close a school and so we're trying to pull these two levers one is ask the board to approve the increase in sub pay and the other is we're going to peel back and taper back on those out of district meetings and see if that doesn't help us kind of weather the the winter flu season a little bit important for people to understand too what

118the impact is when you don't get a sub right all of a sudden now you're following teachers yeah and we also pull we pull our coaches or our counselors or our school psyches or our principals that aren't able to do with their jobs right right well they still have to do it they don't have time to do it right so Dave I want to just clarify that you are recommending this 200 for the remain be permanent for the remainder of this school year we're not necessarily saying what will be in the fall I think well I I think that are you saying it's a signal that I I don't see us going back so last year when we did this we thought well maybe this is a temporary thing and we can kind of renormalize

119and I just I just don't okay evidence shows that we can't one thing just the nitty-gritty too so the change would be effective now so 11 27 or whatever the Monday is that's when it would take place but Subs would see the change on their 1 5 23 payroll that's how that kind of rolls out just so people are clear with that Dave I got two questions um the first one is this will help the 200 will help ensure that we're more likely to get a sub right when we're competing on the day is short yep is it also fair to say that we might be able to get the best subs do we ever have that I mean that we've got to take someone we're less we would rather not because we can't get

120us up for that day it's just going to allow us to get the best yeah so we put together with feedback from subs and feedback from principals we put together a sub handbook we did a sub training at the beginning of the year um I think our office staff does a really good job and our principals do a really good job of welcoming our subs and keeping and a supportive eye on our newer Subs I mean some subs that have been here a while it's they're everybody smiles when they enter because it's like oh good we're good in a good spot but there's new people and just helping helping those new people become acquainted with the district I think that's a separator right daily rate is a separator but how how welcoming a a building

121is is another separator and I think we've tried to take a lot of steps to do that and maybe if if a sub is has a has a has a bad day not just automatically going to well we don't want that sub in the building anymore but really reaching out to that sub and having a conversation about it and and taking some corrective actions before we just jettison them to another District okay good thanks second question is um and I'm willing to move this but just to get back to Stacy's question here if I move that we approve this should be approved for the rest of the year do you want to just prove it are you asking us to improve this person for the remainder of the 2020. yeah I think it's for the

122remainder of the year but I'm signaling to the board when we adopt the handbook for 2324 which is kind of the normal practice don't anticipate that it's going to go back which is what happened this year okay so I'll move it okay thank you Ellen is there a second thank you Mike any further discussion all those in favor aye opposed the motion is carried thanks Dave one of our responsibilities is to review safety school plans on an annual basis and so Nate would you please walk us through what this is highlighting the consistency among elementary schools please yeah so school safety as you know is a high priority the top priority for us in this district and there are many moving Parts associated with it each year we run an internal audit on the practices

123that we follow in the district and also on all of the buildings and then we have meetings as admin teams where we talk about safety plans we figure out what all the drills are that we're going to do and we make sure that we're consistent in in our approach and what you're being asked with tonight is to approve as part of our drill plan or our drill plan series that all of the buildings go through every single year as required by the state of Wisconsin so in River Falls we've aligned our drills with the National Association of school psychologists the National Association of school resource officers and the Alice Institute so some pretty reputable groups that have told us that what we're doing is developmentally appropriate for our students and at all of the schools

124not just at the Elementary's but at the middle school and high school we break down our drills into discussion-based areas seminars orientations and walk-throughs so at the elementary level officer G who's the resource officer responsible for the elementary and middle school he will come and talk with our students and staff about how to be safe at school with the main objective at our level of listening to the classroom teacher so we also talk about strangers and how to respond and and so on and so forth um at the high school and middle school we've got training videos that are put together by the police we also have a presentation that our homeroom teachers our Tas are sharing with our students that talk about threat reporting and school safety uh at the elementary level we're reading

125the book I'm not scared I'm prepared and having discussion and going through practices with the kids through different activities within that workbook and then we have an orientation element again now this is all levels making sure that students have a good sense of what is where within the building and some of our buildings are pretty expansive so knowing where the doors are where certain exits are how to get to the nurse or the office is obviously really really important and then we have the walk through component and the walkthrough can also be called an intruder drill and we do those both at the elementary and secondary level but they look a little bit different so it's important that the board and anyone else who's listening understands that our Intruder drills are announced or broadcast drills

126meaning we are not surprising anybody by these drills parents included in fact just backing up a second before we begin doing any of this work we notify all families in the district that it's going to happen we let them know how the pieces are going to roll out when it's going to start when it's going to be done and how all of it will work together we give parents the option to contact us to reach out to ask questions or to even pull their children out if they want to and I think this year we had maybe just two families that said you know what we want our students to be involved in the learning element the lesson component but we don't necessarily want them to be involved in this part of the drill so

127that gives I guess me a sense of confidence and also a accomplishment that our families have that much trust in us that we're that we're doing things the right way so back to the Intruder drills their their broadcast at our level uh Elementary level we're letting the staff know it's happening we're coming on and making an announcement like we would in the case of an intruder and the children are practicing basically their lockdown drill most of the time we would barricade the door find the safe place in the classroom we would pull the shades we would be very quiet and when I say we pull the door that means it's locked because doors are locked all of the time in the district we don't ever want to leave to chance that we need to find

128our keys and lock the doors in a case like this at the high school level slight difference is that we may have people posing as Intruders now to be very clear there's no one running around the building there's no one dressed a certain way or brandishing a fake weapon of any sort there's no loud noises there's no one grabbing or touching but the reason we do that at the high school and the middle school level we put an orange vest or a yellow vest on someone maybe even two people because the decisions that have to be made in a building during a time like this are partially dependent upon what's going on in your area if you're at an exit or close to an exit and it appears safe to you getting out is a

129safe move although we're beginning to focus more on just hunkering down and hanging in there because we know that our police force would be coming but again there's no touching there's no screaming there's no yelling and it's a pretty subdued type of drill for a very serious serious situation the outcome of all of that is that we are to fill out a report that the state requires and although the reports are a little bit varied in terms of what you see I can assure you that's what that what is happening at Greenwood is happening at West Side is happening at Rocky Branch and is happening at the Montessori and I think if there's some shortcomings in the differences there that's probably on me for not uh articulating the thoroughness to which the reports need to

130be filled out and and completed well it's a sad reality that we need to do these drills but since we do it's really important that we're doing them and doing them in an age-appropriate way with notification to parents so I have a couple couple questions for you um a lot of it this really heavily relies on our teachers right and interacting with our students how do we prepare our teachers including our subs yep great question so every year as part of our safety plan that I put together and give to principals we outline different things that have to be done from August 1st until the next school year one of those things I mention is where we do our internal and external audits another is we have to talk about school safety with our staff

131so our police liaison officers come to our buildings and they basically remind and educate our teachers in particular new teachers about what Alice is and how that operates for us I meet with all of the new teachers at our new teacher orientation um and then and then you know it's just making sure that all of our teachers are on board with a different steps so we have an outline we give the teachers here's the dates that it's happening here's what got sent home here's how you do it and it flows pretty well yeah I spoke to the substitutes this year as well we had a really nice turnout and really good feedback from that also and that's another component of what each teacher needs to leave with their as part of their sub plans is

132the the information that would help them yeah they're as best they can obviously it's not the same thing yeah the depth of understanding that our subs have isn't going to be the same as what our teachers have but we do have a crisis response flip chart that's meant to be like a quick action here's a quick summary you hear this announcement it says lockdown oh my goodness what do we do boom lockdown done so we we do have that we make sure that all of our teachers identify where that is for our substitutes and I should be in every person's sub plans the relationships that our sros make with our students shines through right and they hear from somebody that they know and trust and and that's I think that alleviates a lot of the

133stress and anxiety of this situation of the training how do I so on the ground how do our students look and feel these days so I don't want to take any credit away from the from the sros at all but I also want to make sure that the teachers do get a lot of credit we the teachers in this District love their kids like they are their own children and our kids do really well with these things in part because of the fact that we're approaching the way we go about the work with them as a whole child how would you like your child to be taught when they're in first grade second grade third grade eighth grade 11th grade what would you like if you were a parent of a child and when we

134keep those things in mind we don't forget about the social emotional needs that the kids have we also don't forget about the academic needs that they have so we work really hard throughout the district believing in and the genius of and we do this and this not this or that trying hard to leave nothing nothing to the side I think that I can only really speak to my building but in getting feedback from other buildings our kids do really well with it it's not new anymore these practices have been going on although we make small tweaks each and every year we've been pretty consistent with our practices and that's a really good thing for our kids it's so sad that this is going to become part of their school life like fire drills right so

135in yeah anyway thank you for all your work on this such an important area for teachers students the whole District to be um really on the spot with I mentioned one more thing you know we're really really super intentional about this work in fact if you were to see the plan layout we don't start any of these safety discussions until about three or four weeks after the school year begins and we know that we're unfortunately rolling the dice a little bit with that delaying reminding kids of our safety practices could be a big deal but so is our so is starting the year feeling good about it and not having to think about these things we want to build those relationships and sense of community trust with the new teachers before we delve into them

136so we've tried to identify the sweet spot for that at about the three four week Mark and I think that's been helpful for us too one of the things that occurs to me when when Cindy mentions that it's sad we got to be doing this right now but drills have been part of education for Generations um and I'm old enough maybe the only one in this room was old enough to remember when we did drills for nuclear work ER about to see a number of people in this room and they didn't do them anymore when they realized there is no drill to protect you from a nuclear bomb um but I can remember doing those and how scary those were as a kid and um so this isn't the first time we've had to deal

137with this that doesn't make him any better but it just I think there's a lot of parents and grandparents and and others out there who can identify with the fact that these drills have to happen appreciate as Cindy said your work on this I I would just ask I'm assuming this goes on but I keep thinking a lot the last few months about what happened in Uvalde Texas and the fact that we have traditionally had a very good working relationship with River Falls Police Department and I'm assuming that all of the things you're talking about here we're engaged with River Falls Police Department they would know immediately what to do in a an event of an intruder or something like that and we would know who those people are obviously as a board we know

138our SRO is really well but um maybe you could just say something to how we work with the River Falls Police a lot of that work goes through our sros but it's not limited to that so certainly Chris and Brian have a really good working relationship with me we talk about our district safety plan which is much bigger than just if we were to have an intruder I mean we have 250 pages of policy and mitigation and response if we have certain issues and we need to have that because it's really hard to think rationally during those emotionally stressful times but I've been at the police department I've met with them we've gone over our plans they like them they even said hey we might steal certain elements of the reunification plan we work with

139other partners I've even been in contact with the new Pierce County Sheriff before he was actually the sheriff they get up updated maps of our schools they bring officers to our schools to tour before the school year to remind them of the layout of the building physically being there looking at it is different than having a that they're looking at but they all have them downloaded on their computers and their squad cars we've even talked about access for instance the key cards what if something tragic were to happen where the electronics wouldn't work well we have a plan in place for them to get into our building now if that wasn't able or if they weren't able to do that so we're not perfect by any stretch of the imagination but I think I think

140we have a really good plan and a really really good partnership not just with the police but also with the larger City using their repeater for walkie-talkie transmission that now can go district-wide not just in a building site so we're we're working hard at it and we continue to look at it we'll make adjustments as we learn that we need to sure and just and Chris those things happen with your your building too right I'm looking at Chris silver you you're doing drills and all those kinds of things is all of our buildings are doing this right yeah every building does the same same drills they look pretty much the same the buildings that's been Chris's biggest challenge is he's had four different buildings in the last handful of years oh really you know it's

141a new map every year and where are we going for this and where are we going for that reunification sites are now different places but yes it's we're consistent throughout and like I said if there's a shortcoming in the way that the uh reviews of the drills have gone tonight and what was submitted to you that's probably on me for not helping people understand the the extent and depth that should be reported well at this moment at this point I'm going to move that we approve the 2022-2023 school safety drill evaluations with the understanding that you'll work with the two reports that need to be consistently reflecting what they actually do is that would you be willing to help with that absolutely and I'm confident that there's a lot of deep reflection going on all

142right so I've made the motion is there a second second thank you Bob any further discussion thank you for all that you do um all those in favor aye aye the motion nobody opposed so the motion is carried um at this point do we have any proposed or suggested items for future agendas I want to say very briefly two things that last Thursday we had a groundbreaking ceremony for the Renaissance it was really fun there was a bus load of kids they helped to shovel the snow and the and the dirt it was cold out there the city presented us with a city of River Falls flag that could be flown from a flagpole with a a fish yes yes it's a cool flag it's really cute so and at that point they um were

143talking about that they were so happy that the city has a strong relationship with the school district so it was a really nice event I also want to make sure that we say thank you to Pat Knox and his team in the food service department for making such a very nice potato bar and assortments of Pies for American Educators week I told each one of them that I saw they had to create their own thank you lunch so we have to make sure to thank thank the cooks for that so at this point we're going to set up upcoming meetings the educational program committee will not be meeting thank you all right Mike finance and Facilities will meet Monday December 12th at six o'clock Personnel will meet Monday December 12th at 7 or immediately following

144fnf the next regular board meeting will be Monday December 19th at six o'clock those meetings will all take place here and at this point I request a motion to move into executive session pursuant to Wisconsin State Statute section 1985 1A and F for the purpose of conducting a pupil expulsion hearing and for deliberations thereafter is there a motion please so moved thank you all in a second thanks Bob I need a roll call Mike Bob Allen yes I'm saying yes Cindy we're going to take a recess of four minutes and then we're coming back let's see kit could you help move a table up there please thank you thank you